Aphrahat and the Final Section of the Gospel of Mark

Aphrahat (The Persian Sage)

            Aphrahat the Persian Sage, also known as Aphraates (280-345), was a church leader in Syria who wrote a lengthy series of sermons in acrostic form, called Demonstrations – one composition for each of the 22 letters of the Syriac alphabet. This was completed by A.D. 337,  and was supplemented by a 23rd homily in 345. Aphrahat was a contemporary of Eusebius of Caesarea, and from a distance he heard of the spiritual transition of those in charge of the government of the Roman Empire (from prohibiting Christianity as Diocletian did, to embracing it, as Constantine I ostensibly did).

            Among the implications of this is that neither the Sinaitic Syriac MS, nor the Curetonian Syriac MS, nor the Syriac Peshitta (if its Gospels-text is correctly assigned to the late 300s), constitutes the earliest extant Syriac evidence regarding how the Gospel of Mark concluded, for Aphraates lived before any of those witnesses were produced.  It may be worthwhile to draw attention here to Aphrahat’s testimony regarding the final portion of Mark (which has been utterly ignored by many commentators).

            In the 17th paragraph of Demonstration One: Of Faith, Aphrahat wrote, “And when our Lord gave the sacrament of baptism to His apostles, He said to them, ‘ Whosoever believes and is baptized shall live, and whosoever believes not shall be condemned.’”

            Thus Aphraates used what we know as Mark 16:16 in Syriac in 337.  He expressed no doubts about it whatsoever.  (Non-Syriac-reading English readers may consult, to see the context, John Gwynn’s English translation of Demonstration One, (in Volume 13 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series), which I rely upon for these quotations.)

            At the end of the same paragraph, Aphrahat writes, “He also said thus, ‘This shall be the sign for those who believe; they shall speak with new tongues and shall cast out demons, and they shall place their hands on the sick and they shall be made whole.’”  Although the passage is quoted very imprecisely (notice the absence of any reference to the signs being done “in my name,” and the absence of any reference to serpent-handling and poison-drinking), what Aphrahat quotes here is clearly based on Christ’s words in Mark 16:16-18.

            Aphrahat is regarded as a frequent user of Tatian’s Diatessaron, but his quotation is significantly different from the passage found in the Arabic Diatessaron.  The differences may be very probably attributed to the later conformation of the Arabic Diatessaron to the text of the Syriac Peshitta.  (The Arabic Diatessaron is itself an echo of a Syriac source.)

            Let us accept, for the moment, that Aphrahat was utilizing the Diatessaron when he wrote the 17th paragraph of Demonstration One: Of Faith.  In which case, we have here, embedded in Aphrahat’s writings, a quotation from a source no later than 175 (namely, Tatian’s Diatessaron).  (To put this another way:  Aphrahat quoted from Tatian's Diatessaron, which - if the completion of the Gospel of Mark is correctly assigned to the year 68 - was made by Tatian less than 110 years after the autograph of the Gospel of Mark was written, using copies of the Gospels earlier than any complete copies that have survived to the present day.]

            (Not to detour, but, another neglected author, the Armenian known as Eznik of  Golb (also known as Yesnik Koghbats‘i), also used Mark 16:17-18 in the first half of the 400s, writing in his composition De Deo (a.k.a. “Against the Sects”) 1:25, “And again, ‘Here are signs of believers:  they will dislodge demons, and they will take serpents into their hand, and they will drink a deadly poison and it will not cause harm.’”  This appears to be a citation that Eznik made from memory.  Notice, by the way, Eznik's inclusion of the words "into their hand" in v. 18.)

