WORDS BELONGING TO THE SEMANTIC GROUP “RELIGION AND BELIEFS” IN THE BOOK “THE REFUTATION OF THE SECTS” BY YEZNIK KOGHBATSI

Abstract

“The Refutation of the Sects” by Yeznik Koghbatsi is one of the famous creations of the
Armenian literature of the 5th century, which is distinguished not only by its original content,
but also by its linguistic qualities. In this study, we wrote out the words and phrases belonging
to the semantic group “religion and beliefs” from four chapters of the book, identifying word-
building, etymological and semantic features of these words and terms. The semantic field of
religious words is very closely related to the units of lexical thematic groups “rights”, “people
and social relations”, “nature and natural phenomena”. The analysis of religious words shows
the natural semantic transitions of lexical units from one group to another due to changes in
human thinking, the transition from pagan polytheism, pantheism to monotheism. The basic
concepts of this lexical group are Indo-European words, for example, աստուած, դի, հաւատ,
մեղ, ձօն, տօն, ոգի, to which Iranian, Greek and Syrian borrowings were later added:
դէն, մազդեզն, քէշ, մեհեան, բագին, բարսմունք, յաշտ, մոգ, դեւ, դրաշտ, հրէշ, եկեղեցի,
հերետիկոս, կաթողիկոս, եպիսկոպոս, քրիստոնեայ, հեթանոս, սատանայ, սրովբէ,
քուրմ, etc. Many religious terms, phraseological units, phrases of the Ancient Armenian lan-
guage presented in “The Refutation of the Sects” by Yeznik Koghbatsi were handed down to
both Middle Armenian literary language and Modern one, enriching the vocabulary at all its
levels.