The Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition

34 Pages·2014·0.38 MB·English

The Armenian Apocalyptic
Tradition
A Comparative Perspective
Essays Presented in Honor of
Professor Robert W. Thomson
on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday
Edited by
Kevork B. Bardakjian and Sergio La Porta
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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Contents
Acknowledgements  ix
In Honor of Robert W. Thomson  x
List of Contributors  xi
List of Abbreviations  xiv
List of Illustrations  xvii
part i
Until the Tenth Century
Introduction to Part I  3
Sergio La Porta
Section I
Jewish and Iranian Currents in the Armenian Apocalyptic Tradition
The Origin and Legacy of the Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition  17
Gabriele Boccaccini
Jewish Apocalyptic Literature in the Armenian Tradition  29
Michael E. Stone
The Epic of Sasun: Armenian Apocalypse  41
James R. Russell
Section II
Biblical and Parabiblical Traditions
The Reception of the Book of Daniel in Late Ancient and Medieval
Armenian Society  81
S. Peter Cowe
The Armenian Seventh Vision of Daniel and the Historical Apocalyptica
of Late Antiquity  126
Lorenzo DiTommaso
Enoch in Armenian Apocrypha  149
Annette Yoshiko Reed
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vi contents
The Georgian Nimrod  188
Stephen H. Rapp, Jr.
Geometry and Contemplation: The Architecture of Vardan Anec‘i’s
Vision of the Throne-Chariot. Theosis and the Art of Memory in
Armenia  217
Theo Maarten van Lint
The Reception of the Biblical Book of Revelation in Armenia  242
Robert W. Thomson
Armenian Witnesses of Three Eschatological Motifs  254
Jean-Marc Rosenstiehl
Section III
The Visions of Sts. Grigor Lusaworič‘ and Sahak Part‘ew
The Vision of Saint Gregory and Its Interpretations  285
Robert W. Thomson
The Vision of St. Grigor Lusaworič‘ and the Role of Apocalyptic in the
Conversion of Armenia  296
Sergio La Porta
The Vision of St. Sahak in the History of Łazar P‘arpec‘i  313
Gohar Muradyan
The Visions of Grigor and Sahak Part‘ew: Old Georgian Versions and
Their Reflection in Georgian Sources  326
Zaza Aleksidze
Section IV
Apocalypse and the Rise of Islam
Medieval Armenian Apocalypticism in Context  343
Anders Hultgård
The Armenian Version of the Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius  362
Aram Topchyan
Apocalypticizing Warfare: From Political Theology to Imperial
Eschatology in Seventh- to Early Eighth-Century Byzantium  379
Yuri Stoyanov
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contents vii
Section V
Reflection on the Mysticism of Grigor Narekac‘i
The Visions of Grigor Narekac‘i  437
Hrachya Tamrazyan
part ii
Eleventh to Fifteenth Centuries
Introduction to Part II  445
Kevork B. Bardakjian
Section I
Medieval Reception of Apocalyptic Narratives
The Last Emperor or the Last Armenian King? Some Considerations on
Armenian Apocalyptic Literature from the Cilician Period  457
Zaroui Pogossian
Vardan Aygekc‘i’s Counsel and the Medieval Armenian Apocalyptic
Tradition  504
Sergio La Porta
Apocalyptic Traditions in the Armenian Dormition Narratives  538
Stephen J. Shoemaker
Section II
The Apocalypse in Art
Sundials and Medieval Armenian Architecture  553
Christina Maranci
Voir Dieu : l’iconographie arménienne de la Vision du Trȏne d’Ezéchiel
dans le contexte de l’art de l’Orient chrétien  572
Edda Vardanyan
Illuminating the Apocalypse in Seventeenth-Century Armenian
Manuscripts: The Transition from Printed Book to Manuscript  603
Sylvie L. Merian
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viii contents
“And Behold A Door Was Opened in Heaven”: Vision and Visual Strategies
in Three Vernacular Apocalypses from Fourteenth-Century
England  640
Renana Bartal
Section III
Comparative Pe rspectives
Burn the World Down: Manichaean Apocalyptic in Comparative
Perspective  657
Timothy Pettipiece
Syriac Apocalyptic Literature  667
Witold Witakowski
‘Orthodox’ Faith and Political Legitimization of a ‘Solomonic’ Dynasty of
Rulers in the Ethiopic Kebra Nagast  688
Pierluigi Piovanelli
Historical Apocalypses in Medieval Bulgarian Literature
(10th–14th Centuries)  706
Anissava Miltenova
Armenian Apocalyptica and Medieval Apocalypticism:
Some Reflections  730
Lorenzo DiTommaso
List of Contributions According to Conference Presentation  752
Index of Modern Authors  755
Index of Names and Subjects  758
Index of Ancient Sources  782
Index of Manuscripts and Manuscript Collections  795
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Armenian Witnesses of Three Eschatological Motifs
Jean-Marc Rosenstiehl
Eine Menge Material ist hier freilich unerreichbar, die syrischen, kopti-
schen, slavischen Handschriften werden noch eine reiche Ausbeute liefern.
