Eznik of Kolb

Eznik was an Armenian, born around 380, and he belongs to the single most productive generation in the history of his nation's literature. Armenia had adopted Christianity as a state religion at the beginning of the fourth century, but it had no alphabet of its own. Around 405 Mesrop Mashtots devised one. Everything then had to be translated, fast. Eznik was one of Mesrop's pupils, and one of the men sent abroad to do the work. He went first to Edessa to learn Syriac and translate from it, then to Constantinople to learn Greek. He came home in the early 430s carrying a corrected Greek text of the Bible, obtained after the Council of Ephesus, and the Armenian Bible was revised against it. The version that resulted has been called the queen of translations for its fidelity and its beauty, and Eznik had a hand in it. He was made bishop of Bagrevand. In 449 he was among the bishops at the Council of Artashat when the Persian king Yazdegerd II demanded that Armenia abandon Christianity and return to Zoroastrianism. The council's reply, which Eznik signed, told the king that he had authority over their bodies and their goods but not over their faith, and that from this belief no one could move them — "neither angels nor men, neither fire nor sword." The refusal led directly to the battle of Avarayr in 451, where the Armenian nobility fought the Persian army and lost the field, but won the point: the demand was eventually dropped. His book is Refutation of the Sects, also known simply as On God. It is the first original work of Armenian literature — not a translation, but a work of argument written from scratch. In four parts it takes on the pagan religion of the old Armenia, the dualism of Zoroastrianism, the Greek philosophers' doctrines of fate and eternal matter, and the teaching of Marcion. The Zoroastrian section is what scholars prize. Eznik lived next to that religion and describes its cosmology from close range, and his account is a primary source for Sasanian Persian belief in the fifth century. His central argument throughout is the goodness of the one Creator and the reality of human freedom: evil is not a rival god, and a man is not fated. He died about 450. Sources: Eznik of Kolb, On God, translated by Monica J. Blanchard and Robin Darling Young; Koriwn, The Life of Mashtots; Elishe, History of Vardan and the Armenian War.