The prolific 18th-century hymnwriter Isaac Watts initially penned the lyrics for “Joy to the World” as a rhyming paraphrase of Psalm 98, and his poem was first published in 1719. It became a ...

Isaac Watts’s 1719 paraphrase of Psalm 98 became a Christmas classic when it was set to music by Lowell Mason—the “father of American hymnody”—and it is now one of the most popular ...