Another Classical Armenian history goes online

Robert Bedrosian writes to let us know that another history in classical Armenian has now gone online in English:

This is to let you know that a 10th century History of Armenia written by  Yovhannes [John] Drasxanakert’c’i, Catholicos of the Armenian Church  (898-929) is now online in English translation.

http://rbedrosian.com/YD/yd.html

The translation and study was done by Rev. Fr. Krikor Maksoudian as his Columbia University Ph.D. dissertation (1973), and later expanded and published as in book form (Atlanta, Georgia, 1987). It was Maksoudian, then a deacon and Assistant Professor at Columbia, who taught me Classical Armenian in the early 1970s.  Since then he has achieved the high rank of vardapet (Doctor of the Church), and is perhaps the most erudite of clergy in the Armenian Church in the United States.

Father Maksoudian has graciously allowed me to webify his work.  It may be downloaded, copied, and distributed freely.

Robert Bedrosian has done more than anyone else in a century to make the riches of Armenian literature available to us all in English.  Someone who can translate from classical Armenian is rare; someone who will do so even rarer; and someone who will then make the results widely available… well, Robert is unique in this.  In the pre-internet era he used to publish his translations in book form, where they enrich many a library.  These days he runs his own website and distributes them freely and generously.

An Armeniologist writing in a century will consider all of us as living in the times of Robert Bedrosian.  That’s how much what he does matters.

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One thought on “Another Classical Armenian history goes online

  1. What great news this is! May I add that Robert was also quite generous and very helpful when I asked him to translate three Armenian fragments of Papias for the public domain. I am deeply grateful for him and his work. Thanks Robert!

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