Editing Eusebius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve spent the day working on the Word documents that contain the new translation of Eusebius’ Tough Questions on the Gospels.

It’s been about turning the notes into Word footnotes, correcting the margins, fixing issues with the typefaces.

One curious feature is that my translator chose to use the specialised commercial non-unicode font GrkAcca.  This comes with a software package, Greek without tears.  I bought a copy of this, and learn that a new version is imminent.

The main issue to decide, however, is how to organise the collection of 45 fragments that I have had translated.  I’m moving towards the idea of replicating how Migne does things.  So for the quaestiones to Stephanus, you have the big chunk of materials from the catena of Nicetas.  Then you follow it up with the supplementa minora, better known as “other bits I found lying around.”

One problem is that Migne just copied the second edition published by Angelo Mai.  For some unaccountable reason, this did not include some perfectly worthy fragments published in the first edition. 

So I am toying with this structure:

  1. Supplementa – Major fragments, from Nicetas
  2. Supplementa minora – Minor fragments, from Mai’s 2nd edition
  3. Minor fragments, from Mai’s 1st edition
  4. Other fragments

We have fragments of the questions to Stephanus, about the differences at the start of the gospels; but also from the questions to Marinus, about problems at the end.  So I’d first have the fragments from Stephanus, in the above format; then the fragments from Marinus.

I also have Syriac fragments, all from the Stephanus questions.  These I thought I’d put at the end.  Mai also prints some Latin fragments, all from the Marinus questions.  I thought I’d put these after the Syriac.

My hopes of printing translations of the Coptic fragments are fading fast.  They were translated, to a high standard, by Carol Downer and her people; but nothing I can say seems to induce her to let me have more than the latter half.  Ah well…  We’ll have to manage without.

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6 thoughts on “Editing Eusebius”

  5. Roger,

    I worked quite closely with staff and scholars at the University of Chicago on this project. They are very happy with this monograph.
    The Goodspped Collection is mostly Greek texts but among this collection are some Syriac Fragments mostly dealing with Espistles such as Acts, James, and I Peter. I analysed these fragments as well on notes on the colophons. Some of the notes were in Arabic which I translated and later asked for peer review by folks such as Fr. Columba Stewart. I am happy to say they confirmed all my readings of Arabic text and references to nautical terms mentioned in the Syriac body of the text for Acts.
    Of course I received permission to publish images of these fragments and the Goodspeed curators mentioned my forthcoming publication in their online footnotes (the monograph is now published)
    I am very proud of this work and several other monographs I have published recently from various collections.
    Like you I believe in making this work available to as many people as possible in various formats. For a short period I need to sell a few copies of this monograph but after a period of time I would be happy to post it for free online.
    Write to me at frbarhanna@yahoo.com and I will send you an electronic copy for you to review if you wish.

    Remain in Peace
    Father Dale A. Johnson
    Saint Ephrem Mission
    Dominican Outreach

  6. Still not certain what the book contains!

    The book is the publication of fragments of Syriac New Testament manuscripts in the Goodspeed collection. The pages are reproduced as photographs, with an English translation of the Syriac. In some cases there are notes in Syriac and Arabic, which are also translated.

    Is this right?

    So this is one of a series of monographs that you are doing, publishing previously unedited Syriac material from a range of collections? What are the other volumes?

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