Month: May 2009

More notes on QuickGreek

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m continuing work on a piece of software to help me translate from ancient Greek to English.  One problem has been the time taken before it finishes starting.  When it takes 10-20 seconds on startup, just to load the various dictionaries, you quickly weary of it.  If you want to look up two words, you find it very annoying.  Since I am running it repeatedly, to test things, I’ve got very weary of it.

I’ve now got the load time down to a couple of seconds.  This is still rather longer than I like, but obviously a lot better.  The downside of this is that it takes marginally longer to parse each word.   I tend to work with only a few hundred words at a time, so this is not too onerous.  The processing time for my test text (of 386 words) is about a second, which is acceptable if not wonderful.

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New Hypatia movie

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There’s going to be is a movie made about Hypatia, the late fourth-century Neo-Platonist and friend of Synesius who was lynched after venturing into Alexandrian politics.

Let’s welcome it.  It should stir up interest in late antiquity, particularly if they can make the Byzantine world glow with light and colour.  It doesn’t really matter if a shoal of false impressions get created.  What we need to think of is the impressionable teenagers staring open-mouthed at the screen and thinking “Wow! I want to know more about that.”  Some will go on to become academics, more will buy books about the subject, and a few will get rich in the stock market and fund archaeological expeditions.

Looks as if Cyril of Alexandria is being cast as the baddie — he’s going to be played by Actor-With-An-Arab-Name (i.e. Not One Of Us), while Hypatia will be played by the distinctly anglo-saxon Rachel Weisz.  But I can live with that, if the directors can; some of those Greeks may get quite shirty if a favourite saint is demonised, and they can be aggressive when they put their minds to it!

Update: The movie is called Agora and has already been made. A trailer exists here; with all the titles in Italian!  Thanks to Christopher Ecclestone for the link.

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Eusebius, Quaestiones ad Stephanum/Marinum under way again

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It seems like ages since I last reported on this project to produce a professional-standard English translation of the Gospel questions and solutions of Eusebius of Caesarea.  The translation of the Greek was completed early this year, but needed revision. 

The translator of the Greek has now begun the process of revision of the translation.  This was definitely necessary, as the process of translating all the fragments from catenae revealed areas where the text of the main witness was defective, or had not been correctly understood.  So it seems possible that by the autumn the Greek will be completely done.

The Syriac and Coptic fragments begin to seem as if they will never be completed.  It seems impossible for me to find anyone who will undertake to do them, and then actually do it!  I may have to publish what I have, and just accept the fact that I can’t get this done.  Shame.

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Nau’s version of the Syriac life of Shenouda now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve hastily uploaded my translation of the short Syriac life of Shenouda, published by Nau, here.  I really need to add a short preface, but I just don’t have the time at this moment.

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More on Shenouda and the “Two Ways”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Arabic life of Shenouda is briefly discussed in van de Sandt and Flusser’s The Didache: Its Jewish Sources and its Place in Early Judaism and Christianity(Fortress, 2002), chapter 2, pp. 66-67.  Their note is so useful that I think we had better see it, as we start to look at this text:

THE ARABIC LIFE OF SHENOUTE

Shenoute (Sinuthius) was an abbot of the famous White Monastery of Atripe in Upper Egypt.43 When he died around 466 at the age of 118, his life was written by his successor, the abba Besa. In the form of a memorial speech, Besa idolizes the personality of his great teacher and idealizes his achievements. The account, which was thus a hagiography rather than an ordinary biography, was written in Sahidic Coptic and served as a source for translations into Syriac, Arabic and the Bohairic dialect. The text in the Bohairic dialect dates from the Middle Ages and was first published by Emile Amelineau 44 in the late nineteenth century and again by Iohannes Leipoldt in 1906.45 For our present study, the Arabic text of the Life of Shenoute is of significance because only this translation includes a version of the Two Ways. After the publication of the Arabic text as a whole by E. Amelineau 46 in 1888, it was L.E. Iselin who identified the very beginning of this hagiography as a form of the Two Ways instruction.47

The Two Ways form in the Arabic Life of Shenoute, like the Apostolic Church Order, leaves out the materials which are presented in Doctr./Did 4:9-14. This does not mean, however, that the Arabic version was indebted in this respect to ACO. For ACO (and the Epitome for that matter) omits the Way of Death passage as well, which in an abbreviated shape is present in the Arabic version. Another outstanding feature in this design of the Two Ways is that the “te/kvov” sayings are not limited to the passage that corresponds with Doctr./Did 3.1-6. In the Life of Shenoute, the hearers/readers are addressed as “my son” from the phrase which runs parallel to Doct./Did 2:6 and this stylistic device (with exceptions in the parallel passages to3:9-10; 4 :7) is maintained as far as the saying analoguous to 4:8. However, the distinctive repetitive pattern which characterizes all five literary units in Doctr./Did 3:1-6 is lacking here. Finally, the present form of the writing, referring to “Jesus Christ” (cf. the parallel item in Doctr./Did 2:5 and, possibly, in 4:14c) and “Jesus'” (cf. id., 4:7), shows some obvious instances of Christian editing.

