The Bay Psalm Book, as HEATH tells us, was, next to the Bible, the most commonly owned book in seventeenth century New England. The way these two texts were studied and valued, however, could not have been more different.
The scholarly, rigid way the Bible was meant to be studied surely made more than a few people bored, especially when you compare the active way the Bay Psalm Book encouraged people to get up and sing. This encouragement to sing, and to learn through that singing, is right in line with the active, rather than the passive, role that the Protestant's took when they worshiped and is in extreme juxtaposition when you imagine an isolated preist quietly studying the Bible.
Another unique way the Bay Psalm book was studied has to do with the many revisions that it went through. Frequent revisions from 1683 to 1830 served to update the language and phrasing of the text. This makes complete sense when you realize how much our current experiences and concerns shape our views of the past. By adapting the text based on geographical areas, different ethnic groups, and different languages, this "sing-a-long" worship attracted people from all over New England.
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While the two texts seem to be studied different, it seems that an exceptional amount of thought was put into revisions and translations of psalms. In the introduction to the Bay Psalm book, Cotton goes into detail about why certain changes were made, and attempts to justify these changes. So I think that while the two texts are very different, I don't see them as competing against one another. The Bay Psalm book was created with utmost respect for the Bible. There were even some translations of Psalms that were considered blasphemous or unusable by the Puritans because they paraphrased too much and did not respect the word of God. Also, Cotton explains that this is why some Psalms seem to not flow as well as poetry should, the translators could not justify changing them any more than they already had. I think that the Bay Psalm book was always meant as a companion to the Bible, and I'm not sure that I think the Puritans would think that the Bible was boring.
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