service files lit james.md

INTRODUCTION

The Divine Liturgy of St James, which was until recently only celebrated on the island of Zakynthos on his feast on 23 October and in Jerusalem on the Sunday after Christmas, is today celebrated in an increasing number of Orthodox churches. It was the ancient rite of Jerusalem, as the Mystagogic Catecheses of St Cyril of Jerusalem imply. It is still, in its Syrian form, the principal liturgy of the Syrian Oriental Church, both in Syriac and, in the ancient Syrian Orthodox Church of India, in Malayalam and English.

This version of the Greek Liturgy of St James is highly provisional and tentative, principally because none of the editions available agree among themselves. The only critical edition is the one published by Dom B.-Ch. Mercier in volume 26 of the Patrologia Orientalis in 1950. This is extremely detailed and learned, but totally unusable as a practical edition, which it was not intended to be. Other scholarly editions can be found in Swainson’s ‘Greek Liturgies’ and in Brightman’s ‘Liturgies Eastern and Western’ . Neale and Littledale published an English translation in their ‘Translations of the Primitive Liturgies’ , which rather charmingly suggests in one or two footnotes that St Paul actually quotes from it in his Epistles. ‘Practical’ editions of the Greek have been issued by the Apostoliki Diakonia in Athens and by Holy Cross in the United States . The latter contains a parallel English translation. Both these editions are heavily abbreviated and seriously ‘byzantinised’. A Slavonic version of the Greek, made by Father Philip Gardner, was authorised by the Russian Church Abroad in 1938. This was translated into hyper-Cranmerian English, which even extends to the Introduction, by the Monastery of St Mark of Ephesus in New Jersey forty years later. This version is more than abundantly supplied with very detailed, but sometimes contradictory, rubrics, though where these come from is unclear. Like the two modern Greek editions, the Liturgy is abbreviated and byzantinised.

The present translation is based on Mercier’s edition and tries as far as possible to give a reliable version of the best text available. Since, however, it was also made for actual use, the extremely long commemoration of the Saints towards the end of the Anaphora has been drastically curtailed. On the other hand it preserves a number of what are probably ‘doublets’ of prayers in the manuscripts. It should be noted that the rite of the Fraction supposes that a ‘Syrian’ type of prosphora is being used. That is to say a small, flattish loaf about three inches in diameter, rather than the standard Byzantine prosphora. The fraction is also made easier if the seal used is of the Syrian type, divided into sections and covered with small crosses.

I hope to revise this version in the near future and to complete it by the addition of the long catalogue of Saints. What is here offered is so in the hope that the magnificent prayers of this ancient Liturgy may become more widely known both inside and outside the Church.