The Early Jerusalem Euchologion in Georgian Transmission. Comparative Edition, Translation and Commentary

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Claudia Sode
• Subject Area: Ancient History
• Term: from 2013 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 247453451

The aim of the project is to recover a lost central document of liturgical literature from the cultural legacy of Palestinian Christendom: the Greek Euchologion, used in the Holy Land of the Jews and Christians for centuries until Byzantine rites replaced the Early Jerusalem Liturgy (10th / 12th cent.). This book was an anthology of all the prayers the presider over ecclesiastical congregations (patriarch, bishop, priest) had to recite at the core sacraments (Eucharist, baptism), at feasts and daily common prayer, at the ritual granting of blessings and protection from evil (at birth, in illness and death).On the basis of transmitted Greek extracts and fragments (papyri, palimpsests) and the late-antique and early Islamic translation into Georgian, the Orationale (Euchologion) of Jerusalem will be reconstructed, translated into German and commented on from a philological, historical and theological perspective. In this way and by detailed indices, sources will be made accessible for further research on such topics as the development of the celebratory and symbolic character of Christian cult practices and the theological or rather ideological content of the texts directed to the venerated divinity in the ecclesiastical community throughout the centuries. At the same time a hitherto missing resource for the identification and critical evaluation of the anonymously or fragmentarily transmitted prose texts and poems of Christian worship in Greek will be produced.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigators: Privatdozent Heinzgerd Brakmann, Ph.D.; Professor Dr. Jürgen Hammerstaedt