The Origin and Diffusion of the Common Table Prayer "Come, Lord Jesus"

Abstract

The Common Table Prayer "Komm, Herr Jesu" or "Come, Lord Jesus" is traditionally prayed before meals in many Lutheran and other Christian households. Many consider it to have first been published in London in 1753 and written by Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, the German religious reformer, missionary, and bishop of the Moravian Church. This paper shows, however, that this is a misattribution: the prayer had appeared in print at least twenty times before 1753. Its earliest known publication was in 1698, before Zinzendorf's birth, in a schoolbook written in Leipzig by Johann Conrad Quensen. He was likely the author of the prayer. The prayer was apparently based on a 1669 aria by Johann Rudolph Ahle whose text had recently been republished in the Wagner Gesangbuch of 1697. But unlike the aria, the prayer was meant to be spoken and to be taught to children. The possible precursors to Ahle's aria show it may have been inspired by the Emmaus or Cana stories. The diffusion of the prayer, initially through schools and then more broadly in society, was rapid and complete; by the mid eighteenth century it was culturally dominant throughout German Protestant lands and was becoming a truly international and ecumenical table prayer.