Month: November 2010

The art of cheating in American universities

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A curious article here via SmallDeadAnimals:

It turned out that my lazy, Xanax-snorting, Miller-swilling classmates were thrilled to pay me to write their papers. And I was thrilled to take their money. Imagine you are crumbling under the weight of university-issued parking tickets and self-doubt when a frat boy offers you cash to write about Plato. Doing that job was a no-brainer. Word of my services spread quickly, especially through the fraternities. Soon I was receiving calls from strangers who wanted to commission my work. I was a writer!

Nearly a decade later, students, not publishers, still come from everywhere to find me.

How accurate the story told, at length, is… well, who knows?

The wretched standard of education at Oxford is one I well remember.  The laziness of students is exceeded by the laziness of dons.  The latter, paid to teach, mostly do not bother.  Thus does education become corrupted.

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The heresy of orthodoxy

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from the blogosphere that an interesting book has been published.  The title is the “Heresy of Orthodoxy”, by Andreas Köstenberger and Michael Kruger, of Wheaton College, published by Crossway. 

Tim Henderson devotes three posts at his blog, Earliest Christianity, to a review, here.  The review gives us quite enough to go on, and makes the book seem interesting indeed.

The authors express unease that the clamour for “diversity” in contemporary society is infecting the study of Christian origins.  In particular they assert that much contemporary scholarship projects a quite spurious diversity onto the first century.  The diversity argument cannot be unfamiliar to any of us.  According to those making it — step forward Bart Ehrman — it’s as if Jesus never taught anything much and as if anyone who ever claimed the name of Christian must indeed be derived from his teaching.  More specifically, they reject the idea that the Fathers actually follow the teaching of the apostles more than anyone else. 

This seems absurd to anyone familiar with the Fathers.  The point about heretics is that they did not try to follow a teaching handed down from Jesus, but instead made up their own from ideas around in contemporary society.  We know how how heretical teaching changed; how the disciples of Valentinus felt no compunction in changing his teachings in whatever way they chose.  We know how Tertullian lists the schools of philosophy that each plundered for ideas, and contemptuously tells them that the teaching from Jerusalem has nothing to do with the Academy or the Stoa.  Quite why we are supposed to believe that those heretics whom we see being careless about transmitting doctrine in the second century were somehow careful when we cannot see them I don’t know.  We know which groups in ancient society cared about being faithful to the teaching once delivered to the saints, and which did not.

Ehrman has also done his bit to convince people that ancient texts are not transmitted to us.  I’ve met his disciples online, and every one of them has been taught to take up an attitude of obscurantism.  It is more than slightly irritating for those of us interested in ancient texts and transmission to learn that funds for textual criticism, to repair damage so that we can consult texts, are funding a man who is preaching that textual criticism is fundamentally an illusion.  Again the authors attack this, and rightly so.

So it is good to see this book being produced, and the arguments made all seem rather sound to me, in as far as I can tell what they are from the reviews.  to read it.

Tony Burke of Apocryphicity also reviews the book here and here from a position of disagreement with their thesis, and their religion!  But he really tries to be fair, despite his evident loathing, which is nice to see. 

UPDATE: I have corrected the publisher details.  And I’ve found that the book can be obtained very cheaply indeed at Amazon US, and also at Amazon UK if you ignore Amazon and go for the other suppliers on the page, so I have ordered a copy.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

All the way through the Greek and Latin proof corrections now.  It was pretty important, this stage.  Some of the Latin text entered contained terrible typos.  Thankfully the translator picked them up.  Tired but feeling less like a worm under a stone than I did.

Next it will be the Coptic proof corrections.  I haven’t even opened the envelope yet.  (I’m afraid to, that’s why!)

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Busy.  I’m about half way through processing the Latin proof corrections into Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions.  I’ve also tentatively commissioned a translation of a few more of Isidore of Pelusium’s letters.  And I’m reading Mutschmann’s article on chapter divisions.

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Anyone got a PDF of W.G.Kummel, Introduction to the New Testament?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Someone, seemingly of no great honesty, has professed that a footnote somewhere in this book justifies a claim he is making online.  Does anyone have access to a PDF of it, so I can look? 

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More on chapter titles

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Here is a little more from Diana Albino’s article:

Più recentemente, occupandosi del problema della divisione in capitoli presso gli antichi, il Mutschmann (16) ha espresso la convinzione che tale metodo, ostacolato dapprima dalle esigenze artistiche degli scrittori, dovette diffondersi quando si sentì vivo il bisogno di mettere ordine nel caos del materiale letterario tramandato e di risparmiare tempo e fatica al lettore ed allo studioso, probabilmente nello stesso periodo in cui le medesime esigenze inducevano alla compilazione di opere enciclopediche e sistematiche delle varie discipline.

