Note: Further review is finding other issues with extraneous verses in the Epistles as printed in the book. Once I finish my review, I will provide a more complete update.
Introduction
In
the Byzantine tradition, Scriptural texts for liturgical use are
split into three
volumes: the Gospel Book, the Epistles Book (or Apostol),
and the Prophetologion (Old Testament readings for Vespers).
Ideally, each volume would contain the prescribed texts for every
feast with
unique readings,
however minor, as well as the common texts prescribed for various
classes of saints (martyrs, bishops, virgins, apostles, etc.). In
current Ruthenian practice, the Apostol and the Prophetologion are
joined together, in truncated form, in a single volume: The
Epistles and Old Testament Readings for the Liturgical Year,
ed. William Levkulic with John Opalenick (Pittsburgh, PA: The
Byzantine Seminary Press, 1979, rev. 2011).
Purpose
and Contents of
the Text
A
text should not be critiqued for not being what it wasn’t intended
to be. The Ruthenian Epistle book was not intended to be a complete
Apostol and Prophetologion combined: instead, it was intended to
include the necessary texts for common parish use. Thus it has the
Epistle readings for
every day in the temporal cycle
(the Triodion, the Pentecostarion, and the weeks after Pentecost),
as well as for the major and minor feasts commonly celebrated in
parishes
(primarily those marked as “Obligation,” “Solemn,” or
“Simple” in the Byzantine Seminary Press’ yearly calendar).
The
Epistles section is rounded out with the texts for the common classes
of saints, as well as texts for various votive Liturgies: “For
Thanksgiving,” “In Time of Drought,” “For the Consecration of
an Altar,” etc.
In addition, the volume intends to provide the portions of the
Prophetologion necessary for typical parish use. Thus it has the Old
Testament readings for Wednesdays and Fridays during the Great Fast
(the typical days a Presanctified Liturgy is celebrated), for the
Royal Hours on Nativity, Theophany, and Good Friday, for the Vigils
of Nativity, Theophany, and Pascha, as well as for the various major
and minor feasts found on the calendar.
Translation
The translation used is that of the original 1970 version of the New
American Bible (NAB), copyrighted (at that time) by the Confraternity
of Christian Doctrine. As far as I am aware, the translation was not
altered during the 2011 revision. Today, the copyrights for the New
American Bible, as well as for the Grail Psalter (used in Ruthenian
liturgical texts), are owned by the United States Conference of
Catholic Bishops (USCCB).
A
discussion of the merits of the NAB translation—either the original
1970 version or one of the various revisions throughout the
decades—is outside the scope of this critique, and without purpose.
The New American Bible is the only currently-approved translation
for liturgical use in the Metropolia of Pittsburgh (the Ruthenians).
Unless a different translation were approved, any new edition of the
Ruthenian Apostol or Prophetologion would need to use the NAB;
however, since “permission is no longer granted to reproduce the
1970 New Testament” (per
the USCCB), the Epistle
texts
would need to be updated to a newer version, presumably the version
of the NAB used in the current Roman lectionary. Possibly
the Old Testament texts would be similarly updated.
Cross-Referenced Readings
If a parish solely celebrates Divine Liturgy on Sundays and on major
feasts, then the Ruthenian Epistle book is easy to use. The Epistles
section of the volume has not only Sunday readings, but also the
weekday and Saturday readings throughout the year, in case a parish
celebrates daily Divine Liturgies. The major feasts also have their
epistles printed, with the sanctoral cycle (the cycle of fixed
feasts) printed in order according to the Byzantine liturgical
calendar, beginning with September 1.
One minor issue with the Epistles section: the very first reading, the Epistle reading for Pascha, has an extra verse. As the Typikon states, the reading should be only Acts 1:1-8; however, the Epistle book erroneously includes Acts 1:9, the description of Jesus' Ascension. That error should be corrected in a new edition.
Once
you move to the minor feasts, though, the book starts to switch to
cross-referencing. If the reading for a minor feast is also used for
a Sunday or weekday reading, or for a major feast, then, instead of
reprinting the text of the reading, the book simply tells you where
to turn. For a single epistle, this might be a slight annoyance, but
it’s not too much of a hassle. It also saves on bulk, so that the
book can stay slimmer and easier to handle.
Where
the cross-references become more difficult is in
the case of
the readings for Vespers. Since Vespers has three readings (except
for the Great Fast, when the first reading is chanted at the Sixth
Hour instead), having cross-referenced
readings
means the reader must flip through the book in the middle of the
reading, sometimes multiple times. (Though
in
some cases, such as
for Marian most
feasts,
the same three readings are re-used,
so there is a single cross-reference: e.g.,
turn
to the readings for September 8th.)
