Galadza and van Vogelpoel: Multilingualism in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Among the Melkites

Daniel Galadza and Alex C. J. Neroth van Vogelpoel, “Multilingualism in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom Among the Melkites,” ARAM 31:1-2 (2019), 35–50

Abstract

This paper examines elements of multilingualism in the text and celebration of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom among the Melkites, from the eighth to thirteenth centuries. The main focus for this investigation is the manuscript Sinai Gr. N.E. X 239, a thirteenth-century bilingual Greek-Syriac manuscript with Arabic marginal notes found among the Sinai New Finds in 1975, which contains the text of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom. The fourteen paper folios of the booklet containing the Divine Liturgy include a particular zeon rite during the Communion of the clergy. The texts and rubrics of the liturgical service are often repeated in Greek and Syriac, along with three Arabic marginal notes, which suggest the copyist and those praying from the manuscript were more familiar with Arabic and Syriac than they were with Greek. Nevertheless, Greek was used as a liturgical language. Comparison with other Syriac Melkite liturgical manuscripts, in particular with the thirteenth-century Euchologion Vatican Borg. Syr. 13, brings forward certain peculiarities of Melkite liturgical practice. Many of these Syriac Melkite liturgical texts have been examined by Cyrille Korolevsky, Joseph Nasrallah, and Heinrich Husmann, but their observations remain only preliminary to this day. The study of Syriac Melkite liturgical texts is accompanied by a comparison with Greek and Georgian liturgical texts originating in the Chalcedonian Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, facilitated by recent research on the Greek and Georgian Euchologion from Jerusalem and Palestine by Heinzgerd Brakmann and Tinatin Chronz. The paper concludes by outlining what elements constitute unique Melkite liturgical practices in the Divine Liturgy, how they were celebrated in the multilingual environment in which Melkite Christians lived and prayed, and how the liturgical practices and rites were related to the liturgy of the Byzantine Rite in Constantinople and elsewhere.

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