The Bible as the Liturgical Book

The primary place the Orthodox faithful meet Scripture is not private study but the Church’s worship, where the Bible is chanted, prayed, and enacted. The services are woven so densely from Scripture that they have been called a “mosaic” of the biblical word; and the Psalter is the Church’s own prayerbook, recited in its entirety week by week. Scripture is not merely quoted in worship — it is the very language of worship.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

Scripture as the Language of Worship

For most of Christian history, and still for the Orthodox faithful today, the deepest encounter with Scripture happens in the services of the Church. Before mass literacy and cheap printing, the overwhelming majority of Christians met the Bible not as a book they owned and read privately but as the word proclaimed, chanted, and prayed in the assembly. Orthodoxy has preserved this liturgical priority: the Bible is, first of all, the Church’s liturgical book, and the faithful are formed by it chiefly through worship (Ware, The Orthodox Church, Penguin, 1993, “The Bible”; Georges Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, SVS Press, 1977). Fr. Georges Florovsky and Fr. John Breck both insist that this liturgical proclamation is not a secondary “use” of a text whose real meaning is fixed elsewhere by scholarship, but the primary event in which the living Word addresses the gathered Body (Breck, Scripture in Tradition, SVS Press, 2001, ch. 1; and see The Bible as the Church’s Book).

The consequence is that Orthodox worship is saturated with Scripture to a degree that surprises those who count only the formal “readings.” Beyond the appointed Epistle and Gospel, the services are built out of the biblical word: the psalms that frame every service, the biblical canticles, the scriptural verses (stichoi) that introduce the hymns, and the countless allusions and paraphrases in the hymnography itself. It is a commonplace of Orthodox liturgical commentary that the texts of the services are a “mosaic” or “tapestry” of Scripture — that if one removed every biblical phrase, little would remain (Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, 1977; Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993). The point is not merely quantitative: Scripture furnishes the very vocabulary, imagery, and grammar in which the Church addresses God and confesses Christ.

How Much Is Direct Scripture

A survey of any Orthodox service shows the density. Vespers opens with Psalm 103 (104) (the “Introductory Psalm” of creation), includes “Lord, I have cried” built on Psalm 140 (141) with 141, 129, and 116, the Phos Hilaron, the Song of Simeon (Luke 2:29–32, the Nunc Dimittis), and on feasts the Old Testament paremias. Matins includes the Six Psalms (the Hexapsalmos: Psalms 3, 37, 62, 87, 102, 142), Psalm 118 (119) or the Polyeleos (Psalms 134–135), the biblical canticles that structure the canon, the Psalms of Praise (148–150, the Ainoi), and the Gospel. The Hours are each composed principally of three psalms. The Divine Liturgy carries the Epistle and Gospel, the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) or the Typika psalms (102, 145) at the antiphons, and prayers and hymns drawn throughout from Scripture (see The Divine Liturgy). The Eucharistic anaphora itself culminates in the Sanctus — “Holy, holy, holy” (Isaiah 6:3) joined to “Blessed is He who comes” (Matthew 21:9, Psalm 117 [118]:26) — the words of Scripture becoming the words of the Church’s offering (Robert Taft, The Byzantine Rite: A Short History, Liturgical Press, 1992; Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, 1977).

The Psalter as the Church’s Prayerbook

At the center of this scriptural worship stands the Psalter — the one book of the Bible the Orthodox Church prays in its entirety, and prays continually. The 150 psalms (in the Septuagint numbering; see Text, Numbering, and the Masoretic Question) are divided for liturgical recitation into twenty sections called kathismata (from kathizō, “to sit,” because one may sit during their reading), each subdivided into three staseis or “glories.” In the appointed monastic cursus, the whole Psalter is chanted through in the course of a week at Vespers and Matins, and twice each week during Great Lent (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; the Horologion and the Typikon prescribe the distribution of the kathismata). No other book is treated so: the Psalter is not merely read but prayed as the Church’s own voice, so that the psalmist’s cry becomes the cry of the worshiper and of Christ in His Body.