            Some additional evidence that Aphrahat, writing in Syriac, was using Tatian’s Diatessaron is found in Demonstration 2, paragraph 20, where he states that Jesus “showed the power of his greatness when he was cast down from a high place into a valley, yet was not harmed.”   This statement is not based on anything in the canonical Gospels as we know them; it is based on a quirky rendering of Luke 4:29-30 which recurs when the episode is described by other writers who used the Diatessaron. (It is not in the Arabic Diatessaron; at this point the Arabic Diatessaron’s exemplar has been, again, conformed to the text of the Peshitta).   A few decades after Aphrahat wrote, Ephrem Syrus wrote (I rely on others for the English translation), “When they cast him down from the hill, he flew in the air.”  (More has been written about this interesting detail (by the late William Petersen for instance), but I focus here upon Aphrahat’s testimony.)

            If it is granted that Aphrahat wrote Demonstration 23 in 345 (shortly before he died), then he must have had more than Tatian’s Diatessaron to work with, because (a) it is generally granted that the Diatessaron, as produced by Tatian, did not include Jesus’ genealogies, and (b) in Demonstration 23, paragraph 20, Jesus’ genealogy is quoted as it appears in Matthew 1:13 to 16.

            Whether or not Aphrahat is regarded as the author of Demonstration 23, Aphrahat was definitely the author of Demonstration One: Of Faith and thus, his testimony from 337 (prior to the production of Codex Sinaiticus) provides us with a window on a Syriac text that existed in his lifetime.

             (A good transcript of Aphrahat’s Demonstrations 1-10, produced in 474, exists today as British Museum Add. MS. 17182.  The same MS includes Demonstrations 11-23, written down in 510.)

            Aphrahat has been confused with another Syriac author, Jacob of Nisibis, partly because Aphrahat took the name “Jacob” at his baptism.  (Jacob of Nisibis was among those who attended the Council of Nicea in 325.)  Although John Burgon, in 1871, pointed out that Aphahat’s Demonstrations were wrongly attributed to Jacob of Nisibis (Burgon pointed this out on p. 26 of The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel of Mark, calling Aphrahat “Aphraates”).  Nevertheless Jacob of Nisibis was named in the textual apparatus of the first edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (1966).  This may be an indication of how little attention was paid to John Burgon by the compilers of the Nestle-Aland NTG and the UBS GNT in its first and second editions.

            Rather than replace Jacob of Nisibis’ name with Aphrahat’s name, the textual apparatus for Mark 16:17-18 in the fourth and fifth editions of the UBS GNT features neither.  For those who rely on the textual apparatus of the UBS GNT4 and UBS GNT5, it is as if Aphrahat’s support of Mark 16:16-18 in Demonstration One, instead of being changed from an incorrect identification (as Jacob of Nisibis) to a correct identification (as Aphrahat), has blinked out of existence.   

            No doubt this was merely an editorial oversight; certainly Carlo Martini and Kurt Aland and Bruce Metzger would never have thought of attempting to evade or silence an important voice such as Aphrahat’s.  (I would like to imagine that Aphrahat’s name did not appear in the textual apparatus of NA27 simply because there was not enough room on the page to include it – but, alas, I cannot, because half of the page of NA27 that features Mark 16:17b-20 is entirely blank.  The editors of NA27 found room to include GA 2427 (which has turned out to be a forgery made in the 1800s) in the apparatus for Mark 16:18, and GA 579 (from the 1200s), but somehow they did not find room to include Aphrahat’s name.)  (A novice reader, unfamiliar with the complex nuances of evidence-citation and apparatus-making, could get the impression that the selection of witnesses in the apparatuses of the Nestle-Aland NTG and UBS GNT has been somewhat biased.)  

            The GNT’s current editors are welcome to express their penitence (or serve as proxy-voices for previous editors) by including Aphrahat’s name in the textual apparatus of the yet-to-be-released 6^th edition.  Perhaps someone by then will still dare to rely on such an unreliable source for patristic evidence as the UBS GNT’s textual apparatus has been.

