Unorthodox Beauty shows how Russian poets of the early twentieth century consciously adapted Russian Orthodox culture in order to create a distinctly religious modernism. Martha M. F. Kelly contends that, beyond mere themes, these writersdeveloped an entire poetics that drew on liturgical tradition. Specifically, Russian Orthodoxy held out the possibility of unifying spirit and matter, as well as a host of other dichotomies-subject and object, empirical and irrational, noumena and phenomena. The artist could produce a work of transformative and regenerative power. Using a range of crossdisciplinary tools, Kelly reads key works by Blok, Kuzmin, Akhmatova, and Pasternak in ways that illustrate how profoundly religious traditions and ideas shaped Russian modernist literature.

For centuries, Catholics in the Western world and the Orthodox in Russia have venerated certain saints as martyrs. In many cases, both churches recognize as martyrs the same individuals who gave their lives for Jesus Christ. On the surface, it appears that while the external liturgical practices of Catholics and Russian Orthodox may vary, the fundamental theological understanding of what it means to be a martyr, and what it means to canonize a saint, are essentially the same. But are they? In Making Martyrs East and West, Caridi examines how the practice of canonization developed in the West and in Russia, focusing on procedural elements that became established requirements for someone to be recognized as a saint and a martyr. She investigates whether the components of the canonization process now regarded as necessary by the Catholic Church are fundamentally equivalent to those of the Russian Orthodox Church and vice versa, while exploring the possibility that the churches use the same terminology and processes but in fundamentally different ways that preclude the acceptance of one church's saints by the other. Caridi examines official church documents and numerous canonization records, collecting and analyzing information from several previously untapped medieval Russian sources. Her highly readable study is the first to focus on the historical documentation on canonization specifically for juridical significance. It will appeal to scholars of religion and church history, as well as ecumenicists, liturgists, canonists, and those interested in East-West ecumenical efforts.

This revised publication of the Venice 1891 Leitourgikon collects the hymns chanted in the Divine Liturgy from the ecclesiastical library of the Book of Hours, Menaeon, Triodion, Pentecostarion and Parakletike for the Sundays, Great Feasts and Formal Saint commemorations of the Church calendar. Specifically, it contains the Psalms from the Service of the Typika, the troparia of the Beatitudes, and Kanon troparia from the 3rd and 6th Odes, the antiphons and other troparia (apolytikia, kontakia, hypakoae, megalynaria and communion hymns) necessary to those chanting the Liturgy. It is with great spiritual pleasure that this most practical edition is presented, with the humble dedication to the pious clergy and chanters in the Church. Like in the 1891 edition, it was deemed advantageous to add a few more practical texts. In the area containing hymns from the new service booklets hymns for the commemoration of the Father of Mount Athos, the Feast of the Holy Protection and the memories of St Nektarios the Wonderworker and St Kosmas Aetolos were added. Also included are the texts of the daily antiphons, the troparia of the weekday beatitudes from the Parakletike, the May my mouth be filled with thy praise and Psalms 33 and 144.

By the early twentieth century, a genuine renaissance of religious thought and a desire for ecclesial reform were emerging in the Russian Orthodox Church. With the end of tsarist rule and widespread dissatisfaction with government control of all aspects of church life, conditions were ripe for the Moscow Council of 1917-1918 to come into being. The council was a major event in the history of the Orthodox Church. After years of struggle for reform against political and ecclesiastical resistance, the bishops, clergy, monastics, and laity who formed the Moscow Council were able to listen to one other and make sweeping decisions intended to renew the Russian Orthodox Church. Council members sought change in every imaginable area--from seminaries and monasteries, to parishes and schools, to the place of women in church life and governance. Like Vatican II, the Moscow Council emphasized the mission of the church in and to the world.
Destivelle's study not only discusses the council and its resolutions but also provides the historical, political, social, and cultural context that preceded the council. In the only comprehensive and probing account of the council, he discusses its procedures and achievements, augmented by substantial appendices of translated conciliar documents. Tragically, due to the Revolution, the council's decisions could not be implemented to the extent its members hoped. Despite current trends in the Russian church away from the Moscow Council's vision, the council's accomplishments remain as models for renewal in the Eastern churches.
"Destivelle's study is a much needed and timely examination of the historic All-Russia Church Council of 1917-1918--a council that marked both the culmination and the beginning of a new epoch in modern Russian Orthodoxy. The English translation of the council's definitions and decrees, as well as the 'Statute of the Local Council of the Orthodox Church of All Russia, ' along with Destivelle's exceptional commentary and annotations, will remain a foundational work for scholars and students of modern Christianity and Orthodoxy, as well as for scholars and students of Russian history for decades to come." --Vera Shevzov, Smith College

