www.byzcath.org Forums Mysteries: The Life of Worship Vespers, Matins & the Divine Liturgy The Revised Divine Liturgy Diaconal admonition and its response at the Anaphora

Then what has the IELC/RDL done? For the case in point, the topic of this thread, both the Greek and Slavonic have the same normative phrase, Mercy of peace, but the RDL has Mercy, peace.

Also, the RDL (correctly I would say) follows the Ruthenian Recensian as normative in the rendering (at the elevation of the diskos and cup) of its text that has Offering rather than the We offer as found in the Greek and the Volgata.

John,

As to Greek being the normative base text we have:

Ex Quo Primum:
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ENCYC/B14EXQUO.HTM

as well as the letter of the Oriental Congregation to the Ruthenian bishops upon publishing the Ruthenian Recension books:

"4. Considering, though, the private origin of these modifications from which the Holy See was always aloof and considering the firm will of the Supreme Pontiffs, more than once expressed, even in recent documents, to guard the integrity of the Oriental Rites, it has been judged opportune to follow readings of the older texts, taking care to adhere as much as possible to the (Greek) text of Benedict XIV, especially for what pertains to the rubrics. Thus it has been desired to remain faithful to the recommendation of that Pope, when, having approved the Roman edition of the Greek Euchologion in 1754, he recommended it to all the Bishops of the Byzantine Rite in the Apostolic Constitution Ex quo primum of March 1, 1756.

I would also note that when the OCA translated their Liturgicon in the 1960s the translated it from the Greek, not from the Slavonic.

This only makes sense. If one is going to translate the Pslams, for example, he is going to translate from the Greek Septuagint Psalter, not the Slavonic one.

Fr. Deacon Lance

Both the Greek Catholic and Greek Orthodox Liturgicon have: "Ἔλεον εἰρήνης, θυσίαν αἰνέσεως", which the Greek Orthodox translate: "Mercy and peace, a sacrifice of praise."

Why then do they render it that way, with the and? What does Ἔλεον εἰρήνης actually mean, i.e. what does it literally say? Is εἰρήνης not a genitive, i.e. "of peace"? The expected Greek word for and in Greek και/kai; is it found anywhere in the referenced Liturgicon's response?

The issue is not the Greek, it is the goodness of the translation, and the unwarranted autonomy some translations/translators presume of themselves -- for instance, someone changing what I just said to read "translations/translators presume and themselves". In this case a flag goes up since it doesn't make sense, but that's the equivalent, in terms of fidelity to grammar and meaning, of saying Ἔλεον εἰρήνης is Mercy and peace. Mercy and peace happens to also make sense, but is it automatically legitimate on that basis, that it makes sense even though it doesn't say what the original says?

Can anyone provide the quote from Mateos where he actually suggests that the text / translation be changed?

In the text the deacon quoted Mateos seeks understanding. There is no evidence that he is demanding change.

This appears to yet be another example of where the committee has misused scholarship to advance personal agendas. And they got it wrong since the RDL text does not convey even the understanding that Mateos was trying to get to in what the deacon quoted. The whole RDL is so dated. It does nothing more then adopt some ideas that were avant guarde in the 1970s but were mostly passed by with additional scholarship. Hasn't anyone on the committee opened a book that was published since the 1970's?

According to Ex Quo Primum, a new Greek Euchalogion is to be used instead of the previous faulty (Greek) editions, but I'm not seeing normative in the sense stated above. Here is Ex Quo Primum:

I do agree, "more faithful to the original" is the goal.

[emphasis added]

So the Slavonic of the Recension conforms to the Greek in that it is only intended "to adhere as much as possible to the (Greek) text of Benedict XIV." The primary responsibility then should be to translate the traditional text, the text that is handed on to us, the Slavonic of the Ruthenian Recension, since (within this context) the Congregation has already taken the Greek text into consideration.

If just translating from the original is paramount, then what makes sense is to translate the Psalms from the original, Hebrew. Patriarch Nikon also thought that Geek means original and therefore the truest. He was not correct, having misinterpreted, oversimplified and misjudged the issue.

Ex Quo Primum, for instance, correctly notes concerning the Barberini Codex:
Yet, the Barberini Codex reading is NOT the one given as the Rome 1950 Greek text. Nor is it the reading in the Slavonic of the Recension for which the Oriental Congregation, as stated in the quote “judged opportune to follow readings of the older texts, taking care to adhere as much as possible to the (Greek) text of Benedict XIV, especially for what pertains to the rubrics.” This has resulted in the present Greek and Slavonic texts from Rome that have Mercy of peace and not Mercy, peace as in the RDL.

