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→Comments: Reply to Fr. John
==Comments==
Thanks for putting this up Basil - it's interesting and helpful and I hadn't seen it before. I am a bit worried about the copyright issue, so we'll have to work this out...
::Well, you've read it now, so we'll do with it as you wish. It wasn't intended to be permanent.
I do have two questions or comments about the article: First, I always understood the procession from the skeuphylakion into the church to the be equivalent of the Western offeratory procession. I wonder what Taft says, or what Archimandrite Ephrem means to say about this -- maybe I'm just dense or should read more carefully.
::Perhaps he means that an offering wasn't ever taken as part of the liturgical procession. Not sure how old that custom is in the Latin rite. He does seem to be contrasting the undescribed Western practice with a description of the customary way that the faithful offer their gifts. (BTW, taking up offerings during the service bug me a lot, and perhaps its because they're a foreign custom tacked on in imitation of the West.)
The second thing is that the Prothesis goes back well before the 11th c. -- at least there's an O.T. precedent in Lev. 24 -
:24:5 “You shall take fine flour and bake twelve loaves from it; two tenths of an ephah [2] shall be in each loaf. 6 And you shall set them in two piles, six in a pile, on the table of pure gold [3] before the Lord. 7 And you shall put pure frankincense on each pile, that it may go with the bread as a memorial portion as a food offering to the Lord. 8 Every Sabbath day Aaron shall arrange it before the Lord regularly; it is from the people of Israel as a covenant forever. 9 And it shall be for Aaron and his sons, and they shall eat it in a holy place, since it is for him a most holy portion out of the Lord's food offerings, a perpetual due.
