The Bible in Armenian
Sets the introduction of the Bible to Armenia and the process of its translation and reception against the wider socio-political, religious and cultural currents of Late Antiquity. Cowe notes how missionary religions became catalysts for the creation of new writing systems, and how Christianity's transition from illicit practice to dominant cultural arbiter raised the Bible's status as the physical embodiment of the divine word. He situates Armenia as a buffer state between Rome and Sasanian Persia, showing how that geopolitical position shaped its religious development, then works through the historical matrix of the translation, its parent texts, and the recensional history of the Armenian scriptures.