The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity Edited by Eugen J. Pentiuc
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Half a century ago, Alexander Schmemann, surveying Russian theology between 1920 and 1972, observed that ‘Biblical studies represent the weakest area in modern Russian theology’ (St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 16 [1972], p. 176). His remark could apply to most of Orthodox theology after the fall of the Byzantine Empire, indeed up to the late twentieth century. While his observation may still be valid for Russian theology, it no longer characterizes Orthodox theology more broadly, as this book amply illustrates. The 41 essays collected here, plus the editor’s introduction, demonstrate that Orthodox biblical studies have come of age. Thirty-two of the 42 authors are Orthodox (26 Eastern Orthodox and six Oriental Orthodox). Greek and Romanian biblical scholars dominate—but no Russians are represented. The essays are distributed in five loosely defined sections covering the biblical text, canon, Scripture within tradition, ‘toward an Orthodox hermeneutics’, and ‘looking to the future’. For many centuries after the Reformation, Orthodox biblical studies, even reading the Bible outside liturgical services, were discouraged. As John Fotopoulos remarks, quoting from the 1672 Confession of Dositheus of Jerusalem: ‘Should the Divine Scriptures be read commonly by all Christians? Response: No. … it should not be read by all, but only by those who with the proper investigation have inquired into the depths of the Spirit, and who know which ways the divine Scripture should be investigated and taught, and generally read’ (p. 323). Why? For one, the Reformation sola scriptura doctrine was considered a direct challenge to Orthodox insistence on tradition as the foundation of the Church of Christ, conveyed in the teachings of the Apostles, recollected in the New Testament, and explored and refined by the Fathers of the Church and church councils. Even now, personal reading and study of the Bible is popularly considered a ‘Protestant’ practice, incompatible with Orthodoxy: ‘direct study of the Scriptures is rarely done among Orthodox Christians today—whether by laity or clergy’ (p. 332).
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.086 | 0.024 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".