| 315 . Construction according to Sense .– A word not infrequently violates the formal rules of grammar by agreeing with the real gender or number of the word it modifies. So a collective substantive often has a verb or participle in the plural (§§ 321, 500); neuter words or circumlocutions (like βη ρακληεη mighty Heracles, lit. the might of Heracles) denoting persons often have participles or relative pronouns agreeing with their real gender (§§ 422, 464). 316. Attraction . – Sometimes a word, owing to the influence of other neighboring or preceding words, takes different number, gender, case, or mode, from that expected, or even demanded, by the construction of the clause in which it stands; this is called Attraction. So an adjective standing with an infinitive may be attracted into the accusative, although the word it really modifies is in the genitive or dative (§ 631, 1); a pronoun may be attracted to the case of its antecedent (§ 484) or to the gender of its predicate substantive (§ 465); a verb may be attracted to the number of its predicate substantive (§ 501) or to the mode or tense of another verb on which it depends (§ 590, notes 1 and 4). Syntax of Substantives AGREEMENT OF SUBSTANTIVES APPOSITION 317 91 . A substantive used to describe another substantive word, if it denotes the same thing, agrees with it in case (Apposition) ; if possible, it agrees also in number and gender, but this cannot always be: thus, Κρος βασιλες Cyrus, the king, Κρος κα Κροσος ο βασιλες Cyrus and Croesus, the kings (cf. § 421), Εφρτης ποταμς the river Euphrates, but Πλται πλις οκουμνη Peltae an inhabited city. 318 . Apposition to a Sentence . – A substantive (in the nominative or accusative case) may stand in apposition to the thought expressed by a sentence. κα, τ μγιστον, φοβετο τι φθσεσθαι μελλε and – most important of all – he was afraid because he was likely to be seen Xn. Cy. 3, 1, 1. εδαιμονοης, μισθν δστων λγων happiness be yours – reward for sweetest words E. El. 231. |
| Accept The site uses cookies to help show you the most up-to-date information. By continuing to use the site, you consent to the use of your Metadata and cookies. Cookie policy Christmas Message from Patriarch KIRILL of Moscow and All Rus’ Christmas Message from Patriarch KIRILL of Moscow and All Rus’ to the Archpastors, Pastors, Deacons, Monastics and All Faithful Children of the Russian Orthodox Church Beloved in the Lord archpastors, all-honourable presbyters and deacons, God-loving monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters, The unutterable love of God has gathered us today so that in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:3) we may celebrate one of the most solemn and at the same time mysterious feasts of the Church – the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Glorifying our Saviour’s coming into the world, I extend my heartfelt congratulatios to all of you, my beloved, on the joyful event which opened a new era in the relationship between God and humanity. Looking back at that moment two thousand years ago, we every time strive to fathom the great miracle of the Divine Incarnation, and our Creator’s loving-kindness and mercy never fails to amaze us. For many centuries, humanity had been living in tense expectation, awaiting the Peacemaker (cf. Gen 49:10) promised by the Lord, which is to say a King… just and having salvation (Zech 9:9), in Whose name nations will hope (Is 42:4). Thus, in the fullness of time unto us a Child was born (Is 9:6) that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (Jn 3:16). The love of God which passes knowledge (Eph 3:19) sent into the world not an ambassador or an angel, or the strong and mighty ruler tha people had been expecting, but God Himself Who took flesh in order to deliver humankind from the bondage of sin and evil. It is astounding that the greatest milestone event in human history, heralded by the Old Testament prophets and foreknown by prominent thinkers of antiquity, came to pass so quietly, seemingly unnoticeable. Bethlehem lay sleeping. Jerusalem lay sleeping. The whole of Judaea lay sleeping. Neither to the powerful sound of the trumpet (Ps 150:3), nor to worldwide jubilation, but humbly and meekly did the Almighty Lord – the King of kings and the Lord and Creator of all things – reveal Himself to the world in the nightly silence of a poor cave, glorified by the angelic hosts and a small number of shepherds who came to see this thing that has come to pass (Lk 2:15). |
| And Solomon also spake thus: «Who can say, Thou hast made my heart clean, and I have been cleansed from sins» ( Prov. 20:9 )? And also in the law it is written that Moses prayed before God and said: «Thou forgivest iniquity and sin, and surely Thou dost not justify» ( Ex. 34:7 ; Num. 14:18 loosely). And also when he wished that his people might be blotted out on account of their sins Moses spoke thus, when he entreated and supplicated and said: «Forgive Thy people its transgression, as Thou hast forgiven them from Egypt and up to to-day». And God said to him: «I forgive them according to Thy word» ( Num. 14:19–20 ). 15. O ye who are entreating penitence, be ye like unto Aaron the chief of the priests who, when he had caused the people to sin by the calf, confessed about his sin and his Lord forgave him. And also David, the chief of the kings of Israel, confessed about his transgression, and it was forgiven him. And also Simon, the chief of the disciples, when he denied, (saying) that Christ hath never seen me, and he cursed and swore, «I do not know Him» (S. Mt. 26:74 ) and when repentance came to him he multiplied tears in his weeping; our Lord received him, and made him the foundation, and called him Peter, the edification of the Church. 