Month: February 2009

Recreational use of a nymphaeum in ancient times

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few weeks ago the Antiochepedia site mentioned that an unspecified Arabic source 1 suggested that skin diseases could be cured by bathing in the town water supply.  This rather horrible idea seemed unusual; but I wonder.

When I was in Leptis Magna, I saw the nymphaeum there.  The temple was essentially a facade onto a massive concrete storage tank, which collected water from the rivers and stored it for use by the city.  Temples of the nymphs are associated with springs, and sources of water in general, and thus with the urban water supply.

This leads me to wonder if this is what we are looking at here in Antioch as well; the miraculous supply of life-giving water being associated with the gods — the nymphs, here — and curative powers associated with the latter?  If so, the procedure above would make more sense.

Note: 1.  Antiochepedia doesn’t say what it is, other than ‘Guidi’, but a google search on Antioch and Guidi says that this seems to be a short early Islamic text, much of it fanciful.  I. Guidi, ‘una descrizione araba di Antiocheia’, Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei, Cl. di scienze morali, storiche e filolgiche, ser. 5, vol 6, pp. 137-161 (1897).  It’s only 24 pages, half of which at least is an Italian translation.  I wish this existed in English.  I wonder what it would cost to translate.  Not a lot, I would guess.

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Help with some French

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m trying to understand a passage of Agapius.  Here is the French translation: can anyone tell me what it means?

Il faut que nous sachions d’abord que la terre est ronde comme une boule; son centre cul­tivé et habité représente une élévation; ses côtés touchent les quatre parties qui sont situées en bas; à cause de son élévation le centre est plus rapproché du cours du soleil dans la partie orientale de la terre, c’est-à-dire la région de la terre brûlée. A mesure que l’homme passe et avance par son intelli­gence et sa pensée jusqu’à la région septentrionale vers les extrêmes limites de la terre et l’examine attentivement, il trouve que l’augmentation de la longueur du jour s’y fait constamment à la montée du soleil sur la voie sep­tentrionale des douze signes du Zodiaque au signe du Cancer, et l’augmen­tation de la longueur de la nuit – à le descente du soleil au Zodiaque du sud; il le percevra par son intelligence et le comprendra.

 

It is necessary to know first that the earth is round like a ball;  its cultivated and inhabited centre represents an elevation;  its sides touch the four parts which are located below;  because of its elevation the centre is closer to the course of the sun in the Eastern part of the earth, i.e. the area of the scorched earth. As a man moves and advances in his mind and thought from the northern area towards the extreme limits of the earth and examines it attentively, he finds that the increase in the length of the day ??? there constantly from the rise of the sun on the northern way of the twelve signs of the zodiac to the sign of Cancer, and the increase of the length of the night – to the descent of the sun to the Zodiac of the south;  he will perceive this by his intelligence and will understand it. 

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Abu Al-Majdalus, “Commentary on the Nicene Creed” – now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some months ago I obtained images of two manuscripts from the Oriental Library at St. Joseph University in Beirut, containing a 15th century and 18th century text of the Commentary on the Nicene Creed of the 10th century Arabic Christian writer, al-Majdalus.  I then commissioned Samuel Noble to transcribe and translate this work into English.

The transcription and translation are now online, and may be downloaded in Word format from here.  I place them both in the public domain — do whatever you like with them.  At the weekend I will reformat them into HTML and place that in my collection of additional Fathers.

An article here by Dr. Khalil Samir gives background info on the text.  My own interest was in the citations of Greek writers which it contains, although it does not contain one of Zoroaster, as I had hoped.

PS: Nick Norelli has created a PDF with the two in parallel columns.  It’s here.

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Translations that ought to exist

Posted on by Roger Pearse

What untranslated ancient texts deserve to be translated?  Here is a list of texts that I have thought about translating, which I feel ought to exist in English.  Of course there are many others that probably deserve attention too — these are merely ones where I have given some serious thought to it.  It’s a wish-list, in a way.

The fragments of Philip of Side.*  He wrote a massive universal Chronicle which is now lost.  But there’s a miscellaneous manuscript in the Barocci collection in the Bodleian which has excerpts from various texts, including a biggish chunk of Philip.  It was published a century ago with German translation.  It includes an otherwise unknown chunk of Papias.  But surely we’d like to have this?  Not so expensive to do, either.  Maybe more chunks exist in other mss?

