The Holy Bible

The manuscript is undated, although many differ from one another in phrasing and in the manner of writing.

The eighth manuscript, a partial one beginning from the Book of Job to the end, along with the epistles of the apostles, was written in bolorgir rounded script on cotton paper by Alexianos, secretary to Catholicos Philippos. This one was distinguished from other copies by unusual variations in certain places, but it showed no particular merit because of this. The deficiencies of this copy are filled by other partial old and new manuscripts to complete the numbers, which sometimes agree with the aforementioned copies and sometimes with others. Added to these are the copies of the Jashots Lectionary of the said books, of which we had four ancient complete manuscripts at hand.

Thus, one may count as the ninth copy, by order, the manuscript archetype used by Oskan for printing. Although the circumstances of this volume—its place and time, and by whom and for whose needs it was written—are unknown to us, as we do not have the original itself in hand; yet, comparing our copy of the Oskan edition with our aforementioned manuscripts, it does not appear to be a superior archetype, neither in terms of skilled writing nor in the integrity of its other parts. As we have said, it is largely similar to our third manuscript copy. Furthermore, when put to the test, the attentive investigator can confirm this in the notes regarding the differences in the copies. From this, we surmise that some were written in Cilicia, perhaps toward the end of the fourteenth century. As for what some supposed to be a royal copy written for the needs of King Hetum, which in the eyes of some simple-minded individuals was deemed highly valuable due to its nobility, it seems the final poetic colophon is the cause of them thinking so, because Oskan mentions nothing of this, nor does he mention any of the circumstances of that archetype at all. Indeed, Zakharias, prelate of the Amatuni clan and student of Catholicos Movsēs, narrates in his own colophon that he had obtained such a volume in Karin with a royal poem, and sent it to his monastery in Aragatsotn for official use. But there is no certainty to confirm that this is that same one.

These nine complete manuscript copies that we had at hand were partial [copies] of the Old Testament. As for the copies of the New Testament, together with the drawings in the same manner as the old, the Evangelists alone—counting complete, partial, or defective ones—reached almost thirty, and the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, fourteen. We pass over explaining these one by one in what follows, not wishing to extend the speech to an immoderate length.

b. Having brought forward here the circumstances of the manuscript copies of the Holy Scriptures which we utilized in the compilation of this present work, let us now move to the history of the printed ones. Now, leaving aside the partial editions of the Psalters which, beginning from the year 1565, were printed in various places—in Rome, Lviv, Venice, and so on—in truth, we have as our first complete edition the printing of Oskan Vardapet Erevantsi. For he himself, according to his own judgment, by the command of Catholicos Hakob, having come to the West with that one manuscript copy, and after many various encounters establishing an Armenian printing house in the Dutch city of Amsterdam in the year 1666, printed the first Holy Scriptures in the Armenian tongue, in what is called "large quarto" books, with more beautiful letters than the Armenian alphabets that had been engraved for the purpose of printing in various regions until that time. For this reason, upon publishing the first volume there in the East, it was received with no small praise by the simple-minded of our nation, looking to the beauty of the letters and the clarity of the printing, and especially to the ease of expense in comparison to the acquisition of manuscript volumes. Because of this, the name of Oskan was honored and spread among the nation as a fortunate laborer and a great-minded vardapet doctor/teacher. However, in reality, he inherited the opposite opinion in the eyes of the more discerning, who, not having despised the external circumstances of the printing, knew how to apply the internal ones to the vision of the mind. But since the number of such individuals was very small at that time, and being hindered by misfortune from engaging in a better attempt, little by little they became accustomed to his version, to the point that when they wanted to print the volume after that, in part or in whole, they easily took from him and copied it, as one can see with the Psalters and the New Testaments printed after that. Along with them, the priest Yovhannēs, who in the year 1686 printed the first Jashots Lectionary in Venice, I believe, with no small effort adjusted all those readings according to the Oskan archetype, corrupting the noble royal copy which is usually encountered with God's success.

For the same reason, when the need arose for a second time to print the entire Holy Scripture, a relative of that same Oskan, named Petros un Ladinatsi, having at hand the ready tools for printing, printed it in the year 1705 in Constantinople in the district of Pēkōghli, from the very same copy of his ancestor, but in small print and unclearly.

But after some time, our fruitful Abbot Mkhitar, seeing the deficiency of these two editions in our nation, by which the book became rare and expensive, and he was unable to obtain it for the needs of the students of his school for a moderate cost, he thought to provide a remedy by printing it once again. And since he lacked Armenian manuscript copies to correct the errors which he noted in the Oskan copy there, for that reason he gathered the corrections of theirs in the margins as best he could for the time being, taking [them] from the Latin translation of the Septuagint volume of Paris (which was still held in high regard at the time), and whatever seemed intolerable to him, he also introduced into the main text. By such a balanced alteration, with a more beautiful and always clearer arrangement of decorations according to that Oskan archetype, with the cooperation of his skilled students, he issued the Holy Scripture for the third time in Venice in the year 1733.

c. But since the foundation of this Mkhitarist printing was also the Oskan one, indeed it was not possible for it to have any greater excellence than his...