biblical literature
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- Introduction
- Influence and significance
- Old Testament canon, texts, and versions
- The canon
- Texts and versions
- Textual criticism: manuscript problems
- Textual criticism: scholarly problems
- Texts and manuscripts
- Early versions
- Versions after the 4th century
- Later and modern versions: English
- English translations after the Reformation
- The King James and subsequent versions
- Later and modern versions: Dutch, French, and German
- Greek, Hungarian, Italian, and Portuguese translations
- Scandinavian, Slavic, Spanish, and Swiss translations
- Non-European versions
- Old Testament history
- Old Testament literature
- The Torah (Law, Pentateuch, or Five Books of Moses)
- The Neviʾim (Prophets)
- The canon of the Prophets
- Hebrew prophecy
- Joshua
- Judges: background and purpose
- Judges: importance and role
- Samuel: Israel under Samuel and Saul
- Samuel: the rise and significance of David
- Kings: background and Solomon’s reign
- Kings: Solomon’s successors
- Kings: the second book
- Isaiah
- Jeremiah
- Ezekiel
- The first six minor prophets
- The last six minor prophets
- The Ketuvim
- Intertestamental literature
- Nature and significance
- Apocryphal writings
- The Pseudepigraphal writings
- Qumrān literature (Dead Sea Scrolls)
- New Testament canon, texts, and versions
- New Testament history
- New Testament literature
- Introduction to the Gospels
- The Synoptic problem
- The Synoptic Gospels
- The fourth Gospel: The Gospel According to John
- The Acts of the Apostles
- The Pauline Letters
- Background and overview
- The Letter of Paul to the Romans
- The First Letter of Paul to the Corinthians
- The Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians
- The Letter of Paul to the Galatians
- The Letter of Paul to the Ephesians
- The Letter of Paul to the Philippians
- The Letter of Paul to the Colossians
- The First Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians
- The Second Letter of Paul to the Thessalonians
- The Pastoral Letters: I and II Timothy and Titus
- The Letter to the Hebrews
- The Catholic Letters
- The Revelation to John
- New Testament Apocrypha
- Biblical literature in liturgy
- The critical study of biblical literature: exegesis and hermeneutics
Biblical literature in the liturgy of Christianity
Eastern Orthodoxy
The first Christians were Jews, and they worshipped along with other Jews in the synagogue. The earliest Gentile converts also attended the synagogue. When Christians met outside the synagogue, they still used its liturgy, read its Bible, and preserved the main characteristics of synagogue worship. Every historic liturgy is divided into (1) a Christian revision of the sabbath service in the synagogue and (2) a celebration of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples as a fulfillment of the Passover and a new covenant with a newly redeemed people of God. Thus, the church was never without traditional forms of worship.
For more than 100 years Christians had no authorized New Testament, the Old Testament being read, as had been done previously, in the worship service. By the middle of the 2nd century, however, Christian writings also were in the Sunday service. The Old Testament, the version used most generally in its Greek translation (the Septuagint), was the Bible from which the Gospel was preached. Its reading preceded that of the Christian writings, and the reading was far more extensive than it is in modern Christian churches.
As the liturgies grew longer and more elaborate, the biblical readings were reduced, and the New Testament gradually displaced the Old Testament. No Old Testament lesson remained in the Greek or Russian liturgy or in the Roman mass, though it has been reintroduced in the 20th century in most liturgies. All liturgies have at least two readings from the New Testament: one from a letter or other (non-Gospel) New Testament writing, and one from a Gospel, in that order. The Eastern liturgies all honour the Gospel with a procession called the Little Entrance. This action is accompanied by hymns and prayers that interpret the Gospel as the coming of Christ to redeem the world.
The Eastern liturgies, especially after the great theological controversies of the first four centuries, have favoured composed texts of prayers, hymns, and choral anthems that summarize the thought of many biblical passages, thus becoming short sermons or confessions of faith. The Nicene Creed (4th century) itself is one such text, in contrast with the Shema (“Hear, O Israel”—a type of creed) in Judaism, which consists of verbatim passages from Deuteronomy and Numbers.
The Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox churches contains many such composed texts, such as prayers that proclaim Orthodox theology (e.g., the “Only begotten Son and Word of God” following the second antiphon). Isaiah, chapter 6, verse 3 (“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory”), used in the Jewish Kedusha (Glorification of God), generates two separate texts in the Eastern liturgy: the Trisagion (a solemn threefold acclamation to God) at the Little Entrance and the Greek original of the “Holy, holy, holy” in the eucharistic liturgy.
Psalms are sung extensively at the daily hours of prayer in the East as in the West. At the beginning of the Sunday service, entire psalms or more than one psalm are sometimes sung. More often, however, a psalm verse or two are combined with other material into a composite text of a hymn or anthem. A mosaic of selected psalm verses may be used either as a text for music or a spoken prayer. Most characteristic of all, especially in the Greek Church’s tradition, however, is the freely composed and imaginative hymn text, based on a biblical incident or person, or an extended paraphrase of a passage of scripture. In addition to such biblically based psalms and other hymns, there are the famous Cherubic Hymn of the Greek and Russian liturgies and the original texts of hymns that have become well known in the Western churches—e.g., “O gladsome light of the Father immortal,” and “Let all mortal flesh keep silent.”
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