In this groundbreaking, interdisciplinary study, Andrew Walker White explores the origins of Byzantine ritual - the rites of the early Greek Orthodox Church - and its unique relationship with traditional theatre. Tracing the secularization of pagan theatre, the rise of rhetoric as an alternative to acting, as well as the transmission of ancient methods of musical composition into the Byzantine era, White demonstrates how Christian ritual was in effect a post-theatrical performing art, created by intellectuals who were fully aware of traditional theatre but who endeavoured to avoid it. The book explores how Orthodox rites avoid the aesthetic appreciation associated with secular art, and conducts an in-depth study (and reconstruction) of the late Byzantine Service of the Furnace. Often treated as a liturgical drama, White translates and delineates the features of five extant versions, to show how and why it generated widely diverse audience reactions in both medieval times and our own.

In this book Sergey Horujy undertakes a novel comparative analysis of Foucault's theory of practices of the self and the Eastern Orthodox ascetical tradition of Hesychasm, revealing deep affinities between these two radical "subject-less" approaches to anthropology. In facilitating this unusual dialogue, he offers both an original treatment of ascetical and mystical practices and an up-to-date interpretation of Foucault that goes against the grain of mainstream scholarship.

This is the third of three volumes dedicated to Professor Paul Nadim Tarazi. Volume 3 of Festschrift in Honor of Professor Paul Nadim Tarazi is a collection of articles discussing the latest findings in a variety of theological subjects related to the Bible as received and interpreted in the Orthodox Church tradition. Scholars from around the world have contributed their recent findings in the field of their research and teaching in this volume.

In The American YMCA and Russian Culture, Matthew Lee Miller explores the impact of the philanthropic activities of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) on Russians during the late imperial and early Soviet periods. The YMCA, the largest American service organization, initiated its intense engagement with Russians in 1900. During the First World War, the Association organized assistance for prisoners of war, and after the emigration of many Russians to central and western Europe, founded the YMCA Press and supported the St. Sergius Theological Academy in Paris. Miller demonstrates that the YMCA contributed to the preservation, expansion, and enrichment of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It therefore played a major role in preserving an important part of pre-revolutionary Russian culture in Western Europe during the Soviet period until the repatriation of this culture following the collapse of the USSR. The research is based on the YMCA's archival records, Moscow and Paris archives, and memoirs of both Russian and American participants. This is the first comprehensive discussion of an extraordinary period of interaction between American and Russian cultures. It also presents a rare example of fruitful interconfessional cooperation by Protestant and Orthodox Christians.

Arabic was among the first languages in which the Gospel was preached. The Book of Acts mentions Arabs as being present at the first Pentecost in Jerusalem, where they heard the Christian message in their native tongue. Christian literature in Arabic is at least 1,300 years old, the oldest surviving texts dating from the 8th century. Pre-modern Arab Christian literature embraces such diverse genres as Arabic translations of the Bible and the Church Fathers, biblical commentaries, lives of the saints, theological and polemical treatises, devotional poetry, philosophy, medicine, and history. Yet in the Western historiography of Christianity, the Arab Christian Middle East is treated only peripherally, if at all. The first of its kind, this anthology makes accessible in English representative selections from major Arab Christian works written between the eighth and eigtheenth centuries. The translations are idiomatic while preserving the character of the original. The popular assumption is that in the wake of the Islamic conquests, Christianity abandoned the Middle East to flourish elsewhere, leaving its original heartland devoid of an indigenous Christian presence. Until now, several of these important texts have remained unpublished or unavailable in English. Translated by leading scholars, these texts represent the major genres of Orthodox literature in Arabic. Noble and Treiger provide an introduction that helps form a comprehensive history of Christians within the Muslim world. The collection marks an important contribution to the history of medieval Christianity and the history of the medieval Near East.