I don't see how that can be infered at all. It seems clear everything is to be translated from the Greek except that which does not exist in Greek.


That would be true if we had a Hebrew text older than the Septuagint. We don not, so Septuagint it is. Also Patriarch Nkion was relying on corrupted Greek texts not authenticated ones like Codex Barberini



But this particular rendering of the RDL is the Barberini rendering. I don't know why the 42 Slavonic or 50 Greek don't follow it but from the info presented they should have and the RDL does.

Fr. Deacon Lance

I didn't say he demanded change, I only provided the excerpt as a rationale behind the change.

Fr. Deacon Lance

You are saying it, but I'm not seeing it -- not in Ex Quo Primum, Tisserant's letter from the Oriental Congregation, or the Preface of the 1965 English Liturgicon. I just don't see that translation directive expressed. The RDL does put Rome's 1950 Greek first in line, but the reading in that text is in the Greek "Mercy of peace."

The Septuagint is itself a translation of what? The Hebrew "original." The textual witness of the Hebrew and Greek is another and complicated issue. Antiquity of the text is not the sole issue.

Why follow Barbreini? Ex Quo Primum itself noted that there were other manuscripts that were to be considered. Is the Euchologion of Benedict XIV in print? What does it give for the admonition and response?

Why did the RDL depart from the two standard texts -- Greek and Ruthenian Recension Slavonic -- that it acknowledges in its Foreword and, going beyond translating the given texts, choose another reading?

I would have thought this means literally 'a mercy *of peace* (genitive of mir is mira). I am a fair student of Russian and though it is not Church Slavonic or Rusyn it has a lot in common.

Indeed, as stated in the initial post of this thread:

But the question then arises, "Which Hebrew original"? There was no definitive Jewish canon of Scripture in the first century. Judaism was a polyvariant religion (with many more than the "three schools" outlined by Josephus), and each had its own favored canon. There were at least three or four Hebrew editions in circulation, based on scrolls and other papyrological evidence; some were closer to the Septuagint, others to the Masoretic, and some a mix of the two. There were other Greek translations besides the Septuagint, and there were also Aramaic translations in circulation. All of them were considered authoritative by the sects that used them. And, of course, not all of the books that ended up in the Septuagint were originally written in Hebrew. Some of the Deuterocanonicals were written in Aramaic (Hebrew having passed out of use as a spoken language during the Babylonian Captivity), and some in a mix of Aramaic and Hebrew. The present Masoretic text did not reach its present form until some time after the fourth century; some place it as late as the ninth century. The Septuagint is therefore considerably older than the Masoretic, and actually preserves more closely what the majority of Jews considered to be Scripture in the time of Christ.

In other words, there was no "original Hebrew text" to which one can refer; like "Q", it is an intellectual construct. In addition to which, the Church itself decided the Septuagint was its definitive canon of Jewish Scripture--something that goes back to the New Testament itself, where the overwhelming majority of quotes, citations and paraphrases from the Old Testament are right out of the LXX. The Apostles saw the LXX as their Scriptures, and we cannot depart from their norm. Jerome, God bless him, was dead wrong.

With regard to liturgical texts, most scholars agree that the oldest Slavonic manuscripts preserve an older stratum of the Byzantine rite than the extent Greek texts. The Slavs, being isolated, did not evolve their liturgical practices as rapidly as the Greeks, and were far less subject to outside influenced. They stood still, the Greeks changed. Scholars do not use the Greek texts to check on the meaning or accuracy of the Slavonic texts, they use the Slavonic texts to check on the accuracy and meaning of the Greek texts.

[quote=StuartKlike "Q", it is an intellectual construct. [/quote]

Thank you for pointing out that the "Q" source is merely a construct. A whole genre of bad Scripture "Scholarship" is built around "Q", as if it really existed out there, somewhere.

Dn. Robert

A very good point. A good friend of mine is OCA Orthodox (but a former Ruthenian Greek Catholic). His son just graduated with a degree from St. Tikhon of Zadonsk Seminary in South Canaan, Pa. The son indicates that the instructors at the seminary do point out that Carpatho-Russian usage has much which is pre-Nikonian, whereas the current English translation in use by OCA derives from the Nikonian Slavonic translation. In other words, we have more in common with the Old Believers than they do. We have a usage which is more "ancient" in its roots. So, we have to get rid of that?

Dn. Robert

Be patient - an English translation of the pre-Nikonian Divine Liturgy is in the works.

Fr. Serge