I’ve signed a contract with Les Editions du Cerf to use their Greek text for the Eusebius book. Today I wrote to them asking where I can actually get the Greek text they print in electronic form. I’m devoutly hoping that the answer is not “retype it”!
Portions of Cramer’s catena are getting typed up, and the friend who is doing this is also picking up some strangeness. Various Greek words have more than one accent, for instance.
Meanwhile I have commissioned fresh translations of the two Syriac bits in Severus of Antioch and Ishodad of Merv, for inclusion in the “Syriac fragments” section. I’ve also been in contact with the Coptic translator, although this grinds forward very slowly. I think I’ve given up on the idea of using the Arabic version of the Coptic — it would take forever to get this coordinated with the Coptic. I have not been able to find any information about Armenian gospel catenas, although I am positive they exist, so this will also be omitted.
I’m starting to think again about the process of turning the Word documents into print-ready text. It seems that desktop publishing packages such as Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress can kern the text. But I would much rather have someone else work this over, rather than me do it!
It will be good to get the Eusebius done. The main remaining steps are to finish the manuscript. I need to assemble the Greek and Latin text (and probably the Syriac and Coptic too), which is begun, and then to write indexes and odd bits of text. Once this is done I can send it to the Cerf (a condition of their permission) and start to get it typeset.
There is a question in my mind about the Syriac. Would there be merit in printing the Roman letters under the Serto letters? Perhaps in smaller type, interleaved between the lines, and right-to-left? A lot of people know Hebrew, but can’t read Syriac letters. If the text appeared in this manner, a lot of them could work with the Syriac. I’ve never seen this done, but I don’t see why not.
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