Gelasius of Cyzicus.  His history of the Council of Nicaea in three books has a critical edition in the Berlin GCS series, but no modern language translation.  It’s the only text on Nicaea written within a century not translated.

Cyril of Alexandria, Contra Julianum.  Massive 10 book refutation of Julian the Apostate.  Should be just as interesting as Origen, Contra Celsum.  Probably 100,000 words, or say $10,000 to get translated?

Cyril of Alexandria, De recta fide.  “You need to think like this” says Cyril, in three works of this title.  A German translation exists of the first.  They’re all crucial to understanding the Nestorian split.  Not that long, really.

Eusebius of Caesarea, De Pascha*; Commentary on Luke*.  Two short fragmentary works.  I’ll probably try and do these.

Eusebius of Caesarea, Commentary on the Psalms.  Massive text with no proper text available.  Someone should attack this.

Chrysostom, Against the Jews*.  Wendy Pradels found part of Oration 2, which had been lost.  This has been published with German translation, but never in English.  The rest has twice been translated, but offline.  We really need a good quality, non-PC version.  He also did a sermon against Jews and Pagans, which needs doing.

Chrysostom, On the Nativity*.  Two sermons, often referred to at Christmas time.  One has been translated but is only available in a PhD thesis.  The other not.  Probably wouldn’t cost too much to do.  Only a Migne text available.

Al-Makin.  Big 13th century Arabic Christian chronicle.  We urgently need the bit about Josephus from it.  The text has never been edited or translated.

Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum.  A massive who’s who of Syriac Christianity.  Amazing that this hasn’t been done.  Probably another $10,000 job, but… I have great difficulty getting translators from Syriac.

Syriac fragments of Eusebius from the Mingana library.  I have photos of these.  Not very long; but same problem as Bar Hebraeus.

Thomas of Edessa, On the Nativity, On Easter.  The text of the first was published in a thesis with Latin translation.  I have photographs of both from the Mingana.  Probably each is around 10,000 words, or about $1,000 for a translation.  The first is interesting for a reference to 6th century sun-worship in Syria; and if we’re going to do the first, we should do the second.  But… I can’t get translations made from Syriac.

Quite a list, isn’t it?  How to proceed…!

UPDATE: 9th February 2013.  Coming back to this, I find that we have made some progress.  I have added an asterisk to items that have been done, either by myself or Maria D. (see comments).  Which is good news, actually!

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Courting the mystery – a new patristics blog

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Courtesy of the Patristics Carnival, I have just discovered Kevin and his blog, here, although he has been blogging since 2007 at least.  It’s good to meet someone who has the same interest in G.W.H.Lampe’s lexicon of patristic Greek as I do.  There doesn’t seem to be any way to contact the author, tho.

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Playing with the Google Greek->English translator

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ekaterini Tsalampouni linked to this blog from her Greek language website.  I wanted to know what she said, so I copied it and pasted it into Google language tools.  The result was really very good:

Κατάλογος ψηφιοποιημένων χειρογράφων.

Από το ιστολόγιο του Roger Pearse πληροφορούμαστε για την ύπαρξη στο διαδίκτυο καταλόγου ψηφιοποιημένων χειρογράφων του Μεσαίωνα (μεταξύ των οποίων και αρκετών της Αγίας Γραφής. Για να βρεθείτε στη βάση δεδομένων, πατήστε εδώ. Για να διαβάσετε τη σχετική ανάρτηση του Roger Pearse, πατήστε εδώ.

became

List of digitized manuscripts

From the blog of Roger Pearse information on the existence of online digitized catalog of medieval manuscripts (among them several of the Holy Scripture. To get to the database, click here. To read the suspension of Roger Pearse, click here.

What more could you reasonably want?

How would it deal with patristic Greek, I wondered?  There used to be a website at aegean.gr that had PDF’s of Greek texts from the Patrologia Graeca, but it has since vanished.  However I did have a PDF or two, so I grabbed a bit of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, and pasted it in.   Well, from

Κωνσταντίνου ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ Χριστῷ, τῷ αἰωνίῳ βασιλεῖ, βασιλέως, υἱοῦ Λέοντος τοῦ σοφωτάτου καὶ ἀειμνήστου βασιλέως, λόγος, ἡνίκα τὸ τοῦ σοφοῦ Χρυσοστόμου ἱερὸν καὶ ἅγιον σκῆνος ἐκ τῆς ὑπερορίας ἀνακομισθὲν ὥσπερ τις πολύολβος καὶ πολυέραστος ἐναπετέθη θησαυρὸς τῇ βασιλίδι ταύτῃ καὶ ὑπερλάμπρῳ τῶν πόλεων. Εὐλόγησον πάτερ.

