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N THE early Roman Empire, Christianity was a disreputable religion. It appealed to the masses and not to the leaders of society. Thus, the earliest non-Christian comments on the new religion are consistently disparaging because they come from members of the upper classes.' Christianity is "an odious superstition," and its adherents are referred to as people "who were hated for their enormities."" These statements, hostile as they are, may safely be regarded as indicating the social and cultural level of most of the early Christian communities. For they agree with Paul's description of the Corinthian community (I Cor. 1:26 f.): these Christians were not the wise, the influential, nor the high-born, but the foolish, the weak, the low, the insignificant, and the unreal. Yet, before the end of the fourth century Christianity was the dominant religion of the Empire. Between these two extremes lies a long process of change: change in society and change in the Christian tradition and program. The vital experience of the church as it gradually achieved social prestige has recently been described by Dean Case.3 In that campaign the Gospel of John was one of the earliest battles. A large part of its author's purpose was to present the Gospel in a form that would attract the influential and respectable members of society. This writing of a respectable gospel involved the making of many changes in

T IS not altogether unheard of in the world of scholarship that manuals, introductions, and other tools should lag far behind the results obtained in special studies. It would be unreasonable to expect the manuals to keep exactly abreast of research; no one criticizes them if they are somewhat tardy. But in the study of the Armenian version of the Gospels, the gap between the positions won by individual scholars in separate studies and the information presented in the handbooks is intolerably wide. It is the purpose of this paper to indicate the extent of this gap and to present in summary fashion the results of the last forty years' study of the Armenian Gospels. The student who is being initiated into that arduous discipline-the textual criticism of the New Testament-has certain legitimate questions to ask which are not adequately answered in the current textbooks. Curiosity as to the type of text found in the Armenian Gospels should be satisfied even in an elementary introduction. But the student will turn in vain to such valuable manuals as the second edition of Kenyon's handbook, Gregory's canon and text, Scrivener's plain introduction, and von Dobschiitz' revision of Nestle's Einfiihrung.' Not one of these works gives any general characterization of the text found in the Armenian version.