Month: January 2010

How do you solve a problem like… Karo and Lietzmann?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still too unwell to go back to work, which is a pain because I only get paid when I’m in the office.  I thought I was well enough to go in tomorrow, but a walk to a shop this frosty evening speedily taught me otherwise.  So … another day at home, in which I can probably read but not much else.  Maybe I should have ordered some novels and some cartoon books!

But I have discovered Karo and Lietzmann’s catalogue of Greek catenas.  Now how do I get it in a form in which I can actually use it?  I need something printed, in the hand.

At the moment I am trying to turn it into a Lulu.com book.  I downloaded the Lulu settings for Adobe and I printed the PDF to PDF, thereby changing the page size and preparing it for Lulu.  (It also made the PDF 10 times larger!)  If I can just print this Google Books PDF in book form, then that would do.  I can then slump on the sofa with a coke and a pencil and work through it.

If not, I need to power up the laser printer and just print selected bits of it.  It’s 189 pages, after all!

UPDATE: I have created a book-form of K&L, which is available here.  It’s £7.60, or about $10, if you want one.  I’ve ordered one for me, so it will be interesting to see what the print quality is like.

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Catalogue of catenas

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have referred previously to G. Karo and I. Lietzmann, Catenarum Graecarum Catalogus, published in the appallingly difficult to obtain Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen, Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1, 3, 5 (1902).  In pp. 119-151, they classify catenas as types I-VII, following a scheme drawn up by E. Preuschen.  This really should be online.  Does anyone have a copy?

UPDATE: Apparently that volume of the Nachrichten is here.  Thanks to Andrew Eastbourne for the tip.

UPDATE2: I’ve now edited that PDF, removed everything except the Catalogus, and uploaded it to archive.org by itself.  It’s here.  That should make it easier to find, and more accessible.

Of course now I need to read it…

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What is a catena?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email recently reminded me that many people reading this will not know what a catena is.  I thought a post on this would be useful.

The word catena is Latin, and means chain.  It is used to refer to a book which is made up entirely of quotations from older writers, arranged to make a continuous text.  Usually it is a commentary on some book; first the main text is quoted, and then the opinions of older commentators in a chain underneath.

The catenas that we are concerned with are exegetical catenas; that is, catenas on the bible.  These tend to look like this:

<bible verse in large text>
Chrysostom. <quotation from some work or other by John Chrysostom, probably a sermon or commentary on this book, one or more sentences>. Eusebius. <quote from Eusebius of Caesarea>. Marcion. <quote from long dead heretic> Chrysostom. <another quote from C.> Theodore <quote from Theodore of Mopsuestia> <<and so on>>

<bible verse in large text>
Cyril. <quotation from Cyril of Alexandria>. O. <quotation from Origen>. <quotation where the author’s name has dropped out, so looks like Origen because it follows immediately after>

and so on.  The bible verses follow in the sequence in the bible. 

The actual arrangement of the text and the commentary can vary; the commentary can be in a very wide margin around a large column of central text of the bible, even above and below it sometimes; or a two column arrangement, text and commentary.  Catenas can surround a commentary, even.

The author name is the only division between the extracts.  The names of the authors are often abbreviated, or lost, which can cause a real problem, and in copying quickly leads to fragments being attributed to the preceding author.  The author names — technical term is lemmas — are often in red, which means if the rubricator didn’t do his bit, there are just gaps in the text.  (Anyone who has handled more than a manuscript or two knows that the red bits are added last, and often not at all).

I would post a real sample, but as far as I know none of the catenas have been translated into English.

What we have, then, is the biblical verse, and then a series of comments by older authorities, making up a text.  The quotations are often ‘adjusted’ at each end, in order to make the text flow.

These sorts of books were compiled during the 6th century onwards in the Greek church, using collections of sermons and commentaries on the bible by older writers.  Chrysostom is used a LOT!  But often writers are quoted whose works have perished; for, once the handy catena existed, what need of the full text?

Consequently the catenas are a gold-mine of material otherwise lost.

The term catena is modern.  The Greek terms for a catena were things like exegetikai eklogai, exegetical extracts.

Catenas can be primary or secondary.  Primary catenas are compiled from the works they quote.  Secondary catenas are compiled from other catenas.

