Michael E. Stone, „Biblical Figures in the Armenian Tradition”, Deuterocanonical and Cognate Studies Yearbook 2008: Biblical Figures in Deutercanonical and Cognate Literature. Ed. by Hermann Lichtenberger und Ulrike Mittmann-Richert. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009, 629-46. (original) (raw)

The Rise of Armenian Historiography in the Late Antiquity: Mythology and History

Journal of History Culture and Art Research, 2019

The Iranian civilization, which was the basis of the Armenian culture until the Conversion to Christianity, was far from the historiographic tradition in comparison to Greeks and Romans even if they portrayed their own history by means of reliefs. In this respect, there is a cultural affinity between the absence of historiography before Christianity in the Armenian society and the absence of the literary tradition in pre-Islamic Iran. However, this cultural relationship, which lasted until the fourth century, modified after the adoption of Christianity by the Armenians and caused to emerge the idea of historiography among the Armenians. Thus, there is a parallel between the beginning of the custom of historiography and the acceptance of Christianity in the Armenian society. The general structure of the Armenian historiography, originally based on patristic roots, was shaped after the Battle of Vartanants (Avarayr) in 451 and turned into an ideological struggle for Armenians. This idea shows that the Armenians tend to create historical depth and common destiny in the late antiquity. Following this, the collapse of the Sassanid Empire and the arrival of Muslims to the world of Armenians naturally opened a new era in Armenian historiography. This period was built directly on the idea of "opposition" and "other". This study aims to establish a direct connection between the acceptance of Christianity by Armenians and the start of historiography tradition by the intellectual Armenians and examine the reasons why historiography flourished for Armenians.

Between Story and Commentary The Exegetical Background of some Armenian Biblical Tales

2021

The paper presents and explores several Armenian biblical tales, of different types and from various sources, that exhibit an interesting intertwining of narrative and exegesis: • A tradition concerning Adam and Eve’s fear of darkness after their expulsion from Eden, found in an apocryphal “Books of Adam” and in a widespread folktale, which has also a surprising parallel in rabbinic sources; • A fragment on the strange fate of a priest who improperly approached the Holy Ark of the Covenant, whose exegetical and literary foundations go back to early Jewish-Hellenistic and rabbinic sources; • An episode from the early life of Abraham and Ishmael, embedded in an early commentary on Genesis, which demonstrates the thin line between explanation and expansion of the Bible. These stories attest to the metamorphoses and development of traditions concerning biblical heroes and events, as they are transmitted, retold and reshaped in various groups and varying contexts, and serve to illuminate an important aspect of biblical tales and retellings: their debt, and contribution, to the rich corpus of biblical exegesis.

The Armenians in the Iranian space during Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Richard Hovannisian (dir.), Armenian Communities of Persia and Iran, Collection « Historic Armenian Cities and Provinces », Costa Mesa, CA, Mazda Publishers , 2022

This article analyzes the Armenian presence in the Iranian world from the origins until 1258, as well as the interactions between the two peoples.

The Reception and Reworking of Abraham Traditions in Armenian

Tradition, Transmission, and Transformation from Second Temple Literature through Judaism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, 2015

We shall discuss a corpus of mostly narrative texts about Abraham that are preserved in late medieval manuscripts in Armenian. The date of origin of these traditions is not explicit, but they can in general be set prior to the 10th century, when constituent elements of them appear in a number of sources. 1 They cannot be older in Armenian than the fifth century, at which time the Armenians began to write their own language. S.P. Brock, in a fine study of the story of the ravens in Syriac (on which more below), 2 isolates points at which it differs from the version of the same events in Jubilees. At virtually all these points, the Armenian Abraham saga resembles the Syriac, though we would not claim it is derived from Syriac. The Story of Melchizedek, of which we shall speak below, is most cognate to the Greek Melchizedek tale, while certain other distinctive traditions have not been found in any language but Armenian. Of course, the date of constitutive traditions is not, necessarily, the date of any particular literary formulation of that tradition.

Armenia and Iranian World (1-5th century AD). Sofia, 2013, Abstract

So far there are only two specialized monographs worldwide on the cultural, religious, government and public influence of Iran on ancient Armenians: James Russell. Zoroastrianism in Armenia (Harvard University, 1987) and Эдуард Хуршудян. Армения и сасанидский Иран (историко-культурологическое исследование, Алматы 2003). This work is the third voluminous study in the world on the issue and has the ambitious goal to surpass thematically the previous two by developing a much deeper insight on the social system of Armenia under the authority of the Arsacids, the pre-Christian religion in the country and its place in the context of all-Iranian religious issues.