Armenian Deuteronomy

With his publication Claude Cox follows the template established with the critical edition of his book Armenian Job from 2006. There is no other edition of an Armenian biblical book like these two. It not only rests on an examination of virtually all extant manuscripts of Armenian Deuteronomy, arranges them in text groups, and chooses representative manuscripts from each group in order to establish an eclectic text. For the first time, the lectionary text and the major commentary of Vardan Areveltsi are also collated and their readings appear with those of the manuscript tradition in the critical apparatus. The critically established text is then collated against J.W. Wevers’ critical edition of the Septuagint in the Göttingen series, making a dramatic advance in the understanding of the place of the Armenian in the Greek text tradition. Finally, major contribution to the understanding of the text involve, first, preferences in word order in the Armenian translation and, second, remarkable adjustments in the translation that highlight its exegetical character and clarify its meaning for the reader.