Amelineau supposed that the Arabic text of the Life of Shenoute is a faithful translation from the Sahidic Coptic original. Modern scholarship, however, no longer accepts thus view and believes that the Arabic Life represents an adaptation and elaboration of the Sahidic Coptic archetype.48 The revision may date from the late seventh century. Besa (or “Visa” in the Arabic version), on the other hand, composed his original in the second half of the fifth century. It is clear that these data concerning the process of tradition and transmission do not inspire confidence with regard to a well-founded judgment on the earlier shape of the present text. This much is clear, however, that the monks in the White Monastery in Atripe had a Coptic version of the Two Ways at their disposal.49 This version was not a secondary elaboration of this instruction, like, for example, the Apostolic Church Order. For despite the additions, omissions, and alterations, the Arabic text has many terms in common with the Doctr./Did 1:1 -5:150 and these agreements largely occur in the same sequence. The Coptic Two Ways treatise as seen in the Arabic translation betrays a feature of its primitiviness in omitting the evangelical section of Did 1:35b-2:1. It may thus be considered a witness to a Two Ways form that circulated independently of the Didache and was closely related to the one in the Doctrina.

43 For the following, see Quasten, Patrology 3, 185-187; Altaner-Stuiber, Patrologie, 268-269; Bell, Besa: The Life of Shenoute, 1-35 (Introduction); Davis, ‘The Didache and early Monasticism’, 353-358.
44 Memoires 4.1, 1-91: ‘Vie de Schnoudi’.
45 We had only access to the following publication: Leipoldt, Sinuthii Vita Bohairice (1951). A Latin translation (completed by L.T. Lefort) is found in Wiesmann. Sinuthii Vita Bohairice (1951).
46Memoires. 4.1: Monuments, 289-478 and for the Two Ways, see esp. 291-296.
47Eine bisher unbekannte Version des ersten Teiles der “Apostellehre” (1895) with a German translation from A. Heusler. An English translation of the Life’s Two Ways section (“from the rendition of the French translation by Emile C. Amelineau”) is found in Davis, ‘The Didache and early Monasti­cism’. 365-367.
48 See Bell. Besa: The Life of Shenoute. 4. For the view of Amelineau. cf. Memoires 4.1: Monuments. I.II-LVIII.
49 Cf. also Davis. ‘The Didache and early monasticism’. 35 8.
50 Goodspeed traced seventy-seven corresponding items; cf. ‘The Didache’. 237.

It is pleasing to learn from the footnotes that even these professional academics had difficulty locating copies of Amelineau’s work!  I think that there are copies in Cambridge, and I will try to obtain a copy when I go up there in July.

The scribe Besa is called “Visa” in the Syriac life published by Nau which I have translated and will put online.  This I found slightly confusing, while I was translating, since I was also making a claim against the French National Library on my credit card at the time.

Thanks to Brandon W for letting me have a copy of this, in response to my previous post.

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The “Two Ways” in the Arabic Life of Shenouda

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We’re all familiar with the material common to the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, known as the Two Ways.  However it seems from a note at CCEL that this material also appears in the Arabic version of a hagiographical text called the “Life of Shenouda the Archimandrite”.  This text exists in multiple Coptic and Syriac versions as well, all somewhat different.

From this source I learn the following:

The Life of St. Shenouda was recorded by his close disciple St. Besa, shortly after his repose. It was done in Sahidic Coptic but only the Bohairic translation survived intact in a 10th century AD manuscript. Some Sahidic fragments have been identified and published. There is also, a more expanded version extant in Arabic as well as one similar to the Bohairic surviving in Ethiopic. The Coptic Text was edited by Dr. Johannes Leipoldt from Vatican Copt. LXVI, ff. 19r-82r (CML 55C). It was translated in French by Prof. E. C. Amelineau, in latin by Prof. Weitzmann (?), and in English by Dr. D. N. Bell. The excerpts provided below are from the English translation.

…
Bibliography

Abd an-Nur Seifin, History of the Great Saint Anba Shenouda the Archimandrite. Alexandria 1959 (In Arabic)
Amelineau, E. C., Les Moines Egyptiens: Vie de Schenoudi. Paris: Leroux, 1898
Amelineau, E. C., Oeuvres de Schenoudi: Texte Copte et Traduction Francaise. 2 vols. Paris: Leroux, 1907-14
Basset, R. Le Synaxaire Arabe Jacobite. Patrologia Orientalis vol 17 no. 3, Paris, 1923 (Entry under the 7th of Abib)
Bell, D. N. The Life of Shenoute by Besa. Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1983
Bell, D. N., Shenoute the Great: The Struggle with Satan. Cistercian Studies, 21, 1986, 177-85
Bethune-Baker, J. F., The Date of the Death of Nestorius: Schenute, Zacharias, Evagrius. Journal of Theological Studies, 9, 1908, 601-5
Brakke, D. Shenute: On Cleaving to Profitable Things. Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica 20, 1989, 115-41
Burmester, O. The Homilies or Exhortation of the Holy Week Lectionary. Museon 45, 1932, 21-70
Butcher, E. L., The Story of the Church of Egypt. vol. 1 London, 1897.
Chassinat, E. Le Quatrieme Livre des Entretiene et Epitres de Shenouti, MIFAO v.23Cairo, 1911
Emmel, S., Shenoute’s Literary Corpus Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University 1993

A look in Graf’s Geschichte der christilichen arabischen Literatur would give more info on the Arabic version, I suspect. My copy is at home, tho.

