Month: December 2011

Origen project update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translator sent me a bunch of Greek fragments with translation of the Homilies on Ezekiel today.  That was very nice to receive.

I’ve been gathering the latest version of the files together, and adding a key on the front of the file name so they sort in the order that they will appear in the book:

It’s actually encouraging to see the outline of the Origen book starting to take shape in Windows Explorer.

I’ve also printed off a couple of inches of stuff related to the Greek fragments, and assembled all the original source PDF’s for the whole book.  I now need to go through this and work out what I do, and do not, have. 

I think a simple list of all the fragments of the Greek text, with publication date and page and author, would be a good start!

But I’ve worked hard today.  I’ll pick that up tomorrow.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Lots of excitement on the Methodius manuscripts this morning — Adrian Tanasescu-Vlas has been through the STSL Ms. 40 and identified the works on Methodius in it.  I’ll do some more on this after lunch.  He confirms that De lepra is in there, which means that it is now possible to get someone who knows the language to translate it into English.

I’ve been thinking more about the Origen book, which hasn’t progressed in 18 months.  This means that, without intervention, it will never be done. Possibly the way to progress this is to bring in a collaborator, charged with finishing it off.

Meanwhile the postman brought me a parcel which proved to contain a paperback of Mithras : de geheimzinnige god, complete with colour cover and a stiff-looking picture of Maarten Vermaseren on the back.  I shall attempt to convert this into a PDF this afternoon, since it will be much more useful that way.  I hope that I don’t destroy it in the process, but I have my doubts.

Maarten Vermaseren, 1959
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The return of “Roman Piso”!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Cranks come, and cranks go.  If you’re around online long enough, you’re bound to see a few. 

The turnover is probably for the best, in a way.  The nutters with online longevity seem to get nastier and nastier over time.  It’s probably the brooding, I imagine: however stupid other people are, sitting and concentrating on the defects of others is liable to distort your point of view!  There will never be any shortage of folly in the world, that’s for sure.

Months ago, I was looking on my hard disk and found a directory “/piso”.  How that brought back memories!  There was a strange chap posting back in the day in usenet about how Jesus was really some member of the Roman family which used the cognomen “Piso”.  I found a thread from 1999 here, for instance, and by name here in 2002, and talking to me in the same year.  There was some association with a booklet by a Jewish polemicist calling himself Abelard Reuchlin, which I never got to the bottom of. 

The details of his theory were rather incoherent, and the reasoning as shaky as is normal.  But I remembered the gentleman in question — who used to post as “Roman Piso” — because he seemed a harmless soul, and posted about his obsession without malice.  He vanished from the web years ago, and I always wondered where he went.

Well today I know — for on the David Icke website, he has reappeared!   On Boxing Day he spake thusly:

Here is Proof, that Josephus’ Plutarchus Created Christianity.

Titus Flavius Josephus and Lucius Plutarchus are the same person, thus i nickname “Josephus Plutarchus”, in reality, his real name is “Arrius Piso”. …

Mmm.  He joined the site on Christmas Day, and managed a sterling 66 posts in the last 3 days.

I don’t know if anyone else remembers him, but if so, well, it’s nice to see him back again.

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Russian State Library Methodius mss

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Well, I’ve now managed to create two PDF’s of page images of  the Old Slavic manuscripts of Methodius, one of ms. 40 and one of ms. 41.  The contents of the two mss are different, tho.  The PDF’s are really too large to use.

I wonder if there is a catalogue around anywhere, that would tell us what these mss. contain.

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An amusing critique of Wikipedia and the people who run it

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by accident I found myself looking at this page (not safe for work), which calls itself “Encyclopedia Dramatica”.  It has some pithy (and very rude) things to say about Wikipedia.  The format would tend to make most of us dismiss it, but much of it is at least half true, and will bring a smile to anyone who has tried to improve Wikipedia.