            (A final note about Aphrahat:  he believed strongly that baptism is central in conversion – that is, he did not treat it as an optional afterthought.  In his Demonstration 6, Concerning Monks – in which Aphrahat’s writing seeps with Scripture-references like a dead skunk smells like skunk – he writes, in the 14th paragraph, the following (translated into English from Syriac):  “Remember the warning that the apostle [St. Paul in Ephesians 4:30] gives us:  ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit whereby ye have been sealed unto the day of redemption.’  For from baptism do we receive the Spirit of Christ.  For in that hour in which the priests invoke the Spirit, the heavens open and it descends and moves upon the waters [cf. Gen. 1:2].  And those that are baptized are clothed in it.  For the Spirit stays aloof from all that are born of the flesh, until they come to the new birth by water, and then they receive the Holy Spirit.  For in the first birth they are born with an animal soul which is created within man and is not thereafter subject to death, as he said, ‘Adam became a living soul.’  [Cf. Gen. 2:7] But in the second birth, that through baptism, they received the Holy Spirit from a particle of the Godhead, and it is not again subject to death.”)

  

  

The Armenian Version of the Gospels

            The status of the Armenian version of the New Testament as an important text-critical resource is likely to continue to increase in the coming decades.  It is not easy to realize its significance by reading the 2005 edition of Bruce Metzger’s handbook, The Text of the New Testament:  Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, (co-edited by Bart Ehrman).  Like the preceding editions, its description of the Armenian version barely fills a page.  

A statue of Mesrop Mashtots at Ejmiadsin, Armenia.

            Fortunately, in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research:  Essays on the Status Quaestiones, initially published in 1995, S. Peter Cowe’s chapter on the Armenian version occupies 31 pages (not including the bibliography).  Cowe’s research shows that although the Armenian version has been contaminated by rival text-streams, its earliest recoverable forms are valuable witnesses to the New Testament text.  He also shows that the Armenian evidence is extensive, stating (on page 256) that a recent inventory of the six largest public collections of Armenian Scriptures includes 115 New Testaments and 3,003 Gospel-books.

            The history of the Armenian New Testament began in the early 400s; the scholar Mesrop Mashtots (also spelled Maštoc) designed the Armenian alphabet and used it in the production of a translation of the Bible, beginning in 406 with the book of Proverbs, and finishing in 411.  Working with him in this task were other scholars including Sahak (Isaac) the Parthian and  Eznik of Golb.

            The initial translation is generally thought to have been based on a Syriac text.  Twenty years later, though, when Eznik and other Armenian scholars returned to Armenia from the Council of Ephesus, they brought with them a cherished Bible which had been obtained in Constantinople.  Recognizing the superiority of this newly available resource, the Armenian scholars revised their translation so as to bring it into conformity with the Greek text.  This revision was completed by 440.

            Before moving on from the lifetimes of the first generation of Armenian translators, we should realize that the Armenian version of the New Testament had a prehistory.  Prior to the introduction of the Armenian alphabet, Armenia was already a Christian nation.  Just as the Armenian city of Yerevan pre-dates Rome, the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of Armenia pre-dates the official adoption of Christianity in any other nation.  

Gregory the Illuminator

           In the late 200s, King Trdat (Tiridates)  III persecuted and imprisoned the Christian preacher Gregory the Illuminator (257-331), and oversaw the martyrdom of some of his fellow Christians.  In 301, though, when Trdat recovered from a mental disorder after Gregory was brought to him and prayed for him, Trdat was converted, and proceeded to sponsor the evangelization of his people.
            The message of Christ circulated in Armenia for over a century before it was written down in the alphabet devised by Mesrop Mashtots.  The echo of Syriac texts did not die out the instant that the initial Armenian version was revised, and it shaped both the Armenian canon and some aspects of its text.  The text known as Third Corinthians, for example, which was part of a Syriac text of the Pauline Epistles, was also included in the early Armenian canon.  Likewise Revelation was not initially in the Armenian canon, but was included later.