Wilhelm Bousset1
After more than a hundred years, this statement of W. Bousset is still valuable;
to the “unattainable material” may be added dozens of Armenian apocalyp-
tic texts that remain unedited until today2 or edited over a century ago but
based on too few manuscripts.3 The following fijirst motif reveals that unedited
Armenian manuscripts may sometimes shed new and precious light on old
material. The second and third parts consist of lists of sometimes new quota-
tions of two other well-known motifs.
1 The Origin of the Antichrist and His Name
Some thirty years ago in Erevan I copied from an unedited manuscript4 the
following amazing lines concerning the Antichrist:
1 Bousset 1895, 19. Today the common tendency is to criticize Bousset’s ideas presented in
this quite thin book. But none of the modern research on the Antichrist myth gathers such
an enormous quantity of written witnesses of that form of the old Jewish myth of the fijinal
enemy, i.e., the form that became the most expanded of all in Christian apocalypticism
through the entire middle ages up to modern times.
2 See n. 18 below, on Hippolytus. There are over twenty texts about the “Coming of Gog and
Magog” mentioned in the Catalogue of the Matenadaran. Interesting material, probably
dependant upon Ps.-Methodian or Ephremic traditions, can also be found in the num-
ber of sermons (ճառք) that are either anonymous or are attributed to Ephrem or to John
Chrysostom; for instance Յաղագս Նեռին (On the Antichrist), see John Chrysostom
1862, 910–15; also, Վասն միւսանգամ գալստեանն Քրիստոսի (On the second Coming
of Christ), 915–21 (this is possibly a translation of the Ps.-Chrysostomian sermon, εἰς τὴν
δευτέραν παρουσίαν . . . PG 61:776–8).
3 This was mainly the merit of the Mekhitharist fathers who published such texts in Armenian.
Nearly all these editions, however, did not include a translation that would have allowed non-
Armenian scholars interested in apocalypticism to use them.
4 M706 18r, l.19–22 (unedited). These lines belong to a little treatise “About the End of Times
and the coming of the Antichrist”; a good dozen of such treatises may be found in Erevan (for
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three eschatological motifs 255
. . . անուն հօրն նորա Հռոմեղայ
. . . the name of his father: Hṙomełay
եւ մօր նորա Մելիտոն եւ անուն նորա Հըռասիմ
and of his mother: Meliton; and his name: Hṙasim,
ըստ մարգարէն Եսայիայ որ ասէ թէ կամեցան
after the prophet Isaiah who says: they wanted
առնել իւրոց թագաւոր զՀրասիմ զորդին Հռոմեղայ
to make to their king Hṙasim, the son of Hṙomełay.
These few lines give us precise and interesting details about the identity of
the person of the Antichrist; namely his proper name, the name of his father
and that of his mother. Concerning his name and that of his father, we are
told that they are based upon a verse of the prophet Isaiah, i.e, Isa 8:6–7. This
fact justifijies our examining more precisely the context of this prophecy and
providing a short presentation of the historical events which this passage of
Isaiah addresses.
After the reign of Solomon, the former kingdom of David had been divided
in two parts, the northern kingdom, Israel with its center in Samaria; and the
southern kingdom of Judah, with its capital in Jerusalem. This secession was
a cause of rivalry between the two kingdoms. At the end of the eighth cen-
tury BCE, the king of Samaria, a certain Pekah, son of Remaliah, made a trea-
tise with his neighbor Rezin, king of Aram (or Syria) and both together waged
war against Jerusalem and Ahaz, son of Jotham, the king of Judah.5 Ahaz then
appealed to the king of Assyria for assistance.
On the moral, or theological side, this call for help to the king of Assyria was
considered by the prophet Isaiah as a lack of confijidence in God; and, as a con-
sequence of this treachery, he prophesied that the punishment of God would
bring the real fijinal disaster, the end of the kingdom and the deportation of
the entire nation to Mesopotamia. Thus, the main signifijicance of Isa 8:6–7 lies
in the announcement of that catastrophic end.
