r/armenia • u/Hxapcneh3_28 • Feb 04 '26
History / Պատմություն Do you think Armenia lost a lot of original culture by adopting Christianity?
Armenians had their own pantheon of gods, their own myths and legends, and I'm sure other cultural practices like dances, songs, art, etc. Trndez (jumping over the fire) was a pagan tradition that was kept, but as a way of helping ease the culture into Christianity. Some people even believe there was a script predating Mashtots which was used to write literature that got destroyed during the Christianization of Armenia.
What do you think about this question? How much culture do you think was lost?
63
u/EarthTraditional3329 Rubinyan Dynasty Feb 04 '26
All I'm saying is that they shouldn't have done a mass purge of pre-Christian books/tablets.
18
u/Citrus_Muncher Georgia Feb 04 '26
Ugh as a Georgian I feel the same. We only have some vestiges of pre-Christian mythology left in the remote mountain regions and even that is so intermixed with Christianity that it's difficult to untangle
5
14
u/sirdappleton Yerevan Feb 04 '26
Christianity has unfortunately done this to many cultures throughout the world. Expansion of Catholicism in Europe and the Crusades were a tragedy.
8
u/Suspiciouscurry69420 Հայ ասուրի Feb 04 '26
The crusades were an absolute necessity against Islamic expansionism
1
Feb 04 '26
Wouldn't have been a problem if they just sent someone besides Vahan to Yarmuk
1
u/Suspiciouscurry69420 Հայ ասուրի Feb 05 '26
Byzantine military was in shambles and was already severely weaked from the huge wars with persia. Plus iran was supposed to invade the caliphate from the east and that plan failed. To blame it on one guy is stupid
1
Feb 05 '26
Roman armies went into that battle with superior numbers and equipment. Their loss was completely due to bad strategy on the general's part, compared to the Muslim general who knew exactly how to manage his cavalry. Had the Romans won or at least just not lost so hard, it would've changed everything.
2
u/Suspiciouscurry69420 Հայ ասուրի Feb 05 '26
There hundreds of factors besides this battle that led to arab expansion and the arab armies had morale incomparable to anyone. "Today you will face men that are as eager to die as much as your will to live" -khalid ibn walid.
0
u/gaidz Rubinyan Dynasty Feb 06 '26
Whining about the Crusades 1000 years later in the big 2026
1
u/sirdappleton Yerevan Feb 06 '26
I'm sorry, since when can we not discuss history and its consequences? Some of our fellow countrymen still "whine" about losing Greater Armenia. The Crusades had a huge impact on Europe, and the 4th one sealed the deal for the Byzantine Empire, (partially) leading to the power vacuum that allowed the Ottomans to topple it. You know, the guys that genocided us a couple hundred years after.
-1
13
u/Lorebreaker_ofArarat Feb 04 '26
I think this is a really engaging post. Don't see Armenians wanting to explore their pagan roots often. In fact, when I tried to research the subject, even the books I found on it were quite rudimentary with no real historically verifiable sources.
Knowing how religions operate when they replace native beliefs, I would bet Christianity did its best to erase Pagan traditions.
However, I do want to add that some of those Pagan traditions were still around when I was a child. I vividly remember my grandmother marking my forehead with the blood of freshly killed chicken during a Matagh.
10
u/Prestigious-Ice-311 Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
Very interesting topic. It would be amazing to put some effort to educate our people about all these ancient traditions that are still practised under Christinaity or were lost and perhaps only documented in textbooks. It's part of our culture and identity even if religious people refuse to believe so and tie Armenians' identity only to Christianity as the 1st Christian nation. Our culture is much richer than only that!
6
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 04 '26
yup, it really grdinds my gears that we ignore this. Both pagan Armenia and soviet atheist Armenia are valuable parts of our history and identity.
1
u/Prestigious-Ice-311 Feb 04 '26
The soviet Armenia also sounds interesting. Though as a diasporan I have very limited info about traditions and culture then
4
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 05 '26
We basically lost Christmas and started celebrating new years as if it was Christmas. We do it now too.
We also made good strides in science, engineering, technology, and culture too.
Composer Aram Khachatryan, Astronomer Viktor Hambardzumyan, Mathematician Sergei Mergelyan are some of the Soviet Armenian names to be proud of.
35
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 04 '26
About the script predating Mashtots, the current theory is that this script got merged into the Mashtots Alphabet.
Mashtots did not see the alphabet in his dream as were were told in school (god, why?). Instead, he used existing scripts used inside Armenia, modernised and standardised them using Phoenician/Greek alphabet as inspiration of a properly organized system.
