La version arménienne du Livre V de l’Adversus haereses d’Irénée de Lyon : histoire du texte, édition critique, traduction et notes

At the end of the second century, Irenaeus wrote the five books of his great treatise Ἔλεγχος ἀνατροπὴ τῆς ψευδωνύμου γνώσεως. The original Greek version is only accessible through a fragmentary direct tradition of extremely modest dimensions and an important indirect tradition. The Latin translation, prior to the fifth century, is the only complete available source of this work, better known under the title Adversus haereses. It was the subject of a remarkable critical edition by Fr. A. Rousseau, a monk from Orval Abbey, in collaboration with B. Hemmerdinger, Fr. L. Doutreleau and Fr. Ch. Mercier. Augmented with a French translation and a partial Greek retroversion, it "offers to the general public, without erudite heaviness, the five books of the first theological construction of Christianity, under the fully developed title: Contre les hérésies. Dénonciation et réfutation de la Gnose au nom menteur" (Against heresies. Denunciation and refutation of Gnosis with the lying name). While all modern language translations are made from Latin, the French version of Fr. A. Rousseau is the result of a more complex process . Indeed, after having collated the manuscript sources in their various languages, he tried to get as close as possible to the original Greek, going so far as to propose a retroversion of books III to V, in order to elaborate the French translation. In 1904, the discovery of a 13th century manuscript offers us an Armenian version of the last two AH books as well as a treatise whose title was only known until then: Εἰς ἐπίδειξιν ἀποστολικοῦ κηρύγματος. Responding to the very lively interest aroused by this discovery, the editio princeps of Books IV and V were published six years later; it is still the only edition available to this day. In addition to the large number of corrections to be made to the latter, important quotations have since been added to broaden our knowledge of the main witness to the Armenian reception of Irenaeus' work. The aim of this thesis is the critical edition of the Armenian version of Book V. In the first chapters, we present the author, the reception of his works and their catalogue. Then we make an inventory of the different traditions of the great treatise of Irenaeus, list the Greek witnesses and describe more specifically the Armenian material available and accessible for our study, increased by the new witnesses we have discovered. We then formulate and justify the principles of our critical edition and the rules of its presentation. The Armenian text that has been established is presented with our French translation facing.