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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
There is a good deal of very interesting material preserved in the Armenian tradition belonging to the general category of Canon Lists. Some of this has been published and some not; very little of it has been translated into European languages. The series of studies of which the present note is the first will make available in a single place some of the most interesting of those lists which have been published in Armenian, as well as certain new materials recently discovered in the manuscript traditions. The translations and notes, it is hoped, will make this material readily accessible to scholars concerned with Canon Lists and the Biblical Canon.
1 Murad, F., Yaytnut'ean Yovhannu Hin Hay T'argmanut'iwn [The Old Armenian Translation of the Revelation of John] (Jerusalem: 1905–1911), pp. MJMJA.Google Scholar He bases his text on Jerusalem MSS Nos. 252 (Bogharian, N., Grand Catalogue of St. James Manuscripts, II [Jerusalem: 1967], 24ff.)Google Scholar, bolorgir; 1104 (Bogharian, ibid., IV [Jerusalem: 1969], I54ff.), 1609 C.E.; 399 (Bogharian, ibid., II, 224ff.), 1636 C.E.; 849 (Bogharian, ibid., III [Jerusalem: 1968], 339ff.), small notragir; 157 (Bogharian, ibid., I [Jerusalem: 1966], 468ff.), 1748 C.E.; 182 (Bogharian, I, 535ff.), 1790 C.E. These manuscripts are notably late, and it is quite possible that, as the publication of the Canons of the Armenian Church advances and a full critical text of the Canons of the Council of Partaw is produced, certain of the anomalous and difficult readings observed below will disappear.
2 Zarbhanalian, G., Matenadaran Haykakan T'argmanut'eanc' Naxneac' [Library of Ancient Armenian Translations] (Venice: 1889), 225.Google Scholar
3 Movsessian, M. Ter, History of the Armenian Translation of the Bible (St. Petersburg: 1902), 257ff. [in Russian].Google Scholar
4 D. Šamlian, Surb Groc' Kanonakan cw Erkrordakanon Girk'erě [The Canonical and Deuterocanonical Books of Sacred Scripture], Sion XL (1966), 83–87.Google Scholar Šamlian based the text he published here on the work of Murad (see n. 1, supra) and on Ormanian, M., Azgapatum [National History], I—III (Jerusalem and Constantinople: 1913–1917), Ch. 605, p. 881.Google Scholar Neither Ter Movsessian nor Zarbhanalian gives any details of the sources of the text published in their respective books.
5 Swete, op. cit. (n. on 1. 8, supra), 209, No. 18; Mansi, op. cit. (n. on 1. 8, supra), I, 47.
6 Hakobyan, op. cit. (n. on 1. 8, supra), I, 112f. This edition is based on a large range of manuscripts, and it is greatly to be regretted that the subsequent volumes have not yet appeared in print.
7 In Greek it is Canon No. 60. Hakobyan, op. cit., 240f. has published the Armenian version; the Greek text is in Swete, op. cit. (n. on 1. 8, supra), 209, No. 17. It is dearly beside the point to document the doubtful position of Esther in the various Greek sources bearing on the Canon, a point readily recognized in the lists printed by Swete, op. cit., 203–14 (see also his comments on pp. 228f.).
8 Swete, op. cit., 209, No. 17.
9 An additional list belonging to this group, known in Armenian, is that attributed to the second Council of Antioch, to be found in Murad, op. cit. (n. 1, supra), p. MHT'. This list also omits Esther and Maccabees. At the end of the list of books of the Old Testament it reads, “Altogether the verses (stichoi) of the Old Testament are 79,129,” and following the books of the New Testament, “These boundaries were established by the Council of Antioch. Altogether the verses (stichoi) of the New Testament are 18,591. The combination of the verses (stichoi) of the Old and New Testaments is 97,720.” [Manuscript No. 182 reads, according to Murad, 107,720 for this final figure.] These stichometric reckonings will be dealt with in detail in a subsequent study of this series, in which two stichometric lists preserved in Armenian will be discussed.
10 The Books of Maccabees are omitted from other Greek lists and are placed at the end of some further examples, see: Swete, op. cit. (n. on 1. 8, supra), 201–10.
11 Note, in addition to the points mentioned above, the formulation of the phrases dealing with the book of Sirach.
