I have a confession: I mix and match from a number of prayer books. My "basic preference" is the Jordanville Prayer Book, yet I find myself constantly returning to Antiochian renderings when I say the prayers. For example, I say:
"More honorable than the Cherubim, and more glorious beyond compare than the Seraphim, thou who without stain barest God the word, and are truly Theotokos, we magnify thee."
While the Jordanville Prayer Book renders this:
"More honorable than the Cherubim, and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim, who without corruption gavest birth to God the Word, the very Theotokos, thee do we magnify." (p. 34)
There are numerous things that complicate this issue. First, different local churches render things different ways. The Church I'm attending right now, for example, insists on saying "birth giver of God" instead of theotokos (I hear the word "theotokos" about 10% as much as I normally hear). This is just one example from among many, since different churches just say things in different ways. So, I can't see it being a legitimate argument that one Prayer Book should be used so that everyone is using to the same language. The fact of the matter is, the Church I'm attending has language different than all of my prayer books.
There's also the problem that the Jordanville Prayer book doesn't have all the prayers in it that I'd like to say. Some of them (e.g., the ones to be said before icons) I've written in the back. But there's only so much space, and it just makes more sense to have the prayers in the order that you plan on doing them in, instead of flipping back and forth.
So I guess my question is, is it wrong for me to print out the prayers for a prayer rule? Is it wrong to create a synthesis of various prayer books? If it is wrong, why? And what does one do when we see things rendered in such awkward fashion that they cannot possibly be used? (e.g., the Psalter translated part of Ps. 151: "my brothers were big and good"... the RSV, in comparison, rendered it: "my brothers were tall and handsome"... I'm ashamed to say it, but my wife and I literally laughed the first time we read this first wording, we couldn't believe that someone had actually published such a rendering). Also, I (privately) venerate Alexis Toth, and certainly I'm not going to find official prayers for him (since he's not glorified in ROCOR... yet). So there are examples in which I am forced to use non-conventional prayers (that's a fancy way of saying that I make them up with other Orthodox prayers as my model). So what to do?
