Eastern Orthodox Liturgy

In this paper I propose a new narrative of the history and milieu of the Jerusalem (Hagiopolitan) Daily Office in Constantinople. I show that this Office was monastic neither typologically nor sociologically, but practiced at the Great Palace and in public churches at an early date - in addition to monasteries such as Stoudios. I also suggest an earlier date for the adoption in Constantinople of the Jerusalem Office than what has been previously thought.

I examine John of Damascus' defense of icons, upheld at the Council of Nicea II (AD 787). John argues that the making and honoring of images of Christ and the saints are in keeping with Scripture and Tradition. Contrary to the view that the second commandment prohibits images, John argues that a proper understanding of the commandment shows it is a prohibition on the worship of creatures. Because the context of the commandment is that God is unseen, so no image of Him is possible, the question emerges whether something has changed for those who confess that the Son of God has taken on flesh. John argues that the Incarnation not only makes images of the Son permissible but raises the question of whether resistance to such images indicates a faulty Christology. As for the honoring of images, John shows that Scripture, though prohibiting worship of creatures, approves the honoring of people, places, and things. But more profoundly, John highlights that the Eastern Church fathers understand the Incarnation to bring human nature, and through it the world, into communion with the divine nature. This communion makes it possible for a creature to serve as a conduit for divine energy and grace. John argues that such conduits are rightly honored, not as God, but as creatures in whom God's energy and grace reside. This view carried the day at Nicea II as a faithful representation of the teachings of the apostles and the fathers and remains the view and practice of the Eastern Church to this day.

Nicolas Abou Mrad’s focus is on Diaconal Perspectives between the Book of Acts and the Orthodox Liturgy. Based on the conviction that the Exodus from Egypt is a depiction and a dramatization of a liturgical act tracing the itinerary of the “People of God” from alienation and submission to the “power of man”, to the worship of God that culminates in the declaration of God’s law centered around “serving the other”, this article offers an analysis of the occurrences of the word diakonia and its cognates in the book of Acts, and especially in 6:1-6, which, the author believe, taps into the Exodus tradition, and relates diakonia to an act of continuous Exodus toward the fulfillment of the Word of God’s sovereignty over the whole earth. In this sense, and considered from the point of view of the dramatization of the preaching in Acts, Liturgy becomes, in Orthodox perspective, a continuous act rooted in the gathering of the community around the word of God and unfolded in the community’s daily life as a “serving qahal – ecclesia”

Research paper submitted in April 2016 to the Faculty of Theology at Saint Paul University, Ottawa, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Sacrae Theologiae Licentiae. This work was completed under the oversight of Dr. Brian Butcher while attending classes at the Sheptytsky Institute for Eastern Christian Studies (then under the auspices of Saint Paul University in Ottawa). It was evaluated as acceptable by the reviewing faculty members.
In this paper I seek to articulate, rather rigorously, the manner in which Maximus the Confessor understands the Eucharist to effect the divinization of the communicant.

*National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development (Italy)

Almost everyone in the world is aware that the Shroud of Turin, the reputed burial cloth of the historical character known as Jesus of Nazareth, was radiocarbon dated in 1988 to AD 1260 – 1390, ostensibly precluding the possibility that it was contemporary with Jesus’ burial.  Not as many people are aware that numerous scientists and researchers have challenged those 1988 results, predominantly for two reasons.  The first reason was due to the findings of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project (STURP), composed mainly of American scientists who worked in the U.S.’ nuclear and space program; the group, having produced two dozen papers in the scientific peer-reviewed literature, concluded that the image was NOT the product of an artist.  The second reason is the questionable actions and numerous irregularities by both the Catholic Church and the three C-14 labs involved in the testing.  I’ve written an eight-hundred book documenting the facts and have additional data in a web page.  Skeptics, of course, continue to uphold the 1988 results as accurate, and often ascribe denigrating terms such as “shroudologists” and “pseudo-scientists” to anyone who believes the Shroud could be authentic.  Skeptics also continue to assert that the Shroud is obviously a forgery, although there is no consensus among them how the image was produced.
      In late 2011, newspapers started reporting the results of some experiments performed by scientists associated with the Italian agency “ENEA.”  As often is the case with popular media, the news was somewhat sensationalized, with such headlines as “Was the Holy Shroud created in a flash?  Italian researchers resurrect claim” (Boyle 2011) and “Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural” (Day 2011).  Skeptics naturally asserted in their organizations such as “Center for Inquiry” (Nickell 2011) and in newspaper articles (Day 2011) that the scientists’ data was suspect, but as far as I know, nothing has ever been published in a peer-reviewed journal.  The actual conclusions as reported by the authors in their paper in a peer-reviewed journal weren’t quite as sensationalistic.  However, given the data produced, one can understand how some could come to fantastic conclusions.  This article will attempt to look at the data as presented in several peer-reviewed papers and look at the possible implications of it.
    I’ve added an appendix for a possibly-related phenomenon known as the “Holy Fire,” a phenomena not very well-known in the West.  At the time of this writing, Shroud researcher Russ Breault is working on a Shroud book that posits a possible link between the findings by the ENEA group and the effect of the “Holy Fire.”  The appendix will consist of several of the main sources for more information on this phenomenon.  This article will be updated as needed.

