Missing the (Theophanic) Point: A Blind Spot in Patristic Scholarship and its Consequences for Understanding Anti-Jewish Texts in Byzantine Festal Hymns” (original) (raw)
Alexandru Ioniță / Stefan Tobler (eds.)
Orthodox Liturgy and Anti-Judaism
PETER LANG
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Bogdan G. Bucur
Missing the (Theophanic) Point: A Blind Spot in Patristic Scholarship and Its Consequences for Understanding Anti-Jewish Texts in Byzantine Festal Hymns
Abstract
Many of the Byzantine hymns deemed problematic because of their strident anti-Jewish animus exhibit what has been called “christophanic exegesis”-that is, the straightforward identification of the kyrios of Old Testament theophanies with the kyrios of Christian worship: Jesus Christ. In hymns of this type, any editing or elimination of ethically indefensible and pastorally irresponsible statements, although possible and necessary, requires a good grasp of the logic and “agenda” governing the “christophanic” exegetical and theological tradition. Unfortunately, however, although it is a robust, adaptable, and widespread early Christian tradition, rooted in the New Testament and used for some fifteen centuries in doxological, doctrinal, polemical, and iconographic works, the Christological exegesis of theophanies remains under-researched in patristic scholarship. Treating the Christological exegesis of theophanies as irrelevant for a scholarly account of the Christian theological tradition has serious consequences. First, a dissonance obtains between the patristic authors and their scholarly interpreters in the field of Patristics. Second, the insistent recourse to theophanies in so much of Byzantine festal hymnography appears as a somewhat bizarre, archaizing feature, implausibly resuscitating the interests of a Justin or Irenaeus in the compositions of Romanos the Melodist and John Damascene. Third, and most relevant for the discussion at hand, “missing theophanies” in the study of Christian liturgy hampers our understanding of the theological intentions of some hymns and leaves us ill-prepared to carry out nuanced and informed liturgical reform.
Keywords: anti-Judaism, Byzantine hymnography, christophanic exegesis, theophany
1. Introduction
Every time Holy Week rolls around, we know it is that time when we once again sing about “the murderers of god, the lawless nation of the Jews…,” “arrogant Israel, people guilty of blood,” “bloodthirsty people, jealous and vengeful” and other such niceties about “the perverse Hebrews” and their crooked ways. It sounds brutal, fiery, a bit medieval-quite different from the colorless, odorless, insipid phrases of today’s media communication. It is true that one must also take into consideration the shift that has occurred from the harsh prophetic criticism of Israel (e.g., Amos 2:9-12; Mic 6:1-5; Neh 9:26) and the intra-Jewish
polemics in Second Temple writings (including the New Testament: e.g., “brood of vipers,” “synagogue of Satan,” “enemies of God,” “sons of the devil”), to polemics between the overwhelmingly Gentile Church and "the Jews."1 As Oskar Skarsaune pointed out so clearly,
as long as this tradition is used in an inner-Jewish setting, there can be no question of anti-Jewish (far less ‘anti-semitic’) tendencies … Something fateful happened to this tradition when it was appropriated by Gentile Christians with no basic feeling of solidarity with the Jewish people. Very soon it deteriorated into a slogan about Jews being unbelievers by nature and Christ-killers by habit. 2{ }^{2}
It is also true that liturgical texts come to us from a time long passed, and often reflect rhetorical conventions different from our own. But the simple fact is that,
1 Julien Harvey, “Le ‘Rib-Pattern’, réquisitoire prophétique sur la rupture de l’alliance,” Biblica 43 (1962): 172-96; idem, Le plaidoyer prophétique contre Israel après la rupture de lalliance (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1967); Robert Murray, “Some Rhetorical Patterns in Early Syriac Literature,” in A Tribute to Arthur Vööbus, ed. Robert Fischer (Chicago: The Lutheran school of Theology, 1977), 109-31, at 129; Michael Brocke, “On the Jewish Origin of the Improperia,” Immanuel 7 (1977): 44-51. For intra-Jewish polemics in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see Stephen Goranson, “Others and Intra-Jewish Polemic as Reflected in Qumran Texts,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls After Fifty Years: A Comprehensive Assessment, eds. Peter Flint, James VanderKam and Andrea Alvarez, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1998-1999), 2:534-51. For an extensive discussion of the polemics between Enochtraditions and Moses-tradition in Second Temple Judaism, see Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 2005); for the polemics around the calendar, the Zadokite and Hasmonite priesthood, and between the emerging rabbinic movement and the priests, see Rachel Elior, The Three Temples: On the Emergence of Jewish Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For the New Testament, see William Farmer, ed., Anti-Judaism and the Gospels (Harrisburg: Continuum,1999); Reimund Bieringer, Didier Pollefeyt, and Vandecasteele-Vanneuville, eds., Anti-Judaism and the Fourth Gospel (Louisville, MN: Westminster John Knox, 2001). See also the comparison between Luke’s anti-Jewish statements and the Rabbinic pronouncements against Sadducees, Samaritans, and Gentiles in Craig Evans, “Is Luke’s View of the Rejection of Jesus Anti-Semitic,” in Reimaging the Death of the Lukan Jesus, ed. Dennis Sylva (Frankfurt: Hain, 1990), 29-56, 174-83.
