This page was migrated in July 2022 from my older website, biblicalambiguities.net. As such, it is subject to the biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and the biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer.
22 July 2022
Eastern Orthodoxy refers to those churches descended from the eastern side of the schism of 1054, which broke the bulk of Christendom in two. It may be regarded as loosely headed by the patriarch of Constantinople. It uses the Septuagint for its Old Testament. It descends ultimately from the Church as it existed in the Eastern Roman Empire, which continued -- though typically referred to as the Byzantine Empire by historians -- until its final defeat by the Ottoman Empire in 1453.
It should not be confused with Oriental Orthodoxy, which refers to the churches which did not accept the council of Chalcedon in 451.
Today, Eastern Orthodoxy is much smaller than Western Christianity, by a ratio of something like 1:7.
Since 2018, Eastern Orthodoxy has been in a state of schism involving competing claims of spiritual jurisdiction over Ukraine. You can read about this on Wikipedia.
As with other pages migrated from biblicalambiguities.net, this page may contain material paraphrased or even outright copied without direct attribution from the KJV, RV, ASV, JPS (1917), WEB, NHEB, Kittel's BH, the pre-1923 volumes of the ICC series, or the commentaries on Genesis of Dillmann, Skinner, and Driver. More details on this policy can be found here: biblicalambiguities-general-disclaimer and biblicalambiguities-translation-disclaimer.
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