Peoples of the Book

When Constantine the Philosopher is forced to defend his new Slavonic translation of the scriptures, he draws on his extensive historical knowledge to point out than in centuries past, the bible was written in many languages other than Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.  "We on our part know of many peoples who have books and give praise to God each in its own tongue." he says in Kliment's Life and Acts of Constantine, "Such peoples, it is known, are the Armenians, the Persians, the Abzags, the Ivers, the Sugds, the Goths, the Tirsians, the Hazaras, the Arabs, the Egyptians, the Syrians, and many more."

Its quite interesting that many of these groups whom he mentions were considered heretical.  The Goths had their own translation of the bible, by St. Ulfilas, an Arian Christian who conceived of a script for the Gothic language which mixed Greek letters with runes (looking a little like cyrillic).  These books were mostly destroyed by the Trinitarian Christians throughout the dark ages (although Gothic continued to be spoken in parts of the Crimea).  The Persian and Syrian Christians had broken from the Orthodox church in the Nestorian and Chalcedonian schisms.  Armenia and Egypt, nations which played an important role in the early spread of Christianity, also had separate church structures.

By the Ivers, I assume he means the Georgians, and the Sugds would be the Sogdians of Central Asia, who practiced a Manichean-influenced Christianity.  Its interesting that he names all these nations as people who "have books" (i.e. one or more of the Gospels) regardless of their perceived orthodoxy or lack thereof.  He seems to be holding up the heterogeneity of pre-Nicene or "pre-Ecumenical" Christianity as a strength.  This fits with the view expressed by Theophylact Ochridski, which holds the age of the apostles and church fathers to be superior to recent centuries.  The first through fourth centuries saw Christianity spread across all three continents of the Old World, influencing all literate cultures and even going hang in hand with the creation of new writing systems (largely the ones Constantine lists - Georgian, Armenian, Gothic, and Coptic were all created by Christian scholars).  In the 6th-9th centuries, Christianity had largely not spread further, but had divided against itself and lost ground to Islam (in Asia, Africa and Spain) and Paganism (in Northern and Eastern Europe).  

In this sense, Constantine could be called an Evangelical Christian.  Not that he performed charismatic rituals or encouraged speaking in tongues, but he believed in spreading the teachings of the Gospels, which he considered to contain true wisdom.  This is of course the definition of evangelizing.  He believed that the Church should not stand aloof from those who do not accept (that is, fail to understand) Christianity, but should go to them, engage them in terms they can understand, convince them, and make committed, intellectually adroit christians out of them.  This is what the early church did as it spread outward through the pagan mediterranean world of late antiquity.  By endorsing those Christians of past centuries who spread the faith in new languages and letters, he implicitly condemns those who, by insisting on dogma (an idea of truth which is shaped by a particular language,) drove many Christian nations away from the Orthodox-Catholic Church.

Now, I have been wondering about two of the names here:  the Abzags and the Tirsians.  At first i thought the Abzags could be the Alans/Ossetians/Sarmatians (since their word for language is "aevzag", or according to this Russian site, "abzag").  This site mentions the Abzags as predecessors to the Abkhaz people, who are southern Caucasian, not "Scythian" (i.e. northern Iranian).  But I have no idea who the Tirsians could be.  Tiras is a son of Japheth in Old Testament genealogy, so Constantine may be referring to some nation that claims descent from them.  The Dniestr river was once called Tiras (hence the city Tiraspol), but I have never heard of a literate Christian nation existing in this area before the time of St. Cyril.  This area is part of Moldova now but it seems unlikely that Constantine was referring to Vlachs.