Month: November 2009

More from the Chronicle of Zuqnin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of days ago I wrote a post on this 8th century Syriac world chronicle.  Someone was suggesting that it is one of the earlier Christian referrences to Mohammed, although this looks doubtful.

Part IV, which starts just before the Moslem period, is online with French translation here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=s5UWAAAAIAAJ

although unless you’re in the US, Google show you only the snippet view. p.4-5 of the French mention Mohammed, although this can hardly be an early mention. (p. 51 of the PDF).  Here’s the opening section of part IV of the Chronicle of Zuqnin, from the French of Chabot.  The dates are in Years of the Greeks (Anno Graecorum), but Chabot has added AD to them.

This chronicle begins with the origin of the world and runs until the birth of Abraham and the kingdom of Ninus who founded Nineveh and reigned fifty-two years. But the patriarch Abraham was born in the forty-second year of the reign of Ninus, according to the testimony of Eusebius from whom we have borrowed the materials of this history until the times of the faithful Emperor Constantine.

From that time, until Theodosius the Younger, we followed the Novatian Socrates.

From the Emperor Theodosius to Justinian, that is to say until the year 885 of the Greeks, we have been guided by John, bishop of Asia.

From that time until the year in which we are now, that is to say the year 1086 of Alexander, 158 of the Hegira, we have found no-one who, like the ancient writers, has carefully described the history and the cruel disasters that occurred in the time of our fathers or our own, including the storm of tribulation that we have suffered because of our sins when we were delivered into the hands of the Assyrians and Barbarians.

However, to preserve the memory of those calamitous times and the cruel affliction that the earth has suffered today from the Assyrians – whom the prophet means when he says: “Assyria is the rod of my fury, the stick of my indignation is in their hands, I will send them to a deceiving nation and give them orders affecting the people of my vengeance,”– we have made known the rod, the stick of the Lord, which he has delivered to Assur to punish the earth, and which has even appeared in the sky for several days. Perhaps those who come after us will tremble, will fear the Lord, and walk before him in justice, lest they themselves come as we are into the hands of this rapacious wolf.

It is written: “Tell your son,” and again: “Ask your father and he shall teach you; ask your ancestors and they will tell you.” Now, after we travelled through many countries and did not find an accurate history of events but only the annotation of some particular facts, we formed the plan to unite in order in one book the things we have learned from elderly eyewitnesses or which we have seen ourselves. Whoever finds [this book] and looks with contempt should know that these so various events did not take place in one place or in one kingdom, nor in a single region. If then he meets another chronicle that does not agree with this, let him remember that earlier writers themselves do not agree among themselves, but one minimises, another exaggerates, one writing on ecclesiastical history, another on other topics.

It matters little to wise and God-fearing men [to know] whether an event happened a year or two earlier or later, but it suffices to know the punishments of past generations so as to distance themselves from inequity for fear of attracting the same troubles.

Take care of yourself and fear the Lord your God, lest he send these afflictions on you.

We will begin in the year 898.

Year 898, the emperor Justinian died and Justinian IV reigned with Tiberius Caesar.

Year 901 (589-590), Justinian died and Tiberius reigned alone.

Year 902 (590-591), the holy patriarch of Antioch, Peter, died.

Year 905 (593-594), Tiberius died. He had for successor Maurice, who reigned eight years.

Year 912 (600-601), in the middle of the day there was great darkness: the stars rose and appeared as during the night. They remained around three hours, after which the darkness disappeared and the day shone as before. – This year Maurice died. Another Maurice and Theodosius reigned for twelve years.

Year 914 (602-003), Narses, the general of the Persians, captured Edessa. After entering the city, he had the bishop Severus seized and stoned, who died in his surplice.

Year 915(603-604), holy Athanasius was made patriarch of Antioch.

Year 916 (604•605), Edessa was taken.

Year 923 (611-612), Maurice was put to death with Theodosius, his son, and Phocas reigned eight years.

Year 928 (616-617). The emperor Phocas ordered that all the Jews living under his dominion should receive baptism. He sent the prefect George to Jerusalem and into all of Palestine to constrain them to receive baptism. The latter came down [into the country] and gathered all the Jews of Jerusalem and its environs. The principals among them came into his presence. He challenged them, “Are you the servants of the emperor?” – “Yes”, they replied. He responded, “The lord of the earth has ordered that you should be baptised.” – They kept silent and didn’t reply a word. The prefect demanded of them, “Why don’t you say anything ?” One of the principals among them, named Jonas, replied, “We will consent to do everything that the lord of the earth has ordered ; but the present thing we cannot do, because the time of holy baptism has still not come.” The prefect, hearing these words, went into a violent rage; he got up, struck Jonas in the face, and said to him, “If you are servants, why don’t you obey your master?” Then he ordered them to be baptised and forced them all, willing or not, to receive baptism.

