Problem of Methodology
To understand the methodological issues in current scholarship, one needs to go back to early 20th cent. Liturgical Studies. Gregory Dix and Josef Andreas Jungmann are two main pioneers in this field and developed a theory for how the main Liturgical Rites come about. Their methodology involves the idea that all these liturgies must have a common primitive source. An original shape if you will.

However, later studies, which employ the methods of critical scholarship with the hermeneutics of suspicion and emphasis on redaction led to this idea being challenged. A key contemporary scholar that led the way to this is Paul Bradshaw. Sharing and utilising the approach of Bart Ehrman and Walter Bauer, the assumption of Early Christianity as diverse and talk of Orthodoxy and Heresy being a misnomer led to a rejection of the old monolinear model.

Indeed while this approach(or perhaps aspects of it) have yielded results, there is increasing recognition of its flaws. Eminent scholar of Liturgical Studies, Fr Robert Taft states that there is some truth to the old monolinear narrative. There is an original kerygma that expressed itself differently in different places, leading to the diverse nature of Liturgical Rites analogous to how dialects of languages develop.

Larry Hutardo who specialises in Christian Origins also question the skepticism of Ehrman on variety in Early Christianity. He has also attacked the critical assumption that there is no unified group and even within the same city, each and every Christian congregation functioned autonomous from each other. But this is flawed as the early New Testament and Patrisric texts before Nicaea speak of heretical movements and these 'proto-orthodox' groups saw themselves as guarding the Apostolic deposit. These would naturally have an impact on Liturgical Practice.

Conclusion
Initially I intended to add in sections detailing Jewish influences in AM, which is a major factor in scholars being near unanimous that it must date back to at least the 3rd century and possibly even earlier. There is also another section concerning the remembrance of departed Fathers mentioned as it is weirdly commonly used as a way to say that the invocation of saints are absent from the earliest liturgies. A closer look would of course also show some very uncanny similarities with how some Anglican theologians dealt with Patristic texts that look like there are prayers to saints involved.

However interesting these areas are, to look at just the question of the Missing Institution Narrative made these series of posts longer than I anticipated. These aspects of AM are perhaps best left for another time.

One thing I hope can be shown here is, the question of the missing Institution Narrative is far from a settled one. One may plausibly argue that it is actually there and that one's methodology can affect how one will read and assess primary sources.

Ultimately I hope this to be informative and edifying to you all. God bless

Further Reading :
1) Studies on the Liturgy of Addai and Mari
The Eucharistic Prayer of Addai and Mari, A. Gelson

Eucharist without Institution Narrative? The Anaphora of Addai and Mari Revisited, Fr Uwe Michael Lang

Issues in Eucharistic Praying in East and West : Essays in Liturgical and Theological Analysis (See Nicholas Russo's contribution at Chapter 2)

Addai and Mari - The Anaphora of the Apostles: A Text for Students, Bryan D Spinks

2) Liturgical Studies
The Roman Mass : From Early Christian Origins to Tridentine Reform, Fr Uwe Michael Lang (For methodological issues in Scholarship, see chapter 2, pg.47; For the Liturgy of Addai and Mari, see Chapter 3)

Do this in Rememberance of Me : The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day, Bryan D Spinks (See Chapter 2 on Paleoanaphoras for the Liturgy of Addai and Mari)

Mass without the Consecration? The historic agreement on the Eucharist between the Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church of the East, Fr Robert Taft*

*While the focus of Taft's essay is on the validity of the Liturgy of Addai and Mari without the Institution Narrative, I put this under Liturgical Studies in general since he will refer to Byzantine liturgical theology to suggest that in the Patristic period, there is no single set of formula to consecrate the Eucharistic elements.

An interesting idea he raises is the already-not yet dimension of the liturgy that can refer to the bread and wine before consecration as the Body and Blood of Christ, alongside the idea that in the Eucharistic prayers, it is kind of like Christ's words at the Last Supper reverberating from past to the present moments whenever the Eucharist is celebrated.