2 Oskar Skarsaune, “The Development of Scriptural Interpretation in the Second and Third Centuries-Except Clement and Origen,” in Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament: The History of Its Interpretation I/1: Antiquity, ed. Magne Sæbø (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996), 372-50, at 404. See also Skarsaune’s more elaborate discussion in his Proof from Prophecy: A Study in Justin Martyr’s Proof-Text Tradition: Text-Type, Provenance, Theological Profile (Leiden: Brill, 1987), 278-95 and In the Shadow of the Temple: Jewish Influences on Early Christianity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2002), 262−64262-64.
by ritual repetition, we make such venomous aspersions our own. It is, therefore, not the “Byzantine liturgical texts” of old but today’s Orthodox worshippers that have a problem and the responsibility to address it. Whatever can and must be said about the biblical precedents and the historical development of anti-Jewish expressions in Christian liturgical texts, today these invectives are deeply disturbing, as we know that rhetoric of this kind has been, at times, part of the explosive mix that led to real, not merely rhetorical, violence against Jews. 3{ }^{3} Today, when we intone before Thy Cross we bow down in worship, O Master, it is impossible to not also think of Chagall’s many depictions of the Crucified One in the midst of Jewish suffering, and to ask ourselves where we are in those pictures.
Yet the Orthodox are genuinely afraid-and not without some justification, if we consider some of the liturgical experiments of our separated brethren-that altering the lex orandi might lead to the relativization and dilution of the lex credendi. Where do we go from here?
2. A Treasure “to Labor and to Keep”
There are a good number of hymns that fall into the category of what Elizabeth Theokritoff calls “gratuitous invective,” which simply infuse the services with “a mood of anger and indignation” and, “to say the least, contribute nothing to our theological understanding.” 4{ }^{4} The case for eliminating or editing such texts is fairly clear, and many of these situations are being addressed by some of the local Orthodox Churches, albeit imperfectly-arbitrarily, unevenly, and without the benefit of a Church-wide consultation. One may think, for instance, of the selective printing of the stanzas in the Great Friday Lamentations.
But how can we jettison the Antiphons sung with such devotion on Holy Thursday evening?
- 3 See John Klier, “The Pogrom Paradigm in Russian history” and Peter Kenez, “Pogroms and White Ideology of the Russian Civil War,” both in Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, eds. John Klier, Shlomo Lambroza, and Patricia Herlihy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 13-39; 293-313, at 33, 306: “[t]he Easter season was the traditional time for fights between Christians and Jews, which always had the potential to turn into pogroms,” so that “traditionally the worst time for pogroms was Easter”; “[d]uring the Civil War many priests described Bolshevik Russia as a country ruled by anti-Christ and attempted to persuade their listeners that socialism was a Jewish creation.”
4 Elizabeth Theokritoff, “The Orthodox Services of Holy Week: The Jews and the New Sion,” Sobornost 25 (2003): 25-50, at 26, 49, 42. ↩︎
O My people, what have I done to you, and how have you repaid Me? Instead of manna, you have given me gall, instead of water, vinegar. 5{ }^{5}
Today the Jews nailed to the Cross the Lord who divided the sea with a rod and led them through the wilderness. Today they pierced with a lance the side of Him who for their sake smote Egypt with plagues. They gave Him gall to drink, who rained down manna on them for food. 6{ }^{6}
With Moses’ rod You have led them on dry ground through the Red Sea, yet they nailed You to the Cross; You have suckled them with honey from the rock, yet they gave You gall. 7{ }^{7}
Be not be deceived, O Jews: for this is He who saved you in the sea and fed you in the wilderness. 8{ }^{8}
I would argue that these are not “gratuitous invectives,” but, as I have argued elsewhere, privileged entry-points into Orthodox Christology and, more generally, authoritative sources for theological reflection. 9{ }^{9} Indeed, in the absence of proper catechesis, the negative references to the Jews in these hymns can be misconstrued as applying to all Jews, everywhere, in all times. Nevertheless, any editing or elimination of ethically indefensible and pastorally irresponsible statements requires a good grasp of their logic and theological “agenda.” Here as well as in so many other instances, the primary intention of the hymns is the identification
5 Holy Friday: Antiphon 12 [Triodion, 583]. The similarity with the Western Reproaches is evident. See Baumstark’s detailed analysis of the text in his “Der Orient und die Gesänge der Adoratio Crucis.” The English translation of the hymns is taken from The Festal Menaion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber & Faber, 1969) and The Lenten Triodion, trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware (London: Faber & Faber, 1977), modified only to conform to contemporary use of pronouns and verbs.
