Canon and Use

The canonical position of the Prayer of Manasseh is marginal. It was not defined as deuterocanonical by the Roman Catholic Council of Trent, and in the Vulgate it was placed, with the extra books of Esdras, in an appendix after the New Testament rather than in the body of Scripture. The Eastern Orthodox churches accord it a higher standing, printing it among the canonical or readable books, and it appears in the Greek Bible.

Protestant Bibles that include the Apocrypha print it under its own name. Despite this uncertain status the prayer has had a rich liturgical life: it is used as a canticle in Orthodox and, latterly, in some Western services, prized for its concentrated expression of penitence, and it has been set to music and drawn upon in devotion across the traditions. Scholars value it as a fine example of Second Temple Jewish prayer, and as a case of the impulse to fill a gap left in the biblical narrative, here, the missing text of a famous penitent's prayer, with a fitting new composition faithful to the spirit of the story.