An example of the highest complication is the Feast of St. George,
on April 23 (p. 322). The 1st
reading is on p. 305 (1st
reading for All Saint Sunday), the 2nd
is on pp. 319-320 (3rd
reading for January 30th),
and the 3rd
is on p. 311 (3rd
reading for December 6th).
The reader will have to flip to each of these pages for the reading,
then flip back to p. 322 to find the next page to flip to. This is
an extreme case, of course; All Saints Sunday, for instance, only has
a cross-reference on the 2nd
reading, while the 1st
and 3rd
readings are both printed in that feast’s entry.
Though I understand the goal of slimness, I feel that printing
redundant texts, so that all the readings for one feast were printed
in one place, would give better ease of use. Cross-references should
be reserved for when the full set of readings is repeated elsewhere,
such as the common Marian readings, or the Sunday Before Nativity (p.
312), which uses all the readings from the Sunday of the Holy Fathers
of the First Ecumenical Council (pp. 302-303). This would also mean
that a cross-referenced epistle would be acceptable, since it only
requires reading from a single entry, without flipping pages.
Missing Readings
The
larger issue with the Vespers
portion of the volume
is the lack of many readings. This lack can come in two forms: 1) a
lack of simple citation (giving book, chapter, and verse for a
reading, without reprinting the text) and 2) a lack of the printed
text itself. If the book intends to remain incomplete, giving only
the readings for feasts that are commonly celebrated in parishes,
then I think it worthwhile to at least give a chart of citations for
feasts and commons not included in the text. (This is how the
readings for Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays of the Great Fast are
given: citations only. Only texts for Wednesdays and Fridays—the
usual days of celebration of the Presanctified—are printed, plus
the Thursday of the Fifth Week, the day when the Great Canon is
recited.)
But the bigger issue, I think, is when only a partial
set of readings is printed, and giving simply citations for the rest,
without even a cross-reference.
Once
again, the issue is practicality and ease of use.
Generally, the Old Testament readings are chanted back-to-back.
(Exceptions are the sung responsories at the great Vigils and the
brief break for the blessing of light during the Presanctified.) The
goal should be for the reader to have all the necessary texts lined
up, so that he can read without flipping pages. Cross-references
already complicate this, but at least the flipping is confined to a
single book. When a reading is found nowhere
in the Epistle book, then the reader will have to switch books and
flip to the needed reading in a Bible, or on a printout. It would be
easier for the reader, in that circumstance, to forgo the Epistle
book entirely, and simply mark the pages in a Bible. He will still
have to flip around the book, but at least it will be confined to one
book.
There
is one instance where I can begrudgingly see a good reason for
skipping some readings: the Vigils. The readings at the great
Vigils, particularly Theophany and Pascha, are excessive for general
parish use. The original purpose of the length of readings was to
give the bishop enough time to baptize all the catechumens (since
Theophany was a more prominent baptismal day than the Nativity,
that’s probably why the readings at the Vigil of the Nativity are
comparatively shorter). I think it would be exceedingly rare to find
a parish that has that
many catechumens to baptize. Thus the Typikon gives only three
required readings for each Vigil. The Epistle book’s intention is
to print the text of solely these required
readings,
and then give citations for the rest. This is the case with the
Nativity and Pascha, but there appears to be a serious error at
Theophany. The required readings for the Vigil of Theophany (pp.
317-319)
are #3 (Ex 15:22-16:1), #6 (2 Kgs 5:9-14), and #13 (Is 49:8-15);
however, the book prints the texts of only #4 (Jos 3:7-8,15-17), #7
(Is 1:16-20), and #13. I suspect it is either an error (the editor
mixed up which readings were required), or a change in the
rubrics specifying which readings are required. I
have never heard of the latter being the case, but I have not
researched yet to see if there is any evidence of such a change.
If
the Vigil of Theophany’s missing readings are an error, as I
suspect, it
seems less likely that such would be the case for all the other
missing readings. Certainly the lack of texts for Mondays, Tuesdays,
and Thursdays of the Great Fast was a conscious choice, as is the
lack of texts
for the Sixth Hour throughout the Great Fast. I see the reasoning
for these, though: parishes rarely celebrate Lenten Vespers or
Presanctified on days other than Wednesdays and Fridays, and parishes
celebrating the Sixth Hour would be even rarer.
