In the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" (VIII, ii, 3) people are told to pray three times a day "as the Lord commanded in his Gospel: Our Father", etc.
The reference to it in Canon xxxii of the Quinisextum Council, which quotes it as being composed by St. James, the brother of Our Lord.
At any rate at Bethlehem he quotes as a liturgical form the words "who alone is sinless", which occur in this Liturgy (Adv.
The oldest manuscript is one from the tenth century formerly belonging to the Greek monastery at Messina and is now kept in the University library of that city.
The incense is blessed, and the oblation is brought from the Prothesis to the altar while the people sing the Cherubikon, ending with three Alleluias.
The deacon reads the "Diptychs" of the names of the people for whom they pray; then follows a list of Saints beginning with "our all-holy, immaculate and highly praised Lady Mary, Mother of God and ever-virgin."
The Host is shown to the people with the same words as in the Apostolic Constitutions, and then broken, and part of it is put into the chalice while the priest says: "The mixing of the all-holy Body and the precious Blood of Our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ."
The prayers are longer, the ceremonies have become more elaborate, incense is used continually, and the preparation is already on the way to becoming complicated service of the Byzantine Prothesis.
Besides the references to the Holy Cross, one allusion makes it clear that it was originally drawn up for the Church of Jerusalem.
It is possible to reconstruct a great part of the use of the city of Antioch while St. John Chrysostom was preaching there (370-397) from the allusions and quotations in his homilies (Probst, Liturgie des IV.
[1] The Catechisms of St. Cyril of Jerusalem were held in 348; the first eighteen are addressed to the Competentes (photizómenoi) during Lent, the last six to the neophytes in Easter week.
The allusions to the liturgy are carefully veiled in the earlier ones because of the disciplina arcani; they became much plainer when he speaks to people just baptized, although even then he avoids quoting the baptism form or the words of consecration.
The order of the prayers is different, but when the Greek or Syriac is translated into Latin there appear many phrases and clauses that are identical to ours.
It has been suggested that Rome and Syria originally used the same liturgy and that the much-disputed question of the order of our Canon may be solved by reconstructing it according to the Syriac use (Drews, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte des Kanons).
The Syriac Orthodox used only Syriac (their whole movement being a national revolt against the Emperor),[1] originally, the Levantine and Egyptian Melkites used the Anaphora of St. James alongside their Jacobite counterpart, until the Crusades indirectly caused liturgical reform in the Antiochene Church due to Byzantine influence.
But the list of saints is modified; the deacon commemorates the saints "who have kept undefiled the faith of Nicæa, Constantinople, and Ephesus"; he names "James the brother of Our Lord" alone of the Apostles and "most chiefly Cyril who was a tower of the truth, who expounded the incarnation of the Word of God, and Mar James and Mar Ephraim, eloquent mouths and pillars of our holy Church."
The deacon says stômen kalôs in Greek and the people continually cry out "Kurillison", just as they say "Amen" and "Alleluia" in Hebrew.
A letter written by James of Edessa (c. 624) to a certain priest named Timothy describes and explains the Syriac Orthodox Liturgy of his time (Assemani, Bibl.
Of course, the whole Eucharistic prayer is left out–the oblations are already consecrated as they lie on the Prothesis before the great Entrance (Brightman, op.
Like most Christians in communion with Constantinople, they have adopted the Byzantine Rite (except for the small number in canonical jurisdictions who use reconstructed Western liturgies).
Theodore Balsamon says that by the end of the twelfth century the Church of Jerusalem followed the Byzantine Rite.
[1] Note finally that the Maronites use the Syriac St. James with significant modifications, and that the Byzantine Rite as well as the Armenian Orthodox liturgies, are derived from that of Antioch.
[1] The so-called modifications are, however, primarily translation from the original Aramaic to the evolved Arabic dialect common to Lebanon.
Given the near total isolation (the North Lebanon Mountain region) of Maronite Catholic adherents from the 6th to the 13th centuries, it is unquestionably the liturgy most closely resembling that used by the earliest Christian communities.