The debate on the liturgical language in contemporary Russian Orthodox Church witnesses the ongoing vitality of the Cyrillomethodian tradition, not only in an academic context, but also in the concrete liturgical and pastoral life of the Church. The paper presents the question of the liturgical language in the Russian Orthodox Church, identifying its historical and linguistic roots. After a quick overview of the debate during the local council of Moscow of 1917-1918 and its evolution in the Soviet period, it examines the discussions on liturgical language at the end of 20th-beginning of 21st century, trying a critical assessment of the new Russian versions of church Slavonic liturgy appeared so far.

The article explores a little studied and contentious Orthodox liturgical service intended for a woman immediately after a miscarriage, stillbirth or abortion. It offers a critical edition of this service based on its oldest extant manuscript witnesses and situates the service within the Byzantine historical, cultural, and theological framework in which it emerged. The author gives special attention to the central themes characterizing the rite, namely Byzantine fears and anxieties surrounding pregnancy, conceptions of women's culpability in pregnancy loss, and preoccupations with ritual impurity and the perceived presence of malevolent spiritual forces at childbirth and miscarriage. The article concludes that the rite emerged as part of a broader liturgical movement in the Orthodox Church to ritually accompany all events connected to childbirth, both due to pastoral desires to be present to women in these transitional moments, as well as efforts to combat other popular rituals condemned by the church.

The history of a fixed Easter date prior to the late-second century and the history of the equivocal meaning of Pascha, along with the failure of Nicea's broad indications to be observed throughout the Roman Empire do not indicate that a basis observes for either theology or some other inexorable principle to demand a common Easter. However, pastoral reasons due suggest a common search for trying to get the course of the sun and the moon correctly for uniting family and believers in the lived experience of Christianity.

This paper presents an annotated English translation of the rite of Vespers contained in the Melkite Alexandrian Arabic Book of Hours (Horologion) found in the 13th century Christian Arabic manuscript Sinai Arabic 232. Most of the texts comprising this service have been identified from the contemporary Greek Horologion, the Constantinople Euchologion and the Coptic Agpeya.
This very unusual combination is discussed. While further research on Sin. Ar. 232 and other Arabic Horologia is necessary before we may draw more definitive conclusions, enough seems clear at this point to suggest that the Egyptian Melkites originally used a Hierosolymitan type Horologion and that this, in due time, was both Alexandrinised and Byzantinised. We can therefore say that Sin. Ar. 232 is an Egyptian redaction of a Middle Byzantine Horologion with archaic Hierosolymitan features.
No other Arabic Horologia have been studied to date, and no earlier Melkite or Coptic Alexandrian Horologia are known. Considerable further research on Arabic Horologia is needed.