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Cerf’s up!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I agreed to use the Sources Chrétiennes Greek text of Eusebius’ Quaestiones with the editors.  This will appear opposite the English translation that I commissioned, when I publish the book.

Well, the contract from Les éditeurs du Cerf has arrived! It’s all in French, of course, but is only three pages. 

In fact it’s a sensible contract, designed to facilitate business; that much I can see at once.  You see, I get to see a lot of contracts, professionally.  They get offered to me to sign when I do a freelance job.  Most of those are deeply unfair, and have one-sided clauses in them which one has to try to mitigate as best one can.  The Cerf contract has none of that rubbish.  All the clauses I have read so far seem reasonable, and designed only to protect them against a rogue, rather than to screw the translator.

Now I need to read it very, very carefully and make sure it won’t stop me doing what I need to do, which is put the English translation online under a Creative Commons license eventually.  I can’t do that with a thumping headache, so I will put off doing so for a day or two.

I wonder if we can call the board of directors the “Cerf board”!  I love that pun.  And they seem to be a good company, and one doing a great work for patristics.  All of us, you know, live in what people will one day call the “age of the Sources Chrétiennes”.  Long may they flourish.

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Codex Aesinas of Tacitus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email tells me that quite a bit of the Codex Aesinas of Tacitus – the sole surviving ms. of the minor works – is online.  And so it seems to be.  You go to this website:

http://www.icpal.beniculturali.it/esito_fotografico.html

scroll down, and search for “Aesinas”.  And up come a lot of pages!

I wonder what else is hidden in this site?

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No danger to free speech? the “Seismic shock” incident

Posted on by Roger Pearse

NOTE: I revised this post, after further details became available.  I have now revised and updated it again.  I’m beginning to wonder whether this is about free speech at all.

I was idly reading a blog or two while downloading Cramer’s catena, and I stumbled across this, which excited me so much that I felt I had to write.

At 10am on Sunday 29th November 2009, I received a visit from two policemen regarding my activities in running the Seismic Shock blog. (Does exposing a vicar’s associations with extremists make me a criminal?, I wondered initially). A sergeant from the Horsforth Police related to me that he had received complaints via Surrey Police from Rev [Stephen] Sizer and from Dr Anthony McRoy – a lecturer at the Wales Evangelical School of Theology – who both objected to being associated with terrorists and Holocaust deniers. …

The sergeant made clear that this was merely an informal chat, in which I agreed to delete my original blog (http://seismicshock.blogspot.com/) but maintain my current one (http://seismicshock.wordpress.com). The policeman related to me that his police force had been in contact with the ICT department my previous place of study, and had looked through my files, and that the head of ICT at my university would like to remind me that I should not be using university property in order to associate individuals with terrorists and Holocaust deniers (I am sure other people use university property to make political comments, but nevermind).

Now I didn’t know any of the background about this.  Index on Censorship were also interested:

Blogger Seismic Shock, a Yorkshire-based student, received an alarming visit from local police late last year. Seismic … had been heavily critical of Anglican vicar Stephen Sizer on his blog, alleging that Sizer associated with Holocaust deniers and anti-Semites.

On 29 November, he received a visit from local police, who advised him to remove certain posts from his blog. The police officers maintained that this was an “informal chat”, but the blogger, understandably intimidated, agreed to remove his original Blogger site, while maintaining his WordPress blog.

Index on Censorship has made numerous attempts to contact West Yorkshire Police in order to clarify a) under what authority the blogger was visited by police and b) what potential breach of law had been commited by the blogger that warranted such a visit.

I am a non-combatant on the politics in all this.  Indeed it seems this is a matter of politics, pro- or anti-Israel.  But I am definitely a combatant on the idea that the police should come round “for a chat” with bloggers. 

Many people now know the techniques of “lawfare” piloted in Canada and ably documented by Ezra Levant.  It doesn’t matter whether the victim is actually found guilty.  The technique is to hound them through the courts, with endlessly drawn-out (and expensive!) “investigations”.  The process is the punishment.  In consequence, we may look with very nervous eyes at events such as these.  If the police are called out because of our views, who can be safe? 

I was angry, as most of us would be.  I decided to look into this a bit.