What
makes no sense to me are the occasions—excepting the Vigils—where
some readings are included, and others are not. If, perhaps, at the
time this volume was arranged, there was a tradition or rubric
allowing the truncating of readings during a normal Vespers, then
there might be some reasoning (with only the required or recommended
readings being printed, as is the case with the Vigils); however, I
know of no such tradition. Instead, we have gaps in major feasts:
Holy Thursday is missing its second reading, Transfiguration is
missing its second and third readings. Below
is the full list of missing readings:
Holy
Thursday: 2nd
reading (Job 38:1-23, 42:1-5)
Holy
Friday: 1st
reading (Ex 33:11-23), 2nd
reading (Job 42:12-17)
Mid-Pentecost:
1st
reading (Mic 4:2-3, 5; 6:2-5, 8; 5:4), 2nd
reading (Is 55:1; 12:3-4; 55:2-3, 6-13), 3rd
reading (Prv 9:1-11)
November
8: 2nd
reading (Jgs 6:2, 7, 11-24), 3rd
reading (Is 14:7-20)
December
6: 1st
reading (Prv 10:7,6; 3:13-16; 8:34-35, 4, 12, 14, 17, 5-9; 1:23; 5:4)
January
6, Blessing of Water: 1st
reading (Is 35:1-10), 2nd
reading (Is 55:1-13)
February
2: 2nd
reading (Is 6:1-12), 3rd
reading (Is 19:1, 3-5, 12, 16, 19-21)
June
24: 2nd
reading (Jgs 13:2-8, 13-14, 17-18, 21)
July
20: 1st
reading (1 Kgs 17:1-23), 2nd
reading (1 Kgs 18:1, 17-41, 44, 42, 45-46; 19:1-16)
August
6: 2nd
reading (Ex 33:11-23; 34:4-6, 8), 3rd
reading (1 Kgs 19:3-9, 11-13, 15-16)
August
29: 3rd
reading (Wis 4:7, 16-17, 19-20; 5:1-7)
Again,
this list omits the cases of the Vigils, as well as the Mondays,
Tuesdays, and Thursdays of the Great Fast. The Sixth Hour texts for
the Great Fast are also omitted.
Possible Additions
The
most complete
ideal would be to have two volumes—one Apostol, and one
Prophetologion—with the full
text of each feast on
the calendar,
in order. What
is most practical, however, is to follow the current volume’s
selection of feasts and expand on the texts provided.
In
that case, once again, the easiest-to-use arrangement would be to
print the full text of each reading of each selected feast;
however, in the case of an Epistle reading being repeated, or of the
full set
of Vespers readings being repeated, I can see the benefit of a
cross-reference in slimming down the book. What I think should not
remain is the case is when the reader has to flip through the pages
multiple times for the different Vespers readings. The set of
Vespers readings for a single feast should be in the same place. If
that full set is repeated (as is the case with most Marian feasts),
then a cross-reference is sufficient: however, if the feast uses only
one
of the readings from another feast, I think it better to reprint the
text rather than force the reader to flip around in the middle of the
readings.
I would recommend printing the full texts of the readings for the
Vigils. Yes, it will be a rare case for any parish to use the full
set (though my parish has done so a handful of times). However,
having the readings easily accessible might encourage a parish to use
more of the readings than the bare minimum. The size is an issue, of
course (especially with the Book of Jonah during the Paschal Vigil),
but I think it’s worthwhile.
The
common Vespers readings for the various classes of saints should be
included, alongside
the Epistle readings already printed in the book.
This will take care of most occasions when a parish might want to
celebrate another saint, other than those designated “solemn” or
“simple” holy days. It would also give the chance to possibly
add readings to a Sunday Vespers, since we have no prescribed Vespers
readings
other
than those for feasts and saints.
A
useful appendix, I think, would be a
full calendar of all
the saints and feasts for each day of the year, with citations of the
readings. If the saint simply uses one of the common sets of
readings, a note of that would suffice, rather than reprinting the
full citations. This would be an aid for the reader, in case he does
not have easy access to a Typikon, and a less-common feast is
celebrated. For the more obscure feasts that have their own
readings, or the saints with their own particular readings, this
would let the reader know about those, even if the texts are not
printed in the book.
A final recommendation: printing the texts of the Prokeimenon and
Alleluia in the entry for each feast. The reader is the one who
chants the verses for both: in current practice, he has to turn to
another book or handout to find these texts. Printing them will only
take a few lines for each feast, but it will make it enormously
helpful for the reader. The tone should be noted, but I think music
is unnecessary and overly bulky. The texts from the Oktoechos, for
Sundays and weekdays, should be printed as well, though it
will—unavoidably—require some page-turning from the reader: at
least the texts will be all in one volume. This practice was
followed in Deacon Peter Gardner’s Prophetologion
(2014, self-published) for the ROCOR.
