The liturgical reading of the Bible in Early Eastern Christianity. The protohistory of the Byzantine lectionary
Challenges and Perspectives. Collected Papers, Resulting from the Expert Meeting of the Catalogue of Byzantine Manuscripts Programme Held at the Pthu in Kampen, the Netherlands on 6th - 7th November 2009, 1, Brepols, Turnhout, (2013)Abstract
This paper examines and assesses the relevant external (literary) evidence concerning the liturgical reading of the Bible prior to the eighth century, the period of which date the oldest Byzantine lectionaries and biblical manu- scripts that contain liturgical information. In the first part, the much-debated question of the origins and the early
development of the liturgical reading of the Bible in the first three centuries CE is discussed. It turns out that this reading exhibited avery flexible and variegated character. In the second part, apicture is sketched of the different systems of liturgical reading of the Bible that developed in the fourth and fifth centuries in the Greek-speaking regions in which Greek biblical manuscripts were produced, more in particular in Antioch (with ashort foray into the regions east of that city which were for amajor part Syriac-speaking), Jerusalem, Egypt and Constantinople. It is pointed out that considerable differences existed between the various regions, especially with regard to the Old Testament or the role played by the continuous reading of the Bible. In many cases, it will be possible to formulate
plausible hypotheses on the basis of the evidence available about the liturgical setting in which certain Greek bibli- cal manuscripts that date of the fourth and fifth centuries and do not contain paratextual liturgical information, have been used. This presupposes, however, that one possesses reliable information about the provenance of the manuscript concerned.