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"Liturgical English: [ sforthodoxinstitute.org] Developing an Orthodox Language Study Group" being offered by the Sts. Cyril & Athanasius Institute for Orthodox Studies in San Francisco. There is [ sforthodoxinstitute.org] a "Working Group" for those who are qualified which will meet in SF. And there are "Associate Participants [who will] interact chiefly on-line and may be located anywhere in the world": The "Study Group" consists of the Working Group and the Associates. There is no tuition for this. ($25.00 for supplies for the Working Group and $10 service fee for Associate Participants) Schedule [ sforthodoxinstitute.org] of Upcoming Meetings. From that website: The Liturgical English: Developing an Orthodox Language Study Group aims to engage in discussions surrounding the interest in developing a shared "Orthodox Liturgical English" that is suitable for divine worship and prayer, based in Orthodox customs and practices of translation and liturgical life. Physical meetings of the working group are held in San Francisco, while wider participation is enabled through a host of on-line resources dedicated to the Group's work.
Topics addressed by this Study Group include:
The nature of Orthodox liturgical language. What is it? How is it distinct and different from other forms of a language.
Principles of liturgical translation and text.
The relationship of textual accuracy, poetry and liturgical usage.
Recent ventures in Orthodox English liturgical publications -- most notably David James's A Psalter for Prayer -- and how such projects might fit into larger work on English-language Orthodox texts.
And other related items. The conclusion of "A Welcome Message from Archimandrite Irenei": The purpose of this Study Group is to provide an avenue to explore what it might mean for an Orthodox liturgical English to be crafted. What might be its contours? What are the principles that it must maintain? How might such a project be approached? What pitfalls must it avoid? What would be the criteria of success?
The Institute's Study Group will make no pretensions of giving a definitive answer to these questions, nor to being the avenue by which this want might be overcome; but we hope that it might be a venue to engage in some of these questions, to explore the nature of language in our life and prayer, and perhaps to engage a broader group of people in discussions that may further the cause.
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Joined: Nov 2001
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Those who think because Scripture is written in Koine Greek that it was ever "colloquial" are quite mistaken. Koine can be elegant, elevated, and even highly technical, for all that it isn't "Attic". In fact, the Greek of both Scripture and Liturgy was always rather "antiquarian" (as was the Latin of the Vulgate Bible and the Old Roman Rite), and deliberately so. The ancients understood the concept of hieratic language, and employed it in order to create a sense of separation from the world, a sense of the numinous, that, through Scripture and liturgy, one was indeed entering into the Kingdom of God.
Those who therefore insist that both Scripture and liturgy have to be delivered in a modern idiom using the style guide from USA Today are making two fundamental errors. First, that liturgy being in the "language of the people" means the lowest common denominator of the people; second that the fundamental purpose of both Scripture and liturgy is didactic. And that is why colloquial language in both Scripture and liturgy invariably fails, for the colloquial is never inspiring, and also fails to convey the full meaning of the original. Worse, the people, who are looking for beauty and wonder, are confronted with the drab and everyday, and lose interest--plus, they also understand that the people foisting this off on them think they are too stupid to understand the hieratic language of traditional liturgy.
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