Many of my projects commenced while I was still blogging at Thoughts on Antiquity. I’ve therefore mirrored these posts here, so that they are all in one place. Thanks for Chris Weimer for the export.
Month: October 2008
Feeling the crunch
I have a number of projects on the go to create English translations of material never previously translated or — in some cases — not even edited. The economic news here is now becoming so bad that it is starting to affect ordinary individuals. As a freelance, my income is a little uncertain anyway; 2009 may involve rather a lot of “non-earning” time, which is quite stressful. Rather worse news for me is that most of my “rainy day” savings were in the collapsed bank Icesave. (If about 1,000 readers would care to buy my CDROM of the Fathers, that would be very welcome right now!).
So I’m going to have to cut back somewhat. I was in the process of commissioning a translation of the Coptic fragments of Eusebius Quaestiones. This I will now postpone. I think that I can still afford the other three items I have on the go; the Greek of Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria’s Apologeticus Ad Imperatorem and Al-Majdalus Commentary on the Nicene Creed. I shall feel relieved when these complete, though! Other ideas that I’ve had in mind will now be put on hold until times improve.
As might be expected, all of this has led me to some reflections on the impermanence of life. I tend to place quite a bit of my faith in my savings, my ability to earn a living, and my confidence that my way of life will continue unchanged in a comfortable way. In the last couple of days, all this has looked like an illusion. But… is this not life? Wouldn’t the ascetic fathers simply smile and nod their heads?
I learn from the news reports that politicians are having to change every assumption, and think originally and inventively to deal with the crisis. Policies pursued for years suddenly turn out to be irrelevant, expensive luxuries. Events like these bring us to ourselves. They strip away the illusions in which we can so easily lose sight of what is going on. In this sense, they are God’s anti-septic. After all, all our money will mean nothing to us on the day we die.
At lunchtime today I was in a newsagent to buy a paper and a coke. I stood behind someone, whom I gradually realised must be mentally disabled in some way. But he stood there, forcing his reluctant body and mind to go through the process of buying some little purchase, of counting out money from his wallet. Clearly he found it hard to keep in mind how much a few dollars was; or what change he should expect.
Stood behind him, I felt a little more reality creep into my mind. My problem didn’t look so serious: one can always get more money, somehow. We’re all very fortunate, very blessed, that we don’t have disabilities that will never go away, as that man did.
Let’s keep our feet on the ground. Here we have no abiding city, and all our projects, efforts and dreams will end with the grave. Let’s make sure we cherish each day, and consider how we stand when we come before God.
Do the RC’s and Greek Orthodox own the fathers?
A lot of people seem to think so. Quite a few seem to imagine anyone interested in the Fathers must be One Of Them, or else on the road there by imperceptible degress. “On Being Protestant” at Dunelm Road leads us to “Why I am not a Catholic or East Orthodox“, by Scot McKnight. He’s bang on, too. Not all who say “Lord, Lord…”
Brepols Patrologia Orientalis reprints
I’m still working on Agapius, but wasn’t able to find a second-hand copy of part 2.2. Somewhat nervously, I ordered a copy from the Brepols website. I was nervous because reprints can be of very poor quality, as we all know.
Fortunately all was well. The reprint arrived promptly, and the Arabic and the French are crisp and clear; not bad for a text 100 years old! One of my rare family commitments prevented me doing anything with it over the weekend, but I hope to start scanning from it this weekend.
Al-Makin II
Satan’s Servants — the British Library — have sent me the microfilm of Ms. Or. 7564 on CD that I ordered, and indeed fairly quickly (which sort of suggests that they had it on disk already, and all they had to do was take my money).
The images are about what you’d expect. How usable they are I don’t yet know. Now I need an Arabist with time on their hands!
CSNTM in Cambridge
Last Friday I met with Jeff Hargis of the Centre for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. The team were staying at Tyndale House in Cambridge. Sadly I didn’t get the chance to meet Daniel B. Wallace, the director.
Jeff showed me the photographing setup that they were using. The camera was a very expensive digital SLR, a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III. This has a 21megapixel chip, and costs around $10,000.
