Yushardzan/Huschardzan

The age of the old Ärmenian Version of Irenaeus.
By Fred. C.
Conybeare.
What is the age of the Ärmenian Version
of Irenaeus?
The learned editors, Dr. Karapet Ter-
Mökerttschian and Erwand Ter-Minassiantz, write
as follows on page IV of their Introduction to
the Ärmenian text of Irenaeus Pressen die
Häretiker, Leipzig, 1910:
„Um welche Zeit sind diese Irenäus-Schriften
ins Armenische übersetzt worden ? Sicher ist diese
Frage nicht zu entscheiden, aber alle Anzeichen,
welche vorhanden sind, sprechen dafür, dass sie etwa
zwischen 650 — 750 übersetzt worden sind. So finden
wir den „Erweis" sowohl, als auch das vierte Buch
des Werkes „Adversus haer." in einer Abhandlung
des bekannten Schriftstellers des 8. Jahrh., Stephanus
Philosophus Siunensis, zitiert. (Ararat 1902,
März —April-Heft.) Vielleicht ist dieser Stephanus
Siunensis der Uebersetzer der Irenaeus-Schriften. 1'
And below
„Die Zitate, die aus diesen Schriften entnommen sind, dienen dazu, die Unverweslichkeit
des Leibes Christi zu beweisen. Diese Frage aber wurde in Armenien eben
um die oben angegebene Zeit am lebhaftesten behandelt."
Now it is improbable that any Ärmenian of the seventh or eighth Century would
have taken the pains to translate so large a mass ot the works of Irenaeus, in order
to obtain a few passages favorable to monophysite opinion. He would probably have
been content to excerpt two or three passages which served his purpose. On the other
hand I was Struck when I first read the Ärmenian Version of the lost treatise of Irenäus
Ad Marcianum, by the great resemblance of its style and language to the Ärmenian
Philo. The publication of the Ärmenian text of Ad versus Haereses has enabled
me to test my hypothesis, and in the following pages I think I have demonstrated that
the Versions of Philo and of Irenaeus were made by one and the same translator. Now
the Version of Philo, as "is proved by the citations made from it by the Historian
Elisaeus, and the Version of Apthonius, — not to mention Moses of Khoren, -- belongs
to the first half of the fifth Century. If the Version of Irenaeus is by the same hand,
then it also is a monument of the golden age of Ärmenian literature.
The Version of Philo is homogeneous throughout, and the whole of it is certainlv
by one and the same hand. The Father who made it every where tries to render explicit
to his Ärmenian readers the füll and free sense of his original by paraphrasing