6 Holy Friday: Antiphon 6 [Triodion, 577].
7 Royal Hours of Holy Friday: Troparion of the Third Hour [Triodion, 603].
8 Holy Friday: Antiphon 12 [Triodion, 584].
9 Bogdan G. Bucur, “The Feet That Eve Heard in Paradise and Was Afraid: Observations On The Christology of Byzantine Hymns,” in Philosophy and Theology 18 (2006): 3-26, at 21: “I have argued … that the Byzantine festal hymns are bearers of an elaborate Christology, which essentially proclaims the same theandric mystery in Jesus Christ that is defended by the Councils, yet in a language very different from that of conciliar definitions; that the hymns constitute the historical companion of dogmatic writings in the patristic era and should be considered as their interpretative framework; that the hymns meet the criteria for being considered authoritative sources for theological reflection, and that they would prove crucial in retrieving the lost hymnic dimension of theology; that a Christology rooted in the hymns opens up precious avenues for ecumenical dialogue among the Christian bodies that preserve hymnographic elements derived from the same sources as the Byzantine festal hymns; finally, that the hymns are an invaluable resource for catechesis.”
of the kyrios of Christian worship, Jesus Christ, with the kyrios of Old Testament theophanies. The message contained in the verses quoted above is that the Lord God who chastised Egypt with plagues is Christ; the Lord God who cut a path through the Red Sea for Israel to cross unharmed is Christ; the Lord God who fed Israel with manna in the desert is Christ. In short, the point here is that the Lord God of the Exodus narrative is the Lord Jesus Christ.
As a matter of fact, Byzantine festal hymnography discerns the luminous face of Christ in all theophanies of the Old Testament. The paradoxical identification of Jesus of Nazareth as the Lord of Paradise, the God of our fathers, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He-Who-Is, who spoke to Moses in the burning bush and gave the Law on Sinai, the Lord whom Ezekiel saw riding upon the cherubim, whom Isaiah saw enthroned and worshipped by the seraphim, whom Daniel discerned in the characters of both Son of Man and Ancient of Days, the Glory of his people, the Holy One of Israel, occurs in the hymns of Lent, Holy Week, and Pascha, of Annunciation, Nativity, Circumcision, Presentation, Baptism, and Transfiguration. For instance, in the celebration of the Transfiguration, the hymns bring together Christ’s manifestation on Tabor with his earlier apparition to deliver the Law to Moses on Sinai and present Christ as “riding upon the cloud, in the midst of fire and darkness and tempest” (Exod 19:18-19; Deut 4:11; 1/3 Kgs 19:12) to deliver the Law to Moses. The one who spoke to Moses on Sinai, in thick darkness, shows himself again, on Tabor, in the blazing light of the Transfiguration: the same glory, the same “most pure feet,” the same Lord. 10{ }^{10} The hymns of the Presentation are also replete with the same Christological reading of the divine manifestation on Sinai. 11{ }^{11} In the hymns of Epiphany, we see the Baptist shaken with awe, because he is to baptize the Creator of Adam, the God of Jacob, the God of Moses, the Lord who drowned the Egyptian army in the Red Sea. 12{ }^{12} In all these hymns, one encounters the very same reading of biblical theophanies,
10 E.g., First Canon of Transfiguration: Ode 3 Sticheron [Menaion, 484]; Great Vespers of Transfiguration, Sticheron at Lord I have cried [Menaion, 471]; First Canon of Transfiguration: Ode 4 Sticheron [Menaion, 485]; Second Canon of Transfiguration, Ode 1 Sticheron [Menaion, 483]; Great Vespers of Transfiguration, Apostichon [Menaion, 476].
11 Great Vespers of the Presentation: Sticheron at Lord I have cried [Menaion, 408]; Great Vespers of the Presentation: Sticheron at the Lity [Menaion, 412]; Presentation of the Lord: Sticheron at the Lity [Menaion, 413]; Great Vespers of the Presentation: Sticheron at the Lity [Menaion, 412]; Small Vespers of the Presentation: Glory Sticheron [Menaion, 407].
12 Second Canon of Theophany: Ode 5 Sticheron [Menaion, 372-73]; Eve of Theophany: Sticheron at the Sixth Royal Hour [Menaion, 327]; Eve of Theophany: Sticheron at
and, by way of consequence, the same type of “YHWH Christology.” But the anti-Jewish polemic is largely absent. In my opinion, this absence demonstrates that the anti-Jewish overtones are not essential to the theological message of the hymns. (I shall return to this point a bit later).
I have argued at length elsewhere that the “Christophanic” reading of the Scriptures of Israel, which allowed Christians to appropriate the Hebrew Bible and transform it into a Christologically re-written Bible in which Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as well as Moses and the prophets are, to speak with Justin Martyr “men of Christ” (Justin, Apol. 63.17) and in which the readers are invited to inscribe themselves, was widespread and proved its utility and adaptability in a variety of polemical contexts long before its dissemination in our liturgical compositions. 13{ }^{13} It is rooted in the very writings of the New Testament, as is increasingly recognized by scholars working in the field of Christian Origins; 14{ }^{14}
the Sixth Royal Hour [Menaion, 327]; First Canon of Theophany: Ode 4 Sticheron [Menaion, 370]; First Canon of Theophany: Ode 4 Sticheron [Menaion, 370]); Forefeast of Theophany Canon: Ode 1 Irmos [Menaion, 297].
13 Bucur, Scripture Re-Envisioned: Christophanic Exegesis and the Making of a Christian Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2018); “Christological Exegesis of Theophanies and the Making of Early Christian Theology,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 86 (2022): 97-124.
