Literary Discussions

My best friend from age 25 (we were novices together in a Greek Monastery) is now the only non-Greek every to be accepted to St. Catherines Mt. Sinai and his head librarian in charge of electronically preserving texts which date back to the 4th century (including the Codex Sinaiticus which is the oldest know copy of the complete Bible including Apocrypha-Deuterocanonical and is in Greek Septuagint) - he just wrote to me a about an obscure reference by St. Vincent of Lerins 6th century (or 4th) saying "you must be a SPIRITUAL BEZALEEL, adorning and shaping the doctrine without distorting it." Bezaleel was appointed to be the chief architect/engineer in charge of decorating/designig the tabernacle of Moses" The essence of Eastern Orthodoxy is to preserve everything unchanged and show a doctrinal continuity between Old Testament and New Testament so that, as Augustine said, the New Testament is in the Old Testament concealed and the Old Testament is in the New Testament revealed. Archbishop Anthony Krapovitsky of the Russian Orthodox Church (dating from the time of the Revolution) speculated that Christ's prayer for unity in Gesthemene  "Father all those whom you have given to me MAY THEY BE ONE even as you and I are one" is a prayer for doctrinal and liturgical unity. We know what happened historically with the Greeks from the 2nd century and with Rome and Europe after the Great Schism of 1054 and then with the Reformation of the 16th century. Anyway, all elements which work to increase unity and historical continuity are very significant even if they are also problematic.