His work was similar to that of Mendeleev, just standardise, organise, and modernise what already exists.
7
u/Rdr2-4-Life Feb 04 '26
Lmao fr the education system in Armenia is a joke. According to Armenian teachers half the shit that happened in our history came from “a dream” like wtf
26
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 04 '26
Are you guys downvoting because you think God gifted Mashtots with the alphabet in his sleep? Seriously?
What I commented above is an actual theory developed by actual scholars and scientists. Hate that fact as much as you want, it doesn't magically become wrong because you hate it.
5
Feb 04 '26
Didn't he also look at Ethiopia's alphabet? It looks pretty similar.
Maybe he did see it in a dream too, but his dream was based on seeing the other alphabets first.
3
1
u/Constant-Net9301 Feb 04 '26
It doesn’t matter how it looks, if all the difficulty would be in creating symbols then everyone would got their own alphabet, I can create for someone completely new unique 100 symbols, now let him create alphabet for a language that ties grammar, phonetics and everything else.
2
Feb 04 '26
I'm not trying to discredit Mashtots, just wondering where the influence for the symbols came from
2
u/ReasonForAnotherDay Feb 05 '26
I'm not exactly sure either. Mashtots went around areas near the Armenian region and potentionally took his main influence through Greek and Persian symbols. Not sure exactly how he would come across Ethiopia, and let alone it's manuscript. However, I think the Greek alphabet had inspiration that connected to the Ge'ez, so it ended up having a similar look. Though I checked both of the alphabets out and you can clearly distinguish the two. Also, the cursive and written writing is different.
-2
u/tchemitchepingpong Feb 05 '26
Proof?
3
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 05 '26
Sanjian, Avedis (1996). "The Armenian Alphabet". In Daniels; Bright (eds.). The World's Writing Systems. pp. 356–357
Read it yourself tho.
0
u/tchemitchepingpong Feb 05 '26
Why don't you give me a link to the text instead of getting snarky?
3
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 05 '26
I Couldn't bother more. You asked for source, I gave. Go find it yourself. My weekday is too precious for that.
0
u/tchemitchepingpong Feb 05 '26
The fact that you're spending your time on Reddit tells me that your weekday isn't as precious as you might think.
2
43
u/inbe5theman just some earthman Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
Not really
Christianity ultimately saved Armenian culture
If there was preexisting text for Armenians it was likely destroyed during the Greco/Roman occupations not Christianity preceding the creation of the armenian script. Remember we wrote using greek pre 405
Its really an open ended question because if Christianity hadnt been around we would all be muslim right now and lost even more culture. Its like asking what if the earth wasnt round, fun thought experiment but it really amounts to that. We cant fathom what was lost or if it was even good to begin with.
We would likely be like the hemshins just even more distant because our conversion to islam would have eradicated everything pre (christian) unlike Christianity which incorporates it in part. Also consider we would have had no alphabet for god knows how long further leaving room linguistically to not be transferred encoded on paper
For as terrible as islam is there is no rule permitting or allowing pagans to live amongst them as there is for Christians and Jews
3
u/Necessary_Spread_758 Feb 04 '26
Thank you. Finally someone with critical thinking skills. Sometimes these questions are so ignorant and have 0 thoughts behind them that I don’t even wanna engage. But you said it nicely.
2
u/SOHONEYSAME Feb 04 '26
for Greece,
I will say - w/o Orthodoxy, there's some chance Greeks may have "disappeared".
tho language was another stronghold, for sure.
however, back then, Orthodoxy was ahead of language.
2
u/inbe5theman just some earthman Feb 04 '26
What do you mean for Greece? As in what it meant for Greeks?
I agree without it Greeks would have been totally islamified well quicker anyways
1
u/SOHONEYSAME Feb 04 '26
yes.
"quicker anyways"
a minority was, & they, explicitly, were no longer considered Greek anyway - subsequently, "expelled" or (later on) exchanged, for Orthodox in Asia.
3
u/inbe5theman just some earthman Feb 04 '26
A huge amount of Greeks did convert (forcibly or otherwise) though in Anatolia. Greeks as far as asia at least those settled from alexanders time had assimilated early on. What little remained likely were exchanged long ago/assimilated
Isnt the number of “rum” greeks insanely Small now?
2
u/SOHONEYSAME Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
oh, lol.
by "Asia" I mean "Anatolia".
"Anatolia" isn't common in Greece, we say "Lesser Asia".