16. Be ye not foolish as Adam who was ashamed to confess his sin. And also be ye not likened to Cain who, when he was accused of killing his brother, said: «I do not know where Abel is, for I am not his keeper» ( Gen. 4:9 ). And be ye not lifted up on high in the mind in the likeness of the corrupt generation, and do not add iniquity to iniquity and increase your sins, thinking yourselves to be innocent while ye are debtors. Hearken to your first fathers who, even when they were righteous, subjected themselves to humiliation. For Abraham said: «I am dust and ashes» ( Gen 18:27 ), and he held himself lowly as a thing of small consequence. And also David said: «The days of men are as a vapor» ( Ps. 144:4 ). And Solomon spoke and admonished: «If the righteous shall scarcely be saved where shall the sinners and the impious be found» ( Prov. 11:31 ; cf. |
| Archive Пн Christmas Message from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’ 6 January 2024 year 08:00 Christmas Message from Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus’ to the Archpastors, Pastors, Deacons, Monastics and All Faithful Children of the Russian Orthodox Church. Beloved in the Lord archpastors, all-honourable presbyters and deacons, God-loving monks and nuns, dear brothers and sisters, The unutterable love of God has gathered us today so that in the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph 4:3) we may celebrate one of the most solemn and at the same time mysterious feasts of the Church – the Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ. Glorifying our Saviour’s coming into the world, I extend my heartfelt congratulatios to all of you, my beloved, on the joyful event which opened a new era in the relationship between God and humanity. Looking back at that moment two thousand years ago, we every time strive to fathom the great miracle of the Divine Incarnation, and our Creator’s loving-kindness and mercy never fails to amaze us. For many centuries, humanity had been living in tense expectation, awaiting t he Peacemaker (cf. Gen 49:10) promised by the Lord, which is to say a King… just and having salvation (Zech 9:9), in Whose name nations will hope (Is 42:4). Thus, in the fullness of time unto us a Child was born (Is 9:6) that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life (Jn 3:16). The love of God which passes knowledge (Eph 3:19) sent into the world not an ambassador or an angel , or the strong and mighty ruler tha people had been expecting, but God Himself Who took flesh in order to deliver humankind from the bondage of sin and evil. It is astounding that the greatest milestone event in human history, heralded by the Old Testament prophets and foreknown by prominent thinkers of antiquity, came to pass so quietly, seemingly unnoticeable. Bethlehem lay sleeping. Jerusalem lay sleeping. The whole of Judaea lay sleeping. Neither to the powerful sound of the trumpet (Ps 150:3), nor to worldwide jubilation, but humbly and meekly did the Almighty Lord – the King of kings and the Lord and Creator of all things – reveal Himself to the world in the nightly silence of a poor cave, glorified by the angelic hosts and a small number of shepherds who came to see this thing that has come to pass (Lk 2:15). |
| But Furuli still seems unwilling to give up the idea that an unknown NeoBabylonian king named Marduk-šaruur might have existed. He argues on page 80: “Sack read the name as Nergalšaruur, and if this is the same tablet as the one read by Boscawen, I can confirm that Sack’s reading is correct, because I have collated this tablet myself at the British Museum. If both scholars read the same tablet, a NeoBabylonian king with the name Mardukšaruur never existed. However, the broken tablet BM 56709, the signs of winch are NeoBabylonian, refers to year 1 of a king whose name begins with Marduk. So we cannot exclude that Boscawen read a tablet different from the one read by Sack, and that a king with Marduk in his name reigned in the NeoBabylonian Empire.” This tablet is listed in the Catalogue of the Babylonian Tablets in the British Museum (CBT), Vol. 6 (London: The Trustees of the British Museum, 1986, p. 215). In an unpublished list of “Corrections and additions to CBT 68” (my copy is dated March 18, 1996), which Christopher Walker kept at the British Museum, Walker gives the following comments on the text: “56709 Marduk[...] 12/–/I Dated at Borsippa. CT 55, 92 (not CT 56, 356). The tablet is probably early NeoBabylonian.” Note the words “probably” and “early NeoBabylonian.” This is a suggestion. Furthermore, scholars often use the term “NeoBabylonian” to describe a more extended period than 625539 BCE. The Assyrian Dictionary, for example, starts the period at about 1150 BCE and ends it in the 4th century BCE. (Cf. GTR 4 , Chapter 3, n. 1) Maybe this is how Walker uses the tenn here. The names of about a dozen Babylonian kings between ca. 1150 and 625 BCE begin with Marduk, including Mardukaplaiddina II (the Biblical MerodachBaladan, Isa. 39:1, who ruled in Babylon twice, 721710 and 703 BCE), and Mardukzakirshumi II (703). Thus, as the royal name is only partially legible and we do not know exactly to which period the tablet belongs, it is useless for chronological purposes. Placing the king in the NeoBabylonian period somewhere after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar is based on nothing else but wishful thinking. |