Non bisogna però credere che la divisione in capitoli fu adottata indistintamente per ogni genere letterario: tale procedimento, infatti, fu osservato solo per opere con un preciso fine pratico o per i cataloghi o per i libri miscellanei e non per opere riservate ad una cerchia ristretta di lettori qualificati o composte con intenti artistici. Per quanto riguarda i cataloghi, Ateneo ci tramanda una notizia importantissima, perché c’informa che il catalogo dei dotti compilato da Callimaco, intitolato pantodapa/, doveva essere composto di varie sezioni, distinte dai titoli, di cui uno è appunto quello riportato per indicare una determinata categoria di scrittori:

Which I translate as:

More recently, in dealing with the problem of the division into chapters by the ancients, Mutschmann (16) expressed his belief that this method, which was initially hampered by the artistic demands of the writers, had spread when the need was felt to put some order into the chaotic mass of literary material transmitted and to save time and effort for the reader and the scholar, probably in the same period in which the same needs led to the systematic compilation of encyclopaedic works on the various disciplines.

But we should not believe that the division into chapters was adopted uniformly for every literary genre: that procedure, in fact, was observed only for works with a specific practical aim or in catalogues, or in books and miscellaneous works not reserved for a restricted circle of qualified readers or made with artistic intent. As for catalogues, Athenaeus gives us a very important piece of information, for he informs us that the list of products compiled by Callimachus, entitled pantodapa/, was composed of several sections, distinguished by titles, one of which is precisely what was reported to indicate a certain category of writers:

Kalli/maxoj e)n tw~| pantodapw~n pi/naki gra/fwn ou#twj: dei=pna o#soi e!grayan: Xairefw~n …

(16) MUTSCHMANN: Inhaltsangabe und Kapitelüberschrift im Antiken Buch, in «Hermes» XLVI (1911), pp. 93-107.  Listed on Google books here but not online.

I was hoping to consult Mutschmann, but I can’t find his text online.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A busy few minutes, dealing with the emails this morning!  I got a cold over the weekend which limited what I could do.

The first draft of the remainder of the Religious Dialogue at the court of the Sassanids has arrived and I have annotated it with suggestions.  We were translating this because it contains chunks of Philip of Side’s lost Christian History.  It also contains, I find, a version of the Testimonium Flavianum.  Apparently this is related to the version that appears in John Malalas (and isn’t it a nuisance that Malalas is not available online in English?)

I posted last week the first 14 letters of Isidore of Pelusium.  Over the weekend I asked David Miller, the translator of Eusebius, to review this.  His review came back very quickly, and I will pass it over to the translator, just as soon as I have converted the non-unicode Greek into something normal.  I always hated being “reviewed” myself; we’ll see how it goes.

Another chap wrote to me last week offering to do some work on commission.  I received his CV over the weekend which looks good, and I shall set him loose on some letters of Isidore as well.  He also does Syriac; I wonder whether there is something short and useful to do in that language.  I’d pretty much given up on finding Syriac translators.  There is always Bar Hebraeus’ Chronicon Ecclesiasticum, and heaven knows we need a translation of that.  But it would be a bit big to do in one go.  Maybe we might do a page or two.  But I’d prefer something small that can be done completely.

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Ernest Bramah’s “Kai Lung” stories

Posted on by Roger Pearse

If you have not read Kai Lung’s Golden Hours, by Ernest Bramah, do so.  Together with The Wallet of Kai Lung and Kai Lung unrolls his mat, it forms a little-known English classic.  The humorous stories are set in an imagined version of Imperial China where everyone talks in a kind of English Mandarin.  Kai Lung is a Chinese story-teller, and the books contain a series of stories and aphorisms.  It sounds dull; but in truth the books are enchanting. 

Thinking of atheism just now, I stumbled online across this quotation, which reminded me.

It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one’s time in looking for the sacred Emperor in low-class teashops.

Office politics made me think of another:

It has been said there are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice on a dark night.

There are not nearly enough good, gentle, amusing books in the world.  Enjoy the Golden Hours.  And do buy it in paperback form, rather than read it online?

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How not to do atheism

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by chance I found myself looking at something that made me first rub my eyes and then burst out laughing.  I thought I would share it with you before it vanishes from the web.  From here:

The Bible was wrong. For evidence look to, well, the Bible.

Such is the conclusion of this stunning, provocative infographic, which maps contradictions in the Bible, from whether thou shalt not commit adultery down to the color of Jesus’s robes. Career skeptic Sam Harris commissioned the chart for his nonprofit foundation Project Reason, with graphic design by Madrid-based Andy Marlow. Whatever your religious views, it’s an incredible testament to the power of data visualization. It’s managed to make an ancient text — over which men have fought wars and women have sacrificed babies — look downright silly.

The organization here is pretty simple. You’ve got bars at the bottom representing the 1,189 verses of the King James Bible. White’s for the Old Testament, gray’s for the New Testament. Then a red arc links all the verses that contradict each other…. For the full key, download the chart as a PDF.

