Agathangelos

Agathangelos ( xcl, from Greek Ἀγαθάγγελος "bearer of good news"; 4th or 5th century AD) is the pseudonym of the author of a life of the first apostle of Armenia, Gregory the Illuminator, who died about 332. The history attributed to Agathangelos is the main source for the Christianization of Armenia in the early 4th century.

The History was soon translated into Greek; on the basis of this Greek translation, a translation into Arabic was made, as well as many secondary Greek, Latin and Ethiopic versionsKarshuni translation. The earliest surviving manuscript containing text from Agathangelos is a palimpsest kept in the Mekhitarist library in Vienna; the original text on the palimpsest dates to earlier than the 10th century. Other fragments are dated to the 10th and subsequent centuries. The earliest manuscripts containing the complete history of Agathangelos date to the 12th and 13th centuries.

He claims to be a secretary of Tiridates III, King of Armenia in the early 4th century, while some analysts say the life was not written before the 5th century. It purports to exhibit the deeds and discourses of Gregory, and has reached us in Armenian, Greek, Georgian, Syriac, Ethiopic, Latin and Arabic. The text of this history has been considerably altered, but it has always been in high favor with the Armenians. Von Gutschmid maintains that the unknown author made use of a genuine life of St. Gregory and of the martyrdom of Saint Hripsime and her companions. Historical facts are intermingled in this life with legendary or uncertain additions, and the whole is woven into a certain unity by the narrator, who may have assumed his significant name from his quality of narrator of "the good news" of Armenia's conversion. It has been translated into several languages, and Greek and Latin translations are found in the Acta Sanctorum Bollandistarum, tome viii.

Ghazar Parpetsi, an Armenian historian whose biography is not disputed and who is generally dated to the 440s–510s, describes Agathangelos as the first writer of Armenian history and mentions Buzand as the second (and Buzand himself says that Agathangelos wrote the first book before him).

The historians never mention that they met each other or that they were contemporaries, and the events they describe also suggest that they represent different historical periods occurring one after another. This logically implies that Buzand most likely lived several decades before Parpetsi, representing the beginning of the 5th century, while Agathangelos lived in the 4th century.

The passages in the works of Agathangelos and Buzand that refer to events, names, or knowledge from the late 5th or even the 6th centuries—leading some historians to argue that both authors probably lived in the 5th or 6th centuries—could be later additions to the original texts, a practice attested many times. The original copies of these works did not survive, and we rely on translations and manuscript copies dating from later centuries, meaning we cannot know with certainty what was edited/added later.