idiomatic phrases survive in the text. Thus circumibo (ii. 7)＝“I
will protect,” i.e. אםזככ (cf. Deut. xxxii. 10), and in sacerdotes
vocabuntur＝εἰς ἱερεῖς κληθήσονται, צל פתְים יִקָּךאוּ (cf. 1 Chron. xxiii. 14,
and Isa. xlviii.2),＝“they will call themselves priests.” (2) Frequently
it is only through retranslation that we can understand the source of
corruptions in the text. (3) In some cases we must translate not
the Latin but the Hebrew presupposed by it. Thus in i. 7, successor
＝διάδοχος＝םשרת, must be rendered “minister.”
The Book may be the lost Testament of Moses.—The present book is possibly the long lost Διαθήκη Μωυσέως mentioned in some of the ancient lists, for it never speaks of the assumption of Moses, but always of his natural death (i. 15, iii. 13, x. 14). About a half of the original Testament is preserved in the Latin Version. The latter half probably dealt with questions about the Creation (see Fabric. Cod. pseud. V. T., ii. 844; Acta synodi Nicaenae, ii. 20). With this “Testament” the “Assumption,” to which almost all the patristic references and that of Jude are made, was subsequently edited.
Some views of Author.—Our author’s views on Moses are remarkable. He writes that Moses was prepared from before the foundation of the world to be the mediator of God’s covenant with his people (i. 14, iii. 12). During his life he was Israel’s intercessor with God (xi. 11, 17). Praying on their behalf as a “great angel” (xi. 17), “a sacred spirit who was worthy of the Lord manifold and incomprehensible” xi. 16). Apparently his relation to Israel did not cease with death, as he was to be their intercessor in the spiritual world (xii. 6). His death was an ordinary one (i. 15, iii. 13, x. 12, 14), but no single place was worthy to mark the place of his burial, for his sepulchre was from the rising to the setting sun, and from the south to the confines of the north—yea, the whole world was his sepulchre (xi. 8). On the doctrine of good works our author’s views are allied to Old Testament conceptions rather than to the rabbinic doctrine of man’s righteousness, which bulks so largely in Jewish literature from A.D. 50 onwards. So far from representing man’s righteousness as involving merit over against God, our author represents the greatest hero of Israel as declaring “Not for any virtue or strength of mine, but in His compassion and long-suffering was He pleased to call me” (xii. 7.)
Literature.—Editions of the Latin text: Ceriani Monumenta sacra et profana, I. i. 55–64 (1861); Hilgenfeld, Nov. test. extra canonem receptum, 107–135 (1876); Volkmar, Mose Prophetie und Himmelfahrt (1867); Schmidt and Merx, Die Assumptio Mosis (Merx, Archiv. f. wissensch. Erf. des A. Ts. I. ii. 111–152; 1868); Charles, The Assumption of Moses (translation, with notes and introduction, 1897); Clemen, in Kautzsch’s Apocr. und Pseud., II. 311–331. Critical inquiries.—For a full account of these see Schürer iii. 222; Charles op. cit. xxi–xxviii. (R. H. C.)
MOSES OF CHORENE, Armenian historian, was a native of
Khorʽni in Tarōn, a district of the Armenian province of Turuberan.
According to the History of Armenia which bears his
name he was a pupil of the two fathers of Armenian literature,
the patriarch or catholicos Sahak the Great and the vartabed
Mesrōb. Shortly after 431 he was sent by these men to Alexandria
to study the Greek language and literature, and thus
prepare himself for the task of translating Greek writings into
Armenian. Moses took his journey by Edessa and the sacred
places of Palestine. After finishing his studies in the Egyptian
capital he set sail for Greece; but the ship was driven by contrary
winds to Italy, and he seized the opportunity of paying a flying
visit to Rome. He then visited Athens, and towards the end
of winter (440) arrived in Constantinople, whence he set out on
his homeward journey. On his arrival in Armenia he found that
his patrons were both dead. The History of Armenia speaks of
its author as an old, infirm man, constantly engaged in the work
of translating. In the later Armenian tradition we find other
notices of this celebrated man[1]—such as, that he was the nephew
of Mesrob, that he was publicly complimented by the emperor
Marcian, that he had been ordained bishop of Bagrewand by the
patriarch Giut, and that he was buried in the church of the
Apostolic Cloister at Mush in the district of Taron; but these
accounts must be received with great caution. This remark
applies especially to the statement of Thomas Ardsruni,[2] that
Moses, like his Hebrew prototype, lived to the age of 120 years,
and recorded his own death in a fourth book of his great work.