14 David B. Capes, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1992); Jarl E. Fossum, “Kyrios Jesus as the Angel of the Lord in Jude 5-7” and “In the Beginning was the Name: Onomanology as the Key to Johannine Christology,” both in Fossum, The Image of the Invisible God: Essays on the Influence of Jewish Mysticism on Early Christology (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995), 41-69; 109-33; Charles A. Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology: Antecedents and Early Evidence (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 51-123, 187-200; “The Real Presence of the Son Before Christ: Revisiting an Old Approach to Old Testament Christology,” Concordia Theological Quarterly 68 (2004):105-26; Carey Newman, James Davila and Gladys Lewis, eds., The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 1999); C. Kavin Rowe, “Romans 10:13: What Is the Name of the Lord?” Horizons in Biblical Theology 22 (2000): 135-73; Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Walter Binni and Bernardo Boschi, Cristologia primitiva: Dalla teofania del Sinai all’Io sono giovanneo (Bologna: Dehoniane, 2004); Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008); Simon Gathercole, The Preexistent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); Sean McDonough, Christ as Creator: Origins of a New Testament Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Chris Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012); Randy Rheaume,
it flourished in doxological, doctrinal, and especially polemical works of the second and third centuries; it remained in use during the conciliar era as an effective polemical adjuvant (it occurs in writings directed against Marcellan, Arian, and Apollinarian theologies), but, more importantly, as the unquestioned theological presupposition for the new, more conceptually precise vocabulary of the Ecumenical Councils-"that extraordinary panoply of polysyllabic Greek abstractions which we meet in the Greek Fathers, and which modern Orthodox theologians, God bless them!, are so anxious to invoke."15
3. A Treasure Invisible? Augustine’s New Perspective and the Scholarly Blind Spot
Strangely and sadly, however, the importance that early Christians ascribed to Old Testament theophanies for polemical engagements, doctrinal construction, and liturgical expression, remains severely under-researched within the field of Early Christian Studies. The vast majority of manuals, patrologies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and large monographs on early Christianity barely mention the Christological exegesis of theophanies. It is generally viewed as the province of pre-Nicene writers such as Justin, Irenaeus, and Tertullian, and assumed to hold very little dogmengeschichtliche significance during the conciliar era. Nobody seems to notice that overlooking the continued appeal to theophanies across much of the fourth-century theological spectrum 16{ }^{16} leaves the pervasive and insistent references to theophanies in later Byzantine hymnography unexplained. Among authoritative scholarly treatments of the fourth and fifth centuries, it is usually only studies of Augustine that pay any attention to Christophanic exegesis-and then only to discuss how this theological Neanderthal was driven to extinction by the massive paradigm change coming from Hippo.
- An Exegetical and Theological Analysis of the Son’s Relationship to the Father in John’s Gospel: God’s Equal and Subordinate (Lewiston: Mellen, 2014); Crispin Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism, Volume 1: Christological Origins. The Emerging Consensus and Beyond (Oregon: Cascade, 2015); Christopher B. Kaiser, Seeing the Lord’s Glory: Kyriocentric Visions and the Dilemma of Early Christology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015).
15 Alexander Golitzin, “The Image and Glory of God in Jacob of Serug’s Homily, 'On That Chariot that Ezekiel the Prophet Saw,” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 47 (2003): 323-64, at 360.
16 A notable exception: Manlio Simonetti, La crisi ariana nel IV secolo (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1975), 506-11: “Le teofanie.” ↩︎
It seems that a blind spot exists, which hides this early Christian tradition from the lights of modern scholarship, making it almost invisible and inconsequential. This blind spot seems to be caused by a theological prejudice ultimately going back to Augustine’s revolutionary views on the issue of theophanies. Indeed, within the early Christian tradition, the distinct voice of Augustine of Hippo marks a turning-point in the exegesis of theophanies. In reply to his Homoian opponents, who appealed to theophanies in order to combat modalistic views but also to affirm a subordinationistic Christology, 17{ }^{17} Augustine dispenses with idea of theophanies as manifestations of the Logos altogether; his intention was to cut off the exegetical supply for subordinatianism. 18{ }^{18} Theophanies become, for Augustine, manifestations of the Trinity by means of created realities: either angels 19{ }^{19} or some pre-existing material realities subjected to angelic manipulation (e.g., the rock from which Moses draws water), 20{ }^{20} or realities created for the occasion and discarded immediately afterward. 21{ }^{21} Such created theophanies can grant a bodily vision (e.g., the pillar of cloud, the burning bush, the vision of
17 Their argument is that, since the Son is manifested in theophanies, he must be inherently visible in a way that the Father is not and therefore be of a different nature from the Father. See Augustine, Trin. 2.9.14-16; 2.16.27.
18 For the polemical context of Augustine’s exegesis of theophanies see Basil Studer, Zur Theophanie-Exegese Augustins: Untersuchung zu einem Ambrosius-Zitat in der Schrift ‘De videndo Deo’ (Rome: Herder, 1971); Michel R. Barnes, “Exegesis and Polemic in Augustine’s De Trinitate I,” Augustinian Studies 30 (1999): 43-60; “The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: Mt. 5:8 in Augustine’s Trinitarian Theology of 400,” Modern Theology 19 (2003): 329-56; Bucur, “Theophanies and Vision of God in Augustine’s De Trinitate: An Eastern Orthodox Perspective.” St. Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 52 (2008): 67-93; Kari Kloos, Christ, Creation, and the Vision of God: Augustine’s Transformation of Early Christian Theophany Interpretation (Leiden: Brill, 2011).