3) Patristic Studies
Cyrillona : A Critical Study and Commentary, Carl Griffin

4) Primary Sources
Commentary of Theodore of Mopsuestia on the Lord's Prayer and on the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist

How far short shall we fall of the faith of her who was "blessed among women," if we can turn easily to ordinary objects from these first scenes of the Gospel; scenes in which the kingdom of God, and of his Christ was first manifested upon earth, and have been since fulfilled, and will one day be finally accomplished, in the ruin of the common foe to God and man, and in the triumph of faith, humility, and resignation, which have never failed to shine in Christian patterns, and which shall endure for ever...

Consider that whole dispensation which has been confirmed in every age by the graces of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of men, of the faithful, humble, unshaken, and devoted servants of an Heavenly Lord and Leader. Look well to the fruits of holiness and zeal, of hope and charity, of constancy and patience, and of well-founded and entire dependence on the Will of God, which meet together in the pattern this day set before us. - Joseph Holden Pott

#Annunciation #Anglican #Soteriology

Imagine a voice resounding—Tully's, perhaps. Some book of Cicero is read, or a dialogue, one of his or one of Plato's, or of some other great writer. Uneducated folk hear it, people of limited understanding. Which of them is bold enough to aspire to such works?

These books are like crashing, turbulent waters. or at least like water flowing so dangerously that a timid animal dare not approach to drink. But when we hear. In the beginning God made heaven and earth (Gn 1:1), is there anyone who is too shy to drink? Is there anyone who hears a psalm ring out, and says, "That is above my head"? Take the strains of our present psalm, for instance: they conceal mysteries, to be sure, but so sweet are they that even children delight to listen to them. The unskilled approach to drink, and being satisfied they burst out into psalmody. - St Augustine, Exposition 3 on Psalm 103

#Patristics #Scripture

The kings of the earth have arisen, and the rulers conspired together, against the Lord and against his Christ.

Let us burst their chains asunder and throw their yoke away from us

You, whoever you are, were once his enemy; you will find yourself under his feet, either adopted or subjugated. Which place will you have under the feet of the Lord your God?

The choice is yours, for you must have either grace or punishment.

Christ sits, then, at God's right hand until his enemies are thrust beneath his feet. This is happening; the process is going forward; it may be slow but it never ceases. Though the nations have raged and the peoples have devised futile schemes, though the kings of the earth have arisen and the rulers conspired together against the Lord and against his Christ, what will their raging, their scheming, or their conspiracies against Christ achieve?

Of course not. It will certainly be fulfilled, in spite of their raging and their futile schemes - St Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 109

God therefore said He would destroy them, but Moses, His chosen one, stood in the breach in His presence.

This does not mean that Moses stood in the breach in the sense of making a breach in God's anger." He stood amid the breaking, shattering plague that would have struck the people; that is to say, he stood there to draw it on himself and shield them with his own person, beseeching God, you are willing to forgive them this sin, forgive them; but if not, blot me out of your book (Ex 32:31-32).

This episode proves how powerful with God is the intercession of the saints. Moses was so certain of divine justice that he knew God could not blot him out, and thus he obtained mercy for others, that God might not blot out the people, as he could most justly have done. This was how Moses stood in the breach in his presence to avert God's anger, that he might not destroy them. - St Augustine, Exposition on Psalm 105

#Patristics #Veneration_saints

For it is evident from where [the phrase] “having been chosen” and from where the choice are: because there were many myriads upon the earth, and Mary alone “found favor,” and in her he chose the holy flesh.

Because of this he was saying, “I am well pleased,” as David also says, from the person of the Apostles who have believed in the Lord and who indicate with joy to the nations his grace, because “he subjected the peoples for us and nations under our feet, <he chose for us his inheritance>, the beauty of Jacob, which he loved,” that is, the purity of his beauty, the beauty of all of Jacob, the flesh that was chosen from Mary through the Holy Spirit. - Epiphanius of Salamis, Anchoratus, 49.4-6

#Patristics #Incarnation #Christology #Mariology