Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Alin Suciu publishes the programme for the Coptic conference in Rome here. The conference starts on Monday.
Now I’ve seen what is happening, and that most of the papers are in English, I wish that I was going. So much of the material and papers being given is of interest, and I would certainly love to be in Rome with so many other people doing interesting things.
J.B.Piggin drew my attention to a new site full of digitised Latin manuscripts, at Verdun. The manuscripts are those of the abbey of St. Vanne, the cathedral, and others, doubtless seized at the French Revolution.
Annoyingly you cannot download the things in PDF form, but are obliged to peer at them, squintily, through a keyhole flash viewer. It works well enough, but is deeply frustrating to use for more than a minute or two.
It looks to me as if the collection was looted of nearly all its content at some time. Most of the mss. are breviaries and graduals — service books, essentially. But a few items of interest to us do remain.
Somewhat annoyingly, there seems to be no easy way to link directly to individual manuscripts (if I am wrong, do let me know).
I was quite unable to locate an “overview” page, or get any idea about this project. There must be more mss. to be digitised. But all the same that gives us quite a bit that we didn’t have before!
At home and have been trying to regain control of my inbox!
I’ve worked out how many copies of the Eusebius book have sold so far. 174 copies have been manufactured so far, paperback and hardback. But probably around 30-odd were review or complimentary copies; and I have about a dozen paperbacks in a box — the only stock that I have. These books were part of a box of 20 that I ordered for the Oxford Patristics Conference, but of which I sold almost none at the time.
It took a couple of hours going through the paperwork to work out where we are. I still haven’t got a final reckoning on cost (never had the time). But the income from each volume is only 66% of cover price. It’s clear that the income will not faintly cover the costs of the project. This does not matter, because it was an experiment, but it does indicate that doing more will not be a good idea financially at least.
All this effort was undertaken to calculate the royalties due on Zamagni’s Greek text. I’ve made approaches to pay that, and get that done.
An email suggests that creating a PDF version of the translation of pseudo-Hegesippus would be useful. It might. It might be a good text on which to experiment with typesetting, if I ever have the time.
The translation of Ephraim’s Hymn 22 against heresies will be delayed, at least to the end of September. No problem there.
I’ve ordered a copy of M. Albert &c, Christianisme orientaux, a volume of summaries of the various Oriental Christian literatures, running to 400 pages. It’s pricey, at $60, but Sebastian Brock recommends the section on Georgian literature by Bernard Outtier as being so good that it ought to exist in English. Luckily my French is not at all bad these days.
An article at the Lacus Curtius/Livius blog on “Original research” at Wikipedia has caught my eye. An article was created on the obscure grammarian Hestiaea. This led to discussion on Wikipediocracy, and the discovery of a second reference to the lady, in “pseudo-Didymus”‘ scholia on the Iliad; and attempts by me to discover what this source was, and how we might check.
At Alin Suciu, an invaluable tool has been posted in PDF form; J. A. de Aldama’s list of the spuria of Chrysostom. These are interesting as preserving material by people who were later considered heretical, or were just unpopular. A good portion of the works of Severian of Gaballa in Greek are preserved in this way.
Adam McCollum is the dedicated cataloguer of manuscripts at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library run by Fr. Columba Stewart. The latter is doing an enormously valuable job; of getting copies of all the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts located in oriental monasteries in places like Syria and Iraq. The urgency and importance of this task should be obvious to us all at the moment.
Adam’s task is seemingly more prosaic; to catalogue the results. In practice this requires a wide familiarity with the literature and a great deal of dedication. But it also gives him the chance to make original finds, and to publicise the texts.
On his blog today is an interesting post, and a PDF download:
Among some manuscripts at the Church of the Forty Martyrs, Mardin, that I have recently cataloged are some that deal with the hagiographic Qartmin trilogy of the stories of Samuel, Simeon, and Gabriel.
Some of this material has been published (and even partly translated), but the published texts are not easy to come by. While going through these texts I came across one episode in The Story of Šemʿon (Simeon) in Syriac and in Arabic that, not too short and not too long and of enough entertainment value and philological interest, called for greater readership than it currently has residing in manuscripts.