19 Augustine mentioned the possibility that theophanies be in fact “angelophanies” in Book 2 of De Trinitate. First he presents this as a hypothetical case (a situation in which “one of many angels … by some dispensation represented the person of his Lord,”) but then he seems to take this possibility as a matter of fact: “it is not sufficiently clear which person of the Trinity that angel represented” (Trin. 2.13.23 [CCL 50:110; FaCh 45:79; emphasis added).
20 Augustine, Trin. 3.10.19 (CCL 50:146; FaCh 45:115).
21 Augustine, Trin. 3.10.19 (CCL 50:146; FaCh 45:115). At Trin. 2.6.11 (CCL 50:96; FaCh 45:66), Augustine lists the following: the form of a dove at the Jordan Baptism, which had not existed before, but came into being “suddenly” (Luke 3:22); the tongues of fire (Acts 2:3); the burning bush (Exod 3:2); the pillar of fire (Exod 13:21); the lightning and thunder on Sinai (Exod 19:16). The same applies to the visions of Adam (in Eden), Abraham, or Moses (Augustine, Trin. 2.10.17 [CCL 50:102-103; FaCh 45:71]).
Isaiah), or a spiritual vision (e.g., the Lawgiving on Sinai), 22{ }^{22} but never the “intellectual vision,” which, in Augustine’s hierarchy of vision, articulated in De Genesi ad litteram 12, is the true vision of God. Finally, if theophanies do not confer a direct experience of the divine, it is because, with some notable exceptions, Augustine holds that the vision of God is eschatological. 23{ }^{23} Even though, east of the Adriatic, Christians continued to view theophanies as manifestations of God the Word himself, and even if the pre-Augustinian view continued to be affirmed in hymns such as the Great Friday Improperia, the “O” Antiphons of Advent, the ninth- century hymn Veni Immanuel, and numerous manuscript illuminations, 24{ }^{24} Augustine’s view of theophanies as created and evanescent manifestations gradually imposed itself as normative in Latin-speaking Christianity. It had certainly acquired this status by the time of John Scotus Eriugena in the ninth century, 25{ }^{25} and remained unchallenged in subsequent centuries. As the ancient hymns and
22 Augustine, Gen. litt. 12.26.54; 34.67 (CSEL 44:420, 432).
23 Augustine, Ep. 147.8.20 (CSEL 44:293, 294). Augustine declares Moses and Paul to be exceptions to the rule that the vision of God occurs in the life to come. According to Barnes (“Visible Christ,” 352 n. 48), “the most accurate description of Augustine’s judgment about the possibility of a vision of God in this life is that it cannot happen, but it sometimes does anyway”-namely in extra-ordinary cases such as those of Moses and the apostle Paul. Moreover, a number of statements in writings covering Augustine’s entire lifespan seem to imply or even affirm explicitly that some among the apostles, other than Paul!- were granted this vision and that it continues to occur, quite often in mystical rapture. For relevant texts and their discussion, see Roland Teske, SJ, “St. Augustine and the Vision of God,” in Frederick Van Fleteren, Joseph C Schnaubelt and Joseph Reino, eds., Augustine Mystic and Mystagogue (New York: Lang, 1994), 287308. These texts witness, in my view, to the tension between the inherited theological tradition and the logic of Augustine’s bold and innovative thought.
24 Antiphon for December 18: “Lord and Ruler (Adonai et Dux) of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and gave him the law in Sinai, come to redeem us with an outstretched arm!”; Veni Immanuel: Veni, veni Adonai qui populo in Sinai legem dedisti vertice in majestate gloriae, with its well-known English rendering “O come, O come, Thou Lord of Might/ who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height/ in ancient times didst give the law/ In cloud, and majesty, and awe.” For the persistence of Christophanic exegesis in the visual arts, see Francois Boespflug, Les théophanies bibliques dans l’art médiéval d’Occident et d’Orient (Geneva: Droz, 2012).
25 Eriugena assumes, based on beatus Augustinus, that in theophanies God appears “in some creature made subservient, in aliqua subiecta creatura” (Commentary on John 25 [SC 180:120]), so that Isaiah, for instance, saw “not His [God’s] Essence … but something created by Him” (Periphyseon 1 [CC 161:9]). This Augustinian notion of created theophanies functions as the unacknowledged interpretive lens even when Eriugena
orations and manuscript illuminations were increasingly perceived as somehow belonging to a different “realm” than doctrinal reflection, systematization, and teaching, the theological framework of the second millennium was erected largely without the corrective that these sources could have provided. Perhaps it is part of the major shift, located at the hinge of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when, in Congar’s famous formulation, “everything changes” but "only in the West."26
The marginal status of theophanies and the condescending attitude towards Christophanic exegesis are theological assumptions inherited from Augustine, clearly on display in John Henry Newman, who declares that Augustine’s judgment is to be preferred to that of his predecessors because it offers a reasonable alternative to their confused notions; 27{ }^{27} later in the French historian of dogmas
reads Ps.-Dionysius. See Bucur, “Dionysius East and West: Unities, Differentiations and the Exegesis of Biblical Theophanies,” Dionysius 26 (2008):115-38, at 133-36.
