Two major conferences on Eastern Christianity took place in 2008. The Society of Oriental Liturgy, founded two years earlier, held their second international congress in Rome and a congress gathered in Madrid taking as its subject the study of the manuscript tradition. A selection of thirty-eight papers from these conferences is published in these two volumes. They cover a wide range of material. Both conferences take a broad and inclusive approach to eastern Christianity, including Chalcedonian Orthodox, non-Chalcedonian Orthodox and Greek Catholic Churches – with one essay taking as its subject a Jewish commentator. They also cover both historical experience and the contemporary life of the Churches. Scholars from a variety of disciplines are represented. As a result the two volumes together present a generous wealth of material about the life of a diverse family of Christian Churches.

The reader is offered a rich selection of modern scholarship. This provides fresh insights into areas of study with which the reader will be familiar and also new discoveries in areas which are little known. The inclusion of different disciplines, unrestricted by attempts to harmonise and follow themes is a strength of collections such as these, which help the reader to grasp the breadth of the subject. Each essay adds a further dimension of information to the complex and enthralling picture of the tradition. It gives a vivid sense of the extent of Eastern Christianity and its ability to hold on to faith in changing and often hostile situations.

Eastern Christian writers and their written heritage consists of thirteen papers on the manuscript tradition. The majority of the papers – seven out of the thirteen – are concerned with Egypt, but there are also contributions concerning Russia and Spain among other areas. There are three sections. One of these describes the contexts in which books were written and read, showing how Christian ideas and language penetrated local culture, demonstrating the increasing regularity of Christian references in educational texts in third-century Egypt, and in Jewish commentaries on the Bible in eleventh-century Spain. Then a second group of papers examines the texts themselves, showing how features such as marginal notes, the use of watermarks, the techniques of book-binding and other parts of the production process contributed to the formation of a body of literature. Then, a further section provides surveys of the collections of manuscripts showing what kinds of material were included and how a body of written tradition was preserved and passed on. These approaches build a picture of the evolution of a body of written material, shaped by the experience of the Church and shaping it for future generations.

The second conference took as its subject the tradition as performed in liturgy, with selected papers published as Inquiries into Eastern Christian worship. The first essay refers to the biological analogy for liturgy, first proposed by Robert Taft – the founder of the Society of Oriental Liturgy – of a ‘genetic view of the present’ to suggest a fruitful approach to the study of liturgy. This captures both the contemporary immediacy of liturgy as a given community meets together week by week and also the historical continuity and identity which gives to the community its inherited character and identity. The essay goes on to demonstrate this by showing how the threat of natural disaster, in this case earthquakes, is absorbed and responded to through liturgical commemoration. This is followed by a second paper which addresses a theological subject, analysing the contrasting meaning and philosophical background of liturgical terms – mysterion and sacramentum. So the genetic composition of the community has a theological shape and language. These opening suggestions set out approaches which are developed in the papers which follow.

Several papers discuss the liturgy of Jerusalem. The location of the Holy City in the midst of eastern Christendom has ensured a steady stream of pilgrims and refugees who shared in worship and took the practices back to their homelands. The influence of Jerusalem on eastern worship placed the remembering of the saving events of Christ's life at the centre of liturgical celebration. Papers show how the Jerusalem observance of Holy Week and Easter was preferred to local practices; how baptismal liturgy was carried out; how the Jerusalem liturgy influenced Georgian texts; and also the wide influence of the Mar Saba typikon. The Holy City was a place of meeting and exchange for the eastern Churches, and is shown here to have interacted with local practice to provide a source of coherence in the rich profusion of eastern liturgical style.

Liturgy was absorbed into local cultures, especially by Slav nations in the north. The formation of a local liturgical tradition takes place in various ways, as the papers demonstrate. These explore the development of a distinct Slavonic tradition, in the development of written texts of the eucharist, a distinctive liturgical role for the bishop, the commemoration of local saints, and the evolution of new musical styles. These components demonstrate the success of eastern liturgy in rooting itself in varying cultures.

Once established, the liturgy has expressed the experience of worshippers, and continues to do so. Liturgical renewal has taken several forms in the contemporary Church, and these are discussed. Church leaders can influence liturgical practice, as shown by the leadership of Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky in Greek Catholic Ukraine; by academic study in Greece which has enabled understanding of the nature of liturgy; liturgical renewal which has had uneven penetration in a traditional society like Serbia; and music which can bind together diaspora communities, in this case Copts in the USA. Each of these examples show how Eastern Churches retain a vitality and can bind a community.

The Churches of the East have faced challenges, hostility and persecution, especially during the last century. The essays in these books are a testimony to the rich resources, the continuing engagement with modern world – and sheer joy of the celebration of faith and life. Their difficulties have not extinguished the vibrancy of their liturgical and so their church life.