THE SCRIPTURE IN THE PUBLISHING PLANS OF THE MOTHER SEE HOLY ETCHMIADZIN

Abstract

The Armenian Church from the beginning had a great interest in publishing the Holy Bible. However the political conditions until 70-ties of XVIII century didnt allow to develop the publishing business neither in Western, nor in Eastern Armenia. Exactly because of this reason the Armenian catholicoses tried at any cost to support the publishing business abroad. In this period the activity of printer's ''Holy Etchmiadzin and st.Sargis'', which was established in Amsterdam, became a new phenomenon in the Armenian book-printing. By virtue of work of this printinghouse and the efforts of former chancellor of the Mother See Voskan Yerevantsi the first Armenian Bible came into being. In the XVIII-XIX centuries the political conditions didnt allow the Mother See to focus on the research and preparation of the text of the Bible.It seems that Mother See Holy Etchmiadzin yielded to Mekhitarists the primacy of research in this field. The catholicoses Macar Teghutetsi and Khrimean Hairik, lived in the late 19th - early 20th century, focused attention of the congregation of Vagharshapat on the republication of the biblical texts. Unfortunately the work was interrupted. As it was unclear how to present the text of the Bible to the reader. If Karapet Ter-Mkrtchean set a goal to restore the classical condition of the text, the greater part of the spiritual estate required in a short time to publish a Bible that satisfies the religious needs of the Church. Another part of the believers and Church ministers hoped to have a Bible translated into a language understandable to the people. I suppose that these opposite goals also contributed to the termination of the work. One should regret that to this day it is not known where are kept the results of the work done under the leadership of K. Ter-Mkrtchean. From the standpoint of stimulating the publication of the Bible important was the celebration of the 300th anniversary of publication of the Bible of Voskan, which was initiated by catholicos Vazgen I. The rather serried phalanx of armenologists got down to work, and thanks to their efforts in 1996 the Bible was translated into the Eastern Armenian language. The most important achievment of the last decades was the publication of dozens of scientific biblical texts. Today the preparation of the scientific text of the Bible remains one of the most important tasks facing modern Armenology and the Mother See Holy Etchmiadzin.