The historical events as described above, however, transfer this announce-
ment from the historical level to the level of eschatology, to the future history
of the End, and into the legend of the Antichrist.
Historical events of the past are used as the model or pattern for eschato-
logical stories. This is neither unique nor exceptional. Old prophecies were not
only considered witnesses of the past, but were re-interpreted as indicative of
instance M6891, 120v–127r: պատմութիւն չար նեռին ծննդեան (History of the birth of
the evil Antichrist).
5 2Kgs (LXX 4Kgdms) 16 (see also 2Chr 28; Isa 7:1). It is described as a quite terrifijic war; 2Chr
28:6 reports 120,000 killed and over 200,000 prisoners.
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256 rosenstiehl
contemporary events.6 We fijind this technique used, for instance, by the com-
poser of the Apocalypse attributed to Ps.-Methodius, who takes the story of
Gideon related in the Book of Judges as a pattern upon which he models events
that will happen at the End of Times.7
This is the fijirst result of our study and commentary on this Armenian apoca-
lyptic text; namely, that the most common process of composition of an apoc-
alyptic text consisted in using biblical passages8 and imbuing them with new
signifijicance within a story prophesying the End. In the case of this Armenian
apocalyptic text, we see that it employs the historical events that happened
from the time of the Syro-Ephraimitic war until the end of the Jewish nation
taken in captivity to Mesopotamia9 as a model for the eschatological events of
the End of Times; namely, the legend of the Antichrist.
It will be worthwhile to look at the biblical text quoted, in the Greek and
Armenian versions.
Isa 8:6–7:
6 Διὰ τὸ μὴ βούλεσϑαι τὸν λαὸν τοῦτον
Because this people chooses not
τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ Σιλωὰμ τὸ πορευόμενον ἡσυχῇ,
the water of Siloam that goes softly,
ἀλλ ὰ βούλεσϑαι ἔχειν τὸν Ραασσων
but wills to have Raassôn
καὶ τὸν υἱὸν Ρομελίου βασιλέα ἐϕ’ ὑμῶν,
and the son of Romelias (as) king over you,
7 διὰ τοῦτο ἰδοὺ ἀνάγει κύριος ἐϕ’ ὑμᾶς
therefore, behold, the Lord brings up upon you
τὸ ὕδωρ τοῦ ποταμοῦ τὸ ἰσχυρὸν καὶ τὸ πολύ,
the water of the river, strong and abundant,
τὸν βασιλέα τῶν ᾽Ασσυρίων . . .
the king of the Assyrians . . .
6 See the Dead Sea Scrolls, for instance, 1Q pesher to Habakkuk.
7 Ps.-Methodius 1993, xxxii–xxxiii. A similar technique was employed by Jewish and Christian
exegtical circles to provide the Book of Psalms with a messianic and eschatological
interpretation.
8 Such applications were not limited to biblical prophecies. The description of the coloniza-
tion of the world by the sons of Noah after the flood is inverted and serves as the model for
the fijinal storming of the nations into the country of the Just to wage war against the sons of
light in the War Scroll (see Rosenstiehl 2006, 253).
9 A period of over one and a half centuries!
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three eschatological motifs 257
6 Փոխանակ զի ոչ ախորժեաց ժողովուրդդ այդ
Because this people did not appreciate
զջուրն Սելովայ որ գնայ խաղաղ,
the water of Siloah that goes peacefully;
այլ կամեցան առնել իւրեանց թագաւոր
but wills to make their king
զՀռասիմ զորդին Ռոմելայ,
Hṙasim son of Ṙomela,
7 Վասն այդորիկ ահաւադիկ ածցէ Տէր ի վերայ ձեր
therefore, behold, the Lord brings up upon you
զջուր գետոյն զհզաւրն եւ զյորդ
the water of the river strong and abundant,
զարքայն Ասորեստանի . . .
the king of Assyria . . .
The Armenian text of Isaiah is not exactly the same as the Greek (or the
Hebrew); but difffers slightly. The Armenian Bible contains a peculiar tradition
that may be quite old. We may observe the omission of the conjunction “and”
(8.6b),10 which conveys a completely new meaning to the text. It does not
speak of two kings, namely Hṙasim, the fijirst; and the son of Ṙomelay, the sec-
ond; but compresses both fijigures into one: Hṙasim (Rezin), the son of Ṙomelay
(Remaliah).
