Missing the (Theophanic) Point: A Blind Spot in Patristic Scholarship and its Consequences for Understanding Anti-Jewish Texts in Byzantine Festal Hymns” (original) (raw)

2024, Stefan Tobler and Alexandru Ioniță (eds), Orthodox Liturgy and the Jews (Berlin - Bruxelles - Chennai - Lausanne - New York - Oxford: Aschendorff)

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, adapt- able, 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.