UPDATE: The police have now issued a statement:

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: “As a result of a report of harassment, which was referred to us by Surrey Police, two officers from West Yorkshire Police visited the author of the blog concerned. The feelings of the complainant were relayed to the author who voluntarily removed the blog. No formal action was taken.

I have also been reading the Seismic Shock blog.  It’s somewhat distasteful.  The general impression is of a campaign of posts designed to smear Steven Sizer and Anthony McRoy, in order to intimidate them from expressing their own views.  This, of course, is also an attack on free speech.  (I am not a combatant either way on the political issues between the two sides).

I find myself torn.  A case of genuine harassment — of net-stalking — is a different matter from issues of free speech.

In the UK, only the rich can go to law.  Everyone else is basically without options.  If someone started a campaign of vilification against me, designed to intimidate me from expressing my views, I would have few options but to go to the police.  It seems that this may be what has happened here.  What else could Sizer and McRoy do?  Material pumping out on the web, designed and arranged to smear them, drip drip drip?

But … I am still uncomfortable with this.  Do we want bloggers being vetted by the police?  Yet, what do I do, if some anonymous swine sets up a hate site directed against me, and designed to ruin my reputation, cost me my job, my career, whatever?  What would you do?  Is this what we’re looking at?

I still don’t feel that we have got to the bottom of all the issues here.  But it is clearly more complex than I first thought.

UPDATE 2:  I’m beginning to get a very bad feeling about the claims about “freedom of speech” being deployed here.  The more I look into this, the more complex it looks.

All of us, I take it, are in favour of free speech online.  None of us are keen to have the police appear if we say something someone else doesn’t like.

But that doesn’t seem to be the issue.  The Seismic Shock blog ran a campaign targeting Sizer and McRoy personally, again and again and again.  Every post was “Anti-semite! Anti-semite!” and so on.  That’s not free speech; that’s intimidation.  The object, plainly, was to demonise these two men, and thereby silence them.  The comments added by others on these posts are often simply hateful.

I have not read through all this material.  A few I have seen, more or less accidentally.  Here he gloats that a sermon by McRoy has been removed by a church.  Here he quote mines that sermon with a lecture delivered in Iran, to accuse McRoy of hypocrisy, insinuating that McRoy shares Madhist views (when he knows that McRoy is describing how these people see themselves).  Here he sneers at McRoy for being polite about the Iranian despot whom he was forced to endure, plainly just out of malice.  Some at least of his allies do the same.  Here’s an example, posted today, in which Mr Sizer is demonized for the fact that some other site had pirated his book!

The funny thing is, I more or less share Seismic‘s views on Israel vs Palestinians.  But I do NOT share his idea that personal intimidation and abuse is a legitimate form of debate.  Still less do I endorse his attempts to ruin the careers of two blameless men whose only crime is to hold a political view — admittedly a mistaken one — with which he disagrees.  Shrieking “Nazi! Nazi!” is just as bad as shrieking “Jew! Jew!”, and indeed tends to be pronounced in the same way and for the same purposes. 

I am certainly in favour of free-speech.  I am NOT in favour of intimidation, or censorship by intimidation, as a means to stifle free-speech.  And the more I look, the more it looks to me as if we are all being scammed.

Did his victims do the only thing open to them, by going to the police and complaining of harassment?  The evidence was clear, and the material — which we have not seen — evidently grossly offensive; and the author made no attempt to defend it but backed down.

I would suggest everyone interested in free speech start looking at what Seismic Shock has been doing.  If I am right, he hasn’t been exercising free speech, but instead has been running a campaign of intimidation, designed to stifle the free speech of Sizer and McRoy. He’s been questioned because this was harassment, pure and simple, rather than a political offence. 

I could still be wrong.  But I have this bad feeling…

UPDATE 3 (26/01/2009): I’m still not sure about this, and have wavered again since I wrote yesterday.  I really, really do NOT want to see bloggers interfered with by the police.  Seismic’s posts may have been incessant but … were they harassment?  Were they intimidation?  Only one side is speaking here, so we must be sceptical.  But …. I don’t know.

A lot of those attacking Stephen Sizer are plainly doing so because they don’t like his politics.  Well, I don’t either; but that isn’t the issue, and it confuses the issue, for me anyway.  Dunno.

