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An Armenian Version of Athanasius's Letter to Epictetus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2011

Robert P. Casey
Affiliation:
University of Cincinnati

Extract

The following Armenian text of Athanasius's Letter to Epictetus is found in two manuscripts of the Mechitarists at Vienna:

A. Cod. 629, ff. 66a–73b, 19th century, notragir, copied from an 18th century archetype at Ispahan.

B. Cod. 648, ff. 102b–105b, paper, 14th century, bolorgir, without word division and badly worm-eaten.

The version is different from that published by Tajezi, and belongs to an Armenian corpus of Athanasian writings compiled early in the eighth century. I have added a collation with Ludwig's edition of the Greek, but have deliberately refrained from discussing at length its relation to other textual authorities.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1933

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References

1 See Harvard Theological Review, XXIV, 1931, pp. 48 ff. This version was apparently printed in 1711 at Constantinople in a rare volume of patristic treatises, containing also Cyril of Alexandria's Scholia on the Incarnation. (See Tajezi, p. 324, n. 7; Conybeare, F. C., Armenian Version of Revelation, London, 1907, pp. 166167Google Scholar.) Tajezi says that it was made from the Latin, but this is linguistically and historically quite improbable.

2 Cf. N. Akinian, ‘Eine neuentdeckte Schrift des Katholikos Johannes Odznetzi De Incarnatione Verbi’ [in Armenian], in Huschardzan, , Festschrift aus Anlass des 100-jährigen Bestandes der Mechitaristen-Kongregation in Wien, Vienna, 1911, p. 336Google Scholar.

3 S. Athanasii Sermones, etc. [in Armenian], Venice, 1899, pp. 324–343. This version is quoted in full in ‘The Seal of Faith,’ a seventh-century dogmatic catena, published by Karapet Ter-Mekerttschian, Etschmiadzin, 1914 (cf. J. Lebon, ‘Les citations patristiques grecques du “Sceau de la Foi,”’ Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 1929, p. 8), and in part in Sahak's polemic against the Nestorians (Liber epistolarum, Tiflis, 1901, p. 452), composed about the same period, cf. E. Ter-Minassiantz, Die armenische Kirche in ihren Beziehungen zu den syrischen Kirchen, Texte und Untersuchungen, N. F. XI, pp. 136–137.

4 Harvard Theological Review, XXIV, 1931, pp. 53–54, 58.

5 G. Ludwig, Athanasii Epistula ad Epictetum (Jena dissertation), 1911.

6 Zeitschrift für neutestamentliche Wissensehaft, 1931, pp. 49 ff.

7 British Museum Add. 14557, parchment, 7th century, pp. 154–161; Wright, Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum, II, p. 719. A collation by Hilgenfeld and Lietzmann was used by Ludwig, p. 44. My thanks are due the British Museum authorities for photographs of the manuscript.

8 E. Schwartz, Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum, I, 5, pars altera, pp. xvii, 321 ff.

9 I hope shortly to publish a study of Tajezi's version.