The text, in either or both languages, would be suitable for intermediate, perhaps even beginning, reading courses, and of course anyone interested in hagiography and the history of asceticism, and more generally scholars of Syriac and Arabic, would lose nothing by studying the passage. I stress that the file below is merely a beginning effort, and while I have proofread it, it still should be considered a draft! Here it is:
The ease of making texts available this way — from manuscript to electronic file to the internet in a matter of days, with the option of correction always there — has the potential to change greatly any academic field based on texts, and I hope that more such text presentation will appear. Comments especially on this general prospect are encouraged!
Emphasis mine. He is quite right. The PDF presents the text, in Syriac and in Arabic, in a perfectly serviceable form. And … the world can see it and use it.
Well done, that man.
A post at the British Library manuscripts blog by Sarah J. Biggs about the Etymologiae of Isidore of Seville is rather interesting, and illustrated with some pages from the 11th century digitised ms. British Library Royal 6 C. i:
Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636), the bishop of Seville from about 600 to his death, is better known as an author than as an administrator. His most famous work is the Etymologies, a work of tremendous influence throughout the Middle Ages. One eleventh-century manuscript (Royal 6 C. i), probably copied at St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, is now available on the Digitised Manuscripts website.
The Etymologies is famous for its sometimes quirky explanations of the history of words. In some cases, when Isidore takes the word apart based on what it sounds like, the explanation that results can be extremely engaging, …
In other cases, Isidore’s etymologies, while colourful, are spot-on. The one he gives for the words Fornicarius and Fornicatrix (male and female prostitute) explains that these terms come from the Latin word for ‘arch’ (fornix), and refers to the architecture of ancient brothels. Prostitutes were understood to lie under such arches while practising their trade. This is the same explanation for the word ‘fornicate’ offered in the Oxford English Dictionary today!
Great to have an image of some pages of raw text for a change.
31. Then they bound the saint hand and foot and neck with heavy iron fetters, and covered his face so that no-one would know him and no rebellion would break out, placed him on a mule and handed him over to the mobed who had oversight of the prison at court. The mobed did as he was commanded and the house in which the blessed one was was guarded by horsemen and foot soldiers. When the saint heard that zealous believers were hanging about, looking to break open the house, he was very worried and forbade them to remain in the vicinity of the house. Immediately they left at his command; but the saint stayed in the prison guarded by God, who had said, “With the righteous am I in distress; I will strengthen and honour him and show him my salvation.” And although fettered, he consecrated bishops, priests and deacons, strengthened them with blessings and prayers, and sent them out to the provinces.
Here is another chapter of the 6th century hagiographical life of the East Syriac patriarch, Mar Aba I.
The text is valuable as it was clearly written in the Persian realm, and with knowledge of the political change going on in the mid-6th century. This is the period in which the Sassanid monarchs begin to see the Nestorian Christians as a possible counter-balance to the power of the Zoroastrian clergy, rather than as alien intruders. The anti-heretical policies of Justinian, where Mar Aba himself had had to flee from Constantinople, facilitated this change.
The Magians were always a threat to any ruler on the Persian throne, and Chosroes II can have had no objection to entangling them in endless religious disputes instead. When Mar Aba died, the same Persian ruler promptly appointed his own man as patriarch rather than allowing an election.
Mar Aba has been in exile. He has returned, after an assassination attempt, and is now engaged in a political battle at court with the Magians. The latter are determined to have him executed on one pretext or another if they can; but the King of Kings blows hot and cold on each of their initiatives.
30. While they devised these things, the Christian people came up and went about everywhere in the belief that he had been crowned[1], or that he was about to be crowned. But God in his mercy delivered him from their hands. By his secret work he inspired one of the great men of the empire to stand up before the King and say, “King of Kings, best of men, may you live in eternity and may your majesty reign forever. The Christian people who are in your empire are a strong, great people, an innumerable multitude, and also useful for the service of the government. If this man, their leader, is put to death, it injures them greatly and your empire suffers no small damage.” When the King of Kings in his benevolence heard this from this man, it pleased him and his whole court, so that they would not hear the petition (τάγμα) of the Magians, and he ordered that the holy one of Christ must not be killed.
We need not doubt that the unnamed noble spoke what he knew the King already wanted to have said in public.
