Հայերեն Աստվածաշնչի տպագրության ծրագրի արձագանքը Ամիդում

<jats:p>Alongside contemporary Armenian Bible printing initiatives, a tendency emerged among Armenians in the 17th century to produce handwritten single-volume Bibles. Among the centers proficient in copying these manuscripts was the city of Amida in the Ottoman Em-pire – a topic that has not previously been examined from this perspective. The demand for Bibles grew as Amida developed into a prominent regional educational center. The flourishing local art of manuscript illumination and copying, supported by the patronage of clerical lea-ders, further facilitated this process. In 1601, Srapion Edessatsi (of Edessa), bishop and chief vardapet of Amida, aiming to print the Bible, commissioned the senior scribe and miniaturist of Amida to copy an otherwise little-known biblical chronicle. Most likely, this text – edited by Srapion himself – received the title "Abridged Bible". Due to the acute shortage of complete Bibles, it quickly circulated among the vardapets associated with the Amida seminary. Barsegh Artsruni, who succeeded Srapion Edessatsi and established a distinguished school of manuscript art, commissioned the city’s senior scribe and miniaturist to copy a full Bible. The ma-nuscript, written over a period of ten years, was donated to the Holy Land in 1632. Consequently, the Amida scriptorium began receiving requests for Bible manuscripts from vardapets across the region, establishing itself as a renowned center of biblical manuscript produc-tion. A comprehensive study of the textual apparatus of the eleven Bibles copied in Amida reveals that their text is uniform. Furthermore, analysis of the versified colophon composed by Barsegh Artsruni in the initial Bible strongly suggests that he authored this specific Amida textual edition.</jats:p>