The horologion contained in Sin. Ar. 232 is not easy to situate geographically.  Many of the elements, canticles and prayers, are found in today’s rite, although not always at the same place.  Others have not yet been identified in the service books.  The proposed date of the 13th century seems the most likely in the absence of a colophon.  The psalms are distributed as in today’s rite, apart from the exceptions mentioned above in Prime, which follows on directly from Mattins, and the addition of psalm 50 as a fourth psalm in the mesoria.  As I have shown in my earlier articles, the saints commemorated, particularly in Compline and the Midnight Office, show a strong Egyptian influence.  However, these saints are accompanied by typical saints indicating Sinai.  The presence of Saint Sabbas may be linked to the monastery of Saint Sabbas at Alexandria, and Alexandrian origins would explain many of the ritual particularities that can be observed in the offices. 

N.B. the published version contains some small changes and improvements.

The present study aims to articulate the Orthodox biblical hermeneutics by analysing the biblical readings used in Orthodox worship. Studying liturgical books and especially the lectionaries helps us significantly to understand how liturgics refer to the biblical text and reshape it in order to accommodate it with the Christian doctrine. The present paper addresses the biblical readings dedicated to feasts of saints found in Prophetologium, a liturgical book no longer extant, dating from the 8 th-9 th centuries and issued during the liturgical reform in Constantinople around Stoudios Monastery, but whose biblical readings were later included in the Menaia, Triodion and Pentecostarion. Firstly, the text of the Prophetologion will be discussed, its relationship with the Septua-gint versions and the ancient Greek manuscripts. Then the author will focus on the readings of the Marian feasts and their exegesis as it is suggested by the selections of the readings. The readings of the biblical saints (mentioned in the Holy Scripture), of the ecclesiastic saints and the holy Ecumenical Councils shall complete the study. Introducere În mediul bibliștilor ortodocși români se simte tot mai acută nevoia conturării unei hermeneutici proprii, care să depășească tiparele hermeneu-ticilor preluate mai mult sau mai puțin prelucrat din Apus 1. Într-un articol anterior, încercam să explic de ce Biserica Ortodoxă nu are încă suficient conturată o hermeneutică biblică proprie și găseam răspunsul în lipsa unui contact nemijlocit cu Sfânta Scriptură ca volum aparte 2. În materialul de față, îmi îndrept atenția către răspunsurile pe care le poate oferi cultul orto-dox la întrebarea dacă o hermeneutică biblică poate fi consistent definită. Sfânta Scriptură se reflectă în textul liturgic și prin lecțiunile biblice folosite.

The Church of Jerusalem, the 'mother of the churches of God', influenced all of Christendom before it underwent multiple captivities between the eighth and thirteenth centuries: first, political subjugation to Arab Islamic forces, then displacement of Greek-praying Christians by Crusaders, and finally ritual assimilation to fellow Orthodox Byzantines in Constantinople. All three contributed to the phenomenon of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, but only the last explains how it was completely lost and replaced by the liturgy of the imperial capital, Constantinople. The sources for this study are rediscovered manuscripts of Jerusalem's liturgical calendar and lectionary. When examined in context, they reveal that the devastating events of the Arab conquest in 638 and the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre in 1009 did not have as detrimental an effect on liturgy as previously held. Instead, they confirm that the process of Byzantinization was gradual and locally-effected, rather than an imposed element of Byzantine imperial policy or ideology of the Church of Constantinople. Originally, the city's worship consisted of reading scripture and singing hymns at places connected with the life of Christ, so that the link between holy sites and liturgy became a hallmark of Jerusalem's worship, but the changing sacred topography led to changes in the local liturgical tradition. Liturgy and Byzantinization in Jerusalem is the first study dedicated to the question of the Byzantinization of Jerusalem's liturgy, providing English translations of many liturgical texts and hymns here for the first time and offering a glimpse of Jerusalem's lost liturgical and theological tradition. (Forthcoming, 14 December 2017)

On Feb. 2, 1279 according to the Byzantine historian George Pachymeres, a metal tray became embroiled in religious politics of the Empire, when it was used to serve kollyba after the feast of the Presentation of the Christ in the Temple.  Suddenly someone claimed to detect on it the word Muhammad in Arabic, and a controversy ensued. The paper analyzes the incident and the different possibilities of writing in Byzantium and Islam as word and ornament.