1. Introduction.[1]
2. The translations from Greek.
3. Conclusion.
4. Bibliography.
Georgia is located at the southern foot of the Caucasus and represents the country which the Greeks called Colchis in the west and Iberia in the east. The Georgian language belongs to a group of southern Caucasian languages which are not Indo-European, nor Semitic, nor Uralo-Altaic.
The Georgian language is the only one in its group to have a literature which has been written for fifteen centuries. The Georgian alphabet, which must have been created to facilitate the transmission of the Christian faith, consists of thirty-eight characters. In the absence of a Georgian historiographical tradition concerning the creation of the alphabet, we are reduced to an internal and comparative analysis: the latest study is that of Gamkrelidze (1989). This alphabet has been unsuited for other languages before the modern era. It has permitted the transmission of a rich literature, both original works and translations. The oral translation had already a very long history, since Strabo (1975, 54) seems to imply interpreters for seventy or even three hundred languages at Dioscurias, the terminus port for the Greek merchants. Furthermore, the southern and Indo-European Caucasus had important contacts, as has been shown by T. Gamkrelidze and V. V. Ivanov. In early Georgian, the majority of literary works were translations, and the majority of the translations were translations from Greek. On the language and literature, one may consult Deeters (1963, 1-79, 129-137).
It seems that the first translations of biblical books into Georgian were carried out using an Armenian model, which itself was derived from Syriac, a translation from the Greek; another hypothesis is that it was a translation from the Greek with recourse to the Armenian in difficult passages. Briefly a revision against Greek models was carried out, the first step in a long process of revision which was completed definitively at Athos in the 11th century, resulting in a “vulgate” version of the Bible. A series of problems remain to be studied, as was signalled by J. N. Birdsall (1983, 317). From the 5th to the 8th century, regular work permitted Georgians to enrich their own literature with the treasures of the religious literature in the Greek language, whose immediate models were either Greek or else Armenian translations of Greek texts. It seems to be accepted that very few texts passed directly from Syriac into Georgian. From the 8-9th centuries, the Georgian monks of Palestine also translated from Arabic. This permits us knowledge of Greek texts today lost, or to improve the editions of known texts (Van Esbroeck 1975, 240-285).
The texts translated covered all the requirements of the new Georgian Christianity: the bible, biblical commentaries, liturgical texts, hagiographical texts (Kekelidze 1957, 115-211), poetry, canonical texts, apocrypha, patristic texts (Kekelidze 1957, 3-114). It does not seem that in the early period there was a particular interest in the great historical syntheses; texts considered as secular do not appear in the written literature until the 12th century. For the Christian faith an entire vocabulary had to be created (Chelidze, 1996, Melikišvili, 1999). This was accomplished in two ways; direct borrowings: ek’lesia from ekklh/sia, “church”; and calques: xucesi = presbuteroj, “elder”, semantically extended to mean “priest”. We should note that the new Christian literature contributed to making of the second rank the rich pre-Christian traditions, which persisted essentially in the mountainous regions far rom the centre (the myth of Prometheus: Charachidze 1986, 322-342). Nevertheless oddities remained, which led the Georgians to be accused of heresy by the Greeks.
The lack of Georgian historical texts relating to the invention of the Georgian alphabet is also a feature of the whole early period of translations from Greek; all that remains to us, from this period, is a few names of translators: Set, who worked at Jerusalem; but the text which he translated — of which only two lines remain — is no longer identifiable. We know only that it was of a hagiographical nature (Garitte 1956, 38-39, 45); Datchi, who translated from Armenian — no doubt in Tao-Klardjeti — around the 9th century a part of the Commentary on the Psalms by Theodoret (under the name of Epiphanius); in Tao again Gregor of Ochki translated from Greek one (or maybe two) treatises of Gregory Nazianzen; in the 10th century Stepane of Tjqondid translated some hagiographical texts, as did Chavcheti, and David of Tbeti, who also translated some discourses of Gregory Nazianzen.