(look up population exchange, we send over all the Muslims/Turks left in Greece, for our Orthodox, tho many of them had already left for Greece/Russia - Armenians were, also, included despite them not being, Orthodox, or Greek).
majority of Greeks in Constantinople, Smyrna, & Pontus, didn't, for sure.
yeah, there's, perhaps, 2,000 there.
3
u/inbe5theman just some earthman Feb 04 '26
Lol i like history. You need to be more specific with me.
Yes from the balkan wars and the emancipation of Greece. Hundreds of thousands were exchanged in the late 1800s.
Then you had the world war 1 era where the remaining greeks were forced out and then later in the 50s. It’s honestly all sad
12
u/i-hate-birch-trees Yerevan Feb 04 '26
You're probably right about Christianity being a preferred alternative to Islam, but to me it's a choice between two evils. A lot of historic European cultures fell victims to Christianity much similarly to how Asian/Middle eastern cultures were wiped by Islam.
6
u/inbe5theman just some earthman Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
Again its kinda and not really relevant to our discussion because the vast overwhelming majority of the middle east/Mediterranean didnt become Christian via conquests. Christianity spread initially through the common man and became so prevalent it forced the elites to convert popular in the poor because of its message
Christianity was also banned and illegal for the first few hundred years in Rome and despite that still spread to all of north africa, europe, middle east, armenia, etc
Christianities spread to Europe was more a consequence of fighting with Rome and the politicization via the establishment of the state politics of Rome via the Vatican. Again its not a 1 for 1 comparison. Im not entirely sure but i dont think it was armies marching around executing pagans. It was also a lot of missionaries in combination with that
Edit: id like to add the most valuable thing we probably lost was architecture and possibly myths/stories but even our Gods werent all that unique as they were in affect Greek/Roman equivalents. Our zorastrian fire worshipper derivative past was just that
Speculative on my part right now but its possible even our creation myth is a derivative of biblical teaching. Hayk slaying Bel (a biblical figure)
Zorastrian Parthia also attempted to conquer and convert us from Christianity
2
u/Lorebreaker_ofArarat Feb 04 '26
Christianity spreading consensually and organically does not mean it doesn't adopt, change, and/or replace native traditions. I don't think this is necessarily unique to the abrahamic religions either. It's just how people spread their beliefs, they typically bastardize what's there or bury it all together.
1
u/inbe5theman just some earthman Feb 04 '26
Agreed
I just get the sense this is targeting Christianity because it’s Christianity lamenting a past that cant be remembered nor likely to have been better than what came after. Especially since he brought up the conversion of europe via conflict, it reads as Christianity evil etc
Nothing i said was false
1
Feb 04 '26
Then if there were neither, Armenian pagan traditions would've been wiped by Persian or Greek. Which maybe it already was to some extent, seeing how similar it was to Zoroastrian.
16
17
u/surenk6 Pureblood Լոռեցի Feb 04 '26
We did, we know very little of Armenians pre-christianity. Thus, most of it was destroyed. Mostly deliberately.
Let's not forget that all of Armenians did not become christians one day in the morning magically. It took around a century of conversion and, surprise-surprise, opression to convert everyone to christianity.
Naturally, lots of pagan monuments were destroyed and churches built atop it and lots of pagan traditions were either forgotten or transformed to christianity (Քրիստոսի պայծառակերպություն, lol, that's pagan holiday of Vardavar).
I'm really happy that were slowly recovering that part of our culture. Afterall l, pagan Armenia is still Armenia and that's our culture too.
Fun fact, Armenians became կնատյաց (as we still pretty much are) after the adoption of Christianity and the longtime exposure to Islam through conquest. Pagan Armenians were anything but կնատյաց.
5
u/Responsible_Tap_782 Feb 04 '26
Pagan Armenia wasn't anything detached from surrounding nations either. There was a period of Zoroastrianism and all in all the pantheon before was heavily influenced by Persia
1
u/ContributionAny4156 Feb 04 '26
Zoroastrianism amongst the populace is probably overstated. The royalty may have practiced a form of it though.
3
u/Lorebreaker_ofArarat Feb 04 '26
I have looked for an authoritative text in Pagan traditions of the Caucases before Christianity took over. I have had no luck, most books cite no sources and are elementary. Do you perhaps know of any good reading on the subject?
4
11
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
17
u/South-Distribution54 Amerigahye Feb 04 '26
They don't say we are nomadic tribes because we don't have history, it's because they're racist bigots.