you get

Κωνσταντίνου ἐν αὐτῷ τῷ Χριστῷ, τῷ αἰωνίῳ King βασιλέως, son Λέοντος of σοφωτάτου he ἀειμνήστου βασιλέως reason, the Wise ἡνίκα his sacred Chrysostom he scenes from the Holy ὑπερορίας anakomisthen osper the πολύολβος he πολυέραστος ἐναπετέθη treasure τῇ βασιλίδι ταύτῃ he ὑπερλάμπρῳ cities. Πάτερ blessed.

No good, in other words.  But… then I thought, is this to do with accentuation?  What happens if I remove accents?  If I turn Πάτερ into Πατερ?  Sure enough “Πάτερ blessed” became “Blessed father”!

I’m going to experiment a bit further, and see if stripping off the accents does the trick.  What do we need to do, to make this work, I wonder?  Without any accents, we get:

Κωνσταντινου εν αυτω τω Χριστω, τω αιωνιω βασιλει, βασιλεως, υιου Λεοντος του σοφωτατου και αειμνηστου βασιλεως, λογος, ηνικα το του σοφου Χρυσοστομου ιερον και αγιον σκηνος εκ της υπεροριας ανακομισθεν ωσπερ τις πολυολβος και πολυεραστος εναπετεθη θησαυρος τη βασιλιδι ταυτη και υπερλαμπρω των πολεων. Εὐλογησον πατερ.

Which becomes:

Constantine in Christ afto meantime, meanwhile eternal king, king, son of Leon and sofotatou late king, why, inika the Chrysostom of the wise and sacred AGION scenes from the yperorias anakomisthen osper the polyolvos polyerastos enapetethi treasure and the identity and vasilidi yperlampro cities. Blessed father.

Not quite there, is it?  Interestingly logos = reason in accentuated form, and =’why’ in unaccentuated form.  What am I doing wrong?

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The lost libraries of Timbuktu

Posted on by Roger Pearse

One evening last week I happened to see part of a BBC4 TV programme, The lost libraries of Timbuktu:

Aminatta Forna tells the story of legendary Timbuktu and its long hidden legacy of hundreds of thousands of ancient manuscripts. With its university founded around the same time as Oxford, Timbuktu is proof that the reading and writing of books have long been as important to Africans as to Europeans.

I couldn’t watch this programme for long — too much left-wing or “blacks are wonderful” propaganda, and not much hard information at all.

However I did learn from it that there is a trove of hand-written books in Timbuktu.  They all stem from the Moslem invasion of West Africa in the middle ages.   The oldest are 13th century.  The older books were in Arabic; the more recent ones in tribal languages, written in Arabic script.  The latter were naturally preferred by the modern holders of the books.  During the French period — the only period of civilised rule it has ever known — an unspecified number were rescued and carried off to an unspecified destination (we are invited to consider this as an “indignity”!).  Doubtless they are in the French National Library, and probably properly catalogued too, although this was not said.  Wild estimates of the number of such books were tossed around; anything up to 700,000 was mentioned, although this seems unlikely.  We saw a desktop scanner being used to digitise a page.

There was lots of talk about “riches” of books.  But… what precisely do these texts contain?  How many are of what age?  This I could not learn.

I found online a Moslem Timbuktu Educational Foundation — based in California, as it seems the “riches of African culture” don’t extend to adequate internet connections.  They claim to own the manuscripts.  The site solicits a donation of $100 to preserve and translate each manuscript — although the contact form doesn’t work, and the one and only newsletter is dated to 2003.  The site also is infuriating vague, but gives a little more:

The manuscripts cover diverse subjects: mathematics, chemistry, physics, optics, astronomy, medicine, history, geography, Islamic sciences and traditions of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), government legislation and treaties, jurisprudence and much more.

Yes?  So, which authors?  Which texts?  Is there a catalogue?  And… can’t they get some money off the oil-rich states, being good Moslems and all?  (I certainly would, in their shoes).

The BBC is to be commended for commissioning a programme on manuscripts.  Someone there should be shot for making a piece of political agitprop instead.  A wasted opportunity, then; but still good to see manuscripts on the box.  More please.

PS: The Washington Post has a much better article on all this here.  Manuscripts are 16-18th century.  Some of the mss are online at the Library of Congress here.  See also this article.

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