Re: elegy
I see you responded to my comment about the mythology of Vartan Mamikonian that I omitted after editting because I didn't have time to explain it at the moment.
Well yes, he's sourced from Yeghishe's history of Vartan and the Armenian war. Yeghishe, along with Movses Khorenatsi are names of authors from the 5th century AD, Armenia's "Golden Age". But according to Nichanian (and I bet any scholar who can see the difference between 5th century Armenian, and that of later periods), the language used in the histories attributed to them does not correspond linguistically to the state of the Armenian prose during this century. In certain works (not all, because sometimes they are written by impostors writing from subsequent centuries) from other authors of this century, such as Pavstos Buzand (Faustus of Byzantium), Koryun, Ghazar Parpetsi (Lazarus of Parpe) and Yeznik, the stage of the Armenian language lacks the traces of subsequent linguistic developments, especially those of the Hellenistic school (posited to have occurred sometime between late 5th to the mid 7th century) which through its feverish work to translate Greek manuscripts dealing with theology, philosophy and science had a significant role in transforming the Armenian language to mimic the way Greek builds its neologisms, and basically imported, using Armenian lexical forms, all the terms for abstract and technical concepts from Greek not yet existing as words in Armenian.
I suppose this criteria of "what stage the Armenian language is in" is part of why "the History of Vartan" and Khorenatsi's "History of Armenia" fails the test of appearing like a genuine work of the 5th century and is dismissed as anachronical. The scholars who reach this verdict posit that those works were likely written between the 7th and 9th centuries, though I wonder if they use any basis for choosing this date based on linguistic evidence, rather than historical content appearing in these works which belongs to subsequent centuries, the latter criteria being unable to silence critics of this dismissal because of the argument that one can easily revisit a manuscript from a previous century and add things to it, with no one being able to tell should the original manuscript be lost and the only access to its text being available through copies of it made after it has been (mischievously) edited. Therefore, according to these folks, the entire manuscript's textual significance cannot be dismissed, but only its anachronistic parts...
Feel free to reach your own verdict though, knowing that Vartan Mamikonian is not cited outside of Armenian historiography, and that Christianity was relatively tolerated by the Sassanid emperors:
Originally posted by Odar
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Well yes, he's sourced from Yeghishe's history of Vartan and the Armenian war. Yeghishe, along with Movses Khorenatsi are names of authors from the 5th century AD, Armenia's "Golden Age". But according to Nichanian (and I bet any scholar who can see the difference between 5th century Armenian, and that of later periods), the language used in the histories attributed to them does not correspond linguistically to the state of the Armenian prose during this century. In certain works (not all, because sometimes they are written by impostors writing from subsequent centuries) from other authors of this century, such as Pavstos Buzand (Faustus of Byzantium), Koryun, Ghazar Parpetsi (Lazarus of Parpe) and Yeznik, the stage of the Armenian language lacks the traces of subsequent linguistic developments, especially those of the Hellenistic school (posited to have occurred sometime between late 5th to the mid 7th century) which through its feverish work to translate Greek manuscripts dealing with theology, philosophy and science had a significant role in transforming the Armenian language to mimic the way Greek builds its neologisms, and basically imported, using Armenian lexical forms, all the terms for abstract and technical concepts from Greek not yet existing as words in Armenian.
I suppose this criteria of "what stage the Armenian language is in" is part of why "the History of Vartan" and Khorenatsi's "History of Armenia" fails the test of appearing like a genuine work of the 5th century and is dismissed as anachronical. The scholars who reach this verdict posit that those works were likely written between the 7th and 9th centuries, though I wonder if they use any basis for choosing this date based on linguistic evidence, rather than historical content appearing in these works which belongs to subsequent centuries, the latter criteria being unable to silence critics of this dismissal because of the argument that one can easily revisit a manuscript from a previous century and add things to it, with no one being able to tell should the original manuscript be lost and the only access to its text being available through copies of it made after it has been (mischievously) edited. Therefore, according to these folks, the entire manuscript's textual significance cannot be dismissed, but only its anachronistic parts...
Feel free to reach your own verdict though, knowing that Vartan Mamikonian is not cited outside of Armenian historiography, and that Christianity was relatively tolerated by the Sassanid emperors:
Originally posted by The Spread of Christianity in Armenia", from Vrej Nersissian’s “Treasures from the Ark”
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