Though
all these additions sound bulky, and they are certainly an increase
from the current text, I think they are not too unreasonable. As an
example, Bishop Demetri H. Khoury has arranged a Prophetologion for
the Antiochian Orthodox (Miami, 2012). His volume—which includes
full Sixth Hour and Vespers readings for the Great Fast, full Vespers
readings for the Vigils, common readings for the classes of saints,
and readings for more feasts than the Ruthenian book—runs to only
360 pages in PDF
format. A hardcover
copy runs to 450 pages. The Epistles section of the Ruthenian
book currently runs to 258 pages. Just as a theoretical, if the two
were combined, the result would be a volume of roughly 700 pages.
This is large, but, if printed on thin paper, it
can still be very usable. As an example, the Horologion
of the Melkite Church (Boston, MA: Sophia Press, 2009) is 1028 pages,
but, because it is on thin paper, it is still a comfortable size,
fairly light, and easy-to-use. (And, based on current pricing
($110.00
as of this writing),
one could buy both the Antiochian Prophetologion and
the
Melkite Horologion for less than the current Ruthenian Epistle book.
So, even if all of what I propose were added in one book, I think it
would
still end up cheaper than the current, smaller book.)
Another
edition to compare would be an interesting joint collection, published by Eastern Christian Publications in 2020. Fr. Mark Shuey (Ukrainian Catholic) and Fr.
Theodore Pulcini (Antiochian Orthodox) edited a three-volume set: an Apostol
(Book
of Apostolic Readings),
a festal Prophetologion (Book
of Prophetic Readings),
and a book of Old Testament readings for Sunday Vespers (Book
of Thematic Readings).
The last volume, edited by Fr. Pulcini, is a novelty for the Byzantine Rite, as far as I am aware; it is based off of his 2005 volume, Old Testament Lectionary for Use in the Byzantine Tradition at Great Vespers on Saturday Evening. Citations for these readings, as well as similar Old Testament readings from the Syriac tradition, are given in Fr. David Petras' annual Ruthenian Typicon.
Conclusion
and Suggestions
In
conclusion, the Epistles section of the book is quite good and needs
no real revisions, except for the removal of the extra verse in the reading for Pascha, and the translation update a new printing
would require. I would always prefer to have redundant full texts,
rather than needing to follow cross-references, but, for a singular
Epistle reading, it is a minor hassle, and it does reduce the bulk of
the book a little. My
one suggestion would be adding in the Prokeimenon and Alleluia verses
for the the feast days and commons, as well as the verses from the
Oktoechos. Without redundant texts, this would require flipping
through the book for any days with cross-referenced readings, but at
least the reader’s necessary texts would all be in the same volume.
For
the Vespers section, though, numerous revisions and additions are
needed, and I would suggest others as well. My greatest ideal would
be an absolutely complete Prophetologion, with full texts for every
feast with unique readings, and no cross-references for individual
readings, only for full sets. What is more practical is to build off
of the current selection of feasts. To that end, my suggestions
would be, in general order of priority:
Remove the extra verse from the Pascha Epistle reading, and correct the Theophany Vespers readings so that the full texts of the
required readings (Readings #3 and #6) are printed.
Add the texts of the missing Vespers readings listed above.
Add redundant copies of texts whenever individual texts are
cross-referenced for Vespers: cross-references can remain whenever a
full set of readings is repeated.
Add Prokeimenon and Alleluia texts before the Epistle readings for
feasts, and the texts from the Oktoechos, as a separate section.
The Prokeimenon texts for feasts should be included before Vespers
readings as well.
Add the common Vespers readings for various classes of saints, to
pair with the common Epistle readings already included.
Add a calendar chart providing citations for Vespers and Liturgy
readings for every feast of the year. If a saint’s feast uses one
of the common sets of readings, a reference to them is sufficient.
Add the texts for the full sets of Vespers readings for the three
Vigils (Nativity, Theophany, Pascha).
Add entries and full texts for any feast with unique readings (i.e.,
which does not use one of the common sets).
If all these suggestions were implemented, I think the result would
be a substantially-complete and easy-to-use volume for readers. With
the continued use of cross-references whenever an Epistle reading or
a full set of Vespers readings is repeated, the size of the volume
will be reined in, compared to an absolutely complete edition, with
full redundancies and no cross-references. I think it’s even
possible to keep all of this in a single volume, though certainly
quite a bit bigger than the current edition; especially if the last
two suggestions are dropped, there shouldn’t be a reason to split
the text into separate Apostol and Prophetologion volumes. With
those suggestions added, the bulk might lend itself to
splitting, but there’s also a good chance a single volume would
still be plausible, especially with thinner paper à la the Melkite
Horologion. The final size, though, can’t really be determined
until a draft is put together.
Such are my suggestions for an improved, more complete, and
easier-to-use Epistle and Old Testament book for the Ruthenians. I
hope that a new edition happens sooner rather than later, especially
due to the high price of the current edition, but liturgical books
always have, unfortunately, a very slow editing and approval process.