From the 5th century, some translations from Greek were made at Jerusalem, among them that of the Lectionary, a monument which has vanished in the Greek language. Later, at Mar Saba, translations were made from Arabic into Georgian, one part of the Arabic texts being themselves translations from Greek, for example some very rare texts like the Shepherd of Hermas (Outtier 1990-1991, 211-215). Mount Olympus in Bithynia, Mount Sinai, the Black Mountain, Constantinople and into what is now Bulgaria (Petrisoni / Bačkovo) as well as Georgia proper were all centres of the activity of translation.
Starting from the 10th century, the situation changed. Euthymius the Athonite (955?-1028) was the first of a glorious phalanx of monks who were translators from Greek. But we can also credit him with the translation into Greek of the edifying novel Barlaam and Josaphat (the Georgian text being a translation from Arabic),. We obtain a good appreciation of Euthymius’ technique of translation from van Esbroek (1988, 73-107). George the Athonite begins the reflections on the techniques of translation. “The Life of George” suggests that the retranslations of Greek texts already translated from an Armenian version was for theological reasons (1967, 123), Another copyshop, the Black Mountain near Antioch, shows us that the Georgian translators did not hesitate to use multiple different Greek manuscripts in order to establish a base text of the best possible quality (Outtier 1974, 119). It is also in the circle of Ephrem Mcire (11th c.) that the attempt is made to model Georgian on Greek, to the point of introducing a grammatical feminine, an attempt which was unfruitful. The remains of the translations of Ephrem make known to us his principles in the matter of translation. The glosses have to be placed in the margin, without ever being recopied into the text itself; the punctuation also has to be carefully respected (van Esbroeck 1988, 83-95). But there has come down to us a treatise on the Greek article, which has no exact equivalent in Georgian, and so could cause confusion in the translation: Shanidze (1990). Ioane Petritsi (11-12th c.), disciple of John Italos, represented the most extreme of this hellenophilia in his translations of the philosophers in particular. Another remarkable aspect is the translation of hymn collection texts, respecting the number of syllables in the lines, in order to preserve the melody of the original text; a system of neumatic notation accompanies the translations. This stimulated the creation of original Georgian compositions, in particular of hymns, but also of hagiography and sermons. The decypherment of the neumatic notation remains to be done.
We have already seen (2.1.4) that the tendency towards a more and more literal technique did not cease to gain ground until the 12th century. In fact the genius of the Georgian language possessed a number of its own twists and turns, on the one hand. On the other hand it is impossible to be too literal without becoming artificial, for example the Greek participle in apposition to a verb in the personal mode (on these questions see Brière 1977, 199-214).
The phenomenon of the impregnation of a culture by Greek culture is of great significance. In the case of Georgian literature it is redoubled by another interest. In Georgian some texts come down to us where the Greek original has disappeared. Great attention must also be paid to the existence of Georgian translations of Greek texts of which we no longer have any except much later recensions; the Georgian allows us to approach the original Greek much more nearly. But there is still much to do to catalogue all these texts, to publish them — it is also necessary to have corresponding critical editions of the Greek, which is rarely the case — to study the method of translation and finally, to give a translation into a western language. The researcher who does not know Georgian must generally make do with the adaptation of Kekelidze (1923-1924) by Karst (1934) or Kekelidze (1941) by Tarchnišvili / Aßfalg (1955). Here are some indications of texts lost in Greek, but preserved in a Georgian version: Barsabas of Jerusalem, “On Christ and the Churches”; according to the editor (Van Esbroeck, 1982, 203), this text may go back to the 2nd century; Hippolytus, “On the blessings of Isaac, of Jacob and Moses”, “On David and Goliath”, “On the Song of Songs” (Garitte 1965; Briere 1954); Letters of St. Anthony (Garitte 1955); two letters of Macarius (Ninua 1982, 109-156); two early forms of the “Transitus Mariae” (Van Esbroeck 1973 and 1974); nine homilies of Meletius of Antioch; two texts of John Damascene, as a first selection. The list could be greatly enlarged (Outtier 1993, 276-285).
Georgian literature welcomed the best of Greek Christian literature. From the 11th century, the effort of translation was constant and very organised. Often the Georgians have preserved for us texts today lost in Greek, in particular the Greek literature composed in Palestine. It gives to us one part of the treasures with which it enriched itself, along with its own treasures and those which it borrowed from others in the neighbouring oriental worlds: Persia, and the Armenian, Syriac and Arabic worlds. There remains much to do to publish the texts — and their models — and to bring into the light the evolution of the processes of translation, the schools, the contending influences of monastic milieus and princely courts.
