The liturgical reading of the Bible in Early Eastern Christianity. The protohistory of the Byzantine lectionary

Preview this chapter:

The liturgical reading of the Bible in Early Eastern Christianity. The protohistory of the Byzantine lectionary, Page 1 of 1

< Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/10.1484/M.CBM-SUBSIDIA-EB.6.09070802050003050408090501/M.CBM.1.101392-1.gif

[

The world of Byzantine manuscripts is fascinating but also confusing. Although they play an important part in modern studies on the history of Christian liturgy and on the textual history of the Bible, a clear overview of the vast amount of these manuscripts in their many different forms is lacking. A new approach in their cataloguing is called for. The present volume brings together a number of specialists in the field of Byzantine, liturgical and Biblical studies with the aim to develop a new methodology for codicological research of the Byzantine manuscripts, taking seriously the original environment of the integral codices in the monasteries and the churches in which they were manufactured and functioned.

Prof. dr. Klaas Spronk is Head of the Research Department Sources of the Protestant Theological University (PThU), location Amsterdam, and chairman of the CBM Academic Board.

Prof. dr. Gerard Rouwhorst is Professor of Liturgical History at the Tilburg School of Catholic Theology and member of the Department of Biblical Sciences and Church History of that institution. He is member of the CBM Academic Board.

Dr. Stefan Royé is member of the Research Department Sources of the Protestant Theological University (PThU), location Amsterdam, and CBM programme coordinator and secretary of the Academic Board.

This paper examines and assesses the relevant external (literary) evidence concerning the liturgical reading of the Bible prior to the eighth century, the period of which date the oldest Byzantine lectionaries and biblical manuscripts that contain liturgical information. In the first part, the much-debated question of the origins and the early development of the liturgical reading of the Bible in the first three centuries CE is discussed. It turns out that this reading exhibited a very flexible and variegated character. In the second part, a picture is sketched of the different systems of liturgical reading of the Bible that developed in the fourth and fifth centuries in the Greek-speaking regions in which Greek biblical manuscripts were produced, more in particular in Antioch (with a short foray into the regions east of that city which were for a major part Syriac-speaking), Jerusalem, Egypt and Constantinople. It is pointed out that considerable differences existed between the various regions, especially with regard to the Old Testament or the role played by the continuous reading of the Bible. In many cases, it will be possible to formulate plausible hypotheses on the basis of the evidence available about the liturgical setting in which certain Greek biblical manuscripts that date of the fourth and fifth centuries and do not contain paratextual liturgical information, have been used. This presupposes, however, that one possesses reliable information about the provenance of the manuscript concerned.