The average age of a Wikipedia admin is 17. WTF? And that, buddy, is skewed upwards by the presence of a handful of degenerates whose only social outlet is their band of fellow children. Yes, one of the world’s largest Internet communities is run by cliquey kids! As one would expect, leaving day-to-day operations to a bunch of greasy-palmed kids is a recipe for full-scale faggotry. Imagine the biggest losers and social misfits from high school — the hormonal angst, the zit cases, the dateless geeks, the fatties and dorks — and ponder their collective teeny-angst and anger. Now give them the power to run a massive online community and create their own governance with no oversight. When even nominal editing on Wikipedia results in user flame wars that bring in heavy-handed “administrator” attention, the question potential wiki-users should ask themselves is, Do I really want my knowledge, even my person, to be judged, juried, and executed by Piggy, Roger and Jack with his choirboys? (That’s a Lord of the Flies reference. Look it up. Or watch the movie, which was pretty cool too).

The Wikimedia Foundation is just peachy with this jacked-up state of affairs, going so far as to brag about it. As John Seigenthaler found out, they believe themselves immune to legal threats. As a non-profit, they have no assets (although Jimmy Wales has a collection of sports cars). While they claim immunity as an “Internet Host”, some would argue that the foundation’s structure makes them liable as publishers. The next step would be to pass the buck to their contributors and operations, who are suit-immune minors or anonymous.

This is only part of it.  The article at the site on Wikipedia (think very hard before clicking on this link at all — lots of porn and abuse in it) contains further gems:

World of Wikipædia?, or Wikipedia, is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game …

During gameplay, Wikipedia players can gain more authority as they progress, with “Administrator” and “Double-O Licensed” rankings granting them access to GOD MODE. While the rules for winning the game are a tightly-kept secret, it is believed that the winner is treated to a night of accolades and praise from Wikipedia overlord Jimbo Wales. …

A common misconception is that “Wikipedia is never finished.” Remember that whenever you come by a Wikipedia article was forged from the blood of thousands of angsty teenagers edit warring over really important facts about the world. Information on Wikipedia topics could generally be found through Google (that is, unless a Wikipedia article is the first hit) and other forms of reference material like books my senile uncle’s war stories, but Americ**** are too busy … to be bothered with education. …

The real problem with Wikipedia is the Wikipedians. From players to sysops, every member of its community is the scum of the internets – worse than spammers, worse than script kiddies and Nigerian scammers, and worse than IRCers. An average Wikipedia user has the intelligence of a seal…

Wikipedia is full of people with no desire to improve what it is intended for, information. Instead, they want to grow their e-***** and one day become a mod.

Well, it made me smile.  There’s much truth in all that, mixed with a substantial portion of exaggeration and one-sidedness, of course.

I wonder whether the average age of a Wikipedia admin really IS seventeen?  And how one would know?

UPDATE:  I have been looking around the web for some statistics, and finding nothing very definitive.  There’s a 2009 PDF based on a questionaire, which tells us that the average age of participants in the survey is 25.8; 25% are younger than 18, 25% are between 18-22, 25% are between 23 and 30, and the rest of us are in the remaining 25%.  But … this does not discriminate between users and editors.  Readers average 25.3, editors 26.8.  There’s no indication as to admin age. The actual number of respondents was only about 130,000.

The Wikipedia stats site does not collect this kind of information, unfortunately.

UPDATE: An interesting critique here: “The closed, unfriendly world of Wikipedia.” 

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Google translate, on the Slavonic manuscripts of the Russian State Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m having some fun using Google translate to allow me to browse the online Slavonic manuscripts of the Russian State Library.  Occasionally the results are comic: “Number 140. The Psalter of St. sensible” made me smile, although it is combined with a text by Athanasius.

The manuscripts are those of the Moscow Theological Seminary, the Trinity-Sergius Lavra.  I think we should thank the RSL for putting all these images online!

The start of the collection is here, starting with 3 mss called “Gospel” and then 4 more labelled “Apostle”.  The next 3 are Psalms.  A bit further on are three copies in Slavic of the works of Dionysius the Areopagite, closely followed by some copies of Basil the Great on Fasting.

Number 32 looks interesting — is that actually Severian of Gaballa on the six days of creation? “Six days Severian bishop Gavalskogo”?  That must be his sermons on Genesis.  Who knew that these existed in Slavic?

Then the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, a John Damascene, Ephraim Syrus, and the Ladder of John Climacus. 