At that time James the Jew, Athanasius, patriarch of Antioch, John, bishop of the Arabs, Simeon, [bishop] of Harran, and Cyriacus [bishop] of Amida, were famous.

Year 932(620-621) The Arabs captured Palestine and [the whole region] as far as the great river Euphrates. The Romans retreated and passed into the eastern region of the Euphrates, of which the Arabs also made themselves masters.

These had as their first king one of them named Mohammed, whom they called the Prophet, because he had diverted them from various religions, had taught the existence of one God, Creator of the Universe and given them laws, when they were addicted to the worship of demons and the worship of idols, especially trees. Because he taught them the unity of God, under his leadership they triumphed over the Romans, and as he gave them laws according to their desires, they called him Prophet and Messenger of God also. The people were very sensual and carnal. They despised and rejected any legislation that did not aim at the satisfaction of their desires, that they had been given by either Mohammad or any other God-fearing man, but they received ones that were to the satisfaction of their will and their desires, even when it was imposed upon them by the vilest of them. They said: “It has been established by the Prophet and Messenger of God,” and even “So God commanded him. ”

Mohammed governed them for seven years.

Year 933 (621-622), the emperor of the Romans, Phocas, died, and Heraclius reigned in his place for thirty-one years.

Year 934 (622-623), Mar Cyriacus, bishop of Amida, died, he had Mar Thomas for successor.

Year 937 (625-626), the stars of the sky spun about and headed northwards, like ????. They gave the Romans a terrible omen of defeat and the invasion of their lands by the Arabs, which in fact came about very shortly afterwards, and without delay.

Year 938 (626-627), the king of the Arabs died, i.e. their prophet, Mohammed, and Abubekr reigned over them for five years.

Year 940 (628), the emperor of the Romans, Heraclius, began to construct the great church of Amida.

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I now have the final version of the translation of the Greek, and also of the Syriac fragments, of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel questions and solutions.  Unfortunately the Greek material will now need editing and sorting out.  I hope to get into this in the next week or so. 

In the mean time I’m only doing odd bits of stuff here and there — the pressures of ordinary life have precluded anything else!  — which aren’t too much hard work.  I tend to find this period of the year, coming up to Christmas, hard to bear.  It’s dark and I feel semi-jet-lagged all the time as the days get shorter and the ‘rush’ to Christmas begins.

So I’ve restarted translating Firmicus Maternus, and was doing some stuff on Serapis last night.  Did you know that Serapis is really Joseph, son of Jacob, the patriarch?  And means “son of Sarah”?  No?  Well, neither did I; but that’s Firmicus’ rather improbable explanation.

I’ve also obtained a copy of Manfred Clauss’ book The Roman cult of Mithras which I need to make use of to update the Wikipedia Mithraism (sic) article.  No-one seems to have interfered with this much since I rewrote it, which is quite a blessing.  Again, I’ll get to this when I can.

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Syriac tablet found at Edessa in Turkey

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Turkish press reports that farmers ploughing a field at Urfa in South-East Turkey struck a hard object, which turned out to be a tablet inscribed with Syriac, using the Estrangelo alphabet.

Tablet inscribed with Syriac language in the Estrangelo alphabet from Urfa (Edessa)
Tablet inscribed with Syriac language in the Estrangelo alphabet from Urfa (Edessa)

It was found about eighteen inches below the ground, and weighs about 100 pounds.  It seems to be about 30 x 60 (either inches or centimeters — I couldn’t work out). 

No word on what it says.  Apparently people at Harran university are going to take a look at it, but it will be placed in the museum at Urfa.

Urfa is the site of Edessa, the city whose Aramaic dialect became what we now call Syriac during the period after the conquests of Alexander.  The city was always central to Syriac culture, but was destroyed by the Moslems during the crusader period.

UPDATE:  I have had an email which tells us a little more:

“I am the founder of the www.suryaniler.com platform from Istanbul/TURKEY. I sent this news to George in order to find out what was the tablet about. Now, I am in contact with the museum archeologists of Urfa. They told me that the tablet is still preserved in the area it is found. When it is taken to the museum may be we can get wider size photo of the tablet.

I talked today to the Urfa Museum. They said; it will come to the museum few days later so that we can maybe get a bigger image. When there is an improvement I will inform you.”