A search on Gallica.bnf.fr reveals “Une version syriaque inédite de la vie de Schenoudi, par F. Nau,… – E. Leroux (Paris) – 1900“. This includes Syriac text and a French translation (about 12 short pages in length). It also draws a tree of the relationship of the various versions.  In the introduction, Nau says that Amelineau published the Coptic life and an Arabic life, with French translation, of which the copies above were reprints, in Memoires publies par les membres de la mission archaeologique francaise au Caire, tome IV.

Unfortunately, despite the industry of Amelineau, none of these versions are online.  This is a pity, since we could usefully have a translation of it.

I’ve translated into English the Syriac version published by Nau, and will upload it soon.  But it does not contain the two ways.

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Notes on John the Lydian, De Mensibus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Looking at the downloadable PDF, I find book 4 of De Mensibus (on the months) starts on p. 127 (p.50 of the printed text).  It is devoted to discussing events in the Roman calendar, month by month, so starts with January.  February starts on p. 138;  March on p.143; April on p.153; May on p.163; June on p.169; July on p.171; August on p.178; September on p.182; October on p.184; November on p.185; and December on p.186.  So the whole work is not very extensive.

IV.41 reads:

On day 11, the kalends of April, a pine tree is carried into the Palatine by the tree-bearers.  But the emperor Claudius instituted these these ferias, a man of such justice in judgement that…

This event looks like the carrying of the sacred tree into the temple of Cybele.  That the festival was created by Claudius again indicates the lack of Attis-related events in Republican times.

The short entry on December does not seem to mention Christmas, nor Saturnalia, nor any solar festival.

I can’t find any translations of De Mensibus, although a 1983 English translation of his work in 3 books on the Roman Magistrates exists, and a French edition and translation of the same work was made in 2006.  An Italian version of another of his works.  I’ve asked in the BYZANS-L if anyone is working on this text, and also emailed Prof. Jacques Schamp, who did the French translation of the Magistrates book.

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Using X-Rays on the Herculaneum scrolls

Posted on by Roger Pearse

When Vesuvius went pop in 79 AD, the lava flows buried the city of Herculaneum.  One of the houses buried contained a library of papyrus rolls, mostly containing otherwise lost works by the epicurean philosopher Philodemus.  When rediscovered, they were in the state of charred logs, unreadable and very difficult to unroll.

Now Brent Seales is going to see if he can read two of the charred scrolls without trying to unroll them.  (They tend to fall to dust when unrolled, you see).

Brent Seales, the Gill professor of engineering in UK’s computer science department, will use an X-Ray CT scanning system to collect interior images of the scrolls’ rolled-up pages. Then, he and his colleagues hope to digitally “unroll” the scrolls on a computer screen so scholars can read them.

“It will be a challenge because today these things look more like charcoal briquets than scrolls,” Seales said last week. “But we’re using a non-invasive scanning system, based on medical technology, that lets you slice through an object and develop a three-dimensional data set without having to open it, just as you would do a CT scan on a human body.”

The two scrolls that Seales and his team will work on are stored at the French National Academy in Paris. The UK group will spend July working there.

Their system was developed at UK through the EDUCE project, or Enhanced Digital Unwrapping for Conservation and Exploration, which Seales launched through a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Experts say that if the UK system works as well as hoped, it could provide a safe new way to decipher and preserve more scrolls from Herculaneum, as well as other ancient books, manuscripts and documents that are too fragile to be opened.

“No one has yet really figured out a way to open them,” says Roger Macfarlane, a professor of classics at Brigham Young University who also has worked on scrolls from Herculaneum. “If Brent is successful it would be a huge, potentially monumental step forward.”

Seales admits that there are hurdles, the biggest being the carbon-based ink thought to have been used on the scrolls. He says that since the papyrus in the scrolls was turned to carbon by the fury of Vesuvius, it might be impossible to visually separate the writing from the pages, even with powerful computer programs.

“The open question is, will we be able to read the writing?” Seales said. “There is a chance that we won’t be able to do it with our current machine, and that we’ll have to re-engineer some things. But if that’s the case, that’s what we will do.”

The full story is here.

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Latin translation of John Lydus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was looking at the edition of John the Lydian, here.  I had not realised that the Bonn Scriptores Historiae Byzantinae editions came with Latin translations at the bottom of the page.  This makes things much easier for those of us whose Latin is much better than our Greek. 

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