The same caution must be extended to another tradition, based
on an arbitrary construction of a passage in Samuel of Ani,
which places his death in the year 489.
The History of Armenia[3] or, as the more exact title runs, the Genealogical Account of Great Armenia, consists of three books, and reaches down to the death of Saint Mesrōb, in the second year of Yazdegerd II. (Feb. 17, 440).[4] It is dedicated to Sahak Bagratuni (who was afterwards chosen to lead the revolted Armenians in the year 481), as the man under whose auspices the work had been undertaken. This work, which in course of time acquired canonical authority among the Armenians, is partly compiled from sources which we yet possess, viz. the Life of Saint Gregory by Agathangelos, the Armenian translation of the Syriac Doctrine of the Apostle Addai, the Antiquities and the Jewish War of Josephus, and above all the History of Mar Abas Katina (still preserved in the extract from the book of Sebēos),[5] who, however, did not write, as Moses alleges, in Syriac and Greek, at Nisibis, about 131 B.C., but was a native of Medsurch, and wrote in Syriac alone about A.D. 383, or shortly thereafter. Besides these, Moses refers to a whole array of Greek authorities, which were known to him from his constant use of Eusebius, but which cannot possibly have related all that he makes them relate.[6] Although Moses assures us that he is going to rely entirely upon Greek authors, the contents of his work show that it is mainly drawn from native sources. He is chiefly indebted to the popular ballads and legends of Armenia, and it is to the use of such materials that the work owes its permanent value. Its importance for the history of religion and mythology is, in truth, very considerable, a fact which it is the great merit of Emin[7] and Dulaurier[8] to have first pointed out. For political history, on the other hand, it is of much less value than was formerly assumed. In particular, it is not a history of the people or of the country, but a history of the Armenian aristocracy, and, in opposition to the Mamikonian tendency which pervades the rest of the older Armenian historical literature, it is written in the interest of the rival Bagratunians. Down to the 3rd century it is proved by the contemporary Graeco-Roman annals to be utterly untrustworthy—but even for the times of Armenian Christianity it must be used far more cautiously than has been done, for example, by Gibbon. The worst feature is the confusion in the chronology, which, strange to say, is most hopeless in treating of the contemporaries of Moses himself. What can be thought of a writer who assigns to Yazdegerd I. (399–420) the eleven years of his predecessor Bahrām IV., and the twenty-one years of Yazdegerd I. to his successor Bahrām V. (420–439)? A. von Gutschmid[9] at one time attempted to explain this unhistorical character of the narrative from a tendency arising out of the peculiar ecclesiastical and political circumstances of Armenia, situated as it was between the eastern Roman and the Persian empires, circumstances which were substantially the same in the 5th as they were in the two following centuries. In the course of further investigations, however, he came to the conclusion that, besides the many false statements which Moses of Khorʽni makes about his authorities, he gives a false account of himself. That is to say, the author of the History of Armenia is not the venerable translator of the 5th century, but some Armenian writing under his name during the years between 634 and 642. The proof is furnished on the one hand by the geographical and ethnographical nomenclature of a later period
- ↑ Collected by Langlois, Collection des historiens de l’arménie, ii. 47 seq.
- ↑ In Brosset, Collection d’historiens arméniens, i. 68.
- ↑ The oldest MS. is that of S. Lazaro of the 12th century. Collations of MSS. of Etchmiadzin and Jerusalem are given by Agop Garinian, Tiflis (1858), 4to. The book has been edited and translated by Whiston (London, 1736, 4to); and by Le Valliant de Florival (Venice and Paris, s.a., 1841), 2 vols. 8vo.
- ↑ The commencement of this king’s reign has been fixed by Nöldeke (Geschichte der Sassaniden aus Tabari, p. 423) as 4th August 438; and this date has subsequently been established by documentary evidence from the fact of the martyrdom of Pethion (see Hoffmann, Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer, p. 67).
- ↑ Translated in Langlois, i. 195 seq.
- ↑ For the following statements, the evidence may be found in the article “Ueber die Glaubwürdigkeit der Armenischen Geschichte des Moses von Khoren,” by Alfred von Gutschmid, in the Berichte der Phil. histor. Classe der königl. sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften (1876), p. 1 seq.
- ↑ The Epic Songs of Ancient Armenia (Arm.) (Moscow, 1850).
- ↑ “Études sur les chants historiques et les traditions populaires de l’ancienne Arménie,” in the Journ. asiat., iv., sér. 19 (1852), p. 5 seq.
- ↑ “Ueber die Glaubwürdigkeit,” &c., p. 8 seq.