Birdsall, J. Neville(1983). “Georgian studies and the New Testament.” New Testament Studies 29: 306-320.
Brière. M. (1954). Hippolyte de Rome. Sur les bénédictions d’Isaac, de Jacob et de Moïse. Eds. Brière Maurice. Maries Louis.. Mercier Basile-Charles. Paris.
Brière, M. (1977). “Limitations of Georgian representing Greek.” The early versions of the New Testament. Bruce M. Metzger. Oxford. 199-214.
Charachidzé, G. (1986). Prométhée ou le Caucase. aris.
Chelidze, E. (1996). Ancient Georgian Theological Terminology. (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
Deeters, G. (1963). Armenische und kaukasische Sprachen. Leiden/Köln.
Gamkrelidze. T. (1989). Alphabetical writing and the old georgian script, (in Georgian, with an abstract in Russian). Tbilisi.
Gamkrelidze, T./Ivanov. V.V. (1984). Indoevropejskij jazyk i indoevropejcy. Tbilisi; English transl.: Indo-European and the Indo-Europeans. Berlin. New York, 1995.
Garitte. G. (1955). Lettres de saint Antoine. Louvain.
Garitte, G. (1956). Catalogue des manuscrits géorgiens littéraires du Mont Sinai. Louvain.
Garitte. G. (1965). Traités d’Hippolyte sur David et Goliath, sur le Cantique des Cantiques et sur l’Anté-christ. Louvain.
Karst. J. (1934). Littérature géorgienne chrétienne. Paris.
Kekelidze. K. ( 1923-1924). Histoire de la littérature géorgienne. I-II. Tbilisi. (in Georgian).
Kekelidze, K. (1941 ). Histoire de la littérature géorgienne. I-II. Tbilisi. (in Georgian).
Kekelidze, K. (1957). Études d’histoire de la littérature géorgienne ancienne (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
Melikisvil, D. ( 1999). De l’histoire de la terminologie philosophico théologique en géorgien ancien, (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
Ninua. G. (1982). La version géorgienne des œuvres du Pseudo-Macaire (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
Outtier. B. (1974). «Les recueils géorgiens d’œuvres attribuées à S. Ephrem le Syrien.» Bedi Kartlisa XXXII: 118-125.
Outtier. B. (1990-1991). «La version géorgienne du Pasteur d’Hermas.» Revue des études géorgiennes et caucasiennes 6 -7: 211-216.
Outtier. B. (1993). «Langue et littérature géorgiennes.» Christianism orientaux. Introduction à l’étude des langues et des littératures. M. Albert et al. Paris. 261-296.
Shanidze. M. (1990). Discourse on articles. An old georgian grammatical treatise. (in Georgian). Tbilisi.
Strabon (1975). Géographie. t.VIII. éd. François Lasserre. Paris.
Tarchnišvili. M. /Aßfalg. J. (1955). Geschichte der kirchlichen georgischen Literatur. Città del Vaticano.
Van Esbroeck. M. (1973). «Apocryphes géorgiens de la Dormition.» Analecta Bollandiana 91: 55-75.
Van Esbroeck, M. (1974). «L’Assomption de la Vierge dans un Transitus pseudo-basilien.» Analecta Bollandiana 92: 125-163.
Van Esbroeck, M. (1975). Les plus anciens homéliaires géorgiens. Etude descriptive et historique. Louvain-la-neuve.
Van Esbroeck, M. (1982). Barsabée de Jérusalem. Sur le Christ et les Eglises. Patrologia orientalis XLI : [1]—[112]. Turnhout.
Van Esbroeck, M. (1988). «Euthyme l’Hagiorite: le traducteur et ses traductions.» Revue des études géorgiennes et caucasienne 4: 73-197.
Vie de Georges, Abuladze et al. (1967). Monuments de la littérature géorgienne ancienne, II (in Georgian). Tbilisi; traduction latine: Peeters, P. (1917-1919). «Histoires monastiques géorgiennes.» Analecta Bollandiana XXXVI-XXXVII. 74-159.
Bernard Outtier, Lavau (France)