Jewish Feasts on the Jerusalem Calendar? Challenging Another ‘Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins’

Year
2025
Type(s)
Author(s)
Hugo Méndez
Source
ΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ: Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, Thessaloniki, Greece, 13–18 June 2022, ed. Chrysostom Nassis, Arsenius Mikhail, and Daniel Galadza, 351–70. Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies, no. 6. Münster: Aschendorff, 2024.
Url(s)
https://www.aschendorff-buchverlag.de/detailview?no=21778
BibTeX
BibTeX

This paper takes aim at this second, liturgical “myth of Jewish-Christian origins, challenging the idea that the fourth- and fifth-century church of Jerusalem inherited some of its sanctorale from older Jewish or Jewish-Christian practices in the region. As I see it, there is simply no compelling evidence that any commemoration unique to the calendar is Jewish or Jewish-Christian in origin. Rather, the city’s feasts—and the liturgical cycle that frames them—fit most plausibly in a fourth- and fifth-century gentile context. To illustrate this point, I will critique existing analyses of three feasts in the Armenian Lectionary of Jerusalem suggested as Jewish or Jewish-Christian in origin—specifically, the feast of James and David (25 Dec.), the feast of Mary Theotokos (15 Aug.), and a dedication rubric “for all the altars” in December.