In A Philosophy of the Unsayable, William Franke argues that the encounter with what exceeds speech has become the crucial philosophical issue of our time. He proposes an original philosophy pivoting on analysis of the limits of language. The book also offers readings of literary texts as poetically performing the philosophical principles it expounds. Franke engages with philosophical theologies and philosophies of religion in the debate over negative theology and shows how apophaticism infiltrates the thinking even of those who attempt to deny or delimit it. In six cohesive essays, Franke explores fundamental aspects of unsayability. In the first and third essays, his philosophical argument is carried through with acute attention to modes of unsayability that are revealed best by literary works, particularly by negativities of poetic language in the oeuvres of Paul Celan and Edmond Jabes. Franke engages in critical discussion of apophatic currents of philosophy both ancient and modern, focusing on Hegel and French post-Hegelianism in his second essay and on Neoplatonism in his fourth essay. He treats Neoplatonic apophatics especially as found in Damascius and as illuminated by postmodern thought, particularly Jean-Luc Nancy's deconstruction of Christianity. In the last two essays, Franke treats the tension between two contemporary approaches to philosophy of religion-Radical Orthodoxy and radically secular or Death-of-God theologies. A Philosophy of the Unsayable will interest scholars and students of philosophy, literature, religion, and the humanities. This book develops Franke's explicit theory of unsayability, which is informed by his long-standing engagement with major representatives of apophatic thought in the Western tradition.

The journal Put', or The Way, was one of the major vehicles for philosophical and religious discussion among Russian emigres in Paris from 1925 until the beginning of World War II. This Russian language journal, edited by Nicholas Berdyaev among others, has been called one of the most erudite in all Russian intellectual history; however, it remained little known in France and the USSR until the early 1990s. This is the first sustained study of the Russian emigre theologians and other intellectuals in Paris who were associated with The Way and of their writings, as published in The Way. Although there have been studies of individual members of that group, this book places the entire generation in a broad historical and intellectual context. Antoine Arjakovsky provides assessments of leading religious figures such as Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Florovsky, Nicholas and Vladimir Lossky, Mother Maria Skobtsova, and Afanasiev, and compares and contrasts their philosophical agreements and conflicts in the pages of The Way. He examines their intense commitment to freedom, their often contentious struggles to bring the Christian tradition as experienced in the Eastern Church into conversation with Christians of the West, and their distinctive contributions to Western theology and ecumenism from the perspective of their Russian Orthodox experience. He also traces the influence of these extraordinary intellectuals in present-day Russia, Western Europe, and the United States. Throughout this comprehensive study, Arjakovsky presents a wealth of arguments, from debates over "Russian exceptionalism" to the possibilities of a Christian and Orthodox version of socialist politics, the degree to which the church could allow its agenda to be shaped by both local and global political realities, and controversies about the distinctively Russian theology of Divine Wisdom, Sophia. Arjakovsky also maps out the relationships these emigre thinkers established with significant Western theologians such as Jacques Maritain, Yves-Marie Congar, Henri de Lubac, and Jean Danielou, who provided the intellectual underpinnings of Vatican II.

