Some Preliminary Thoughts on the Incomplete Text of Anania Narekats‘i, Called Concerning an Explication of Numbers [Սակս բացայայտութեան թուոց] Roberta R. Ervine (bio) It was for love of us that God used voice and hand and word and numerical order [in creation] (Eghishē, Commentary on Genesis 1.6–8)1 For some time, early scholars encountering the text Concerning an Explication of Numbers [Սակս բացայայտութեան թուոց] attributed its authorship to the seventh-century writer Anania Shirakats‘i, who was well known for his interest in all things mathematical. The work was published together with Shirakats‘i’s other writings in 1944.2 However, as a cursory reading of the text shows, the author’s intention is not mathematical, but exegetical. Noting the many arithmological references in the writing of the tenth-century mystic poet and exegete St. Grigor Narekats‘i, Galust Ter-Mkrtch‘yan suggested that Concerning an Explication of Numbers was instead the work of St. Gregory of Narek’s maternal cousin and mentor, Anania Narekats‘i. This attribution [End Page 9] has become the norm, and there seems no reason to dispute it. More recently, Hrach‘ya T‘amrazyan has made the case for Anania Narekats‘i’s authorship even more persuasive, in the first volume of his study on Grigor Narekats‘i and the Narek school,3 as well as in his 1986 monograph on Anania Narekats‘i’s life and work.4 Anania of Narek is most often remembered as the man who raised and educated the young, motherless future saint Gregory of Narek in the years after Gregory’s father was appointed bishop of Andzewats‘ik province in the kingdom of Vaspurakan.5 The fact that Anania headed one of the most prominent schools of his time, giving shape to its spiritual ethos and content to its monastic movement, is largely seen as important for having nurtured the refined mystical experience and expression of Gregory. It is true that Anania had a formative influence on Gregory.6 However, he was also in his own right a major force in the considerable intellectual and spiritual ferment and activity of his lifetime (+980). The historian Ukhtanēs (935–ca. 1000) wrote his History of Armenia [Պատմութիւն հայոց] at Anania’s behest.7 In his introduction, Ukhtanēs recounts their interview regarding the project, describing Anania, who had been his teacher, as “resplendent with divine grace and filled with the knowledge of the Spirit’s gifts, outdoing all with the [End Page 10] beauty of spiritual song and having attained all the commandments of God and being firmer therein than many.” He goes on to address Anania directly, saying, “O divinely adorned and illustrious Lord, my Lord, and universal Vardapet, like a tree bearing much fruit and standing tall amid the excellent and god-planted paradise of the congregation called [the monastery of] Narek, having produced leaves and flourished with virtuous life, blossoming in the house of the Lord and in the courts of God. . . [Ps 91:14].”8 Likewise, the historian Step‘anos Tarōnats‘i (Asoghik) refers to Anania as “a great philosopher.”9 The second half of the tenth century was a period of ambivalence in the relationship between the Armenian and Byzantine states and Churches. Having lived most of the productive part of his life during the successive usurpations of the Macedonian dynastic throne by men of Armenian origin—Nikephorus Phocas (963–969) and his nephew and assassin, John Tzimiskes (969–976)10—Anania died sometime in the first decade of Basil II’s long reign (976–1025). [End Page 11] Like his contemporaries, Anania navigated the sometimes turbulent waters of the rivalrous relationship between Armenia’s Bagratid and Artsrunid kingdoms. The Bagratid kingdom, which covered roughly the northern and western regions of Armenian territory, had officially begun its existence in 884. Anania was probably aware of developments in the kingdom across his lifetime, under Abas I (929– 953), Ashot III the Merciful (953–977), and Smbat II (977–989). Those developments would have included the ever-present risks of increasing fragmentation, due to the Bagratid policy of creating or allowing the creation of offshoot kingdoms like those of Kars (962–1064) and Lori (982–ca. 1101). The Bagratid king of...