The Armenian Commentary on the Book of Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian: An Edition of the Armenian Text with Introduction, English Translation and CommentarySyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference PortalThe National Endowment for the HumanitiesThe International Balzan Prize FoundationDavid A. Michelsoncbsc_adminRecord added to Zotero bycbsc_adminSyriaca.org: The Syriac Reference Portalhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/896QPP8K/tei
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CREATED: This bibl record was autogenerated from a Zotero record.Edward GeorgeMathewsThe Armenian Commentary on the Book of Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian: An Edition of the Armenian Text with Introduction, English Translation and Commentaryhttp://syriaca.org/cbss/896QPP8Khttps://www.zotero.org/groups/a_comprehensive_bibliography_on_syriac_studies/items/896QPP8Khttps://www.zotero.org/groups/4861694/items/896QPP8K1996Ephrem the Syrian (309-373), known by his contemporaries as the 'Harp of the Holy Spirit', was highly praised throughout the early Christian world. While Ephrem wrote only in Syriac, translations were made, perhaps beginning even in his own lifetime, into nearly every language of the Christian world: Greek, Armenian, Latin, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, Georgian and Syro- Palestinian. The Greek and Armenian corpora each comprise a very considerable body of literature, neither of which shows any significant correspondence to the surviving Syriac corpus. In the Armenian corpus there are found, among many other works, commentaries on nearly every book of the Bible. Most of these commentaries survive only in these Armenian translations and, without any serious study, these have all been presumed to be authentic works of Ephrem. It is the purpose of this dissertation to begin a study of this Armenian corpus of Ephrem's commentaries, beginning with the Commentary on Genesis, since it is the first book in this corpus, but more importantly since it is the only work that has a complete counterpart in Syriac. Despite the scholarly consensus that the Armenian text is a translation or an epitome of the extant Syriac version, a detailed comparison of these two texts has made it evident that these two commentaries are two independent, unrelated works, diverging greatly in structure, style, themes and biblical text. A literary comparison with other extant works has shown that the Armenian Commentary on Genesis has made extensive use of material found in the unedited Scholia of Jacob of Edessa (d. 708), particularly as it is found reworked in a ninth-century Catena on Genesis compiled by Severus of Edessa. Further analysis has demonstrated that this Armenian Commentary on Genesis also betrays awareness of material found only in a second, later recension of this Catena material. From this analysis, it is now clear that this Armenian Commentary on Genesis is not the work of Ephrem the Syrian and that the translation could not have been done before the tenth century. In addition to this study, we have included a newly edited text of this Armenian Commentary on Genesis, based on the three manuscripts known to exist, thus providing a much better text than that found in the 1836 Mekhitarist edition, which only reproduced a single manuscript. We have also appended our annotated English translation, the first translation of this work into any language.
Mathews, Edward George. “The Armenian Commentary on the Book of Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian: An Edition of the Armenian Text with Introduction, English Translation and Commentary.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1996.
Edward George Mathews, The Armenian Commentary on the Book of Genesis Attributed to Ephrem the Syrian: An Edition of the Armenian Text with Introduction, English Translation and Commentary (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1996).EphremEphremiana [Armenian]GenesisOld TestamentPseudo-EphremSyriac influence [Armenia]commentaryexegesisprimary sources [Armenian] + English translationtranslations from Syriactranslations into Armenian