The book is in Russian and includes a full English translation. It is authored by an Eastern Orthodox Bishop for LGBT individuals in Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Russia. The book will resonate with Eastern European LGBT persons who are "out and proud," out to a select few, and those who live quiet lives of isolation and hopelessness. The Bishop answers a series of questions about social, political, religious, and spiritual issues that directly impact LGBT persons in Eastern Europe. His answers provide love, comfort, and support to those enduring homophobia. The questions presented reflect those that many LGBT individuals struggle with in Eastern Europe. They are answered in plain, simple language often referencing Orthodox thinkers, theologians, and philosophers from Eastern Europe. Table of Contents 1. For whom is this book written? 2. Why would a Bishop in a major Orthodox Church write this book? 3. Why am I different? 4. Should I feel ashamed? 5. Why am I lonely and isolated? 6. I'm confused. Do I have a mental illness? Am I a national security threat? 7. Will I become a pedophile? 8. Isn't LGBT a life style choice? Don't I have a choice not to be in a same-sex relationship? 9. Isn't being LGBT about sex? 10. Isn't homosexuality a problem brought in by the secular West? 11. If it's not a lifestyle choice can I pray away this burden? 12. Will getting married to someone of the opposite sex make my same-sex attraction go away? 13. If it is normal to be LGBT, how can so many people in society, religion, and government be wrong? 14. I'm scared. What should I do? 15. What about government law? 16. Should I tell my parents or close friends that I'm LGBT? What if they reject me? 17. Am I a sinner for wanting to love and be loved? 18. Religious leaders call me a sinner. Aren't they God's representatives? 19. Am I rebelling against God's natural order? 20. Doesn't God condemn what I am in the Bible? 21. Is HIV and AIDS God's punishment of homosexuals? 22. Will I burn in hell? 23. Am I trying to change the Word of God or Church Tradition by wanting to be accepted as a LGBT person? 24. How can I be lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender and still be a good Christian? 25. What is the Rainbow Flag? What is the Pink Triangle? 26. What does God expect of me as a LGBT person? 27. Am I blessed for being different? 28. What must I always remember? Prayer Resources LANGUAGES: RUSSIAN & ENGLISH

Here is a selection and translation (in modern Greek) of Symeon's Hymns, of some of the greatest Byzantine poems, describing the experiences of their author from living with God.

The text is accompanied by images of the Christ and of angels, in full color, and by an introduction explaining the endeavour of Symeon to set the Church free from a conventional and faceless perception of faith.

A pivotal period in Russian history, the Time of Troubles in the early seventeenth century has taken on new resonance in the country's post-Soviet search for new national narratives. The historical role of the Orthodox Church has emerged as a key theme in contemporary remembrances of this time-but what precisely was that role? The first comprehensive study of the Church during the Troubles, Orthodox Russia in Crisis reconstructs this tumultuous time, offering new interpretations of familiar episodes while delving deep into the archives to uncover a much fuller picture of the era. Analyzing these sources, Isaiah Gruber argues that the business activity of monasteries played a significant role in the origins and course of the Troubles and that frequent changes in power forced Church ideologues to innovate politically, for example inventing new justifications for power to be granted to the people and to royal women. These new ideas, Gruber contends, ultimately helped bring about a new age in Russian spiritual life and a crystallization of the national mentality.

Elpenor's edition publishes the New Testament in the original Greek language, known also as "Koine." Coming from Byzantium and being used until our days in Greek speaking Orthodox Churches, this version can be regarded as the most authoritative form of the New Testament text.

Text according to the 1904/12 edition of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople (Antoniades version) with corrections of typos made by the Church of Greece.

Illuminated with images of Byzantine manuscripts, photos of churches in Athos Holy Mount and in other places in Greece, Orthodox Icons and various Orthodox style drawings.

Reading the Bible in Greek supports a deeper understanding of biblical meanings, while by itself a contact with Greek elevates thinking.

Read more: The 1904 New Testament Edition of the Ecumenical Patriarchate: ellopos.com/blog/?p=1599 * Corrections to the Patriarchal Greek Text of the New Testament: ellopos.com/blog/?p=1604 * Book Preface: ellopos.com/blog/?p=1555 * Preface to the 1904 edition (Summary): ellopos.com/blog/?p=1626