| But let us turn our gaze from the sorrow to the joy. What joy does the Nativity of the Mother of God bring us? Let us explain in more detail the Church hymn which explains the meaning of this feast’s joy. Through the birth of the Ever-Virgin, through Her only-begotten Son and God, cursed and outcast mankind makes peace with God Who is immeasurably offended by man’s sins, for Christ became the mediator of this peace (cf. Rom. 5:10-11). Man is freed from the curse and eternal death, made worthy of the blessing of the Heavenly Father; he is united and co-mingled with the Divine nature; he is raised to his first inheritance by this co-mingling, according to the Church hymn. Mankind, once an outcast, has been made worthy of sonship to the Heavenly Father, received the promise of the glorious resurrection and eternal life in the heavens together with the angels. This has all been and is being wrought by the Son of God incarnate from the Most Pure Virgin from the Holy Spirit, and by the intercession of His Most Pure Mother. How honored and magnified is mankind through the Holy Virgin Mother of God, for it has been made worthy of renewal and sonship by God; She Herself was made worthy by Her immeasurable humility and exceedingly great purity and holiness to be the Mother of the God-man! She is ever the most powerful Intercessor for the Christian race before Her Son and God! She is our Hope unashamed; She turns away from us the dark cloud of God’s righteous wrath, opens to us the ancient paradise by Her powerful intercessions; She upholds the thrones of kings, and preserves them unshakeable to the ages. She has saved Russia thousands of times and continues to save her; She has made her strong, glorified her, established her, and continues to do so; She is the Surety of Sinners for salvation. To Her do Christians direct their numberless prayers, requests, and praises, doxologies and thanksgiving; She has worked and continues to work miracles without number in the Church, to the ends of the world. |
| Corresponding to the change in man himself, all the visible world will change. From the corruptible it will turn into the incorruptible. The souls of people who died before the general resurrection exist under differing conditions. The souls of the righteous will experience a foretaste of eternal blessedness, and the souls of sinners a foretaste of eternal torment. The state of the souls of the dead is determined at the particular judgment, which takes place after the death of each person. This is clearly evident from the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ about the rich man and Lazarus (cf. Luke 16:19–31). The Apostle Paul also points this out when he says, Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better (Philip. 1:23,24). Death has great significance in the life of every man. It is the demarcation point by which the time of preparation is ended and the time of reward is begun. But as this particular judgment is not final, the souls of sinful people who died with faith in Christ and repentance are able, to receive relief from suffering beyond the grave and even be completely delivered from it by the prayers of the Church, augmented by works of charity done for them by the living, and especially by commemorating them in the bloodless sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ. For this purpose the Orthodox Church established commemoration of the dead, which has been performed regularly since Apostolic times. Commemoration of the dead comprises one of the main parts of the Divine Liturgy. This is evident from the first Christian Liturgy of the Apostle James. The Apostle John says, If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and He (God) shall give him life (I John 5:16). The Apostle Paul in his epistle to Bishop Timothy writes, I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth ( I Tim. 2:1–4 ). |
| Finally, we may as well discard RF’s German ‘example’ (which seems to be taken from a bad joke) and rewrite the framed text printed in boldface type on page 80 to bring it into accord with the truth of God’s Word, the Bible: “The words of Jeremiah 25:11 29:10 Daniel 9:2 and 2Chronicles 36:20 are all clear and unambiguous: Judah and Jerusalem were to become desolate and remain in this condition from the final destruction of the city in 587 BCE until the end of the 70 years ‘for Babylon’, which period ended in the year 539 BCE, when Babel fell to Medo Persia.” This is what the Bible and history, supported by chronology and archaeology, agree on in all details. What was the objective of Jeremiah? This is RF’s next subtitle, and the rest of page 80 and the better part of page 81 are filled with his speculations along the twisted and contorted trail he has chosen to follow. Really, it is not necessary to speak of the prophet’s objective at all beyond his strong desire to complete the task his heavenly father had given him, about which we read in Jeremiah 1:410 appointing Jeremiah as his prophet in Jerusalem: “Before I was forming you in the belly I knew you, and before you proceeded to come forth from the womb I sanctified you. Prophet to the nations I made you.’... to all those to whom I shall send you, you should go; and everything that I shall command you, you should speak. ... Here I have put my words in your mouth. See, I have commissioned you this day to be over the nations and over the kingdoms, in order to uproot and to pull down and to destroy and to tear down, to build and to plant.” (emphasis added; cf. vss. 1119) Actually, that is how Jeremiah’s task has been understood by Bible scholars at all times, not only by Christian ones, but also Jewish ones, such as Dr. Joseph Klausner who wrote about Jeremiah that he ‘intervenes in the political life of his nation, contending not only with priests and popular teachers, but also with kings and princes, prophesying not only against Judah and Jerusalem, but also against the Gentiles and foreign powers, and the whole of the then known world, enfolding them all in his allembracing grip, and scrutinizing them with the acute vision of the eagle.’ – Jesus of Nagareth, translated by H. Danby, London 1929. (Page 390, emphasis added) |
