Posted on 10/30/2005 9:34:29 PM PST by Lorianne
Few birthdays are cause for a global scholars' conference at Harvard, but they're raising a metaphorical glass in Cambridge to toast the Armenian alphabet. It's not just that at 1,600 years old the alphabet makes Methuselah look like a youngster. These three dozen letters gave a written language of faith to a pivotal country in Christian history.
Years before the Roman emperor Constantine's famous conversion, Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion, in the year 301. At the time, Armenian was a spoken tongue only, meaning worshipers relied on translators during services to interpret a Bible that was written in other languages.
''Bare oral translations," an Armenian theologian later wrote, ''were insufficient to satisfy the aspirations of the heart."
A fifth-century priest, Mesrob Mashtotz, sated those aspirations, devising a 36-letter script (two more letters were added later) so the Old and New Testaments could be rendered in Armenian. For Armenians worldwide, including the Armenian Apostolic Church, religion and language would become intertwined as the life supports keeping the nation's culture and heritage alive outside the homeland, says James R. Russell, Mesrob Mashtotz professor of Armenian studies at Harvard.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Armenian script is a cool-looking writing system.
Most interesting.
One or two of the compositions were written by Mesrob Mashtots, incidentally.
**Armenian was a spoken tongue only,**
According to Eusebius' ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY he examined actual letters supposedly written by Jesus to the king of Armenia. If they had no written language how did the king of Armenia correspond with Jesus?
Another language, one would assume.
Greek?
Spoken word to a messenger?
or, as suggested, Greek. Possibly Aramaic or Latin?
if the royalty knew an existing written language, it's curious why Armenian wasn't first set to paper in the alphabet of one of those languages. Thus a hybrid language like Yiddish is. (Old High German written in Hebrew letters.)
Good point. I think this is a subject that deserves further investigation. However my forensic linguistic skills are almost nil.
This scenario was played out in many countries. Vietnam being a relatively recent example. It was a Roman Catholic priest who gave them an alphabet. Appropriately for this day (Oct 31), it was Luther's translation of the Bible that gave German people an official common script and much of his work is still the basis for today's German writing.
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