Regular readers will know that I have commissioned a gentleman whom I refer to as Mr. A to translate all the remains of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum. This work contains a series of ‘problems’ — differences between the gospels — and Eusebius’ ‘solutions’ to them. The problems ‘for Stephanus’ all come from either the start of the gospels, and usually deal with the geneaologies of Jesus. The remainder deal with differences between the endings of the gospels, including the multiple endings of Mark, found even then in the manuscripts. The work is lost, but an epitome survives, plus lots of fragments in Greek and Syriac catena-commentaries.
Today is a great day. Mr. A has today completed the first translation of the entire epitome into English, and intends to revise it all by the end of this week. After this, we start in on the fragments of the catenae. This week I went to Cambridge and found yet more fragments in various 17th century printed extracts, themselves taken from catenae.
So far the cost of translation has reached $1,800, which is quite a sum to pay out of my own pocket! But I hope that if I make the text available in a print-on-demand version online, that enough copies can be sold to recover this. I also invite donations; after all, the subject of the work should be of interest to an awful lot of people, whether Christian, atheist, or whatever.