Versioni armene di testi siriaci. Breve panoramica sulle traduzioni armene dal siriaco nei secoli V-XIII e loro caratteristiche

The article offers a survey of the extant Armenian translations from Syriac religious and scientific texts, and gives an outline of their main features. It focuses especially on two temporal and geographic contexts: Edessa and its area during the 5th century, and the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia during the 12th-13th centuries. The Armenian version of the Bible and various translations of the Acts and Lives of Saints, both from Greek and Syriac, date back to the first period, under the influence of the Persian School of Edessa and its exegetic methods. The article describes in brief the developments of the Nestorian controversy, which played an important role in the Armenian decision to undertake a revision of the Armenian Bible text after the Council of Ephesus. It continues by giving some examples of the Armenian tendency toward additions and reworking – in an ethnic perspective – in the translation of the Lives of Saints and Martyrologia. The last section lists the outcomes of the process of translatio studiorum by which the Syrians handed down their scientific knowledge to the Armenians during the Cilician kingdom.

The article offers a survey of the extant Armenian translations from Syriac religious and scientific texts, and gives an outline of their main features. It focuses especially on two chronological and geographical contexts: Edessa and its area during the 5th century, and the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia during the 12th-13th centuries. The Armenian version of the Bible and the various translations of the Acts and Lives of Saints, both from Greek and Syriac, date back to the first period, under the influence of the School of Edessa and its exegetic methods. The article describes in brief the developments of the Nestorian controversy, which played an important role in the Armenian decision to undertake a substantial revision (almost a retranslation) of the Armenian Bible after the Council of Ephesus. It continues by giving some examples of the Armenian tendency toward additions and reworking – in an ethnic perspective – in the translation of the Lives of Saints and Martyrologia. The last section lists the outcomes of the process of translatio studiorum by which the Syrians handed down their scientific knowledge to the Armenians at the time of the Cilician kingdom.