26 Yves Congar, Neuf cents ans après: Notes sur le “schisme oriental” (Chevetogne: Éditions de Chevetogne, 1954), referring to André Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et textes dévots du moyen âge latin. Études d’histoire littéraire (Paris: Bloud et Gay, 1932) 59-60, 62, 506: “Dom Wilmart, this excellent specialist of ancient texts, has written that a believer from the fourth or fifth century would have been less bewildered by the forms of piety current in the eleventh century than would a believer from the eleventh century in the forms of the twelfth. The great shift (‘la grande coupure’) is located at the hinge of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. But this shift only occurred in the West where, sometime between the end of the Eleventh and the end of the Twelfth Century, everything changes (‘tout se transforme’); it does not occur in the East where, in so many respects, Christian matters are still today what they were there-and what they were here [i.e., in the West]-before the end of the eleventh century. This observation imposes itself the better one knows the facts and is moreover extremely serious, for it leads us back to the very moment when the schism asserted itself in a way that has been without a true remedy up to now. It seems impossible that the coincidence be purely exterior and fortuitous.”
27 See John H. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London: Pickering, 1878), 136-37: "[T]he Ante-nicene Fathers, as in some of the foregoing extracts, speak of the Angelic visions in the Old Testament as if they were appearances of the Son; but St. Augustine introduced the explicit doctrine, which has been received since his date, that they were simply Angels, through whom the Omnipresent Son manifested Himself. This indeed is the only interpretation which the Ante-nicene statements admitted, as soon as reason began to examine what they did mean. They could not mean that the Eternal God could really be seen by bodily eyes; if anything was seen, that must have been some created glory or other symbol, by which it pleased the Almighty to signify His Presence. … The earlier Fathers spoke as if there were no medium interposed between the Creator and the creature, and so
Jules Lebreton; 28{ }^{28} and even in Basil Studer’s fundamental study of Augustine’s De videndo Deo. 29{ }^{29} Augustine’s theological prejudice against theophanies remains “baked into” the study of the Fathers to this day, undisturbed by the change of paradigm from Patristics to Early Christian Studies. 30{ }^{30}
4. Remembering the Christophanic Point of the Hymns
The resulting scholarly blind spot on theophanies has important consequences for properly contextualizing, understanding, and evaluating the anti-Jewish animus present in many Byzantine hymns. As I have noted, in many hymns that exhibit strong anti-Jewish sentiments, the primary concern is Christological. For instance, “Be not be deceived, O Jews: for this is He who saved you in the sea and fed you in the wilderness” 31{ }^{31} uses Judaism’s faulty perception of Jesus as a foil for the Christological proclamation-evidently, addressed to Christiansthat Jesus is none other and no less than the very Lord of the Exodus. Since this kind of Christological identification of the “Lord” of Old Testament theophanies with Jesus occurs frequently in hymns that do not sharpen this Christological
they seemed to make the Eternal Son the medium; what it really was, they had not determined. St. Augustine ruled, and his ruling has been accepted in later times, that it was not a mere atmospheric phenomenon, or an impression on the senses, but the material form proper to an Angelic presence, or the presence of an Angel in that material garb in which blessed Spirits do ordinarily appear to men."
28 Jules Lebreton, “Saint Augustin, théologien de la Trinité: Son exégèse des théophanies,” Miscellanea Augustiniana 2 (1931): 821-36, responding to the theological challenge launched by the publication of a voluminous dossier of passages illustrating the christological understanding of theophanies in the first five centuries (Georges Legeay, “Lange et les théophanies dans l’Ecriture Sainte d’après la doctrine des Pères,” Revue Thomiste 10 [1902]: 138-58, 405-24; 11 [1903]: 46-69, 125-54). Legeay (“Lange et les théophanies,” 405) had voiced the following opinion: “Il nous est, ce semble, permis de préferer, à l’opinion de saint Augustin, le sentiment à peu près unanime des Pères des quatres premiers siècles de l’Eglise …”
29 See Studer, Zur Theophanie-Exegese Augustins, 82, on Irenaeus’ “allzu realistisches Verständnis der Theophanien” (emphasis added); similarly, Studer holds that Hilary “schrieb den Theophanien des Sohnes eine zu grosse Wirklichkeit zu” and that “diese [Nizäner] die Erscheinungen zuz u ausschliesslich dem Sohne vorbehielten und sie zugleich mit der Menschwerdung zuz u sehr in einer Kontinuität sahen.”
30 Elizabeth Clark, “From Patristics to Early Christian Studies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Studies, eds. Susan Harvey and David Hunter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 7-41.
31 Holy Friday: Antiphon 12 [Triodion, 584].
confession into anti-Jewish polemics, we know that anti-Judaism is not inherent to the theology of the hymns.
In the larger context of early Christian appeal to theophanies, it can further be noted that although one context of usage is, indeed, anti-Jewish (Justin’s Dialogue furnishing the most notable example), Christophanic exegesis is mainly used against dualism (Tertullian’s Against Marcion), against modalism (Tertullian’s Against Praxeas; the Epistle of the Six Bishops against Paul of Samosata; Eusebius’ Against Marcellus and Ecclesiastical Theology), against subordinationism (in the Athanasian and Cappadocians treatises against Arianism and Eunomianism), and against Apollinarianism (Gregory of Nyssa’s Letter to Theophilus). In most Byzantine festal hymns, as I have shown, the focus on the Christological exegesis of biblical theophanies does not involve any kind of anti-Jewish polemic.
