Greatest Hits of the 60s, 70s, and Beyond

It struck me that the phrase that one often hears on radio stations – “the greatest hits of the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and beyond” – could apply equally well to the Bible. It is a compilation of works which were considered to be particularly worth keeping and revisiting from a larger number of works written by Christians in this period.

I’ve always been the sort of person who dislikes “Greatest Hits” compilations. I prefer listening to whole albums. There are a great many songs that I really love, by some of my favorite bands, which were never singles, not to mention some really fantastic music on albums that never produced commercial hits at all.

There is something that is lost when we only know a band’s hits. I’d argue that there’s also something lost when we don’t know the literature that never became a “hit single” from ancient Christianity, too.

Here are a few songs that most of you have probably never heard, to illustrate the point: