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Gir≤ Harwmanw)1 Contains a Series of Polemics Against Non-Christian Religions Including Manichaeism2, Islam3, and Judaism

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Gir≤ Harwmanw)1 Contains a Series of Polemics Against Non-Christian Religions Including Manichaeism2, Islam3, and Judaism A 14TH ARMENIAN POLEMIC AGAINST JUDAISM A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY ARMENIAN POLEMIC AGAINST JUDAISM AND ITS LATIN SOURCE Introduction The first volume of Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s Book of Questions (Gir≤ Harwmanw)1 contains a series of polemics against non-Christian religions including Manichaeism2, Islam3, and Judaism. The treatise against Judaism is very brief – it occupies less than three full double-columned pages in the edition printed in 1729 in Constantinople – but is intriguing for its citations of Jewish sources4. In this portion of BQ, in addition to referring to unascribed ‘Jewish arguments’, Tat‘ewac‘i explicitly men- tions the Talmud, the specific Talmudic tractates Sanhedrin and Yoma, and a text which he cites as Beresiat‘as. In a previous article, I posed the question of the availability of Tal- mudic and other Jewish sources to fourteenth-century Armenian monks based on Tat‘ewac‘i’s short excursus on Job in BQ vol. VI, ch. 225. In 1 GRIGOR TAT‘EWAC‘I, Gir≤ harwmanw [The Book of Questions], Jerusalem, 1993 (original printing, Constantinople, 1729) (= BQ). Tat‘ewac‘i (1344-1409) completed BQ in 1397. All references to the Book of Questions are to this edition unless otherwise noted. On Tat‘ewac‘i’s life see S. LA PORTA, ‘The Theology of the Holy Dionysius,’ Volume III of Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s Book of Questions: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary, Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, Cambridge MA, 2001, ch. 1 (= LA PORTA, Theology); S. LA PORTA, Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in R. ERVINE – M. STONE – N. STONE (ed.), The Armenians in Jerusalem and the Holy Land, Leuven, 2002, p. 97-110 (= LA PORTA, Pilgrimage). On BQ, see S. LA PORTA, Concerning Job: Chapter 22 of the Sixth Volume of Grigor Tat‘ewac‘i’s Girk‘ Harc‘manc‘, in St. Nersess Theological Re- view, 2/2 (1997), p. 131-165 (= LA PORTA, Job); LA PORTA, Theology, ch. 2; S. LA PORTA, Sorcerers, Witches, and Weasels: Armenian Definitions of the Magical Arts, in Revue des Études Arméniennes, 28 (2001-2), p. 171-214. 2 T. POLADIAN, Gregory of Tatew-Against the Manichees, in Review of Religion, 9 (1945), p. 242-53, presents a brief study of the section against Manichaeism. 3 This section was intentionally omitted from the edition printed in Constantinople in 1729 to avoid persecution from the Ottoman Muslim authorities. It was subsequently ed- ited and published by B. KIWLESEREAN (ed.), Islam∂ Hay Matenagrou¯ean mèΔ [Islam in Armenian Literature], Vienna, 1930 (repr. in BQ). On this section, see F. KRAELITZ- GREIFENHORST, Die arabischen, persischen und türkischen Wörter im Buch gegen die Mohammedaner des Gregor von Tat‘ew, in Handes Amsorya, 41 (1927), p. 771-8; F. MACLER, L’Islam dans la littérature arménienne, in Revue des Études Islamiques, 6 (1932), p. 493-522; A. JEFFERY, Gregory of Tathew’s ‘Contra Mohammedanos’, in The Muslim World, 32 (1942), p. 219-35; and S. DADOYAN, Grigor of Tat‘ev: Treatise against the Tajiks, in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 7/2 (1996), p. 193-204. 4 The text occurs on pages 27-29 of BQ. 5 LA PORTA, Job. Le Muséon 122 (1-2), 93-129. doi: 10.2143/MUS.122.1.2037153 - Tous droits réservés. © Le Muséon, 2009. 2148-09_Mus09/1-2_06_LaPorta 93 6/7/09, 11:08 am 94 S. LA PORTA that chapter, Grigor notes that Job’s life extended “until the Exodus from Egypt,” a tradition found in Talmudic tractate Baba Bathra 15a6. Tat‘ewac‘i further attributes the authorship of the Book of Job to Moses. While some Christian exegetes preserved this tradition, it also occurs in Baba Bathra 14b. As M. Stone has shown, this baraitha was translated into Armenian and is preserved in J69 which is dated to the fourteenth century7. The possibility that Grigor possessed a limited familiarity with Jewish sources is not remote. He traveled to Jerusalem while a young man to be ordained a priest, and Jewish communities existed in the cities of north- ern Syria through which he may have passed8. Although historical sources of this period reveal little concerning Jewish communities in Armenia9, the recent discovery of the Jewish cemetery near the village of E¥egis, in the region of Vayoc‘ Jor in the province of Siwnik‘, pro- vides evidence for a Jewish presence in Armenia during the late thir- teenth and early fourteenth centuries10. None of Tat‘ewac‘i’s explicit references to Jewish texts in the chapter, however, arise from a direct Armenian translation of Jewish sources that were available to Grigor; rather they ultimately derive from the major anti-Jewish polemic, the Pugio Fidei, of the Dominican Raymond Martini11. 6 R. I. EPSTEIN (gen. ed.), Hebrew-English edition of the Babylonian Talmud, London, 1965-89 (= BT). 