“Byzantine Orthodoxies” may at first indicate a study similar to recent explorations of ancient “Christianities,” especially in the wake of Walter Bauer, but this volume (while assuredly part of this scholarly debate) instead illuminates the manners in which Byzantine Orthodoxy found its expression through theology, rhetoric, politics, music, and art. The unique Synodikon of Orthodoxy of 843 casts its shadow over the rhyme and reason of this collection, as the Synodikon is a recapitulation of Byzantium's long struggle with orthodoxy, both before and after its first declamation.

Initiating Section 1 (“Defining Orthodoxy”) and setting the stage for the entire collection, John Behr dispels the common notion that Christian orthodoxy was a top-down creation of fourth-century Christianity divorced from its Semitic roots. He criticizes modern scholarship for reducing fourth-century orthodoxy to its doctrinal formulations at the expense of the theological traditions and paradigms in which such formulations found their expression: such a reduction substitutes “the explanation for that which it is explaining” (21). These doctrinal formulations, though becoming increasingly precise, are not, Behr explains, “the focal point of Christian faith[;] rather they express the parameters of the engagement with the Scriptures in the contemplation and worship of Christ” (25). Orthodoxy, far from focusing on Christ as a mere historical object, views him as “still the coming one” (25) and thus directs itself more toward the future than the past. Highlighting the specifically exegetical focus of fourth-century theology, Behr presents a greater continuity with the traditions of the earliest apostolic writings than much of modern scholarship is willing to admit. Caroline Macé's subsequent essay serves to explain how the key fourth-century figures became standards by which the Scriptures were read centuries later.

Dirk Krausmüller's essay analyzes the use of rhetorical training in order to hammer out the ambiguous orthodoxy of past (especially scriptural) texts and bring them more in line with inherited theological traditions, while Patricia Karlin-Hayter then elucidates the increasingly complex interplay between political and religious authorities in matters of orthodoxy. Norman Russell, providing a convenient bookend both in theological insight and chronological subject matter, explores the self-understanding of orthodoxy in the controversy after Gregory Palamas, revealing that the heart of the hesychast debates was really the ancient orthodox concern for a faithful understanding of the person of Christ. Around the axis of a sound Christology rotated all other theological discussion, however seemingly minute.

This notion is confirmed at the beginning of Section 2 (“Orthodoxy in Art and Liturgy”), as Leslie Brubaker explores the earliest canonical legislation regarding art and the representation of Christ: while, on the one hand, “tradition validated practice” (96), on the other, traditional artistic symbols of Christ (for example, a lamb) were rejected in favor of a more definitive human representation in order to preserve an orthodox Christology (likely in response to Islam). The subsequent essays by Liz James and Robin Cormack highlight this increasingly complex and reciprocal relationship between orthodoxy and art: while both claimed divine origins, neither could claim complete immutability. Dimitra Kotoula's explanation of the British Museum Triumph of Orthodoxy icon (late fourteenth century) confirms Cormack's key point: art became both a “defensive and offensive expression of Orthodoxy” (112).

Alexander Lingas and Archimandrite Ephrem (Lash) conclude the section with an exploration of orthodoxy and music: the former reveals that in the numerous theological and aesthetic battlegrounds between the East and West in 1054–1453, music continued to serve as a commonality and a source of cordial exchanges (unlike the centuries since); the latter explores the uniqueness of Byzantine hymns in their exalting orthodox doctrine with firm theological precision, while “naming and shaming” (152) heretics.

Opening Section 3 (“Orthodoxy and the Other”), Nicholas de Lange carefully considers whether one can speak of “Jewish Orthodoxy” in Byzantium. Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev's exploration of a ninth-century Byzantine-Armenian correspondence reveals the developing and divergent conceptions of orthodoxy between the Byzantine “diachronic, collective and spatial understanding” (193) that hinged largely on the authority of patriarchs and the Armenian understanding, which, subsisting under non-Christian dominance, stressed the validity of an orthodoxy based on martyrdom and autochthonous origins.

Concluding this section, Tia M. Kolbaba looks to Byzantine Orthodoxy's direct relationship with the West, exploring significant eleventh-century writers who held that Latins were within the fold of orthodoxy (a position drastically reduced in the twelfth century). However, while such writers were willing to disregard unimportant differences—asserting that most differences were not sufficient to divide the Body of Christ—they were hardly favorable toward Latin positions and instead exhibited a “condescending tolerance” (206).

Sergei Averintsev's epilogue brings the largely historical discussion definitively into the modern era by offering perspectives on the general “Orthodox taste” (215) or, as Louth aptly summarizes, the “sense, expressed in a predilection for certain themes or values, that seems to characterize the Byzantine articulation of Orthodoxy” (11). The Orthodox vision of Pascha (Easter) thoroughly permeates, according to Averintsev, this articulation.

In Averintsev's presentation, one sees that the general sense of orthodoxy within Byzantium remains difficult to pin down, especially, as each essay shows, in terms of concise formulae. The diversity of aspects of orthodoxy that this volume presents affirms Louth's recognition that Byzantine Orthodoxy is “betrayed when turned into concepts” (11). Among numerous other topics, this diversity would be greatly enriched by a direct exploration of the effects of Islam, the stabilization and fluidity of liturgical rites, or—since the collection implicitly and explicitly concerns the modern articulation of the ecumenical and political identity of Byzantine Orthodoxy—the orthodox influence behind Byzantium's missionary efforts, especially in the current world, where the exportation of national values often takes center stage.

However, as the editors recognize, this volume does not claim completeness, nor is it meant to: “if it raises questions and suggests different ways of approaching the subject and what it entails, it will have fulfilled its purpose” (11). Thoughtfully challenging many modern conceptions of orthodoxy in the history of Christianity, Byzantine Orthodoxies indeed fulfills its purpose.