UPDATE 4 (26/01/2009): A comment abusing me personally has appeared below, and has been linked to with approval by Seismic.  It’s interesting to see this play out, and how each side behaves.

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In praise of footnotes

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ill at home today with a horrible cold, and unable to read much.  I picked up the translation by Frank Williams of the Panarion of Epiphanius, that great late 4th century catalogue of ancient heresies.  It is indeed a blessing to have this material in English.

But I found myself looking for footnotes, of the kind that we see in Victorian editions.  In these ample discussions, many an interesting point can be found.  In general, modern footnoting tends to be references, rather than disgressions, expansions, or clarifications.  This is a shame, in a way. 

Let’s hear it for the prolix footnote!

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The Armenian manuscripts of the French National Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The catalogue of Armenian manuscripts at the French National Library tells an interesting story of how the pre-revolution holdings were assembled. 

It all starts when Francis I of France entered into a treaty with the Grand Turk, and established a permanent ambassador in Constantinople.  This opened the Turkish state to French scholars in search of Greek texts.  Bindings of Henri II in the Royal collection show that Armenian manuscripts were being acquired in the middle of the 16th century.  But it was only in the second half of the 17th century, under the influence of Colbert, that a definite policy of acquiring Armenian mss came into being, as an official letter to the traveller Antoine Galland (1646-1715) shows, sent just before his third voyage to the East in 1679.  This instructed him to buy:

“…all the ancient Armenian books that can be found, and above all books of history by a certain author named Moses [of Khorene] in that language; also Armenian translations of the bible, written in ancient times, because an Armenian bible has recently been printed in Holland.” [1]

Colbert was interested in Armenian affairs, not least because there was an Armenian colony at Marseilles involved in the trade to Persia and India, and he arranged for Louis XIV to grant permission on 11 August 1669 to an Armenian bishop-cum-printer Oskan of Yerevan to operate at Marseilles.  This in turn sparked interest among Paris litterateurs like Richard Simon and Eusebe Renaudot in what bishop Oskan was doing.  These court Catholics made use of creeds as part of the literary war against Protestantism, to demonstrate the antiquity of catholic formulations.  A Dominican sent by Colbert to Ethiopia acquired one Armenian ms. in Cyprus on the way.  Others were bought from French merchants or travellers.  In this sort of way 165 Armenian mss were gathered in the Royal library alone prior to the French Revolution. 

Colbert himself acquired mss, as did other great persons of state or religious orders.  The collection of Renaudot went with the rest of his rich library to the Maurist fathers of St. Germains-des-Pres, which was seized at the revolution.

The first French scholar to interest himself in the study of the Armenian language was Petis de la Croix (1653-1716).  His father had been secretary-interpreter to the French ambassador in Constantinople for more than 20 years, from 1670.  De la Croix himself was a translator for the king.  He left a large Armenian-French dictionary in manuscript, assisted probably by the former Armenian patriarch of Constantinople and Jerusalem, who had been removed from Constantinople by the ambassador, the Marquis de Feriol, and held under arrest in the Bastile from 1706 until his death in 1711.  During his arrest the patriarch copied a number of Armenian mss now in the BNF.  Renaudot was authorised to negotiate with him concerning his possible release and return to the East.

A mission to the East in 1728-30 by Sevin and Fourmount resulted in the acquisition of 134 pieces.  A letter home by Sevin on 22 Dec. 1728 reveals optimism:

“Most of the works of Nestorius, Dioscorus, and some other famous heretics, have been translated into that language [Armenian] and it would be important to recover them, as well as various historical pieces composed in ancient times by the Armenians.  One of them, a friend of Fonseca, flatters himself that he has the power to supply us with these things but as the books of the Armenians are very carefully written and also mostly decorated with figures of plants and animals, a very high price is placed on them, which prevented me from buying the six that he brought to me, consisting of New Testaments, Rituals, and translations of St. Chrysostom, which it would be easy to find again.” 

In a last minute note on the same letter Sevin adds:

“Since I wrote the above, Mr. Fonseca has shown us in a house 160 Armenian mss, i.e. more than there are in all the libraries of Europe altogether, and even in all of Constantinople.  These mss are composed of commentaries on scripture, translations of the fathers, ancient works of theology and books of history; the most important is that of Armenia, which is not to be had at Paris for less than £500.  We have been promised also the history of the martyrs of Palestine by Eusebius, a piece which we don’t have in Greek, and which would throw a considerable light on the first three centuries of the church.  The acquisition of so many manuscripts in one language is very important, and there would be some risk in awaiting your order to buy it.”