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New online Syriac manuscripts, catalogues of Cairo mss

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Kristian Heal at BYU has been busy, and is doing some excellent work in making resources available.  The following announcement appeared in Hugoye and in Nascas.

I am pleased to bring to your attention some additional resources now available on our website.

1.       Manuscript catalogues

Almost 20 years ago, Professor Kent Brown from Brigham Young University coordinated an NEH funded project to microfilm and catalogue manuscripts from Cairo and Jerusalem. Our Center is working on a project to improve access to this important collection of manuscripts on microfilm. As a first step to improving access we have digitized the preliminary catalogues of the whole collection that were prepared by the late Dr. William Macomber.

The catalogues are now available for download here: http://cpart.byu.edu/?page=121&sidebar

Over the coming months we will be donating copies of the microfilms to 10 research centers in Europe and the United states in an effort to enable scholars to better work with this important collection.

2.       Syriac and Garshuni Manuscripts from St. Mark’s Convent, Jerusalem

As part of our effort to improve access to Syriac resources in particular, we have prepared PDF copies of the  manuscripts filmed at St. Mark’s Convent, Jerusalem. One of the conditions of usage is that a copy of any publications based on these manuscripts be sent to St. Mark’s convent.

The manuscripts can be freely downloaded here: http://cpart.byu.edu/?page=126&sidebar

The online manuscripts are a wonderful idea, no hesitation.

I have more hesitation about the copies of the microfilms.   Now I have found it very difficult to get copies of material from BYU, so possible alternatives must be a good thing.  But … the libraries that will hold them are bound to be places like the Bodleian, who will certainly see this merely as a chance for profit, and will charge incredible sums if they are allowed to get away with it.  I can’t get material that I need from the Bodleian now. 

I imagine that KH was unable to get clearance to simply digitise the collection and place it online.  But it is a pity that his benevolence will probably be rendered useless by the greed of European library staff.

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Books of my childhood

Posted on by Roger Pearse

As a boy I read all sorts of childrens’ fiction.  Many of these books left lasting impressions on me, and I recall them faintly even 30 years later.  But of course children don’t notice the name of the author, or the title of the book; and some of these books I would dearly love to read again, but cannot because I don’t know which they are.

Down the years I have stumbled across some of them again.  I remember seeing one in my local town library — enough to note the details, before it was stolen.  Later I ordered it.  On abebooks.com they used to have a feature where you could recount whatever you could remember, and others would try to tell you what it was.  I recovered another one that way.

But one eluded me.  All I could recall that was unique was the name of the villains; “baugrens”.  For years I have searched the web in vain, in case it should appear.  But it never did.

This evening I tried again; and got a result.  A bookseller posted an advertisement, and transcribed the blurb, and so it came up.  And it is the right book.  It turns out to be by a certain Tom Ingram, and the title is  “Garranane”:

The cloud appeared quite suddenly over the kingdom of Garranane. At first nothing seemed amiss to Kai and Flor, a brother and sister whose royal parents were visiting a distant land. But the cloud stayed, blackening the sky. Then Lotha came to Scortallin Castle with his troupe of performing dogs, and Fenrir, a beautiful lady who drew terrifyingly accurate pictures from life. And after Fenrir and Lotha, the baugrens arrived in Garranane, creatures of evil who cast no shadows. Almost too late Flor and Kai understood the meaning of the cloud.

Five minutes later I had a copy on order!  I shall be eager to see it again.  Isn’t google wonderful?  But in case this information should vanish, and there is someone else out there looking, I thought I’d repost it here.

UPDATE: 21 October 2017.  Here’s a picture of the cover:

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Origen on the gift of tongues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Charles Sullivan has written a chapter of his forthcoming book in which he goes through all the works of Origen and looks at what is said about the gift of tongues.  The chapter is here.  It can only be read online, tho, and not downloaded.  I’ve skimmed it, as I don’t read stuff online all that well, but it contains some interesting ideas.

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The Chronicle of Zuqnin (ps.Dionysius of Tell-Mahre)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In the Vatican library there is a manuscript written in Syriac containing a world chronicle in four parts, ending in 775 AD.  The shelfmark of the volume is Vatican Syriac manuscript number 162.  The manuscript contains 173 leaves or ‘folios’ in manuscript-speak, each with two sides, the front (‘recto’) and the reverse (‘verso’).  The manuscript seems to have been written in the early 9th century, if we look at the letter-forms in use.