This corresponds to the ancient Christian conviction that the Psalter is the Scripture that both teaches prayer and is prayer. St. Athanasius, in his Letter to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms, explains that while the other books of Scripture speak to us, the Psalms uniquely give us words to speak back to God, so that “he who takes up this book… recognizes them as being his own words,” and is himself formed by praying them (Athanasius, Letter to Marcellinus 10–11; trans. Gregg, Paulist Press, 1980). St. Basil the Great calls the Psalter a “compendium of all theology,” a common storehouse of good doctrine that heals the soul as it sings (Basil, Homily on Psalm 1, 1–2; see St. Basil the Great). The Church’s continual praying of the Psalter is thus the fullest realization of Scripture as the Church’s book: the biblical word taken so deeply into the Body that it becomes her habitual speech to God (see Scripture and the Life of Prayer).

The Biblical Canticles

Alongside the Psalter, the Church’s daily hymnography is structured around the nine biblical canticles (odes) drawn from Scripture, which form the skeleton of the canon sung at Matins. These are: (1) the Song of Moses at the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1–19); (2) the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy (32:1–43, used chiefly in Lent); (3) the Prayer of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1–10); (4) the Prayer of Habakkuk (Habakkuk 3:1–19); (5) the Prayer of Isaiah (Isaiah 26:9–20); (6) the Prayer of Jonah (Jonah 2:3–10); (7) and (8) the Prayer and Song of the Three Youths in the furnace (from the Greek additions to Daniel 3); and (9) the Song of the Theotokos (the Magnificat, Luke 1:46–55) joined to the Song of Zechariah (the Benedictus, Luke 1:68–79). Each ode of a festal canon is composed to echo its biblical canticle, so that the Church’s poetry grows directly out of the scriptural songs (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; the biblical odes are printed in the Psalter and Horologion used liturgically). Notably, several of these canticles come from the Song of Moses at the Red Sea and from the Song of the Three Youths — texts also central to Paschal typology (see Typology, the Exodus, and Pascha).

Scripture Enacted, Not Only Recited

Finally, in Orthodox worship Scripture is not only chanted and prayed but enacted — its events made present and participated. The Gospel book is itself venerated, carried in procession, kissed, and enthroned on the altar as an icon of Christ the Word; the reading of the Gospel is a liturgical epiphany, greeted with lights and incense and the acclamation “Glory to Thee, O Lord” (Ware, The Orthodox Church, 1993; Barrois, Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship, 1977). In the cycle of feasts the Church does not merely commemorate the biblical events but enters them: at Theophany she stands at the Jordan, at Pascha she passes with Israel through the sea and with Christ from death to life. This is the liturgical form of the Emmaus principle — that the Scriptures are opened and Christ is known “in the breaking of bread” (Luke 24:35; see Christ the Key to the Scriptures). To worship as an Orthodox Christian is to live inside the Bible: to speak its words, sing its songs, and stand within its story. The next file sets out the ordered systems — the lectionary cycles — by which the Church reads through her Scriptures in worship (see The Lectionary and the Cycles).

References

Barrois, Georges. Scripture Readings in Orthodox Worship. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1977. (The scriptural texture of the services; the readings.)
Ware, Kallistos (Timothy). The Orthodox Church. New ed. London: Penguin, 1993. (“The Bible”; the Psalter and the services.)
Athanasius of Alexandria. Letter to Marcellinus on the Interpretation of the Psalms 10–11. Trans. Robert C. Gregg. New York: Paulist Press, 1980. (The Psalms as the words we speak back to God.)
Basil the Great. Homily on Psalm 1, 1–2 — the Psalter as a compendium of theology and healing of the soul.
Taft, Robert F. The Byzantine Rite: A Short History. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992. (The structure of the services.)
Breck, John. Scripture in Tradition. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001. (Ch. 1; liturgical proclamation as the primary event.)
Scripture: Psalms (LXX numbering); Exodus 15; Daniel 3 (Song of the Three Youths); Luke 1:46–55, 68–79; 2:29–32; Isaiah 6:3; Luke 24:35.