Sevin went on to buy the mss anyway, for a total of £15,000, an incredible sum, and then, naturally ran into difficulties.  Sevin also stated that he would have to steal one ms, because the church to which it belonged could not sell its possessions.  The end result of his efforts, tho, was to substantially augment the holdings of the library further.

[1] Henri Omont, Missions archeologiques francaises en Orient au XVIIe et XVIIIe siecles, 1, Paris, 1902, p.206.

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Finding Armenian resources

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My queries to professional Armeniologists have gone unanswered, doubtless because they are very busy.  But I am still interested to learn whether there are catenas on the gospels in Armenian.

A thought struck me last night.  Suppose that none have been published?  Where could we find catenas?

The answer, surely, is to start looking at catalogues of Armenian manuscripts.  These will surely indicate the general content of manuscripts.  If there are catenas, they will probably indicate the authors quoted.

The French National Library has PDF’s of most of its catalogues online (bless them!).  This includes a splendid catalogue of their 300-odd mss, with a nice history of the collection at the front and some good indexes.

The results were a little disappointing, tho.  So in the Index of subjects on p.1002 (p.538 of the PDF), there are lists of mss by subject.  But catena is not one of those subjects.

However there is an anonymous Commentary on the genealogy of Matthew and Luke in Ms. 303, items 4-5.  This is something Eusebius talks a lot about in the Quaestiones ad Stephanum.  Probably the material here is at least influenced by him.  Unfortunately you would need Armenian to learn much more.

A few pages on, there is a category of Questions and Responses.  Athanasius, Cyril of Alexandria, and John Damascene all feature.  So, interestingly, does Philo!  There is no Eusebius listed, but who knows what someone sat in the reading room ordering up mss might find?

Looking in the author index there are fragments of the Church History and the Chronicon in various mss.  This is natural, since both exist in full in Armenian.  But no other works are listed.

All in all, this was an interesting exercise.  I learned more about the collection than I might have done.  But so far, no material for the Eusebius Quaestiones.

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The gospel of Judas saga continues

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Herbert Krosney, who wrote much the best book on the skullduggery around the finding, selling and dismemberment of the manuscript of the ps.Gospel of Judas has written an update on events since then.  This can be found here, at a page run by Marvin Meyer.  It’s explosive stuff.

The manuscript floated around the art world for 20 years.  It was then sold to an Akron art dealer, Bruce Ferrini, who had started to dismember it and sell it piecemeal.  But he was unable to pay the seller, who repossessed it.  There was always a question, therefore, of whether Ferrini had actually handed back all that he still had.  Ferrini then went bankrupt.

… on March 17th, 2008, St. Patrick’s Day, when Ferrini was finally deposed (after many attempts to get him on the stand) in Akron. The proceedings took a full day.  Ferrini not only admitted that he had withheld materials in 2001.  He also left the court-supervised proceedings at lunchtime, along with his lawyer, and returned to the court an hour or so later with a sort of lawyer’s briefcase with what appeared to be full page fragments inside.

These were delivered to the custody of the court-appointed receiver, and it was agreed that they would be photographed and identified by an expert, a Coptologist, but under strict conditions of secrecy and not for public distribution or knowledge.  No one in the know – very few people outside the lawyers, I should add – were allowed to see the photographs, nor was any public report on their contents permitted.  This secrecy was court-ordered and agreed to by all the lawyers and claimants in the case.

The photographs were sent to Prof. Gregor Wurst … What [Gregor Wurst] discovered within these materials was essentially the balance of the Gospel of Judas.

The site also gives more detail on the missing material.

The question remains, however, as to what has become of the other three manuscripts from Egypt, sold at the same time to Ferrini and given the same treatment.  The Sahidic ms. of three letters of Paul seems to have been recovered, thankfully.  But of the Coptic Exodus, we know little.  The Greek mathematical treatise is still unpublished also.  All this secrecy…

Thanks to Evangelical Textual Criticism for this one.

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