On folio 66v at the bottom there is a scribal note or colophon.  The leaf seems to have been lost and recopied.  It reads:

Pray for the wretched Elisha of the monastery of Zuqnin, who copied this leaf, that he might obtain mercy like the robber on the right hand (of Jesus).  Amen and amen.  1

Another British Library manuscript (Oriental ms. 5021) mentions a scribe, Elisha of Zuqnin.  A colophon dated to 903 says that he lived in Egypt as an anchorite.  Presumably he wrote the Vatican ms. while at Zuqnin, and moved to Egypt later.

The manuscript was found in Egypt at the monastery of Deir el-Suryani (Monastery of the Syrians) in the Nitrian desert in Egypt.  This  monastery acquired a very rich collection of Syriac manuscripts.  In 926-932 AD the Archimandrite Moses of Nisibis collected manuscripts from monasteries in Syria and Iraq and transported them to Egypt, forming the basis of the collection.

One of the early Syriac scholars, J. S. Assemani, brought a bunch of Syriac manuscripts to the Vatican library in 1715.   One of these was the manuscript of the chronicle.  He didn’t get the whole manuscript, tho; a century later Henry Tattam bought nearly all the remaining manuscripts at the monastery and donated them to the British Museum, in 1842.  Among the piles of parchment are some leaves missing from Vatican Syr. 162.  These are today in the British Library, bound under the shelfmark Additional Ms. 14,665, folios 1-7.

The chronicle used old parchment.  Underneath the Syriac text are Greek letters of the 7-8th century, containing excerpts from the Old Testament.  123 folios of the Vatican manuscript and all the London folios are from this old manuscript.

The text has deteriorated since the 18th century.  A copy was made by Paulin Martin in 1867, which is in the French National Library (shelfmark Syr. Ms. 284 and 285).  The copy contains errors, but is valuable since the original can no longer be read in various passages.  Chabot, the editor of the text in the CSCO edition — the only one — was forced to rely on the copy at various points.  It would be interesting to see what modern technology could do to improve this edition!

Partial publication of chronicles is the curse of Syriac studies.  This chronicle is not immune.  There were two partial editions in the 19th century.  Fortunately the CSCO text is complete, but only the first half received a Latin translation!  The second half was not translated until 1990, when R. Hespel translated it into French.

Earlier, the fourth part was also edited and translated into French by Chabot in 1895.2 This portion (from fol. 121 to the end) is of interest for Islamic history.  Parts 3 and 4 were translated into English by Amir Harrak in 1999.

Would that this was online!

1. Incerti auctoris Chronicon Pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum, ed. J.-B. Chabot, CSCO 91 and 104 (S.Syr. 43 and 53), Paris 1927, 1933.  Vol. 1, p. 241, note 6.
2. Chronique de Denys de Tell-Mahre; quatrieme partie, publ. et trad. par J.-B. Chabot, Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes: sciences philologiques et historiques 112), Paris, 1895.  Online here and here.
3. Amir Harrak, Chronicle of Zuqnin: A.D. 488-775. Mediaeval sources in translation 36. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999.  A limited edition preview is in Google books here.  Harrak also collated the whole CSCO text against the manuscript and gives critical apparatus omitted by Chabot.

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James of Edessa, Chronicle now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve placed online an English translation of the table of years and events in the Chronicle of the Syriac writer James of Edessa. This continues the table in the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea from where that ends, in 325 AD, down to the early Islamic period ca. 700 AD. Naturally it focuses on eastern events, and includes one of the earliest mentions of Mohammed.

The material is here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm#James_of_Edessa_Chronicle

The original publication of this material was frankly a mess. I’ve written a preface explaining a bit more clearly what we’re looking at. I’ve also uploaded the translator’s preface, and also translated the Latin preface by the same editor to his publication of a Latin translation some years later. In addition I’ve added fragments from Elias of Nisibis scattered across the publications.

All this material is public domain, so please help yourselves, do whatever you like with it, place copies online and so on.

Other free material by the fathers can be found in the same collection:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm

If you want to support the work of the site, a CDROM is available for $37:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/all_the_fathers_on_cd.htm

Funds from sales are currently going to pay translators to do the homilies on Ezechiel of Origen, the Gospel problems and solutions of Eusebius, and a 13th century catalogue of Arabic Christian literature by Abu’l Barakat which should help us see what patristic material got into that language. None of these have been translated before.

UPDATE: I have also placed a PDF of the ZDMG article online at Archive.org:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheChronologicalCanonOfJamesOfEdessa

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Driving in the sunshine can be very therapeutic.  I spent quite a bit of today doing this.  I’ve been wondering how to write a preface to the Chronicle of James of Edessa.  The steady beat of tyre on tarmac helped, and I’ve just written the first draft of the preface.  The problem is how to present the data in a clear and intelligible way.  But I think I’ve got it!

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