Journal ArticleOpen Access
Sahakyan, Fr. Movses (Davit), 2025
Fundamental Armenology, Issue 1(21) 2025, Religion (National Academy of Sciences of RA / All Armenian Foundation Financing Armenological Studies); ISSN 1829-4618
Christian faith is one of the cornerstones of Armenian identity, and it finds its distinctive expression in Armenian theological thought. Fr. Movses Sahakyan takes the early period, from the Church's apostolic foundation to the beginning of the sixth century, tracing the mission of Sts Thaddeus and Bartholomew, the adoption of Christianity as a state religion, and the invention of the Armenian alphabet and its effect on Armenian Christian thought. He works through the universal and local ecclesiastical challenges of the era, the Nicene Creed and the successive councils, to show how period authors and events crystallized a distinctly Armenian theology, one that answered both internal religious needs and developments in global Christianity.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Sheklian, Christopher, 2025
Études arméniennes contemporaines, No. 16 (2025), 'Objects of Thought', pp. 25–51 (Bibliothèque Nubar / AGBU); DOI 10.4000/15gmf
Sheklian brings the Miaphysite Christology of the Armenian Apostolic Church into dialogue with contemporary 'new materialist' theory. He argues that ancient debates over the natures of Christ shaped the very Western philosophical vocabulary of nature, essence, and substance, and that the Armenian tradition — through the term բնութիւն (bnut'iwn) and thinkers such as Khosrovik the Translator, Step'anos Siwnets'i, and Nerses Shnorhali — offers a distinct conceptual configuration of materiality that unsettles Chalcedonian assumptions. He connects these theological differences to present-day philosophical and ecological stakes.
Journal ArticleOpen Access
Leyloyan-Yekmalyan, Anna, 2025
Matenadaran: Medieval and Early Modern Armenian Studies (MEMAS), Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 163–186 (Mesrop Mashtots Matenadaran / Brepols); eISSN 3041-5063
Re-reads the carved lower tympanum of the Noravank narthex (founded 1261), whose composition centers on the Virgin and Child. The bird beneath the Child's feet is identified as the apocryphal clay bird animated by Jesus's breath, echoing the Father animating Adam; the lion the Child sits on is the Lion of Judah from the vision in Esdras. Old Testament prophets flank the Virgin, and a large letter Ա with a three-pointed arrow aimed at Mary's ear evokes Ephrem the Syrian's conception-through-the-ear formula, reinforced by the word ԲԱՌՆ and the surrounding Armenian inscription, which the author translates. The reading ties Armenian monumental sculpture to apocryphal and patristic exegesis.
ThesisOpen Access
Avetyan, Madlen, 2017
M.A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, California State University, Northridge (advisor Sabina Magliocco); xi, 147 pp.; handle 10211.3/192578
A CSUN master's thesis in anthropology on 'ethnodoxy' — the fusion of ethnic and religious identity — among Armenian-Americans in Los Angeles, the largest Armenian community in the diaspora. Avetyan argues that the Armenian Apostolic Church has functioned since the fourth century as a unifying national institution in the absence of statehood, and that both its practical and its symbolic religiosity remain central markers of Armenian identity in the diaspora today. The study fills a gap in scholarship that had examined Armenian cultural identity without seriously weighing its ethno-religious dimension. Committee members included Vahram Shemmassian.