          The transmission-stream of the Armenian New Testament in the 400s-600s was a racetrack on which the text of the initial translation (from Syriac) and the text of the revision (from Greek) were in competition – and readings from one sometimes rubbed off onto the other.       

           In the early Middle Ages, Armenian scholar-monks spread the Armenian version wherever they went – and they went throughout Eastern Christendom:  to Jerusalem, to Edessa, to Alexandria, to St. Catherine’s, to Mount Athos, and so forth.  Occasionally the Armenians compared their Armenian Scriptures to local standards and adjusted their text accordingly.  In the later Middle Ages in Cilicia (southeastern Turkey), the Latin Vulgate – the text of the nearby Crusader States – influenced the Armenian text, resulting in the introduction of some readings that are conspicuously absent from earlier copies.    

            Most Armenian manuscripts are medieval, and quite a few were made after the invention of the printing-press.  Even the earliest substantial Gospels-manuscripts in Armenian feature the Eusebian Canons and, frequently, illustrations, which may indicate that these features were present in the Armenian tradition along with the text ever since the revision in the 430’s.  Aside from fragments and pages recycled as part of the bindings of younger manuscripts, the most important Armenian copies of the Gospels include the following:

            (1)  Gospels of Queen Mlk’ē (San Lazzaro MS 1144/86), produced in 851. 

            (2)  The Lazarian Gospels (Matenadaran MS 6200), produced in 887.

            (3)  British Library Add. MS 21932, produced c. 900.

            (4)  Gospels of the Priests (Walters MS 537), produced in 966.  This is the earliest substantial Armenian manuscript in the Western hemisphere.      

            (5)  The Cughrut Gospels, produced in 974.

            (6)  Matenadaran 2374, produced in 989.  This manuscript was formerly identified as Ejmiadsin (also spelled Etchmiadsin) 229.  A black-and-white facsimile is online.  It is known for its inclusion of an unusual form of the pericope adulterae (John 7:53-8:11), and for the note “The elder Ariston” added between Mark 16:8 and Mark 16:9, and for its four illustrations, and for its ivory covers, which may have been obtained from its exemplar.

            (7)  San Lazzaro MS 123/68, produced in the 900s.

If you know the Armenian numerals (which are the letters
of the alphabet), you can locate passages in the Gospels
by identifying their Eusebian section-number,
even if you can't read Armenian.

            (8)  Gospels of Adrianople, produced in 1007. 

            (9)  Matenadaran 10434, produced in 1069.  The colophon of this manuscript states that its exemplar, according to a tradition, had been made by Mesrop Mashtots.

            (10)  British Library Add. MS 19727, produced in 1166.

            (11)  The Red Gospels of Karahissar/Ganjasar (University of Chicago, Goodspeed Collection MS 949), produced in the 1100s or early 1200s.  Ernest Colwell made a detailed study of the text, illustrations, and liturgical marginalia in this manuscript in 1936.

             (12)  Gospels of Keran, produced in 1265.

             (13)  The Gladzor Gospels (UCLA Armenian MS #1), produced in the 1200s.

             Other manuscripts are listed at Dickran Kouymjian’s online Index of Armenian Art.  In addition to these codices, a multitude of ancient Armenian fragments have been collected from the bindings of later manuscripts.  Perhaps the most interesting early fragment is MS Arm. N. 640, a papyrus housed in the National Library of France.  In this non-Biblical fragment from the 500s, the text consists of Greek words transliterated in Armenian letters.  

Erkat'agir text from Mark 2:14-15 in
MS 338, Image 2.
From the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection
at the University of Chicago.

             Different Armenian manuscripts display different kinds of lettering, roughly analogous to the difference between uncials and minuscules in Greek manuscripts.  The earliest Armenian manuscripts have erkatʻagir lettering.  (This term means “iron letters.”  Some researchers have suggested that this name implies that this script was used in metal-working, but a more likely origin is that it expresses its first developers’ hope that this alphabet would endure for a very long time, like iron.)  Manuscripts from the 1100s and later – especially after the 1200s – usually have bolorgir lettering, which is rounder and smaller than the erkatʻagir script.  