The camera was on a tripod on the end of a horizontal pole, lens pointing down towards the book which was resting on the usual book rest. The tripod which had little spirit levels inside it to ensure that the camera was level in at least one direction. Since the pages of the book are at an angle sloping to the spine, this isn’t the end of the story, tho. A large black bag full of books was tied onto the other end of the horizontal pole; this was merely a simple counterweight to stop the camera pulling the tripod over!
On the same desk was a laptop — a MacBook, as it happened. This was running a piece of software (I think it was the bundled Digital Photo Professional) which interfaced to the camera through a bit of Canon supplied software. The camera could be controlled totally from the laptop; focusing, F-stops, white balance, etc. Most important was a preview moder, which just kept the lens open so that the team could see what the image would look like and move the book to get it square, etc.
The software also had an automatic white balance feature. They used a standard Kodak colour card, rested it on the page, pointed the camera at it, told the software which little colour square was white, and let it work out the rest.
Adjusting the book for each shot was a manual process, and needed two people; one to operate the laptop/camera, and one to adjust the book after each page was turned. They tended to photograph all the rectos, then all the versos, as I have done, and so had the same problem that I’ve encountered where the room light changes during the process, making the alternate final images different shades. They rechecked alignment etc after each shot, and usually would make a small manual adjustment. This meant that they spent rather longer on each manuscript than I ever have. The software gave them some grids on the screen to help with alignment, however.
They were not using a lighting rig, but relied on available light and the facilities of the camera to adjust the image. This was mainly because most of the libraries in which they photographed forced them to do this. Artificial light was preferred, simply because it didn’t change while shooting. In extreme cases they had taped black curtains over the window with duct tape to keep the sunlight out.
I wondered what the cost per image was, once all costs were taken into account. Jeff estimated around $3-4 per shot, averaged across the fairly large number of images taken.
The outputs could be pretty large. A TIF file of 60Mb per image, and a derived .JPG. The team give the host institution a stack of DVD’s containing both types of images, as is only fair.
Not all institutions will allow material to go on the web. CSNTM are comfortable with this, and no doubt this will change as libraries get less nervous of the web.
One important consequence of the photographing process is that they perform an inventory of the holdings of the institution. After all, they have to physically put their hands on the manuscripts. Not infrequently this reveals that the inventory is out of date; manuscripts may be there, but not listed. Worse, manuscripts that the host thinks they have may not! This happened in Cambridge, where one of the colleges discovered two manuscripts were missing and could not be found! A determined search over a number of days eventually recovered the two. Thus the CSNTM visit in fact helped ensure that the libraries had what they thought they did.
The process of obtaining access is one in which I was very interested, and I regretted that I could not talk to Dan Wallace, who handles this. Building relationships with people in the Greek Orthodox church, writing letters in the right language every six months, and simply building a reputation are at the bottom of it. I have done some of this myself, and it is tiring and dispiriting work. I can only imagine the efforts that Dan Wallace has put into this.
Over lunch (for which he paid — thank you!) at a pub on the river, Jeff told me about their expeditions. They’ve started to make progress in Cambridge, although as yet the University Library and Trinity College have refused to allow them to photograph their manuscripts. Sadly these institutions would neither allow CSNTM to photograph, nor do it themselves; they would only photograph the mss themselves, and only if paid many times the real cost to do so. To them I say: Gentlemen, that is not what we taxpayers expect of you in return for our money.
But other colleges had been far more sensible. A number of other colleges (I don’t recall which) had been happy to have their NT mss holdings professionally photographed for free, and mss guru Christopher de Hamel lent them parts of his private manuscript collection.
The process of photographing is an iterative one, and no doubt they will be back in Cambridge again. The team were on their way to Oxford when I left, to start the process of building relationships there.
Part of what Dan Wallace does is to do presentations to bodies such as churches in the US to help raise funds. They also produce short films on DVD of their expeditions, and Jeff kindly gave me a copy of their DVD of the Patmos expedition. As yet they have not been able to get onto US TV. But in some ways this process of outreach is a valuable thing. It helps to make the general public aware of the manuscript collections of the world, and their vulnerability, and their value. As such this part of their work benefits every person working with mss.
My thanks to Jeff and Dan and CSNTM for a very interesting and enjoyable visit!