Anna Adams: Reconsidering the "Egyptian Connection" in the Anaphora of Fourth-Century Jerusalem

Prior to Geoffrey Cuming's important article "Egyptian Elements in the Liturgy of Jerusalem" (1974), scholars long assumed that the baptismal and eucharistic rites of early Jerusalem belonged to the Syrian liturgical family. Cuming, however, argued that the Hagiopolite rites share more significant parallels with the Egyptian liturgical family than with the Syrian. Cuming's argument for an "Egyptian connection" was heavily criticized by Bryan Spinks, but recent scholarship by Juliette Day and Maxwell Johnson has reopened the question. Day and Johnson have argued for parallels between the baptismal rites of Egypt and Jerusalem, and have called for similar analysis of the eucharistic rites of these two liturgical centers.
In this paper, I will begin the proposed analysis by building on Day and Johnson's suggestion that a version of the Apostolic Tradition may in fact lie beneath the developing liturgical traditions of both Egypt and Jerusalem. More specifically, I will argue for parallels between the portions of the Apostolic Tradition that pertain to the eucharist (AT 4, 22, and 26) and the anaphora that is described in the Mystagogical Catecheses traditionally attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem (MC 3, 4, and 5). I will compare the structure of the anaphorae found in these texts, the theological content of the prayers, and the inclusion (or lack thereof) of an institution narrative. Finally, I will propose other documents that should be examined by liturgical scholars as we continue to reconsider the possibility of an "Egyptian connection" in the early eucharistic rites of Jerusalem.