Holy Scripture and liturgical symbolism in Saint Nicholas Cabasilas

This article by Assaad Elias Kattan examines the biblical hermeneutics of Nicholas Cabasilas as it unfolds in his *Explanation of the Divine Liturgy*. The analytical and critical study is structured around two components: liturgical symbolism first, then the concrete use of scriptural texts. Kattan shows that Cabasilas develops a dual semantics distinguishing textual meaning from contextual meaning, the latter being determined by the liturgical order rather than by the content of the texts themselves. The article calls into question the distinction, proposed by Bornert, between allegorism and typology, arguing that both procedures stem from the same fundamental hermeneutical principle. The main contribution of this paper is to reveal that Cabasilas's exegetical method, more evolutionary than systematic, stands at the crossroads of patristic literalism and allegorism, without ever arriving at an explicit theoretical synthesis, which makes any attempt at systematization difficult.