Vigil of Protection of the Mother of God

[Olga]

I would appreciate it if anyone could provide me with alternative English translations of the following two troparia from the canon of the feast of the Protection of the Mother of God. There is some odd language and imagery in these texts, I suspect a mistranslation. Normally, I would consult the Greek texts I have, but the Greek church has used a different service text since the early 1950s.

The troparia are as follows:

Ode 4, first troparion:

With melodious voices we cry out to you, O most-hymned Virgin: Rejoice, you butter-mountain, curdled by the Spirit. Rejoice, O lampstand, O jar bearing the manna that sweetens the senses of the pious.

Ode 7, second troparion:

O Virgin Mother of God, mountain curdled by the Spirit which Avvakum saw pouring forth the sweetness of healing upon the faithful, heal us who cry out to your Son: Blessed is the god of our fathers.

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

The Mother Mary translation has: Ode 4 1st Troparion:



O Virgin whom all men praise, making music for thee we sing in faith, Hail fertile mountain, filled to the full with the Spirit, Hail bearer of light and jar storing manna sweet to the senses of the righteous.

Ode 7, 2nd troparion:


O Virgin Theotokos thou mountain seen by Habakkuk watered by the spirit and that pours forth the sweets of healing upon the faithful, make us whole who sing to thy Son: blessed art Thou O God of our fathers.

Unfortunately I don't have the Isaac Lambertsen translation of this service. He is usually much more accurate to the Slavonic original.

In Slavonic the 4th Ode tropar has tuchnaya goro, usirennaya duchom - тучная горо усыренная духом. The 7th Ode also refers to gora usirennaya duchom - гора усыренная духом.

My local Slavonic expert isn't available right now but as the root of usirennaya appears to be сыр which means cheese and a number words connected to cheese it could well be that curdled is the proper word. In turn tuchnaya in modern Russian can mean fertile but maybe this is the word the Slavonic psalter uses which is often translated butter mountain.

I suspect this whole butter mountain is an issue in itself as I seem to recall some disagreement as to whether butter mountain is really a proper translation from the original.

If I can recall what psalm this is found in I'll give it a look and make a further post.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Anthony]

Dear Olga,

I believe the text is based on the Septuagint version of one of the psalms, and is the literal translation though it will probably be unfamiliar from most English versions. I remember talking to a priest who was complaining about precisely this. I will look it up tonight if that would be useful.

Anthony

[Olga]

Thank you all for your replies, they are most useful. "Fertile mountain" seems to make more sense, though Fr Raphael is quite correct in pointing out the Slavonic root words referring to cheese, even though it seems bizarre imagery.

If indeed the text is derived from a particular psalm, that would help too, as I do have a Greek Septuagint to refer to. As an aside, is there any way of locating the pre-1950s text of the Greek service, which should shed light on the matter - anyone out there with an elderly Greek menaion? :)

[Fr Raphael Vereshack]

Thank you all for your replies, they are most useful. "Fertile mountain" seems to make more sense, though Fr Raphael is quite correct in pointing out the Slavonic root words referring to cheese, even though it seems bizarre imagery.

If indeed the text is derived from a particular psalm, that would help too, as I do have a Greek Septuagint to refer to. As an aside, is there any way of locating the pre-1950s text of the Greek service, which should shed light on the matter - anyone out there with an elderly Greek menaion? :)

This imagery comes from Psalm 67: 16-17 (Sept) where the same cheese mountain is again found in each verse. vs 16 precedes this with the adjective тучная (tuchnaya) which again in modern Russian can mean fertile. But you'd have to speak with a real expert to know its actual meaning in Slavonic.

About finding this service in the Greek books: my impression is that this service is fairly recent for those who follow the Byzantine tradition. One of the paradoxes of the Feast is how even though the Mother of God appeared to Andrew & Epiphanius in Constantinople it is the Russians who made this a special Feast. In the Russian tradition Pokrov has about equal importance with the feast of Sts Peter & Paul.

In Christ- Fr Raphael

[Fr Seraphim (Black)]

Regarding Fr. Raphael's reflection about the Pokrov being fairly recent in the Byzantine tradition, I will add this impression I had when I first arrived to live on Mount Athos.

As Fr. Sophrony was born in Moscow, and in the early years the services were mainly in Slavonic, with bits of Greek and English (at the Monastery of St. John the Baptist, Essex, England) I had grown to love this Feast enormously.

Upon arriving at Stavronikita on Mount Athos (and knowing that Mount Athos is the Garden of the Theotokos) I was thoroughly surprised to find it absent and held as a very minor Feast on another day (which I now forget).

One of my longest held hopes is to one day build a hermitage dedicated to the Feast of the Pokrov. It is such a blessed and comforting feast.

[Olga]

Thank you, Fr Raphael, for the psalm reference. The Greek text reads ore teturomena (sorry, I can't seem to post the original Greek), which, on the face of it, can be indeed translated as mountains full of cheese! Though I would imagine such a literal translation is not the true meaning of the word in this case.

Fr Seraphim

My understanding on the difference in Greek and Slavic traditions on this feast is this: As I mentioned before, the Greek church has used a new, rewritten service text since about 1952, and it was at about this time that the date of the feast was changed from October 1 to October 28. This new date is known in Greece as Okhi (No) Day, and it commemorates the incident in 1940, when the Greek prime minister rejected surrendering to the invading Italian armed forces, thus bringing Greece into the Second World War. October 28 is a national holiday, second in importance only to Independence Day.

Why link a secular, political holiday with a religious one? Perhaps the reasoning was thus: The date for the raising of the rebellion against the Ottomans in 1821 was deliberately chosen to be March 25 (Annunciation), symbolic of the anticipated "rebirth" of the nation. The Church was very much involved, including the raising of the first battle standard of a blue cross on a white background. Legend has it that this standard was the curtain hanging over the Royal Doors in the church of the monastery of Aghia Lavra, and that it was blessed by Metropolitan Germanos of Patras. To me, it seems that linking another feast of the Mother of God, and one whose theme is protection of the faithful, with Greece's second national day follows a similar line of reasoning.

I might add that I am most uncomfortable with the idea of relocating a feast of the Church to suit secular or nationalistic requirements...