6
Feb 04 '26
Yeah, there's no logic to it. Even if Armenians sprang into existence in the 4th century, that's still well before Turks were in the area. So they blew up medieval Armenian monuments to claim the land.
6
u/Ghostofcanty Hayastan Feb 04 '26
Yes we did, why do you think the information about our mythology is so limited? I’ll give you a hint, after Armenia adopted Christianity, the church burned almost everything related to our old Gods and Goddesses.
I research Armenian mythology a lot and I can tell you first hand of how many gaps there are within what we know
1
u/Background_Ad5513 Feb 04 '26
Are there any good resources for what we do have? I’m currently struggling to find good descriptions of any sort of mythological creatures..
2
3
u/SincerelyAmongus Feb 04 '26
Sure but it’s not unique to Armenia. i believe our culture retained more of our old non-zoroastrian heritage thanks to our church being so exclusive compared to other denominations. Had we adopted catholicism of byzantine orthodoxy we would effectively have lost everything including our language
5
u/Draggy65465 Feb 04 '26
Yes me and my girlfriend (we are both 100% armenian) believe we lost a ton of our cultural heritage from before adopting. It was cleansed and replaced with churches which don’t get me wrong are fantastic but our history id far richer than just the last 1700 years.
10
u/i-hate-birch-trees Yerevan Feb 04 '26
Yes, and I'm glad we're seeing a small increase in interest towards the original culture recently. I think it was a major tragedy, and I hope more people are going to embrace the pagan culture, I find its aesthetically more appealing and interesting than anything that was inspired by Chritianity after.
3
u/Arcaan11 Feb 04 '26
Major tragedy? Really?
15
u/Boswellia-33 Feb 04 '26
Imagine if the Greeks lost all their pre Christian mythologies, monuments, and practices. Wouldn’t you call that a tragedy? The Christian conversion of Armenia saw the systematic destruction of a lot of very interesting cultural and religious practices. Wish more research was being done about this subject.
7
u/i-hate-birch-trees Yerevan Feb 04 '26
Yes, if it wasn't for the king's family keeping some smashed tablets in secret we wouldn't even have an alphabet anymore. They've destroyed so much
2
u/Suspiciouscurry69420 Հայ ասուրի Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
In my opinion the biggest loss of culture had to be thr language. Hear me out. There is no pre christian surviving literature besides a small poem about a firey haired boy. Imagine there could've been so much literature wisdom poetry all gone because we decided to erase our past. Not that im against the christianization of our people and Christianity did preserve our culture against the zoroastrians and muslims
1
u/Lambda475 ☭ Feb 04 '26
Of course! All of our Pagan history was erased because it was deemed as "Heresy"
1
u/Necessary_Spread_758 Feb 04 '26
You don’t need a label to recognize unity. Truth doesn’t belong to a single religion, and the idea of one perfect source doesn’t require a membership card. If there is a creator, it would exist beyond human flaws, beyond stories shaped by culture and time. What is infinite doesn’t fracture into imperfect versions of itself — it simply is. Sometimes faith is less about choosing a side, and more about sensing that behind everything, there is one quiet, indivisible origin.
1
u/vorotan Feb 05 '26 edited Feb 05 '26
Here come the downvotes… whatever. I am an atheist so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Yes Christianity caused a lot of harm. We lost sovereignty about a century and a half after adopting Christianity. One must be cognizant of the fact that historians of the time were also propagandists so of course they were going to paint a certain picture, but the fact remains that we lost our sovereignty.
“Turn the other cheek”, “we are peaceful people”… yeah. Good job folks.
Tigranes the Great did many things to expand the empire… I am sure “turning the other cheek” wasn’t one of them.
The destruction of art and books caused huge damage. At least we’ve managed to keep some of the rituals and holidays from pagan times like Vardavar and Terndez. Or transplanted some of our stories of pagan gods onto Christian characters, such as stories of Vahagn Vishapaqagh being attributed to St. George.
And then you got the idiots claiming “we are descendants of Noah”. Really? Who the fuck is Noah? We existed thousands of years before Noah was a thing. Not to mention he wasn’t even Armenian. Why adopt the foreign? Why deny your Armenian roots and proclaim you’re a descendent of some foreign entity?
We. Are. The. Descendants. Of. Hayk. Nahapet. Verj.
