I’m supposed to be on holiday — indeed I must spend a few days NOT working on projects! Perhaps later this week.
I’ve just emailed Les editions du Cerf about getting their approval for the manuscript of the Eusebius book. This was a condition of them allowing me (on very generous terms) to use the Greek text of the Abridged Selection printed by Zamagni.
I’ve processed all the revisions to the Greek text of the fragments into the PDF — which was truly horrible to do. I would have got the editor to do it differently, had I realised what he was doing. Oh well, that’s experience.
Now I have to go through the other issues in my file of corrections and deal with those.
I’ve also heard back from Carol Downer, the leader of the UCL Coptic Reading Group, who did the Coptic translation. Apparently there will be some more corrections from there, although they sound minor to me and we might do them at the proof stage.
The next stage, after these corrections, is to explore printing physical copies and getting the translators to check them (and doing so myself). You can only do so much on-screen. I need to talk to Lightning Source, who are the print-on-demand people I was recommended to use.
I also need to enter the book in the British Library “cataloguing in progress” system. And … no small point … get a cover designed. Wonder how to do that!
UPDATE: All the corrections I know about are now added as stickies to the PDF file. There are quite a few, but it will probably take the typesetter less time to pop them in than it took me to add them to the file. I am very impressed, tho, by Acrobat’s co-working facilities. They are ideal for this. Adam McCollum, who did the Syriac, has replied very quickly on some formatting issues; and I’ve checked a query about the Arabic text back with the original edition.
I’ve now emailed the PDF of the whole book back across to Bob Buller, who will probably deal with it at the weekend. It’s another definite step forward!
Keep up the good work! I am waiting with bated breath for Gospel Problems and Solutions to come out, as I am wondering if it shows Eusebius further exploring the contradictions between the genealogies of Christ in Matthew and Luke. I’m doing an article at Piggin.net on the topic right now.
It does. Eusebius devotes most of the Ad Stephanum to various issues in this area, in fact!
Great. I’m using a 1994 book in German by Gabriele Broszio, Genealogia Christi, which reproduces (and analyses) significant chunks of the Migne text of Quaestiones et responsiones ad Stephanum. Doubtless all those fragments you are adding into your complete text will fill in a lot of the gaps.
I’d not heard of that book, so this is most interesting. Does it translate the material?
No, only paragraphs as part of Broszio’s running text. The full title is Genealogia Christi: Die Stammbäume Jesu in der Auslegung der christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten fünf Jahrhunderte. She rounds up 222 pages of Latin and Greek commentary from scholarly editions of 30 to 40 of the fathers (30 pages are Eusebius, lifted from Historia ecclesiastica, Stephanum and Demonstratio evangelica) and analyses exactly who stands where on the genealogy issues. It’s wonderfully thorough, though she leaves out texts about the issue that interests me: Joachim, “father” of Mary.
Thank you — this is most useful and interesting!