Ebook: The Conversion Of Armenia To The Christian Faith

Publisher: Oxford: Horace Hart, Printer to the University; The Religious Tract Society. England, 1897. 256 pages. Language: English."The Writer of the following pages began this investigation for his own information, and is impelled to offer to the public the result of his studies in this field of research…
My residence in Julfa, the Armenian suburb (if I may so style it) of Isfahan (…) have not only given me the opportunity of studying the Armenian language, but even rendered such a course of study incumbent upon me. I have thus been enabled to draw my information at first hand from Armenian historians, some of whom were contemporary with many of the most prominent actors in the great work of converting Armenia to faith in Christ. (…) I have made use of extracts from Lazarus Pharpets (fifth century), Zenobius (fourth century), and other early writers… and I have found most valuable the selections from a variety of modern writers (mostly Armenian, but some Russian)… Besides the Armenian writers, mentioned above, I also owe something to Eusebius, and less to other early Greek and Roman patristic writers… It may be asked why I have continued the narrative up to the fall of Arsacide dynasty in Armenia, instead of pausing at the death of Gregory the Illuminator [Grigor Lusavorich]. The answer is that the Armenians themselves, in days of which I have written, rightly considered that Gregory's great work remained incomplete until the translation of the Bible into Armenian was finished in A.D. 436…" (an excerpt from the preface)