Lyrics
Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!
Our triumphant holy day, Alleluia!
Who did once, upon the cross, Alleluia!
Suffer to redeem our loss. Alleluia!
Hymns of praise then let us sing, Alleluia!
Unto Christ, our heavenly King, Alleluia!
Who endured the cross and grave, Alleluia!
Sinners to redeem and save. Alleluia!
But the pains which He endured, Alleluia!
Our salvation have procured; Alleluia!
Now above the sky He's King, Alleluia!
Where the angels ever sing. Alleluia!
Public domain hymn text and tune. English translation first published anonymously in Lyra Davidica (London, 1708), from a Latin/German original tracing to the 14th-century carol "Surrexit Christus hodie."
The Story Behind the Hymn
"Jesus Christ Is Risen Today" is considerably older than most of the hymns that share its Easter subject matter. Its roots trace back to "Surrexit Christus hodie," a Latin Easter carol found in several fourteenth-century manuscript collections, itself likely adapted from still older material. The English version sung today first appeared anonymously in 1708, in a London collection called Lyra Davidica, or a Collection of Divine Songs and Hymns, Partly New Composed, Partly Translated from the High German and Latin Hymns — a title that openly announces the hymn's mixed European ancestry.
Nothing certain is known about who compiled Lyra Davidica itself, though the contents suggest an editor working somewhere within the German pietist tradition active in England at the time. The tune, now called EASTER HYMN, appeared in that same 1708 collection in a more ornamented, florid form than the version sung today; it was simplified into something closer to its modern shape by John Arnold in his 1749 Compleat Psalmodist.
This hymn's repeated "Alleluia" at the end of every line — eight exclamations across three verses — gave it a distinctive congregational character that influenced later Easter hymns. Charles Wesley is understood to have drawn directly on this older, anonymous hymn when he wrote his own "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today" decades later, meaning the two hymns, though often confused for one another because of their similar titles, are in fact separate works — one anonymous and medieval in origin, the other a deliberate eighteenth-century response to it.
Three centuries after its first English printing, the older of the two — still carrying its fourteenth-century Latin ancestor's repeated cry of triumph — remains a fixture of Easter worship across denominations.