| From the day that thou wast created thou wast with the cherub: I set thee on the holy mount of God; thou wast in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast faultless in thy days, from the day that thou wast created, until iniquity was found in thee (Ez. 28:14-15). A question arises: Where did this iniquity come from in a cherubim that God had created? The answer is below, in verse 17: Thy heart has been lifted up because of thy beauty; thy knowledge has been corrupted with thy beauty [in the Slavonic, vanity]: because of the multitude of thy sins I have cast thee to the ground, I have caused thee to be put to open shame before kings (Ez. 28:17). We see that the cause of iniquity lies in the fact that Thy heart has been lifted up because of thy beauty; thy knowledge has been corrupted with thy vanity. That is, the cause of iniquity is self-admiration, narcissism, of which there is certainly enough in our world today. No matter what our occupation, we no longer consider this state to be a sin: “I am the best, I am the most beautiful… Of course they’re all nice looking, but I am the best of all.” After man’s fall from God, as we see further on, this state has been handed down like damage from the first humans to all mankind. This is the secret of human sin and iniquity. It was said just like that: Thy heart has been lifted up because of thy beauty. I would like to recall here the holy martyr Christopher, whose memory is celebrated by the Church on the same day as St. Nicholas the Wonderworker—May 22. St. Christopher’s Life is very short, but says much. Christopher was very handsome and tall. And just imagine, he prayed his whole life to God so that He would take his beauty away! This is totally incomprehensible to us. How could that be?! We think, to the contrary we need to pray differently, as the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev said, “in order to be pleasant, we need to be pleasant.” This is the axiom of modern life. But this man, the holy martyr Christopher, prayed for the opposite—that he would not be pleasant. Why? Because he saw that self-admiration and self-deceit where leading him away from the path of salvation. This man was very attentive to his inner world, to the state of his heart and immortal soul. This is a true example that is worthy of emulation: to pray that whatever is leading us from the path of salvation be taken away from us, regardless of whether it brings us illusory advantage and prosperity in this temporal world. This prayer can become possible only when we become attentive to our inner world—only when we learn what is truly beneficial to us and what is not (cf. Rom. 12:2). |
| hieromonk Damascene (Christensen) Icon of Christ, «the King of Kings and Lord of Lords» (Revelation 19:16). This icon from eighteenth-century Russia shows the artistic influence of Russiás neighbor, China. Dedicated to the 222 Chinese Orthodox Martyrs, who were slain for Christ during the Boxer Rebellion in Beijing in the year 1900. There exists a Being undifferentiated and complete, Born before heaven and earth. Tranquil, boundless, Abiding alone and changing not, Encircling everything without exhaustion. Fathomless, it seems to be the Source of all things. I do not know its name, But characterize it as the Tao. Arbitrarily forcing a name upon it, I call it Great.... Tao Teh Ching, chapters 25 and 4 (Translated by Gi-ming Shien and Eugene Rose.) In the beginning was the Tao, And the Tao was with God, And the Tao was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; And without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness, And the darkness comprehended it not.... He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, And the world knew Him not.... And the Tao became flesh, And dwelt among us, And we beheld His glory... The Gospel of John, chapter 1 (Translated from a Canton edition of the New Testament, published in China in 1911 by the American Bible Society.) St. Seraphim of Sarov, Russia (1759–1833): detail of a portrait painted from life. About St. Seraphim’s illumination by Uncreated Teh, see p. 390. THOUGH NOT with the same power as in the people of God [the Hebrews], nevertheless the presence of the Spirit of God also acted in the pagans who did not know the true God, because even among them God found for Himself chosen people. Such, for instance, were the virgin prophetesses called Sibyls who vowed virginity to an unknown God, but still to God the Creator of the universe, the all-powerful ruler of the world, as He was conceived by the pagans. Though the pagan philosophers also wandered in the darkness of ignorance of God, yet they sought the Truth which is beloved by God; and on account of this God-pleasing seeking, they could partake of the Spirit of God, for it is said that the nations who do not know God practice by nature the demands of the law and do what is pleasing to God [cf. Romans 2:14].... |
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