The same identity appears in Ps.-Epiphanius’s Sermo de Antichristo 15:11
. . . Եւ յառաջ քան եւս երեսուն ամաւ ծնեալ լինի չար եւ անիծեալ
Նեռնն
. . . and before thirty years will be born the evil and cursed Antichrist
այն յազգէ Դանայ ի Քորազին,
from the tribe of Dan in Chorazin,
ի պիղծ եւ ի շնացող ծնողաց եւ ի պոռնկաց.
from foul12 and adulterous parents, from fornicators
10 Already noted by Frasson (Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, 273), who does not think it a varia lectio,
but an omission: “è omessa la congiunzione tra Rasim ed il fijiglio di Romelia.” The lectio of
the Armenian may be the result of its interpretation of the Greek καὶ (in Ραασσων καὶ τὸν
υἱὸν Ρομελίου) as “Raassôn who is the son of Romelias.”
11 Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, 88–90.
12 “Foul” or “polluted,” “abominable,” the noun corresponding to this adjective is used in Dan
9:27, Mt 24:15 (the “abomination” of desolation). This word is commonly attributed to the
mother of the Antichrist in the Armenian tradition; see, for instance, the Seventh Vision of
Daniel, Yovsēp‘eanc‘ 1896, 248, l. 29–30: սա յղասցի և ծնցի ի կուսէ պղծոյ (he will be
conceived and born from a foul virgin).
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258 rosenstiehl
որ խաբէութեամբ ասեն զինքեանս կոյս գոլով.
who wrongly say that they are virgins
որոց անուանք այս են.
whose names are these:
հօր նորա Հռովմէլայ, եւ մօր նորա Միլիտինեա.
of his father, Hṙovmēlay; and of his mother, Militinea;
եւ իւրն Հռասիմ:
and of him, Hṙasim.
Although Ps.-Epiphanius does not explicitly cite Isaiah at all, it is obvious
that the verses of Isaiah rest behind this passage!13 The author begins with
some well-known features from the legend of the Antichrist: the origin of the
Antichrist from the tribe of Dan,14 his birth in Chorazin;15 the lie about
the virginity of his mother.16 And he ends with the names of the parents and
of the Antichrist himself.
The Armenian apocalyptic tradition seems to be the only one to have
preserved these names. The next text, however, Hippolytus’s De Christo et
Antichristo 57,17 not originally composed in Armenian,18 indicates that this
tradition was not unique to Armenian apocalyptic texts, but belonged to com-
mon apocalyptic traditions:19
13 As noted already by Frasson, Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, 272–3.
14 Hippolytus, De Christo et Antichristo 6fff., 14–15; Ps.-Hippolytus, Оn the End of the world
18–19; Latin Tiburtine Sibyl (Sackur 1898, 185); Latin Ps.-Ephrem 88–89 (Verhelst 1983, 526);
“Vision of St. Nersēs” (VN 1853, 95); Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius 14,6; Greek Apocalypse of
Daniel 8,2 (=10,2 in Zervos 1983) and Venice text v.47 (Berger 1976, 25); on this motif, see
Bousset 1895, 112–15 and Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, 266–8.
15 “Vision of St. Nersēs” (VN 1853, 95); Apocalypse of Ps.-Methodius 14,1; Slavonic Vision of
Daniel 11 (Alexander 1985, 71); and Ps.-Epiphanius 1976, 268–9. Jesus shared this apocalyp-
tic tradition, see Mt 11:21, 23; Lk 10:13, 15.
16 Ps.-Hippolytus 22; Greek Apocalypse of Daniel Venice text v.37 (Berger 1976, 25); Greek
Ephrem 2,226 B[=3, 137 F]; Latin Ps.-Ephrem 89 (Verhelst 1983, 526); Romanos the
Melodist, “Hymn on the Second Coming” (Grosdidier de Matons 1981, 242). See also the
qualifijication as պիղծ, n. 12 above.
17 Achelis 1897, 38.
18 An ancient Аrmenian translation of either this treaty of Hippolytus or the work attrib-
uted to him, Оn the End of the world, does actually exist in Аrmenian, see Kalemkiar 1892,
110 (and perhaps M7951, 188r–199v), and the fragments published by Pitra 1884, 158 and
236fff.
19 It seems to survive in the Greek Apocalypse of Daniel 12,1–5 (=11,1–5 in Zervos 1983):
1 καὶ συμβούλιον ποιήσουσι τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἐθνός καὶ Ἱεροσωλυμῖται λέγοντες·
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