Moment or Process? Eucharistic Consecration and Epiclesis in Egyptian Thought: A Survey of Liturgical, Patristic, and Medieval Sources
Abstract
There is a long-standing polemic that the ‘moment’ of eucharistic consecration for the West is the words of institution and for the East is the epiclesis. Zheltov and Mckenna have previously analysed this issue with respect to the Byzantine rite; however, there is still a need for analysis of the Coptic rite. This paper examines the liturgical, patristic, and medieval sources to provide a survey of understandings of the epiclesis and consecration within the Egyptian liturgical heritage. The liturgical sources utilized include the early Egyptian anaphoras, as well as those utilized in the Coptic rite today—Egyptian Liturgy of St Basil the Great, Anaphora of St Gregory the Theologian, and Anaphora of St Cyril of Alexandria. The paper will show that there is diversity of thought regarding eucharistic consecration within the Egyptian tradition; yet, while accents on moment and process are both present, consecration as a process appears to be the dominant understanding.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
Cited by 1
- Authors
- Zakhary, B.
- Affiliations
- University of Notre Dame (US)
- Corresponding author
- Zakhary, Beniamin
- ORCID
- Zakhary, Beniamin
- Venue
- The Journal of Theological Studies
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2024-09-19
- Volume
- 75
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 430-462
- ISSN
- 0022-5185 (ISSN-L)
- 1477-4607
- OpenAlex
- W4402713093
- Cited by
- 1
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1
- FWCI
- 14.24
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Theological Studies (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Classics › Byzantine Studies and History
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Biblical Studies and Interpretation
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Karl Barth and Christian Theology
- Keywords
- Eucharistic consecration, epiclesis, Coptic liturgy, anaphora, Byzantine rite, patristic sources
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