             The relationship between the Armenian erkatʻagir and bolorgir scripts is probably similar to the relationship between the Greek uncial and minuscule scripts:  the erkatʻagir script existed first, and the bolorgir script developed later, in the 900s.  The theory that both scripts developed side-by-side cannot be ruled out; the earliest substantial Gospels-manuscript, written in erkatʻagir lettering, is from the mid-800s, and a bolorgir script was used in a non-Biblical manuscript only a century later.  However, the paucity of evidence before the 800s only allows, rather than supports, such a theory.    

            The third kind of Armenian script in Gospel-manuscripts is notrgir, which consists of cursive lettering.  In some manuscripts in which the main text is written in erkatʻagir or bolorgir lettering, the notrgir script is used in marginalia and colophons.

A zoomorphic Armenian letter
with bolorgir script in the Armenian
Gospels of the Fluting Shepherd,
MS 139, Image 133.
From the Goodspeed Manuscript Collection
at the University of Chicago.

            It is not rare for Armenian manuscripts to feature zoomorphic letters, that is, letters consisting of abstractly drawn animals, especially in the opening verses of each Gospel.  Birds often appear in the margins of Armenian manuscripts, sometimes to accompany Eusebian canon-numbers, but sometimes at random.  The Eusebian Canon-tables in some Armenian manuscripts are a veritable aviary and zoo, spectacularly decorated.

            The Armenian version’s earliest stratum represents the Caesarean Text, but it has been subjected to several divergent influences.  When assessing the text of an Armenian Gospels-manuscript, several questions should be asked:
            (1)  Is it written on parchment, or paper? 

            (2)  What script is used?

            (3)  Does it contain a colophon, and if so, what does it say about when and where the manuscript was made, and by whom, and on the basis of what kind of exemplar, and under what conditions? 

            (4)  Does the binding contain “guard leaves” from an earlier manuscript?

            (5)  Does the pericope adulterae appear after the end of the Gospel of John?  (This passage is not in the Gospel of John in most of the older Armenian Gospels-manuscripts, but was cited by Gregory of Narek in the mid-900s.)

            (6)  Does it contain Luke 22:43-44? 

            (7)  Do its chapter-divisions correspond to the chapter-divisions of the Vulgate?

By provisionally separating Armenian Gospels-manuscripts into groups, depending on the answers to these seven questions, one can create categories reflective of different stages in the transmission-history of the Armenian version.  This task, though not complicated, is far from complete.  The bright light that promises to shine from the Armenian evidence has not yet been set upon the lamp-stand it deserves.

            Additional resources about Armenian manuscripts and the history of Armenia (both ancient and recent) can be found by visiting the following links:

         

J. Rendel Harris, one of the leading
textual critics of the late 1800s,
protested the Hamidian Massacres
in 1895 and personally raised support
to deliver aid to persecuted Armenians.

Gospel-titles in Armenian and English

Armenian manuscripts at the National Library of Russia
Matenadaran - Gospels 

Matenadaran - Cilician Gospels (text begins on page 71)
Armenian Gospels from 1302 (text begins on page 17)
The Lectionary of King Hetum II

Miniature Painting in Armenian Cilicia 

Gregory of Narek’s Laments and Prayers 

The Armenian Library and Museum of America (in Watertown, Massachusetts)

History Museum of Armenia (in Yerevan, Armenia)
Arts of Armenian - by Dickran Kouymjian
Notes on Armenian Codicology, Part 2 - by Dickran Kouymjian
Armenian Resources at the University of Illinois
Armenian Genocide Museum

The Bible in Eastern Armenian

Gospel of Matthew in Eastern Armenian

Gospel of Mark in Eastern Armenian

Gospel of Luke in Eastern Armenian

Gospel of John in Eastern Armenian