Phrase - Would that there were

I stumbled into this phrase in a sentence, and being a non-native speaker of English, I had a hard time figuring out what it means. At first, I thought it was a grammatical error, but when I looked it up online, there were phrases exactly like this in the Bible and in Tolkien's work. Unfortunately, there has been no explanation about what it means.

The sentence is as follows:

Would that there were more books like this, playing with what we can expect from the plot.

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Does "would that there were" here have the same meaning as "I wish there were"?

Thank you.