Christ as Charioteer: An Expanded Image in Early Armenian Literature

Abstract

Beginning with the perception of God as warrior in the Hebrew Bible, the article explores the image of God as charioteer in a spectrum of theophanic texts, both biblical and parabiblical, underlying Jewish apocalyptic traditions translated into Christian beliefs surrounding the Cross as means of heavenly ascent. Equating the Cross with the tetramorphic chariot-throne of God in Ezekiel’s visions, an interpretive tradition mediated primarily through Syriac Christianity and rooted in the Christology of the New Testament, Armenian interpreters expanded the tradition. A close reading of early Armenian texts conveying the reception and transmission of the imagery of Christ as charioteer shows an expansion to a point of reordering the chariot’s heavenly ascent to earthly descent, a divine visitation to the land of Armenia, thus driving the tradition to a sort of realized eschatology.