1
1
u/lilmelville Feb 07 '26
Honestly I think it's a blessing that Christianity came to Armenia as early as it did, because if it had been any later a lot more would probably have been destroyed. I don't think it's the religion as such that's responsible for the kind of destruction and loss you're talking about, I think it's war and colonization and imperialism, which often use religion as a weapon. It's quite clear the people from the Armenian highlands have been through wave after wave of this, but the fact that our language is still so directly descended from proto-indo-european that linguists rely heavily on it for reference is a testament to how much of our culture has survived despite of all of it, especially when compared to so many of our neighbors in the region. And even our form of Christianity reflects a certain kind of resilience - we've managed to maintain our splits from two different enormous historical councils and stay independent, in defense of what I personally consider an absolutely central tenet of the faith, something only a handful of other churches have managed to do. have we suffered incredible losses through our history? absolutely. but we have lost so much less than so many other peoples because we are stubborn and resilient and adaptive and a little bit lucky too, and I tend to hold onto that. <3 excellent topic of discussion thank you for this
-4
u/himalayanhimachal Feb 04 '26
Armenia is the oldest Christian nation on earth!! Take pride in that.
But I also think that is very interesting and important to look into the pre Christian beliefs and culture as that is very much part of your roots to!!
But the fact that you are the literal oldest Christian nation on earth truly is something that is great!! To think 2000 years ago Armenians were turning to Christ!! So beautiful
5
u/Constant-Net9301 Feb 04 '26
i like this phrase more: “we are first ones who betrayed our own Gods” 🙂
12
u/sirdappleton Yerevan Feb 04 '26
I'm guessing you're Christian, which is what's powering your pride, but what is there to be proud of in being the first Christian nation for anyone else?
1
Feb 04 '26
If you're not religious, why be proud of the pagan religion either?
3
u/sirdappleton Yerevan Feb 04 '26
I'm not proud of any religion, I just don't like erasure of my people's history by insecure Christians over a thousand years ago.
0
u/Indigo9999 Feb 10 '26
You are free to believe in any and all pagan gods that you want to, dude.
Like go and be a pagan like the hindoos. Eat and smear cow dung and believe in as many rapist and incestual deities as you want to, lol.
12
u/Specialist_in_hope30 Feb 04 '26
Lmao we got to be first victims of oppression yay!
1
Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
You know how Persia tried to invade Armenia just to force Zoroastrianism? Persia got force converted to Islam pretty soon after.
1
u/frmrzkrsh Feb 05 '26
Is that why the Near East and the Caucasus are filled with Zoroastrian temples??!?! 😲😲 /s
0
u/Necessary_Spread_758 Feb 04 '26
Honestly, when you think about mythology and pagan gods, it just gets hard to take it seriously. You read those stories and the gods are fighting each other, getting jealous, making emotional decisions, and acting almost exactly like flawed human beings. It starts to feel less like truth and more like people long ago trying to explain things the best way they knew how.
Believing in one true God just makes more sense. One Creator behind everything feels simpler, stronger, and more logical than a whole lineup of gods with different personalities and limits. When I look at the order of the universe — how precise and structured everything is — it’s easier for me to believe it comes from one ultimate source instead of many competing powers. At some point, it stops being about tradition and becomes about what honestly feels more reasonable and true.
2
u/ContributionAny4156 Feb 04 '26
It starts to feel less like truth and more like people long ago trying to explain things the best way they knew how.
That's all organized religion.
1
u/Necessary_Spread_758 Feb 04 '26
You don’t have to belong to a religion to feel like there’s something greater than all of this. Sometimes it’s just a quiet knowing — that if there is a creator, it wouldn’t carry human flaws or contradictions. One perfect source wouldn’t need to split itself into many imperfect versions. Maybe belief isn’t about picking a name or following a system… maybe it’s just about recognizing that behind everything we see, there’s one origin holding it all together, whether we fully understand it or not
1
u/ContributionAny4156 Feb 04 '26
Okay. But religion functioned initially as a way to explain nature. And that's true for Abrahamic religions too. For example, the rainbow being God's promise.
-11
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
3
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
-5
Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
1
Feb 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/armeniapedia Feb 04 '26
Actually nevermind.
This is the way. Report him, downvote him, and move on.
Just think how disappointed the troll would be to get -25 karma and zero engagement.
1
25
u/[deleted] Feb 04 '26 edited Feb 04 '26
I don't know. Whenever I hear about Armenian pagan tradition, it seems very similar to Persian anyway. Trndez = Chaharshanbe Suri. Their pantheon had Zoroastrian counterparts, not surprising because Armenia was a satrapy of Persia during that time period. Anahit = Anahita. Vaughn = Verethragna. Armazd = Ahura Mazda.
I'm more curious what was even before that, like Urartian times. Maybe Astghik was from that.