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Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers
Anglican Theological Review, Winter 1999 by Spinks, Bryan D
Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers. Edited by Paul F. Bradshaw. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997. viii + 231 pp. $29.95 (paper). According to Paul Bradshaw, "texts are really only useful to the student of liturgy if they are accompanied by explanation that sets them within their context and explains their connection to one another" (p. v). These essays, which grew out of doctoral seminars at the University of Notre Dame, are designed to provide the context and explanation of the major Eastern anaphoras which are found in R. D. C. Jasper and G. J. Cuming, Prayers of the Eucharist: Early and Reformed (3rd edition, New York: Pueblo, 1980). This collection continues to be a major textbook for students of the eucharistic prayer, and although each text has an introduction and select bibliography, the student is left to wade through the latter. These essays seek to ease the student into the literature. I am not convinced, however, that all of these essays actually achieve the editor's stated intention. Nine essays are presented in this book, together with an Introduction by Paul Bradshaw. However, only six of the essays derive from the graduate seminar. Two are reprints and one an expansion of papers by established scholars in the field, and their format and pitch is markedly different from the others, making the collection unbalanced.
The Introduction by Bradshaw sets out the problem of assessing early eucharistic texts, and reflects in miniature what he has said at greater length elsewhere. What is surprising is his apparent agreement with some of the hypotheses put forward by Enrico Mazza (The Origins of the Eucharistic Prayer, Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1995). When I was Visiting Associate Professor at Notre Dame in the fall semester, 1996, the doctoral students had great fun in my seminar in spotting the flaws in its methodology and argument. The first essay by Stephen B. Wilson is a good summary of present scholarship on the East Syrian anaphora of Addai and Mari, and he usefully discusses the theology of the prayer-though (p. 21) Ratcliff did not excise all the gehanta prayers. Walter D. Ray returns to the Strasbourg papyrus, which seems to have captured the imagination of present-day scholars in the same fashion as Apostolic Tradition did back in the 1950s. Recent scholarship has exposed the folly of the latter, and one wonders whether too much now is being attached to this Egyptian fragment. However, the essay gives students an overview of scholarly opinion, and should be very helpful. D. Richard Stuckwisch introduces the Basilian anaphoras, noting that another former Notre Dame student, Todd Johnson, has recently argued for an Egyptian origin for the Ur-text. However, Stuckwisch rightly notes that priority must still be given to the magisterial discussion of the text by John Fenwick (The Anaphoras of St. Basil and St. James, OCA 240 Rome: Pontificium Institutum Orientale 1992). But Stuckwisch also takes the discussion further by adding a new dimension, and suggests a possible link between Origen, Gregory Thaumaturgus and Basil. Kent J. Burreson gives an excellent discussion of the anaphora outlined in the Mystagogical Catecheses attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem, and is to be commended for suggesting a proper theological anchorage for the text. Equally accomplished is the contribution by John D. Witvliet on the anaphora of St. James, though he suggests a modification to Fenwick's proposed relationship between Basil and James. Raphael Graves's essay on Apostolic Constitutions 8 breaks ranks with his colleagues by giving a highly detailed textual comparison of prayers from other parts of the Constitution.s but which are not in Jasper and Cuming. A detailed knowledge of previous scholarly view is required here.
My main concern, however, is the decision to include the essays by the late Geoffrey Cuming on St. Mark, Maxwell Johnson on Serapion, and Robert Taft on Chrysostom. Cuming's paper, given in outline in 1979 at the Society for Liturgical Study, appeared in Le Museon in 1982. In this essay Cuming argued for the anaphora outlined by Cyril of Jerusalem as being Egyptian. In 1983 he publicly withdrew this at the Oxford Patristic Conference. To reprint this article without note or explanation is misleading to students. Maxwell Johnson's essay presupposes a high degree of acquaintance with the textual and scholarly history, and I have questioned some of his methodology and reconstruction in the Journal of Theological Studies, April 1998. Robert Taft's essay, in Baumstarkian style, is about methodology and the use of the computer for assessing the anaphora underlying the Greek St. John Chrysostom and Syriac Twelve Apostles. Taft addresses his peers, not students. These three essays thus provide no up-to-date help with a readable review of the literature. Furthermore, some of the other essays go beyond a summary and make new suggestions; as laudable as this is, the result is that they too become part of the scholarly literature which the student must digest, which rather defeats the intended object. This is a very good collection of essays on some of the early Eastern anaphoras, but we will need a companion to Jasper and Cuming giving up-to-date introductions and summaries suitable for the student.
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