No. 63 is also Severian.  No 75 is Cosmas Indicopleustes.  No. 100 is the Annals of George Hamartolus.  No 102 is Cosmas Indicopleustes again.  Isaac the Syrian appears as 151.  167 is The Imitation of Christ by a certain Thomas Kempiyskago.

Later on the items of interest — interesting to us here, anyway, for I suspect much of this is of the highest interest to students of Russian history — grow fewer.  I notice the occasional 18th century text, and the odd one in Greek or Latin.  No. 338 is “collected works of the Fathers and Lucian” (?) which sounds interesting.  There are Greek and Latin dictionaries. No. 351 (Gr. 188) is by Theodoret of Cyrhus, “On the fishery of God”.

It is, truly, a marvellous collection.  I am deeply grateful that they have set up the website in such a web that those of us who know no Russian can still use it, and learn more than one could possibly imagine.

The entry point, in case you want to browse, is:

http://www.stsl.ru/manuscripts/index.php?col=5&gotomanuscript=01

 And there is a marvellous aerial picture of the St. Sergius Lavra here at the English language site:

http://www.stsl.ru/languages/en/index.php

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Manuscripts of the Old Slavonic Methodius online!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A commenter has discovered two manuscripts of the Old Slavonic Methodius online!  The manuscripts used by Michael Chub, when he edited some of the works, are apparently accessible:

Some good news. I found the scans of two Old Slavic manuscripts used by Archbishop Mikhail.

See http://www.stsl.ru/manuscripts/index.php?col=5&gotomanuscript=040, the first two manuscripts (40 and 41) from the list.

Sadly one can’t download the things as PDF’s — they’d be much easier to look at in that form!

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More on the Origen status

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Well, I’ve spent a couple of hours so far sifting through the Origen project materials.  It’s still very hard to work out what is where.  The Greek fragments are certainly in something of a mess, and I need to understand better what is involved and included. 

The problem is that I lost understanding somewhere along the way, back in the day — because of pressure of other things.  My fault, of course; but now I pay for it.

I probably need to print off a LOT of emails and let the miracle of paper and a ballpoint pen help me wade through it all!

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Origen update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of years ago I commissioned a translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel.  This ground away between 2009-2010, and then stopped.  The fault, in truth, was mine, in that I diverted the translator onto Philip of Side, or so the emails show. 

The problem now is to work out what was, and was not done.  What I’m doing is going through all the emails and all the files and looking at date stamps on the latter.

It’s already becoming clear that a very great deal was done.  All of the Latin material — 1 preface, 14 homilies — were translated, and they were all revised after comment from me.  Homilies 8-14 were revised again after that in early 2010 — I haven’t found out why, yet — and later still, homilies 1-6 were revised and compared with the Scheck translation that came out while it was in progress.  Homily 7 seems to have missed out, but I may find different later.  I also need to check the status of the Latin text for each homily.

I haven’t worked out the status on the Greek fragments.  One last fragment, from the Codex Marchialinus, has not been done at all; but the translator was working on that recently, and I have just emailed him a prompt.

Until I know precisely what the situation is, we can’t go forward; but I am actually rather encouraged to find that things are much nearer to completion than I had thought.

I’m going to compile a set of files with the latest revisions, and a statement in a Word document, for each portion of the book, of where it is, what has been done, and what needs to be done.  Once I have this, I can work out what needs to be done, and what I can do to make it happen. 

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Michael Bourdeaux, Gorbachev, Glasnost & the Gospel (1990) now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just uploaded (by permission) the third of Michael Bourdeaux’s books here.  Written in 1990 it records many of the changes brought to the Russian church by perestroika and glasnost, but not the final break-up of the USSR.

It’s sobering to think that much of what happened here has been erased from history, in that the mainstream media never refer to it.  It’s also sobering to see how many religious ‘trends’ in modern society are identifiable, before their time, in the policies of the Kremlin.  Bourdeaux’s books are well worth a look.

I have just discovered the existence of a 1995 Bourdeaux publication, wherein the KGB archives were partially unsealed and revealed that most of the most prominent and senior Russian Orthodox clergy were in fact officers of the KGB.  Which of us ever heard of that?

Christians must record their own history, and ensure that it is not lost; for otherwise it will vanish into obscurity.

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