Very busy this week with work-related stuff; too much so, to do anything useful!
The fragments of Philip of Side are coming along nicely. The translator is doing his usual excellent job and ferreting out a lot of useful related information buried in articles in languages none of us know. The publication — which will be free and online — will be an excellent one.
One interesting issue arose concerning the text to translate of the fragments contained in the Religionsgesprach text — a 6th century fictional dialogue at the court of the Sassanids. This was printed by Bratke, but a critical edition does exist, in a thesis form, by Pauline Bringel. The two texts are rather different, even aside from the fact that Bringel identified two recensions of the text. We’re going to use Bratke, tho, and footnote differences. Bratke is accessible. Bringel will not be publishing her thesis any time soon, I learn, although the Sources Chretiennes would publish it, because of pressure of teaching duties. There would be little point in doing a translation from a text that none have access to.
This weekend is deadline time for contributors to the Eusebius project. There is more that could be done to the Coptic materials — but there has to be a limit some time! The translator is sending me hard-copy of proof-changes, which I hope will arrive tomorrow. I’m afraid it looks as if I may have to learn the Coptic alphabet to do some work on it, which is a nuisance, but there we are. However I shall do the minimum possible! With luck I can put the Coptic fragments to bed this weekend. I still need to resolve issues with fonts, tho. I’m still awaiting the transcription of the Syriac fragments, but I am told this will be ready on time, but not before. The Latin fragments I revised last night and are now — thankfully — done. An index of fragments and publications that I commissioned is in Excel, and needs more work and to be turned into a Word document.
The translator of the Origen Homilies on Ezechiel has found some more materials that probably derive from Origen’s Scholia on Ezechiel; these will be added in. I have admonished him to remember to take a summer holiday!
On a quite different subject, I had to rebuild the installer of QuickLatin, the tool that I sell ($29) to help people with Latin. My local anti-virus wailed about “unsigned code”, and I have been trying to work out how to sign a .exe file. Apparently no-one wants to make it too easy, although why anyone would want to make a security measure hard to implement I can’t imagine. I tried to f ind out this afternoon and failed. Oh well. It can go unsigned a while longer.
I’m still thinking about going to the UK patristics conference at Durham in September. I may yet go. But I’ll wait until July at least, because I don’t quite know what will happen to me in my current freelance job. I may need to find a new contract in a month, although I suspect that I shall end up with time off this summer! And I shall take some time off too.
I’ve also had a lot of correspondance this week, much of it very interesting. One chap who is interested in Coptic turns out to have a PDF of the British Library manuscript containing De Lagarde’s catena. This is the catena which I am publishing the Coptic from. He declined to give me a copy of it, because of fears about copyright — not entirely unreasonable, considering that today there was an announcement about more enforcement measures by the regulator, OFCOM. But he did let me see a page with the first Eusebius entry on it. The Coptic text was extremely clear, and interestingly there was a difference from De Lagarde’s printed version. De Lagarde runs the text together, and the names of the authors of each bit appear inline. But in the ms. the “Eusebius” was actually on a separate line! I’d show you, but apparently the British Library don’t want you to see it unless we pay them money.
It did leave me wondering what the point of running a public collection of manuscripts is, when circulation of images is prohibited! But I think I’ve asked that question before.
The British Library is one of the greatest libraries no doubt in that, but it seems that, like most prestigious libraries, it is overprotective of its manuscripts. This is strange – for apart from the material possession of the manuscript such libraries should not possess any copyright – or so I think.
The British Library is funded by the tax-payer. Who actually controls it?
I agree about the copyright — it is absurd. I think a rich man could establish that there is none. Sadly in the UK the establishment is in the pocket of the copyright lobby.
The BL is very unresponsive to any of its customers. I once wrote to the then Culture Secretary, David Lamy, whose department hands out the grant to the BL. He said that the BL was not under his direct control. It’s a quango, in other words. There is a board of trustees somewhere, I think, but it all seems very shadowy. I also lobbied an MP — John Gummer — for help dealing with them, but got nowhere.
I’m open to suggestions! The need, I think, is to embarass them in public.
Unfortunately only universities and academic institutions can exert effective pressure on the BL, but they also have libraries with manuscripts which they tend to zealously protect – so they will not exert any pressure! Besides that, they are tributaries somehow to or dependent on the BL and, therefore, cannot afford to embarrass it.