ABSTRACT
Scholars of Eastern Christianity give relatively little attention to the Jewish apocalyptic roots of ideas and practices that came to define the Orthodox thought-world. This is unfortunate because Byzantium cannot be understood adequately without considering its important apocalyptic undercurrent. Even more serious is the resulting gap in our understanding of Orthodox theology: on the one hand, it is well known that an “enormous library of pseudepigraphical and apocryphal materials from post-biblical Israel and Christian antiquity … was continuously copied and presumably valued – though seldom quoted – by Eastern Christians, and especially by their monks”; on the other hand, however, “one would be hard-pressed to find a single contemporary Orthodox theologian who devotes any significant space whatever to their consideration.” The author of this observation, himself an Orthodox monk and American academic, suggests that scholars interested in the mystical and ascetical tradition of the Christian East should build on the achievements of the scholars associated with the “neo-patristic synthesis,” but “with much greater attention devoted to an area where we believe their work was lacking: the patrimony of biblical and postbiblical Israel.” He argues that the study of apocalyptic literature, of the Qumran Scrolls, and of later Jewish mysticism “throws new and welcome light on the sources and continuities of Orthodox theology, liturgy, and spirituality” ( Golitzin 2007a: xix). For better or for worse, this synthesis of theology, liturgy, and spirituality in the Christian East is often referred to as “Orthodox Mysticism.”
