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Document Details :

Title: Biblical and Parabiblical Women in Late Antique Christian Lliturgy
Subtitle: An Eclectic Overview
Author(s): BUCHINGER, Harald
Journal: Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses
Volume: 96    Issue: 3   Date: 2020   
Pages: 537-562
DOI: 10.2143/ETL.96.3.3288590

Abstract :
In Christian liturgy, saints appear in three prominent places: firstly and perhaps most importantly, feasts of the sanctoral cycle of annual celebrations are dedicated to the veneration of particular figures; the exchange of such sanctoral commemorations is also a medium for networking between different communities and regions. Secondly, lists of saints are commemorated in the intercessions of Eucharistic prayers, that is, a structural component in which the universal communion of those partaking in the Eucharist comes to be developed. While these saints come from both the Bible and – much more dominantly – from Christian history, a third function is reserved for biblical and parabiblical characters: paradigms from the Bible are invoked in certain prayers either as examples of God’s salvific activity or as role models for those for whose benefit the prayer is spoken. In this article, all three categories are surveyed in the liturgy of late antique Jerusalem, the 'mother of all churches', and in the Byzantine and Roman liturgies as those which have become the dominant rites of Eastern and Western Christianity.

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