Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 7, 1896.djvu/135

Rh into prose-verse; just as, in the thirteenth century, a Spanish Jew, Ibn Khizdai, turned the non-Christian Arabic recension into a Hebrew prose-poem. Of this poem or rythmic prose recension made by Arhakel, there are manuscripts both in the Bodleian and in the British Museum. At the foot of the text I have given a few variants of the Armenian story as preserved in this poem of Arhakel; but it is clear that the text which he followed was the same as that which we have in the Armenian Menologia.

Now when it became man, the word of God chose twelve disciples who were also named apostles, and it sent them into all the world to preach the kingdom of God. And the land of India fell by lot to the Apostle Thomas, who departed thither to preach Christ. And there he worked many miracles with power of the all-holy Spirit; he built churches, and ordained priests and deacons. And he himself, having fought a good fight, died in Christ. But that land stood by the preaching of the holy apostle for a long time; yet at last idolatry once more began to prevail; and there rose up a king great and victorious in his might, by name Abener. And he aroused persecution against the Christians; and many champions of the faith were martyred by him with all sorts of tortures, men and women, old and young, and thus won the unfading crown from Christ our God. Now this proud king Abener had no