NOTE: - 48 -

...[senseless] and from their misguided words, scraping that out from their senseless minds. But if not, let them hear the righteous reply to their vain babblings from the faithful and unerring sons of our holy father Grigor Lusaworichʻ, who are the true-born [children] of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of Ējmiatsin. And this [reply is] not by any novel, invented word, but handed down from the ancient holy Apostles, preached by the Holy Fathers, and generally written by our great Patriarch Nersēs Shnorhali and confirmed by true testimonies; which if they read with understanding, we hope they will surely be convinced, just as the pious King of the Romans, the Emperor Emmanuēl, was convinced: "On one [and the same] day," says Shnorhali, "we celebrate the feast of the Nativity of Christ and of [His] Baptism on the sixth of January, as we received from the traditions of the early Fathers; herein these writings were upright. First, because formerly all the churches—beginning from the Apostles—celebrated thus; and later some separated [them], on account of the distance between Betʻghehēm and the Jordan from one another; for they were unable to perform the feasts at both pilgrimage sites on one day, being distant from one another, and with gradual increase, the other churches also received the same [practice]. But the Armenians, as they held [it] from Saint Grigor, remained immutable in the same [tradition]. Again, because also the Evangelist Ghukas testifieth these things to be true (Ch. 1, v. 8): for he relateth that on the feast of the Atonement—which was the tenth of Tʻshrin and the 27th of September—the high priest Zakʻaria entered into the temple, offered incense, saw the vision of the angel, heard the good tidings of the conception of the barren woman, and suffered the dumbness of tongue for not believing. And then he saith, 'When the days of his ministration were fulfilled, he departed to his own house.' And his house was not in Jerusalem, but in the hill country of Judea, where Mariam gave the greeting to Eghisabētʻ; and the days of his ministration were: five days of the feast of the Atonement, and seven days of the [feast of] Tabernacles, which make twelve days. Wherefore these two feasts the Evangelist calleth 'the days of the ministration' of the priest Zakʻaria, which they celebrated together according to the Law; which when it was fulfilled, he departed, it saith, to his house on the twenty-second of Tʻshrin; and on the ninth of October occurred the conception of Eghisabētʻ. Now, those who on the twenty-fifth of March perform the feast of the Annunciation to the Virgin, [reckon] the conception of Eghisabētʻ in Tʻsh...