So to anyone who thinks the Bible’s the last word on anything, remember this: It isn’t even the last word on itself.

You’ve probably never heard of this Sam Harris, and I have never troubled to read anything he produces.  Those of his disciples that I have met have been very stupid people.

But back to the image, and let’s think about it critically.  What can it mean?  Someone draws a picture and that says, erm … what?  That a couple of atheists can compile a list of “bible difficulties” and represent it in graphical form?  Or that there are “bible difficulties”, as the Victorians used to quaintly call them?  There’s quite a bit of hubris in suggesting that what someone thinks is a problem, with something  he doesn’t want to believe, must really be one.

Mind you we should not be unfair.  Those exulting over this curious production seem to understand quite well that it is designed for emotional impact rather than intellectual impact.  But let’s have some fun!  Let’s see if we can actually get a sensible meaning out of this?

The lesser kind of atheist writers have been trying for some centuries to compile lists of “bible difficulties”. They would like us to believe that, if they can find or invent anything which looks like a contradiction, by whatever combination of ingenuity or wilful stupidity, in a library of books written over a period of several centuries and copied by hand — especially a numerical difference, and we all know how reliable is the copying of numerals in ancient texts –, then that proves … well, what?  They get quite hazy about what it proves, specifically, other than that “the bible is not true”. 

But the logic is never quite laid out for us to inspect.  Is it some sort of unspecified theological point, about how divine inspiration ‘must’ work?  If so, do these sort of atheists believe they can make valid theological statements about a God in whom they do not believe?  Or perhaps is it that this text cannot be the work of an omnipotent God, working through human hands to give a message and accepting that those humans may make mistakes in copying or reading, because… erm… sorry why was that?  It’s as if the argument falls apart, just as soon as you recast it into your own words and omit the slogans.  

To those who think of the crisp incisive prose of J.S.Mill when they think of atheism, this sort of argumentation will be a sad disappointment.

Intellectually — and we do “intellectual” on this blog, I think — the whole exercise of piling up “problems”, as a way to refute something, is rubbish.   It’s not going to tell you anything, and it will do injury to the person doing it, because it is unbalanced.  It is the favourite method of the hate-writer, and the process corrupts those who do it, as the “faults” of those they dislike grow larger and larger under the distorting lens of the microscope.  No sensible person looks for accurate information about wombles from www.iHateWomblesKillKillDieDieDie.com.

Consider the idea of a heap of “problems”, as applied to any ancient text or collection of texts.  Won’t any text of any length have “problems” of this kind?  Not because it’s, erm, whatever point they are trying make here, but because of how the world is.  People see things differently.  Typos creep in.  Cultural differences get misunderstood  by modern readers.  And so on and so on.  To make these  facts about the world into an argument against one kind of belief, while silently ignoring the same problem with every belief and everything we know, is rather silly.

It is not an argument against Christianity that the world is a flawed place.  It is an argument FOR Christianity, surely?  It is not an argument that the bible is unreliable that people make mistakes copying it  — that’s the same argument again. 

The argument also misses the point.  No-one comes to be a Christian because they discover the bible is inerrant.  They come to believe the bible is inerrant because they became Christians.  The argument thus becomes a form of jeering, rather than a discussion of the validity or otherwise of Christianity.

I need to get back to proof correcting the Eusebius volume.  I’m pretty sure Eusebius, author of Gospel Problems and Solutions, had heard that there were things that some people thought were diaphonia. 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I had another bash at applying the Eusebius proof corrections to the PDF.  I’m now up to p.274 of the PDF file, which means all the proof corrections to the Greek have been done (I think!).  But there will be some footnote renumbering, which is a pain.  This takes me up to around 30% of the Greek-Latin corrections.

Last night I wrote to everyone who had been doing stuff for me and whom I had not heard from for a while.  I got a note back from the chap who translated the 14 letters of Isidore I posted yesterday tells me that he has indeed started on the next lot, which should appear in a month.  He also reminds me that I had intended to get these reviewed by someone knowledgeable, which I must indeed do.  I must also ask him about his name appearing on the stuff.

The first draft of the translation of the remaining portion of the 6th century novel, the Religionsgesprach am Hof der Sassaniden has arrived.  There are quite a few queries on this.  I did some this evening, but it will have to wait until I have some time on Monday.  It looks very good, tho, and it is great to realise that we’re getting close to the end of this text.  I will make this translation public domain when it is done and paid for.  And that reminds me — Pauline Bringel, who edited the text recently, kindly sent me a PDF of her thesis.  I must remember to send her a copy of the translation!

Another email from a translator who was working on an Arabic text for me, published originally by Paul Sbath.  I hadn’t heard from him since February, thanks to some local difficulties.  But he’s still on the case and we’re likely to get this in a month.

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