I'm curious if someone could shed some light on a curious troparion in the second canon of the Nativity of the Theotokos (composed by St. Andrew of Crete).
In one source, it reads: "We hymn thy holy nativity and honor thine immaculate conception, O divinely chosen Bride and Virgin. And with us the ranks of angels and the souls of the saints glorify thee." This is naturally bewildering because the Menaion is Russian Orthodox and I'm pretty sure it was scanned straight to PDF.
In the Ruthenian rendering of the same canon, it reads: "The angelic powers and all the holy ones dance for joy as we sing the praises of your holy birth and venerate your conception without seed, O ever-Virgin and Bride of God."
I'm getting the sense here that the "conception" being referenced is that of Christ by the Theotokos, not the Theotokos by St. Anne?
Not surprisingly, this just, sort of, struck me as odd. I'd imagine the Russian Orthodox, more than anyone else, would avoid the words "immaculate conception" back to back in any liturgical translation. But it may just be a weird translation, in this case, and not even in reference to the conception of the Theotokos.
Anyone else have a version of this canon?
And I'm not very interested in debating the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception. I am just interested in the translation.
