Paternoster Press is a British

Christian publishing Christian media, sometimes referred to as inspirational, faith and family, or simply Christian, is a cross-media genre that features a Christian message or moral. Several creative studios and mass media formats are considered to be aspects of Ch ...

house which was founded by B. Howard Mudditt (1906–1992) in 1936. Mudditt was a

Bank of England The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government o ...

clerk who decided to move into publishing after seeing the many publishers based on London's

Paternoster Row Paternoster Row was a street in the City of London that was a centre of the London publishing trade, with booksellers operating from the street. Paternoster Row was described as "almost synonymous" with the book trade. It was part of an area ca ...

during his lunch hours; the firm was named after the street, and also alluded to the

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

.Summerton 2010 The ''

Irish Times ''The Irish Times'' is an Irish daily broadsheet newspaper and online digital publication. It launched on 29 March 1859. The editor is Ruadhán Mac Cormaic. It is published every day except Sundays. ''The Irish Times'' is considered a newspaper ...

'' described Paternoster as "a synonym for scholarly, evangelical Christian publications." Mudditt led a

Plymouth Brethren The Plymouth Brethren or Assemblies of Brethren are a low church and non-conformist Christian movement whose history can be traced back to Dublin, Ireland, in the mid to late 1820s, where they originated from Anglicanism. The group emphasizes ...

assembly in Walthamstow, a north-east suburb of London. Through this and other connections, Mudditt formed relationships with many religious scholars who then published in Paternoster, including F. F. Bruce, H.L. Ellison, George H. Lang, and I. H. Marshall. In its early decades, Paternoster collaborated with other publishers, including Inter-Varsity Fellowship (later

Inter-Varsity Press Inter-Varsity Press (IVP) was previously the publishing wing of Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. It support the publishing or distribution of well over one million books each year to over 150 countries, including the translation ...

) and the American firm

Eerdmans William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company is a religious publishing house based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Founded in 1911 by Dutch American William B. Eerdmans (November 4, 1882 – April 1966) and still independently owned with William's daughte ...

. Paternoster began with the publication of a children's magazine, ''Horizon'' and followed with another magazine, ''The Harvester'',Paternoster Press Papers and a regular evangelical booklet, ''The Emergency Post''. Also among Paternosters early works were a periodical, ''Science and Religion''. In 1956, Inter-Varsity Fellowship sold the periodical, ''Evangelical Quarterly'' to Paternoster. Another significant publication was the '' New International Greek Text Commentary'' of the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...

, coedited by

I. Howard Marshall Ian Howard Marshall (12 January 1934 – 12 December 2015) was a Scottish New Testament scholar. He was Professor Emeritus of New Testament Exegesis at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. He was formerly the chair of the Tyndale Fellowship for ...

, W. Ward Gasque, and

Donald Hagner Donald Alfred Hagner is an American theologian, currently the George Eldon Ladd Professor Emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary. He was born in 1936 in Chicago of a Polish mother and Swedish father and was educated at Northwestern University (B ...

and published with Eerdmans. Later authors publishing in Paternoster include Tim Grass and Harold Rowdon. In the 1990s and 2000s, the publisher also presented a series of noted academic monograms: ''Paternoster Biblical Monographs'', ''Paternoster Theological Monographs'', ''Studies in Christian History and Thought'', ''Studies in Evangelical History and Thought'', and ''Studies in Baptist History and Thought''. ''Paternoster Biblical Monographs'', a series in the Evangelical tradition, broadly defined, won praise for the high caliber of its scholarship.Squires, John T., "Spirit and Kingdom in the Writings of Luke and Paul: An Attempt to Reconcile These Concepts", (book review) ''

Review of Biblical Literature The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL), founded in 1880 as the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, is an American-based learned society dedicated to the academic study of the Bible and related ancient literature. Its current stated mis ...

''. 2007, Vol. 9, p480-483. Paternoster relocated to

Exeter Exeter () is a city in Devon, South West England. It is situated on the River Exe, approximately northeast of Plymouth and southwest of Bristol. In Roman Britain, Exeter was established as the base of Legio II Augusta under the personal comm ...

in 1962. In 1975, Mudditt's son,

Jeremy Jeremy may refer to: * Jeremy (given name), a given name * Jérémy, a French given name * ''Jeremy'' (film), a 1973 film * "Jeremy" (song), a song by Pearl Jam * Jeremy (snail), a left-coiled garden snail that died in 2017 * ''Jeremy'', a 1919 ...

, became managing director and in 1976 was joined by Peter Cousins. In 1992 it was purchased by the Christian book distributor Send the Light as part of their ''Authentic Media'' division based in

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, and moved to

Carlisle, England Carlisle ( , ; from xcb, Caer Luel) is a city that lies within the Northern English county of Cumbria, south of the Scottish border at the confluence of the rivers Eden, Caldew and Petteril. It is the administrative centre of the Cit ...

. Paternoster's imprints include Regnum (an academic list) and Rutherford House (a popular historical list); it also publishes books with specific imprints for organisations such as WEF ( World Evangelisation Fellowship), YWAM ( Youth with a Mission) and Spring Harvest. In December 2009, as part of the failure of STL ( Send the Light), Paternoster was sold to Australian-based company Koorong, which, prior to this, was primarily a retailer of Christian books, music and gifts.

References

Sources

*Grass, Tim
FF Bruce: A Life
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2012. *Neil Summerton
Jeremy Mudditt
Brethren Historical Review. (2010) Vol 6: P 122-125 *Ten Harmsel, Larry, and Reinder Van Til
An Eerdmans Century
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2011.
Paternoster Press Papers, Administrative History. ELGAR: Electronic Gateway to Archives at Rylands
The University of Manchester Library Collections, Manchester, UK. {{Authority control Christian mass media companies Christian publishing companies Book publishing companies of the United Kingdom Publishing companies established in 1936