A new, critical edition of Armenian Deuteronomy, forty years after its “diplomatic” predecessor. Reflections and the Results of new Collations

Abstract

If we were offered a 5th-century MS of the book of OG Deuteronomy, it would be an exciting day, even if bits of it were illegible for one reason or other. Something like this may help in envisioning the place of the Armenian translation for the textual criticism of the OG text. This version, like other secondary versions, is not in Greek and, for that and for several other reasons, there are bits of it whose source text cannot be precisely reconstructed. I say “reconstructed” because in collating a secondary version it is not a question of collating the translation as it stands but of collating the source text from which it has come. This is an important distinction. The analysis provided here rests on the remaking of an edition of Armenian Deuteronomy, of taking a diplomatic edition and having it rise like a phoenix into an edition that presents an eclectic text, a fully critical edition, after the space of forty years. This exploration begins with the deseridatum of critical editions of texts; continues into the challenges of producing an eclectic text from which the source text can be reconstructed; and finally, sets out the rewards of this entire enterprise.