62 HORMUZD EASSAM, ESQ., ON BIBLICAL LANDS, THEIR 



The Armenians claim a very remote antiquity, alleging 

 that their language is that of Noah, unaffected by the con- 

 fusion of tongues at Babel, and therefore that it is the 

 primitive language spoken by our first parents in Paradise. 

 There is no doubt they are descendants of the ancient 

 inhabitantiS of Ararat and of what remains of the site of the 

 Garden of Eden, at the sources of the Euphrates and Tigris, 

 which territory they now occupy. They assert that their 

 language was spoken by Adam, Eve, and Noah. The story 

 is a fabulous invention, from the very meaning of the names 

 of those who lived before and after the flood, which were 

 pure Semitic ; whereas the Armenian tongue is, as it is sup- 

 posed, Iranic. It is well known that the Bible was not 

 translated into their language till the fifth century, by 

 Miesrob. Until then the only version they had was 

 written in the Chaldean tongue called Pesheto. Miesrob 

 was also the inventor of the Armenian alphabet, and 

 until then the Armenians possessed no literature of their 

 own. 



The Armenians allege that their Christianity dates from 

 the first century, and class themselves amongst the first who 

 acknowledged Christ as their Redeemer, and they support this 

 theory by claiming Agbarus as their first Christian king. 

 It may be remembered that Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical 

 History mentions that Agbarus, king of Edessa (the present 

 Orfa in Mesopotamia, the reputed Ur of the Chaldees, where 

 one of the great massacres of the Armenians took place), 

 sent a letter to our Lord requesting him to come and 

 cure him of a disease from which he w^as sufiering. The 

 said historian quotes from the records of the church at 

 Edessa a translation of this letter, along with another pur- 

 porting to be a reply from Jesus Christ, promising to send 

 one of His disciples to heal him. How the Armenians came 

 to possess such a tradition it is impossible to explain. 

 Edessa has always been an Assyrian or Chaldean settlement, 

 and from whence all the eminent Divines of the primitive 

 Assyrian (erroneously called Syrian) church went forth. 

 Certainly we have never been told either in the written or 

 unwritten history that Orfa was situated in " Armenia," but 

 in Aram Naliraim of the Hebrew Bible, where all the 

 primitive Christians believed Abraham came from, as the 

 place was always considered the historical "Ur of the 

 Chaldees," mentioned in the eleventh chapter of Genesis, 

 especially as a district on the north of it has always been 



