Author: Roger Pearse at ToA

What I did on my Easter holidays I

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA

I’ve got a whole week off this week.  I’ve started by typing up a couple of stray early 19th century translations of monodies by Libanius which I found on google books and printed off.   Copious use of the long-S prevents any real use of OCR, so it’s manual typing.

It’s curious but the only out of copyright texts by Libanius translated into English all seem to be monodies!  A monody, I learn from one of the footnotes, is a dirge sung by a single actor on stage.  The two texts are monodies over Nicomedia, destroyed by an earthquake; and over the temple of Apollo at Daphne.  This was a famous oracle just outside Antioch, and was also famous for temple prostitution.  When Julian the Apostate was wintering in Antioch in 362, before his Persian campaign he oracle complained that the presence in the town of the body of the martyr St. Babylas was preventing the god giving oracles.  The emperor ordered that it be moved; and shortly afterwards the temple burned down. 

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Philip of Side

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA

Last weekend I located a copy of Henry Dodwell’s Dissertationes in Irenaeum (1689) which apparently contains the only publication of some bits of Philip of Side’s lost 5th century Ecclesiastical History, with a Latin translation and commentary. This reproduces a bit of Codex Bodl. Barrocianus 142 (14-15th century), which the Bodleian catalogue reveals to contain various church history texts, complete or excerpted. This bit is a list of leaders of the school at Alexandria, beginning with Athenagoras (writing “before Celsus”) down to Philip’s own time. The excerptor isn’t very accurate in what he says about Eusebius, so probably is no better on Philip. De Boor apparently published other fragments in TU, but I was unable to get these.

I learn also from Bruce Lincoln, Thomas-Gospel and Thomas-Community: A new approach to a familiar text. Novum Testamentum 19.1 (1977) p.69 n. 15 that the Coptic Gospel of “Thomas is mentioned by Hippolytus, Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem and Philip Sidetes.” (Although this may not be coptic Thomas, except in Hippolytus), but no ref. for Philip is given. It would be nice to collect all the Philip material.

I did consider getting a photograph of folio 216 recto and verso from the Bodleian, but the urge went away after I found that each photograph would cost $30, and was hedged round with further legally-dubious demands for money if anyone else saw it.

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Finding the Patrologia Graeca at Google Books

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
To locate the volumes of the Patrologia Graeca on Google books, use the search “cursus completus series” (without the quotes). To get volumes of the Patrologia Latina as well, leave out the term ‘series’. NB: It is important to specify “full view”, otherwise nothing much comes back. I’ve today seen what seem like dozens of volumes of the PG. I’m not sure whether these are visible to US readers (I’m accessing the site via a multinational’s WAN which makes me look as if I’m in the US), but I’ll add a note if this is a problem.

I find that the online displayed copies often seem to be missing pages; but the PDF available for download for them all does not.

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Titus of Bostra, “Contra Manichaeos”

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
Titus of Bostra wrote a long work in 4 books against the Manichaeans.  Large parts of the Greek exist, but a complete Syriac version was found in British Library Ms. 12150, brought from Deir al-Suryani (St. Mary Deipara) in the Nitrian desert in Egypt by Archdeacon Henry Tattam in 1842.  This manuscript was written in 411 AD, and also contains various works otherwise lost by Eusebius of Caesarea.

By chance while searching on Google Books, I came across a study of Titus’ work.  I learned from this that an unpublished French translation of books 1 and 2 existed (I have written to the translator and asked for a copy) and a century-old unpublished German translation of book 4 and part of book 3.  I wish that the work were online in English, or at least an English version of the existing translations. 

Returning to the Nitrian desert finds, I also stumbled across a statement that after these were brought to the UK, the Assistant Keeper of Manuscripts, William Cureton, reserved all the most interesting finds for himself (!).  This forced scholars to work on other parts of the vast collection of texts, with good results.  It is depressing to think that those who control the national collection, now as then, treat it as if it exists mainly for the benefit of its staff and not the nation; special rates for reproductions, refusal of any photography except by themselves, limited access, etc.  Nor is the BL alone in this, I would guess.

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Copyright and barriers to learning

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
On the ABTAPL list I receive a list of copyright events from Graham Cornish’ Copyright Circle. Most of the items indicate the endless encroachment of lawyers on access to learning.  But in the current list there are two entries which indicate a contrary trend.  

V&A to scrap academic reproduction fees.   By Martin Bailey
In a move which could transform art publishing, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (V&A) is to drop charges for the reproduction of images in scholarly books and magazines….The new scheme will come into effect early next year. The V&A is believed to be the first museum anywhere in the world which is to offer images free of copyright and administrative charges. It also intends to take a “liberal” view on what should be deemed scholarly or educational…. The decision to end charging could well have major implications on art publishing since there will be pressure on other UK museums to follow suit.
The Art Newspaper 01/12/06 http://www.theartnewspaper.com/article01.asp?id=525

Model Copyright Agreement – Journals
JISC and SURF have published a model agreement that will help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of a journal article. The main features of the licence are that copyright in the published work remains with the author and the author grants the publisher a licence to publish the work. The new model agreement will be particularly useful where articles are published in the traditional way, with publications being made available only to subscribers. Further information at www.surf.nl/copyrighttoolbox/authors/licence/ (14/11/06)
JISC-Legal Newsletter No. 21, November 2006 http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/newsletter_06-11.html

Most state-funded libraries have fought tooth and nail to keep their content off-line.  Recently Karlsruhe went so far as to refuse to allow volunteers to photograph manuscripts which they believed they would have to sell!  I received considerable abuse for even suggesting it.  The poverty of the British Library site is only matched by the crude refusal to photograph material other than at vast profit, as again I have experienced.  The Beinecke Rare Books library tried to charge me $216 for 14 digital photographs, when I wanted a photocopy of 14 pages of a 20th century handwritten translation. 

