Trinity and Liturgy: the Syrian Tradition
Gabriele Winkler
During the 5th to 6th centuries the majority of the eastern eucharistic liturgies included the creed. This
inclusion, however, was preceeded by another process, the reshaping of crucial parts of the anaphora by inserting
credal statements. A very good example is the Anaphora of Basil, in particular in the prayer after the Sanctus,
but also in the expansion of the Anamnesis, which achieved its definitive shape via the inclusion of christological
statements reflecting the beliefs of the period. The formation of the lengthy prayer after the Sanctus and of the
fully expanded Anamnesis, however, do not reflect the influence of the Nicene Creed (or the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitanum),
as one might expect, but the tenets expressed in the creeds of the Synods of Antioch in 341 and 345. In order to
understand the significance of several statements in the "Oratio Christologica" after the Sanctus of the Anaphora
of Basil, one has to realize that the Nicene Creed of 325 was initially not at all normative.
The paper will explore the various Egyptian redactions of the Anaphora of Basil - Greek, Coptic, and Ethiopic - and compare
the Egyptian versions with the Armenian, Syriac, and Byzantine redactions.
The reshaping of important parts of the anaphora (in particular the prayer after the Sanctus, and to some extent also the
prayer before the Sanctus, as well as the formulation of the Anamnesis) must have taken place around or shortly after 345.
The two extant Armenian versions were shaped under Syriac influence. Furthermore, the consecratory verbs of nearly all the
versions of Basil also mirror Syriac models.