This article is an extra resource for the article “The “Holy Light” of Jerusalem debunked”. The commenter “Jamds Haidos” admonished Costas, the author of the article, that the translation of the patriarchal prayer (that is offered in the Sepulchre when the Light is supposedly received) is slanted and misleading and that he should have presented the entire text of the prayer. For that reason I did a little research and here I present the prayer in its entirety (and not just the juicy parts) as it appears on the website of the Jerusalem Patriarchate in Greek and translated by them in English (And a legal loose end: The Patriarchate page states that both texts are free to be used for non-commercial purposes as long as the source is mentioned, i.e. jerusalem-patriarchate.info. I think this sentence settles that.)
Anyone with a decent knowledge of ancient Greek can decide for themselves which one is the inaccurate translation (not to jump the gun, but it’s not mine).
I would also ask of Jamds Haidos to point out any parts of the text that parallel James’ writings, so I can add the references (I’ve already spotted two similarities to other New Testament passages, as you can see).
A final note: I would’ve made different stylistic choices for my own translation, but kept it in tune with the translation of the Patriarchate, so you can make comparisons more easily. Plain green text indicates translation errors, bold green text indicates parts missing from the Patriarchate’s translation and red bold text indicates parts of the translation that don’t exist in the original.
On the way to Ithaca 