The article explores a unique eucharistic manuscript written in the early fourteenth century in the Serbian redaction of Church Slavonic. The codex preserves non- Philothean texts of the liturgies of St John Chrysostom and St Basil that are characterized by distinctive features, including a rare clerical vesting rite and a significantly reduced prothesis rite. After a codicological and historiographical description of the codex, a transcription of the full text of the Chrysostom liturgy is given. The transcription is followed by a detailed liturgiological analysis of its contents, with ample reference to Greek and other parallel texts of the liturgy. The conclusion of the study is that HAZU III a 32 was likely first used within a parochial, non-monastic context, and represents liturgical practices in the rural Slavic Balkans prior to the widespread standardization efforts at the end of the fourteenth century.

The Orthodox liturgy is a religious phenomenon that can be analyzed phenomenologically and theologically alike, given the emphasis that both phenomenology and Orthodox theology place on experience. By proposing the Kingdom of God instead of the natural world without being able to annihilate the latter in the name of the former, the liturgy seeks divine-human communion. Through the dialogue of prayer, through symbolic and iconic openings, as well as through apophatic theology, the liturgy emphasizes the horizon of mystery as a horizon essential to the way man positions himself before God. The present text attempts to demonstrate that apophaticism, understood as an experience of the mysterious presence of God, is one of the crucial dimensions of the Orthodox liturgy; and that this apophatic presence of God reveals a way of thinking which does not become onto-theology, not even when using concepts borrowed from metaphysics. The overcoming of onto-theology is achieved here not by abandoning concepts such as “being” and “cause” but by placing the language game in the field of prayer and apophatic theology.

This paper represents part of the findings of research presently in progress on the traditional chant and music of the Greek Orthodox Churches in America. Specifically addressed in this paper are the early, European origins of the introduction of polyphony and instrumental accompaniment into some Greek Orthodox parishes followed by a short discussion of the implications and challenges social change has had on the sacred music and worship in the Greek Orthodox inheritance within the American experience in a post-modern world.

This paper is dedicated to the three oldest Cyrillic texts of the Byzantine Divine Liturgy held at St Catherine’s Monastery on Mt Sinai: Sin. Slav.38/N, Sin. Slav. 39/N and Sin. Slav. 40/O+N. With the exception of a part of Sin. Slav. 40, all three rolls were discovered in 1975 and are described in detail for the first time in this article. The three manuscripts are dated to the 14th century and written in the Serbian redaction of Church Slavonic. Importantly, they contain eucharistic liturgies that are not standardized according to the influential diataxis of Philotheos Kokkinos (†1377/78). As such, these rolls offer new data for tracing the early history of the eucharistic liturgy among medieval Slavs on Sinai and on the Balkan Peninsula. The article includes a liturgiological commentary with comparisons to other South-Slavic and Greek euchologies. Full editions are given for each roll.

