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 cycle1 (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.
1The terms “temporal cycle” and “sanctoral cycle” are used in Roman Catholic liturgics, but they could be applied to Byzantine use as well. The sanctoral cycle (“cycle of the saints”) covers any feast with a fixed calendar date: we might also include the Byzantine feasts that are relative to fixed dates (i.e., Sunday After Theophany, Sunday Before Exaltation of the Cross, etc.). The temporal cycle (“cycle of time”) relates to any feast or memorial whose time of celebration is based on the changeable date of Pascha. Thus the entire Triodion and Pentecostarion are relative to the date of Pascha, as is the general cycle of Sundays and weekday readings: they are based off on the Sundays After Pentecost, and Pentecost itself, of course, is based on the changeable date of Pascha.
Text ©2024 Brandon P. Otto. Licensed via CC BY-NC. Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long as credit is given to the author.
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