7 M. STONE, An Armenian Translation of a Baraitha in the Babylonian Talmud, in Harvard Theological Review, 6 (1970), p. 151-4. All abbreviations of manuscript collec- tions follow the suggestions outlined by the AIEA and used by B. COULIE, Répertoire des bibliothèques et des catalogues de manuscrits arméniens (Corpus Christianorum), Turnhout, 1992. 8 On Tat‘ewac‘i’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem, see LA PORTA, Pilgrimage. 9 The thirteenth-century Armenian bishop and historian, Step‘anos Orbelean, men- tions that the city of Kapan in the southern region of Siwnik’ contained a Jewish quarter which was destroyed in 1103, STEP‘ANOS ORBELEAN, Patmou¯iun Tann Sisakan [His- tory of the House of Sisakan], M. EMIN (ed.), Moscow, 1861, ch. 60, p. 245. An Armenian colophon dated to 1365 composed in the city of Kaffa on the Crimean peninsula notes a Genoese military commander who entered the city and “slaughtered all the Ismaelites and Hebrews,” A. SANJIAN, Colophons of Armenian Manuscripts, 1301-1480: A Source for Middle Eastern History, Cambridge MA, 1969, p. 94. While admittedly Kaffa is not in Armenia, it did possess a large and important Armenian community, see N. STONE, The Kaffa Lives of the Desert Fathers: A Study in Armenian Manuscript Illumination, Leuven, 1997. 10 See D. AMIT – M. STONE, Report of the Survey of a Medieval Jewish Cemetery in Eghegis, Vayots Dzor Region, Armenia, in Journal of Jewish Studies, 53 (2002), p. 66- 106 and IDEM, The Second and Third Seasons of Research at the Medieval Jewish Cemetery in Eghegis, Vayots Dzor Region, Armenia, in Journal of Jewish Studies, 57 (2006), p. 99-135. 11 R. MARTINI, Pugio Fidei. Farnborough, 1967 (original printing, Leipzig, 1687) (= PF). 2148-09_Mus09/1-2_06_LaPorta 94 6/7/09, 11:08 am A 14TH ARMENIAN POLEMIC AGAINST JUDAISM 95 Over a century and a half before the completion of BQ, Raymond Martini (c. 1210-1285) was born in the town of Subirats, near Barce- lona12. Between 1237 and 1240 he entered the Dominican Order in Bar- celona. In 1250 Raymond de Peñaforte, director general of the Domini- can Order and driving force behind the missionary activities of the mid- thirteenth century, sent a group of monks, including Martini, to Tunis to work in the recently-founded school for Arabic instruction13. Martini re- turned to Spain in 1262 and may have been present at the famous debate that took place between R. Moses ben Nachman (Nachmanides) and Friar Paul Christian. An important consequence of this debate was that James I, King of Aragon, established a commission to examine Jewish texts for insults against Christianity. Martini was appointed to the commission in 1264 as a censor. In 1267, he completed his first anti-Jewish treatise, the Capistrum Iudaeorum14, aided by the material he had studied and col- lected whilst a censor. This work, written entirely in Latin, is divided into two parts of seven chapters each. The chapters are labeled “rationes” in the first half and “nequitiae” in the second. The first part forwards seven arguments based upon Genesis and the prophets to prove that the Messiah has already come. The second refutes seven Rabbinic objections to his coming. Eleven years later, in 1278, Martini completed his second anti-Jewish polemic, PF15. It is generally accepted that PF was not the work of one man alone, but the cooperative effort of a team of scholars working 12 On Martini’s life see especially A. BERTHIER, Un maître orientaliste du XIIIe siècle: Raymond Martini O.P., in Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum, VI (1936), p. 267-311 (= BERTHIER, Maître orientaliste); cfr also A. WILLIAMS, Adversus Judaeos, Cambridge, 1935, p. 248-255; H. SCHRECKENBERG, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld (13.-20.Jh.), (Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe XIII; Theologie Bd. 497), Frankfurt/M., 1994, p. 290-307 (= SCHRECKENBERG, Adversus-Judaeos-Texte). 13 It was there, between 1256-1257, that Martini wrote his Explanatio symboli apostolorum in which he discusses the twelve articles of the Christian faith. The work also contains polemics against Judaism and Islam. In the third article he argues against the Jews that the Messiah has already come, but he does not cite any Rabbinic texts. J. March published an edition of the entire text in 1908 based upon a manuscript from the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century. On this text see U. RAGACS, The Forged Midrashim of Raymond Martini – Reconsidered, in Henoch, 19 (1997), p. 60, n. 5 (= RAGACS, Forged Midrashim); and BERTHIER, Maître orientaliste, p. 279-80. 14 A critical edition of the text and a translation into Spanish is provided in A. ROBLES, Raimundi Martini: Capistrum Judaeorum, 2v., Würzburg, 1990, 1993 (= ROBLES, Capis- trum Judaeorum). For a description of the manuscripts, see BERTHIER, Maître orientaliste, p. 287-289, and ROBLES, Capistrum Judaeorum, I:22-25. 15 On the manuscripts and history of the printed editions of this work, see BERTHIER, Maître orientaliste, p.
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