Keywords: Hymnography, Pagan paradigm, ethnical typos, ontological fulfilment
Abstract:
The hymnographers of the Church among Nations (ἡ ἐξ Ἐθνῶν Ἐκκλησία, Ecclesia Gentium) did not restrain themselves to the usual Old Testament typos-es in depicting the realities of Grace within and after the New Testament, but also created some “illegitimate” ethnical typos-es, by using the method of hymnographic correlation of similar structures. While the Old Testament typos-es take part by anticipation to the im-printed Grace, the ethnical ones, as a product of typologies of certain social, religious or mythical-philosophic structures that were formed among the Nations, do not share any ontological continuity with the origin of Grace, but refer to it by analogy, since their forming structures are related with the formless reality of Grace and they can, through poetic licence, be reshaped as icons framing a new content. The Hymnography of the Church presents, through the typology of ethnical paradigms, the Nations who accepted the reason of the Incarnation and the transparency of the Scriptures, i.e. the “sources of Grace”, that flood even the crystallized “structures” within them, “bearing the fruit of life” and conferring them an iconic dimension. They are opposed to old Israel, who never leaved the letter of the Law and therefore never understood the Old Testament typos-es that foreshadowed the Incarnation. Beyond the historic and scientific criteria, responding to the law of “universal attraction” of similar structures, i.e. to the forces that generate correlation and typology, the ethnical structures intertwined by hymnographers within the fabric of the hymn – usually concepts or institutions specific to Pagan Antiquity – are seen as variable regarding their content and parameters, which can be changed at any time, according to the neptic purpose of the hymn, namely the awakening of the mind towards the immaterial, by exercising its perception.
Pages: 54-107