Wie kam es zu einer Entfremdung zwischen Russland und Georgien, zweier Länder desselben chalkedonensisch-orthodoxen Glaubensbekenntnisses, deren kulturelle Verbindungen bis ins Frühmittelalter zurückreichen? Georgische Einflüsse lassen sich bereits am glagolitischen Alphabet der Slawenapostel (9. Jh.) und der altrussischen Nestorchronik (12. Jh.) ablesen. Ebenso alt ist die russische Sehnsucht nach dem georgischen Paradiesgarten, dem Vyrïj-sad, dem Wohnsitz der Seelen der Verstorbenen, wohin die Vögel alljährlich zum Überwintern ziehen, welcher erstmals in der Belehrung Vladimir Monomachs (vermutlich 1117) Erwähnung findet. “Indeed, we began to believe that most Russians hope that if they live good and virtuos lives, they will not go to heaven, but to Georgia, when they die”, schreibt John Steinbeck 1948 in seinem Russian Journal von seiner Russlandreise mit Robert Capa.
Bei seiner Kirchenreform schwebt dem russischen Patriarchen Nikon (1605-81) die georgische Kirchenverfassung mit ihrem Ehrenvorrang der geistlichen Macht als sakrale Utopie vor. Nach der petrinischen „Enthauptung“ der Kirche übernimmt im 19. Jh. die russische Literatur die Rolle des geistigen Gegengewichts zur weltlichen Macht und säkularisiert das Sehnsuchtsbild des großen Patriarchen zum arkadischen Traum. Pathetisch gesprochen, ließe sich die russische Hinwendung zu Georgien ähnlich der deutschen Liebe zu Italien als „Sehnsucht der Mitternacht nach dem Licht“ bezeichnen.
Nach dem Fall Konstantinopels ersuchten georgische Könige erstmals 1483 das „weiße Russland des großen Nordens“ um Schutz, welchem nach der geschichtstheologischen Überhö-hung des Pleskauer Mönchs Philotheos zum „Dritten Rom“ (um 1500) die Rolle zufällt, das Böse der Welt in Schach zu halten und die Schutzherrschaft über die orthodoxe Christenheit wahrzunehmen. Als Alexander II. von Kachetien 1586 angesichts der türkischen Bedrohung den Sohn Ivans des Schrecklichen Fëdor um Schutz für sich und sein Volk bittet, kann dieser die Zusage seines militärischen Beistands zwar nicht einhalten, doch führen er und seine Nachfolger fortan den Titel „Herrscher des iberischen Landes und der georgischen Könige“. Für die Georgier beginnt „die Sonne im Norden aufzugehen“, wie es der Dichter Mamuk´a Barat´ašvili (18. Jh.) formuliert. Gänzlich entgeht den Georgiern die Säkularisierung Russlands seit Peter dem Großen. An die Stelle der „Heiligen Rus´“ tritt die „Große Rus´“, welche sich nicht mehr von eschatologischem Sendungsbewusstsein und religiöser Affinität, sondern von strategischen Interessen und der Staatsräson leiten lässt. Das Missverständnis bedingt eine Entfremdung und eine Tragödie, die bis heute währt.

SUMMARY
Like nearly all mediaeval Books of Hours in Arabic, the horologion
contained in Sinai Ar. 232 has not been edited or published. A close
examination of its content reveals the particular geographical and ecclesialsituation of this Arab Orthodox tradition in the 13th century. The
commemoration of "local" saints at compline are reliable evidence that this manuscript is from Sinai. The manuscript contains elements indicating community and also private prayer. The ritual is situated at a moment of liturgical transition, with elements of the middle Jerusalem tradition (after 8th century reform) and others of the new, neo-sabaite tradition. The Arabic terminology also witnesses to Syriac influence, and some of the saints mentioned are Alexandrine or, indeed, Coptic. This paper seeks to identify and examine these various elements, and also mentions what might be called an "ecumenical" approach in the manuscript between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches.

The current Euchologion contains four prayers regarding exclusively the vine and its fruit: a prayer for the planting and another for the harvesting of a vineyard, a prayer at the partaking of grapes on the sixth day of August, and one at the blessing of wine. However, besides these, the ancient Byzantine Euchologia contain a larger number of prayers with the same object, which have unfortunately fallen into disuse. The purpose of this study is to identify this kind of prayers in the ancient manuscripts of the Byzantine Rite and to present their content. In addition, a section of the paper focuses on the presence of such prayers in some Slavo-Romanian Euchologia dating from the 16 th-17 th centuries. The author analyses a number of seventeen prayers (with variants), most of them of non-Constantinopolitan origin, and concludes that this abundance of euchological material was a consequence of the liturgical use of wine in the Eucharist and other rites. Moreover, based on the information provided in this paper, the author proposes some textual revisions of the current prayers.

From the microscopic confines of a singular epistolary exchange between Archimandrite Antonin Kapustin and Metropolitan Filaret of Moscow, mega-trends in the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church are revealed. The tension between autocephaly and distinct hierarchical order from the ecumenical patriarchate in Istanbul down to the various episcopates of Ottoman Christendom, and striking a healthy balance between collaboration and subordination to civil authority are present here as they have been for centuries. All this against a background of great power rivalry over the disposition of what Russian, French, and English statesmen thought of as a dying Ottoman Empire. As though cheating the passage of time, both the “Eastern question” of the nineteenth century in a slightly modified form and the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Church remain open matters in the twenty-first century. These figure in the discussion of worship and dogma which follows.