The Forgotten Prayers

Every prayer in this book was, at some point, nearly lost. One sat inside a manuscript that a bishop held in his own hands in 1873 and didn't recognize for another ten years — the Didache, possibly the oldest Christian teaching document outside the New Testament, written within decades of Jesus's death, then simply gone for close to a thousand years.

Another survived because it was sung at weddings and funerals by people who had no idea they were singing an ancient armor prayer. A third was written on the back of a tax receipt by someone who couldn't afford parchment and needed God's protection badly enough to use whatever paper was available.

THE FORGOTTEN PRAYERS gathers 58 of these practices into one book, spanning the Egyptian desert, Celtic Ireland, Coptic monasteries, Constantinople, and the hidden corners of Christian history that most believers — even devoted ones — have never been told about. Here's a taste of what's inside.

The Didache, discovered in a Constantinople monastery after 800 years of silence, contains one of the earliest written copies of the Lord's Prayer — with a single instruction attached that most modern Christians have never seen: say it three times a day.

In Ireland, monks wrote loricae — breastplate prayers — that asked God to cover a person body part by body part, down to the fingernails. One of these prayers is still sung in churches every Sunday. It's called " Be Thou My Vision ," and almost nobody singing it knows they're singing an armor prayer.

In the Coptic church, believers say " Lord, have mercy " forty-one times in a row — thirty-nine for the lashes, one for the spear, one for the crown of thorns.

In 2014, a researcher at Manchester found one of the oldest Christian amulets in the world: a prayer written on the back of an Egyptian tax receipt, folded small, and carried on someone's body for protection fifteen hundred years ago. Each chapter tells the true story behind a forgotten practice, with its full historical and archaeol