At the risk of repeating myself, the various polemical usages of Christophanic exegesis are not its primary “life setting.” Consider Luke’s Emmaus story, which illustrates the principle of a distinctly Christian entry into the Scriptures of Israel. The readers receive all information about the identity of the traveler long before the two disciples’ eyes are opened to recognize him; they overhear, as it were, the Lord’s mention of a Christological key to open “all the Scriptures” and presumably accept Christ’s Bible-based self-exegesis long before the two disciples understand what the mysterious traveler is doing to their hardened hearts and darkened nous; readers even get a glimpse of the meal in Emmaus, where the convergence of teaching and Eucharist opens the eyes of the two runaways from Jerusalem, converting them into disciples and proclaimers of the Risen Christ. Nevertheless, the readers are not told which passages were discussed on the road and how exactly specific Scriptures speak of Christ; and simply hearing the Gospel does not yet initiate one into the twinned experiences of the Risen Christ and the “burning heart.” Rather, the testimony of the two paints the endless horizon that Luke sets before his ideal reader. In short, then, the opening of the Scriptures, of the eyes, and of the voûc in Luke 24 (Luke 24:31, 45) is not apologetic or polemical, but testimonial and mystagogical.
It is to this “insider’s perspective” that much of Byzantine hymnography returns and to which it bears witness: the gaze and experiential interest of the Bride for her Beloved, devoid of any intention to look outward and fight off distortions of the faith. Recognizing, pace Augustine, the centrality of theophanies for the Church’s Christology, in terms of both doctrinal reflection and worship, allows us to discern the “agenda” of Holy Week hymnography, and to distinguish its theological core, which is primarily Christological, from those instances when a disturbing anti-Jewish rhetoric attaches itself to the hymnic proclamation of the Gospel.
5. What Now?
A reform of anti-Jewish “flourishes” is a moral imperative. Father George Papademetriou, in the 1970s and, very recently, Father Eugen Pentiuc, in his authoritative volume, The Old Testament: Eastern Orthodox Tradition, have already made this point:
No adequate justification can be advanced for retention of offensive texts; the fact is that Orthodoxy is rich in liturgical forms that can be purged, without serious loss, of language that engenders hatred.
The Orthodox Church as a whole, and especially and more effectively the hierarchs, should revise and discard anti-Judaic statements and allusions from hymnography and from liturgy itself, as a matter of fact. The poetry of Eastern Orthodox hymns is too sublime to be marred by such low sentiments echoing from a past dominated by religious quarrels and controversies. … those anti-Judaic statements in hymnography … are not and should not be part of such a sophisticated and Christ-centered tradition as is the Orthodox. 32{ }^{32}
For my part, I am concerned, as the title of this presentation shows, that “missing the theophanic point of the hymns,” as is unfortunately current in Patristic scholarship, hampers our understanding of the theological intentions of some hymns and leaves us ill-prepared to carry out nuanced and informed liturgical reform. Without grasping the YHWH Christology of, say, Antiphon 6 on Holy Friday, 33{ }^{33} or of Latin compositions such as the Veni Emmanuel and the O Antiphons, 34{ }^{34} we have no business laying hands on these texts. Liturgy should not become the playground of well-intentioned but theologically inept innovation.
With respect to both liturgical reform and the rapprochement with the Synagogue (two distinct but related areas of discussion), the way forward must
32 George Papademetriou, “Judaism and Greek Orthodoxy in Historical Perspective,” Greek Orthodox Theological Review 21 (1976): 93-113, at 102; Eugen Pentiuc, The Old Testament: Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 40.
33 Holy Friday: Antiphon 6 [Triodion, 577]: “Today the Jews nailed to the Cross the Lord who divided the sea with a rod and led them through the wilderness. Today they pierced with a lance the side of Him who for their sake smote Egypt with plagues. They gave Him gall to drink, who rained down manna on them for food.”
34 Antiphon for December 18: “Lord and Ruler (Adonai et Dux) of the house of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and gave him the law in Sinai, come to redeem us with an outstretched arm!”; Veni Immanuel: Veni, veni Adonai qui populo in Sinai legem dedisti vertice in majestate gloriae, with its well-known English rendering, “O come, O come, Thou Lord of might/who to Thy tribes on Sinai’s height/in ancient times didst give the Law/in cloud, and majesty, and awe.”
