The Orthodox Church

[InChristAlone]

Originally Posted by HERn

I get that the Orthodox Church is the most ancient expression of "ritualized" Christianity, but given what I understand about persecution of the early church in the days of the apostles it's hard for me to imagine one of the brothers walking among the meeting swinging the thurible with burning incense. I think the smell would have given them away. I think the Orthodox Church represents the earliest ritualized form of Christianity, but not necessarily "primitive" Christianity. This of course does not mean that The Lord prefers the "primitive" (whatever that was) form of worship. I'm pretty sure He is more appreciative of diversity in worship than I am comfortable with.

Please check out these articles:

The early Christian Church came into being as a liturgical church because Jews worshipped liturgically. The New Testament records numerous instances of liturgical worship, which range from pure Jewish practices (such as Peter and John going to the Temple because it was the hour of prayer) to Christian liturgical worship (which confirms that the early Christians met and worshipped following Jewish liturgical practices, and added to them the rite of the Eucharist).

Many present-day Christians do not understand why the worship services of the "liturgical churches" are so different and so structured. A common assumption is that in the New Testament, worship was spontaneous. However, worship in the early Christian Church, like Judaism, followed a specific order or form. This "order" has its very roots in the Scriptures. In fact, all of Christianity worshipped this way for 1500 years; the Eastern Orthodox Church and Western Roman Church have been worshiping this way — more or less unchanged — for nearly 2000 years.

Two words need to be kept in mind when one first experiences liturgical worship: origin and changelessness.

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http://www.liturgica.com/html/litEChLit.jsp


First-century Christian synagogue liturgy

It seems fairly obvious that Christians, as a sect within first-century Judaism, worshipped essentially as other first-century Jews did. And we are justified in expecting to find in historical Christian worship some vestiges of earlier Jewish liturgy.

But in looking for parallels, it would be a mistake to assume that modern Jewish liturgy is identical – or even very similar – to the way first-century Jews worshipped. A modern Jewish prayerbook is not much help in reconstructing the prayer and worship of first-century Judaism, or in comparing it with later developments in Christian liturgy.

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http://silouanthompson.net/2007/09/f...gogue-liturgy/

Liturgy of St James

The Liturgy of Saint James is considered to be the oldest surviving liturgy developed for general use in the Church. Its date of composition is still disputed with some authorities proposing an early date, perhaps ca. AD 60, close to the time of composition of Saint Paul's Epistle to the Romans, while most authorities propose a fourth-century date for the known form, because the anaphora seems to have been developed from an ancient Egyptian form of the Basilean anaphoric family united with the anaphora described in The Catechisms of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_of_St_James