All kudos, then, to the V&A for getting into the internet age.  Most of what they have in mind has negligible commercial value.  But items that can be seen online can be studied by billions of people who could never visit the museum itself.  As the article rightly suggests, this will put pressure on the obscurantists.  Similar kudos are deserved by the National Archives in Britain, which has initiated a scheme whereby readers can register their digital cameras and then use them to take copies.  (I did suggest that the NA should keep copies of those, but this obvious step to create an archive was a bit further than the staff could envisage).

The second item likewise must benefit everyone.  Journals have taken pains to keep material offline, away from the public, and only available to major subscription-paying libraries.  Of course this means that the taxpayer who funds it all can’t see it, even though it is perfectly possible and free technologically.  As academics retain their own copyright, material will become available to a wider audience. 

There are academics who don’t care whether anyone sees their work.  I remember an email exchange with a translator of one of Origen’s works who was sublimely indifferent to the fact that his translation was printed in an edition of around 200 copies, all available only in a handful of institutions, and which would never appear online or be accessible to those who pay his salary until 130 years time.  But most are pleased to learn that the people value their work, and want to learn from it.  These real scholars are the ones on whom the Republic of Letters relies, and they will now be free to teach a wider audience.

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Learning Syriac — first session

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
As I mentioned earlier, I am trying to learn Syriac.  A week ago I went down to London, and 5 of us had a day of intensive tuition.  It was interesting that several had bought the grammars, but had been quite unable to get into them.  We were taught how to form and transliterate the Serto letters — something that all the books do very badly indeed –, with the vowel-system of Jacob of Edessa, and given some homework.  In the afternoon the mysteries of Syriac nouns and adjectives were laid out.  My general impression is that the language is not complicated, and that the poor quality of the books is actually the main obstacle.  The homework so far has really succeeded in teaching me the serto alphabet — much more easily than my struggles to learn the simpler estrangelo alphabet by myself.
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Monumenta Germanica Historica online

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I have just discovered that someone has scanned a lot of the volumes of the MGH and placed them online.  You can find them here.  Sadly they have not made whole volumes downloadable (why not?).  Among other things, the Chronography of 354 is there.
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Useful books or peddling hate?

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I learned from the bar of advertisements at the top of this page that a certain R.J.Hoffmann has published a translation of the fragments of Julian the Apostate Against the Galileans (i.e. Christians), through Prometheus Press.

Hoffmann published first a translation of Celsus’ work against the Christians, as reconstructed from the quotations in Origen’s Contra Celsum, which has often been translated in full. This was published by Oxford University Press, but received only two scholarly reviews, one nominal and the other which accused him of rewriting the text to ‘improve’ it and make Celsus Philosophus sound like a modern atheist. The translation is very punchy. But I had occasion to examine a couple of passages, and found that Hoffmann’s version did not represent the text in Origen at all accurately. On the other hand these passages were extremely acceptable to the lower forms of online atheist.

Next up was a translation of Porphyry’s lost work against the Christians. This in fact consisted not of a translation of all those fragments but only of those which came from the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes. In other words, he was translating only what already existed in an English version. The general accuracy of translation is better, and the book only let down by poor editing and the omission of all the material for which at that time no English translation existed. It seems to have attracted less scurrilous use than the first.

In 2004 the new book appeared. The fragments originally come from Cyril of Alexandria’s Contra Julianum, which unfortunately does not exist in English; but Dr. H. has only translated those portions which have already been translated. Again he has used Prometheus Press. It will be interesting to see if the book is listed in l’Annee Philologique, since the Porphyry was not.

A good translator is a benefit to us all. A translator who shares the religious sympathies of his subject can be a great boon, and can make a text far more accessible. I have long believed that Tertullian should only be translated by young men, who can relate to the fire of his thought! Those influenced by the flower-power generation are ideal to translate those muddled-mystic gnostic texts, which sensible people like myself can only yawn over. We all benefit, and no-one is the worse for the enterprise.

But there is also the risk that shared sympathy can go too far. An early 20th century Italian priest-translator of Tertullian introduced into De praescriptione haereticorum a phrase which completely changed the meaning of the sentence in a papalist direction. No doubt the change was an honest mistake, but an editor of a different confession would have preserved him from it. This problem is still more acute when it comes to shared hatreds.

Dr Hoffmann has a talent for expressing ancient anti-Christian writing in an accessible way. But so long as he continues to rewrite ancient polemic while omitting material not already translated, certain doubtless unworthy suspicions will continue to fester. Do any of these books serve any pleasant or scholarly purpose? I would like to hope so. But if so, what?

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Learning Syriac

Posted on by Roger Pearse at ToA
I’m going to have a go at learning Syriac.  It’s rather a lot of years since I left full-time education, so I face the prospect with trepidation.  An academic here in the UK is going to run 4 intensive Saturdays for us, starting in December.  The bad news is 5 weeks of homework between the first and the second. It will be most interesting to see if I can learn anything. I wonder if other people would like to recount their experiences of picking up a language as a mature student outside the education system.  I don’t agree with the idea that no-one is entitled to use an ancient text unless they can read it in the original — how many academics even can consult most oriental languages (Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Persian, etc) in this manner?  But I think that we can all agree that we would rather be able to!
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