be a renewal from within our spiritual tradition. In the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyon, this spiritual tradition “receives testimony from the prophets, the apostles, and all the disciples …\ldots and which always, by the Spirit of God, renewing its youth, as if it were some precious deposit in an excellent vessel, causes the vessel itself containing it to renew its youth also” (Adv. haer. 3.24.1). One of the facets of this spiritual treasure is the Christological exegesis of theophanies. Indeed,
Theophany permeates Orthodox Tradition throughout, informing its dogmatic theology and its liturgy. That Jesus, Mary’s son, is the very One who appeared to Moses and the prophets-this is the consistent witness of the ante-Nicene Fathers, and remains foundational throughout the fourth century Trinitarian controversies and the later Christological disputes. 35{ }^{35}
From this vantage- point, it appears that liturgical reform might proceed by maintaining the theophanic proclamation (that Christ is the Lord of the patriarchs and prophets, the Lawgiver on Sinai, the enthroned Glory) while excising the anti-Jewish “flourishes.” In some cases, it might be helpful to switch to the passive voice; in others, to deliberately change the addressee from “Jews” to “believers” or “brothers,” without, however, changing the Old Testament reference. For instance, “Today the Jews nailed to the Cross the Lord who divided the sea … they pierced with a lance the side of Him who for their sake smote Egypt with plagues …” can become “Today is nailed to the Cross … the Lord who divided the sea … Today is nailed to the Cross the Lord who divided the sea … Today is pierced with a lance the side of Him who for their sake smote Egypt with plagues …” Or, similarly, “Do not be deceived, Jews: for this is He who saved you in the sea and fed you in the wilderness” could be changed to “Let us open well our hearts, O brethren: for this is He who saved Israel in the sea and fed them in the wilderness.” The examples could and should be multiplied.
6. Conclusions
As unworthy inheritors of many liturgical treasures, Orthodox Christians are also charged with a sacred responsibility “to labor and to keep” what they have received - the hymns as well as their proper theological key and context: Christophanic exegesis. This is not simply one strand of Tradition among others, but the very heart of the Christian tradition. We are to treasure what
35 Golitzin, “Theophaneia: Forum on the Jewish Roots of Orthodox Spirituality,” in The Theophaneia School: Jewish Roots of Eastern Christian Mysticism (Saint Petersburg: Byzantinorossika, 2007), 17-20, at 18.
we have been given in trust: not as curators of museum exhibits, but as joyful partakers of the fruits of Eden, given to us so that we may “grow in life and faith and spiritual understanding”; not as jealous hoarders of precious possessions, but doing all we can to show our separated brethren what also constitutes their inheritance of theology and spirituality.
“Missing theophanies” in scholarly accounts of the Christian theological tradition has serious consequences. First, a dissonance occurs between the patristic authors and their scholarly interpreters in the field of Patristics. Second, the insistent recourse to theophanies in so much of Byzantine festal hymnography appears as a somewhat bizarre, archaizing feature, implausibly resuscitating the interests of a Justin or Irenaeus in the compositions of Romanos the Melodist and John Damascene. Third, and most relevant for the discussion at hand, “missing theophanies” in the study of Christian liturgy hampers our understanding of the theological intentions of some hymns and leaves us ill-prepared to carry out nuanced and informed liturgical reform. In positive terms, then, approaching liturgical texts with the traditional “theophanic” understanding of Christian biblical exegesis and theological reflection, would allow us to discern between the inalienable theological “heart” of liturgical texts and the numerous but theologically dispensable anti-Jewish invectives.
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Table of Contents
Introduction … 7
Biblical Texts and the Liturgy
Ruth Langer and Demetrios E. Tonias
The Self through the Other in Byzantine and Jewish Liturgies:
A Comparative Exercise … 19
Alexandru Mihăilă
Quoting Scripture against the Jews during the Holy Week in the Eastern Orthodox Church … 41
Sandrine Caneri
The Liturgical Prayer in the Sight of the Gospel: How Are Jews Presented? … 51
Vadim Wittkowsky
Die antijüdischen Stellen des Neuen Testaments als besondere Texte des frühesten Christentums … 61
Bogdan G. Bucur
Missing the (Theophanic) Point: A Blind Spot in Patristic Scholarship and Its Consequences for Understanding Anti-Jewish Texts in Byzantine Festal Hymns … 81
Basilius J. Groen
The Strained Relationship between Venerating Old Testament Saints and Singing Anti-Jewish Hymns during Holy Week in the Byzantine Rite … 99
Post-Byzantine Tendencies
Charalampos Minaoglou
The Post-Byzantine Anti-Jewish Literature … 113
Konstantinos M. Vapheiades
Anti-Jewish Trends in Late Byzantium: The Example of the Painting Manuals … 131
Agnieszka Gronek
Representations of the Sanhedrin in Post-Byzantine Art Following the Example of a 19th Century Icon in Uličskié Krivé … 145
Nadieszka Kizenko
The Long Shadow of Byzantine Anti-Jewish Liturgical Texts: The Church Slavonic Service to Martyr Gavriil of Białystok … 167
20th Century and the Striving for Liturgical Renewal
Stefanos Alexopoulos
Reforming by Translating or Omitting: The Case of Orthodox Holy Week Hymns in the Greek-American Context … 189
Marian Pătru
The Romanian Orthodox Church and the Homiletical Construction of Jewishness in the Interwar Period (1918-1940) … 217
Ionuț Biliută
Antisemitic Tropes in the Liturgy of the Saints of the Communist Prisons in Post-Communist Romania … 237
Alina Pătru
Reception of the Liturgical Hymns by Christian Orthodox Service Attenders … 259
Peter Ebenbauer
„Mein Volk, was habe ich dir getan?" Die Karfreitags-Improperien in den gegenwärtigen Ordnungen des byzantinischen und des römisch-katholischen Ritus … 275
Simona Ştefana Zetea
The Jews, Our “lawless” … “elder brothers”: Perspectives on the Reception of the Second Vatican Council among an Oriental Catholic Church … 289
List of Figures … 311