Not very often does someone detail where they screwed up. Being that I always demand that scholars be transparent and correct the record when they are wrong, I demand the same from my own published work. Out of full transparency, upon re-reading, I have found errors in my article: “Original Sin in the Byzantine Dormition Narratives” published by Revista Teologica (2021). For those not aware, Revista Teologica is Orthodoxy’s premier “Old World” journal that publishes in English. Journals in the West have more “prestige” in some circles, but they are also in my honest opinion less “authentic” and more sensitive to Protestant and Roman Catholic sensibilities.

Overall, I think I did a good job considering I am not vocationally an academic, I have a full time job, I am a hands-on husband and father, and I cover a plethora of other topics and do extensive writing on this blog/Youtube. I am not sure if I made more errors than the average writer undertaking such an article or not, but I’d guess I did. The amount of edits and re-edits (the original article was 3 times longer, maybe it will be a book some day if I do extensive research on Mariological hymnography and non-Dormition sources) done within a thousand interruptions are to blame. Here are the problems that I have found upon additional re-reading. I will update as I find more.

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Footnotes that appeal to other footnotes tend to be all off by one (they should all be one number higher). This is because the journal added a new footnote I did not write (Footnote 1), but apparently did not update the other footnotes whose numbers would now be thrown off.

Footnote 5 is missing a second I in Christiaan Kappes’ name.

Footnote 15 is missing a citation from Saint Hippolytus (Apostolic Tradition 4:8).

Footnotes 51, 122 should mention that the Paragraphs in Against Julianus are from the English language translation, but not the Latin. I did not add more extensive citations for open source materials because they are easily verifiable online, but in this case I should have due to the Latin not matching the English, and the latter not being open source.

Page 13 states: “Forness states that Jacob ‘quoted the Henotikon in order to substantiate that Christ endured suffering willingly in his letters.'” It cites pages 95-96 of his book. Pages 95-96 of the book due indeed discuss the preceding, but the quotation marks are an editing mistake as it is not a direct quotation from Forness.

Footnote 73 should say “responding to Constantino.” “To” is missing.

Footnote 81 should say “See footnotes 71 and 72.” (This one was my mistake as the numbers kept changing after several edits.)

P. 22 states “who as ‘assault[d]'”–should be “who was ‘assault[ed]'”

Footnote 164 “Byantine” should be “Byzantine.”

Footnote 178 “Symeon the Metaphrast’s” should be “Symeon the Metaphrast.”

P. 27 “because the Christology” should be “because proper Christology.” In the same sentence ‘–understood’ should be changed to ‘–this grace understood.’

The preceding in all honesty are trivial. The most egregious error is that somewhere during the editing process, the translation of Homily 37 in Christopher Veniamin’s translation of Palamas’ homilies never replaced the original passages I used from the same narrative as available on Fordham University’s Internet History Source Book. There are also wrong page numbers. This includes a Footnote for Homily 58. I remember I had taken pictures of both homilies on my phone so I can reference the book without having it handy. However, I never thoroughly updated the original passages for one homily and the page numbers for both were either misread or surmised, and never corrected due to incomplete editing on my part. For example:

  • “more than his mother” in Footnote 199 is on page 293. It should be page 296. The quote also matches Fordham.
  • “‘she led a most strenuous manner of life” is from Fordham’s rendering. The footnote (200) says this is referenced on p. 290. However, the actual passage is on page 291 and it is rendered: “her whole life, her behaviour, her mind and words, were utterly devoted to godly striving.”
  • “nourishment such as even Adam did not succeed in tasting” is a rendering from Fordham. The actual quote is on p.290 (not 289 as footnote 201 falsely references) and it states “food which Adam never reached the point of tasting.”
  • Footnote 202 has a similar error, transposing the Fordham quote for the Venamin one, the former reading “‘she might prove to be his daughter… she yielded a little to nature” and the latter reading “for Adam’s sake and to show herself his daughter, she like her Son, yielded for a short time to nature.”
  • Footnote 203 references p. 291. The correct page is p. 293. Fordham states “she seemed not to bear our flesh…became supremely perfect” while Veniamin states “been clothed by her flesh…became excellent.”
    • This is the only misattributed quote where the meaning actually changes due to a difference in rendering, which I sincerely apologize for. It appears the Greek is vague and permits for either rendering, but due to this uncertainty if given the opportunity to re-edit the article I would remove this.
  • Footnote 204 also is completely wrong. I am not sure why those page numbers are referenced. In the Fordham rendering, the 4th to 7th paragraphs do contain the content that is being referenced, however.
  • Footnote 206 refers to page 480, but the correct page is 481.