Mesrop Mashtots

Life

Mesrop Mashtots is believed to have been born around 362 in the village of Hatsik in the province of Taron in western Armenia. The oldest account of his life is The Life of Mashtots, a biography written by his disciple Koriun. This biography uses only the name "Mashtots"; the name "Mesrop" is thought to have been added in later sources.

In his youth he served as a secretary at the Armenian royal court. He later became a monk and traveled through the provinces engaged in missionary work and teaching. In the course of this work he encountered a serious obstacle: Armenia at the time had no script in which to write its own language, so worship and the reading of the Bible had to be conducted in Syriac or Greek. As a result, the people had difficulty properly understanding the content of the faith.

He died in 440 in Vagharshapat and, according to tradition, was buried in Oshakan.

Ministry and Achievements

• Creation of the Armenian alphabet: With the support of Catholicos Sahak Partev, then head of the church, and King Vramshapuh, Mashtots completed the Armenian alphabet around 405. According to tradition, the original alphabet consisted of 36 letters. The first sentence translated into the new script is said to have been Proverbs 1:2 ("To know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding").
• Bible translation: Together with Sahak, he gathered disciples and translated the Bible into Armenian. The translation was initially based on the Syriac Bible. Greek manuscripts are understood to have later been brought from Constantinople and elsewhere and used to revise the translation. The Old Testament is thought to follow the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament).
• Education and literature: He founded schools to train translators and teachers. As they translated patristic writings and liturgical books, Armenian Christian literature became firmly established.
• Other scripts: Koriun's biography reports that he was also involved in creating the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets.

Influence on the Korean Church

There is no confirmed record of Mashtots having directly influenced the Korean church. In Korea he is mainly introduced in discussions of the history of Bible translations around the world or of Eastern church history. Because of his effort to enable a people to read the Bible in their own language, he is sometimes discussed alongside the history of Korean Bible translation.

Assessment

The Armenian Apostolic Church venerates him as a saint. Each year, around October, he is commemorated together with Sahak on the Feast of the Holy Translators. He is also regarded as a figure who helped establish Armenian national culture and identity. The Matenadaran, the institute of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan, Armenia, bears his name.

Several issues are debated among scholars:

• Koriun's account that Mashtots created the Georgian and Caucasian Albanian alphabets is disputed, particularly by Georgian scholars.
• Scholars also differ in their assessments of how much Mashtots and Sahak each contributed to the creation of the alphabet and to the translation work.

The Armenian church did not accept the decisions of the Council of Chalcedon, held in 451 after his death. As a result, the Armenian Apostolic Church today forms a tradition distinct from both the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Western church. This division, however, took place only after Mashtots's death.