)( 9 )(

or were written entirely separately, or specifically within the Arakats Proverbs of Solomon as brief didactic precepts. As for the testimony that our kertoghahayr father of poets/grammarians referring to Movses Khorenatsi brings forward in the Girk Pitoyits Book of Chrie (2.1), it is according to the Hellenistic Greek source text, as we have noted there, which does not appear in the current Armenian copies; therefore, our reasoning is confirmed therein. Apart from the book of Sirach, we have also left out the Tught Eremia Epistle of Jeremiah, which Oskan had placed at the end of the book of Baruch, as we never saw any traces of it in our manuscripts. Following this example, we have also removed the various sections or connecting passages throughout each book, which Oskan—or some other later person who deemed our copies deficient—had inserted from the Latin, although we have noted those instances in the annotations.

Regarding the numbering and the order of specific books, we have conformed to the manuscript copies, just as the most faithful Hellenistic copies had them. Therefore, there is no reason to be surprised or confused if a discerning reader of this volume sees this difference in our edition compared to the copy of Oskan, which until now has been used out of simple habit. For he himself, according to his own logic, attempted to classify all the books in accordance with the Latin. He placed the major prophets in the Old Testament in a different order, and then the minor ones; and in the New Testament, he placed the katoghike Catholic/General epistles after the Pauline epistles, and within those, the Hebrews after all others. He did not know to pay heed to the custom of the common prayers of the Armenian Church, in which our ancestors, following the canon of the Astvatsashunch Holy Bible that they used in the order of the apostolic readings, starting from Easter (whence our ecclesiastical year of worship begins), prescribed first the Catholic epistles, and then the Pauline ones throughout the whole cycle of the year until the next Easter, as is well known to skilled ministers of the Church.

b. Second, we considered it appropriate and beneficial to include the prefaces and the lists of chapters for each book of the Old and New Testaments, along with their corresponding numbering in the margins of the source text, as they were commonly established in all manuscript copies, which Oskan, as he writes in his epilogue, discarded as superfluous and useless. It was necessary to hold the polymath author of these texts—at least regarding the Old Testament—in high regard from our Haykazants Armenian scholars, having observed their elegant, Armenian-style transcription along with other specific marks, if it had not appeared in the new translation of the Eotanasunits Septuagint from the seventh century, which is confirmed to be from the Hellenistic prototype. The best manuscript copy of this, I was fortunate to see in the Ambrosian Library in Milan. Because this manuscript, in my judgment, was written around the 13th century in semi-uncial, it contained only the wisdom and prophetic books. At the beginning of each book, it had a table of chapters that almost word for word matched ours; however, the prefaces were missing, which are found complete in all our books. Now, these prefaces and tables of chapters, which all our manuscripts contain entirely, even if they were not originally composed in the Armenian dialect according to the aforementioned, the genuine Armenian style that is observed in them gives the impression that they were translated into our language by our own translators simultaneously with the biblical text, perhaps having their Hellenistic prototype before them. Yet, it is a great wonder that they are not found in the Hellenistic manuscripts that have come to light thus far, which are stored as treasures in various libraries of Europe. Only in the Alexandrian one, as they say, can one see on the margins of the source text traces of anciently inscribed numbers of chapters that correspond in some places to our division. For this same reason, European scholars were unaware of them, ignorant of our literature, until the publication of the prophecy of Daniel with its table of chapters in Latin—from the aforementioned Milanese manuscript, printed in 1788—and the author of that chapter arrangement was believed by the translator of the work to be Eusebius of Caesarea. Therefore, it was not out of place for us to philosophize the same, even if the prefaces were missing in ours; for it is clearly shown in them that the scribe of these, along with the chapter arrangements (in which there is no difference in the style of transcription), is someone else, of a later time than Eusebius, who quotes him in his Chronicle, mentioning him by name, as can be seen in the prefaces to Esther, Judith, and the first Makkabayetswots Book of Maccabees. Furthermore, by mentioning therein the prefaces of the books of Judges and Kings made by him, it gives us almost no doubt to consider that the entire prefaces and tables of chapters of the Old Testament are the work of that one scribe; but who he is and in which century he flourished, we cannot say at this moment, neither with certainty nor by speculative guess. Following this, for the books of the Old Testament, in accordance with our manuscript copies, we have also placed the prefaces and lists for each book of the New Testament; such as the prefaces to the four gospels, which are thought to be by Pamphilus the Martyr, or Eusebius of Caesarea. Also, the beginnings of the chapters of the gospels, in accordance with the four simultaneously, are marked with numbers, which I believe to be the ghost of that Ammonius of Alexandria, which the learned Eusebius perfected, as he writes in the notice of his Hamabarrbar Canon Tables/Harmony. In the same way, we have also arranged the prefaces and lists of chapters for the Acts and Epistles of the Apostles, made by the eloquent scholar Eutha[lius], who, according to the hints in his words, seems to have flourished in the middle of the fifth century; but in what calling, and who they were who asked him for such labor, is in doubt. However, above all this, in order not to overload the contents of this volume, we were satisfied with those we have included, guarding against excessive...</column-break/>