Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
General announcements
An interesting email on the Ethiopian literature email list:
List members may value knowing that one of the positive results of the imaging of the 1513 first Ge’ez book – Psalterium Æthiopicum – Rome, Potken,
http://www.kingscollections.org/exhibitions/specialcollections/psalter1513/was the use of Infra Red imaging to ‘remove’ spilled ink. Please see:-
Fire hits Internet Archive building http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-24848907
On Monday I must go back to work, so blogging will certainly take a back seat while I get established in a new job.
I have spent much of today converting a large 600+ page book into a PDF, so that I can search it, quote from it, and work with it more conveniently. It was a long task!
I wish that academic publishers did what Amazon do with music CDs. If you buy a music CD from Amazon, Amazon make an electronic version of the tracks available to you, in MP3 format. So you can download the album to your iPhone, as well as having the hard copy. Why can’t publishers provide PDFs on a similar system?
Via Brice C. Jones I learn that the new volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (vol. 73) contains a parchment fragment of the 4th century, with 6 lines from Justin Martyr’s First Apology on it! The reference is P.Oxy. 5129.
This is quite a find, since the apologies of Justin are known to us only from ms. Paris graecus 450, written in 1364. It is by no means unusual for Greek texts to be preserved only in manuscripts of the 14-16th centuries; what is unusual is to get a shred of a manuscript from antiquity.
Jones gives a photograph, transcription and translation. It’s a shame that it’s so very short; but how very exciting too!
A post in an online forum drew my attention to some passages in which God is described explicitly as being outside of time, and seeing all eternity as the present.
The first source mentioned is Augustine, Confessions, book 11. The old NPNF translation is here, and a look at the (Victorian) headings for the chapters reveals some very interesting ideas:
Chapter X.-The Rashness of Those Who Inquire What God Did Before He Created Heaven and Earth.
Chapter XII.-What God Did Before the Creation of the World.
Chapter XIII.-Before the Times Created by God, Times Were Not.
Chapter XIV.-Neither Time Past Nor Future, But the Present Only, Really is.
Chapter XV.-There is Only a Moment of Present Time.
Chapter XVI.-Time Can Only Be Perceived or Measured While It is Passing.
Chapter XVII.-Nevertheless There is Time Past and Future.
Chapter XVIII.-Past and Future Times Cannot Be Thought of But as Present.
Chapter XIX.-We are Ignorant in What Manner God Teaches Future Things.
It is unfortunate that the translator used mock-Jacobean English, in a manner more or less impenetrable even to someone as well-educated as the readers of this blog must be. For instance one passage in chapter 11 is rendered:
… in the Eternal nothing passeth away, but that the whole is present; but no time is wholly present ….
Fortunately I was able to find other versions:
In the Eternal, on the other hand, nothing passes away, but the whole is simultaneously present. (Outler translation[1])
In the eternal, nothing is transient, but the whole is present. (Chadwick translation.[2])
Boethius expresses a similar view in the Consolation of Philosophy, book 5, which is online here:
If one may not unworthily compare this present time with the divine, just as you can see things in this your temporal present, so God sees all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this divine foreknowledge does not change the nature or individual qualities of things: it sees things present in its understanding just as they will result some time in the future.
The translator of Boethius adds a useful note directing us to the Timaeus of Plato, “ch. xi. 38 B”, and stating that where Boethius refers to people who ‘hear that Plato thought, etc.,’ this is because this was the teaching of some of Plato’s successors at the Academy. Plato himself thought otherwise.
The passage referenced from Plato’s Timaeus 11 is as follows:
For there were no days and nights and months and years before the heaven was created, but when he constructed the heaven he created them also. They are all parts of time, and the past and future are created species of time, which we unconsciously but wrongly transfer to the eternal essence; for we say that he “was,” he “is,” he “will be,” but the truth is that “is” alone is properly attributed to him, and that “was” and “will be” only to be spoken of becoming in time, for they are motions, but that which is immovably the same cannot become older or younger by time, nor ever did or has become, or hereafter will be, older or younger, nor is subject at all to any of those states which affect moving and sensible things and of which generation is the cause. These are the forms of time, which imitates eternity and revolves according to a law of number. Moreover, when we say that what has become is become and what becomes is becoming, and that what will become is about to become and that the non-existent is non-existent-all these are inaccurate modes of expression. But perhaps this whole subject will be more suitably discussed on some other occasion.
Time, then, and the heaven came into being at the same instant in order that, having been created together, if ever there was to be a dissolution of them, they might be dissolved together. It was framed after the pattern of the eternal nature, that it might resemble this as far as was possible; for the pattern exists from eternity, and the created heaven has been, and is, and will be, in all time. Such was the mind and thought of God in the creation of time.
Chadwick adds a note referring us to Plotinus 3.7.3, which reads:
All [Eternity’s] content is in immediate concentration as at one point; nothing in it ever knows development: all remains identical within itself, knowing nothing of change, for ever in a Now since nothing of it has passed away or will come into being, but what it is now, that it is ever.
What we have here, then, is a philosophical idea from the Platonic school, being adopted by the Fathers to deal with the difficult question of the relationships of time and eternity.
As with all such borrowings, we may use them if they clarify what the scriptures tell us; but with the reservation that, if they cease to be useful, they are merely theories and may be discarded.
I’ve been adding a few more Mithraic monuments to my collection of pictures online. A Mithraeum from 1969 from Cologne is the focus.
Otherwise I am doing little. Gainful employment beckons!
A few months ago I mentioned a very odd story from Scotland, where, in 2012, the Glasgow Presbytery of the Church of Scotland drove one of its largest congregations out of their own building, which they had just contributed $5m to refurbish, under threat of lawsuit. There were many evil deeds by the church officials, all reported in the national Scottish press. The church bureaucrats even sent bailiffs to a prayer meething, to seize the hymnbooks, paid for by the worshippers, from the hands of the worshippers. There was a scandal, the Church of Scotland was covered with obliquy, and the same officials released a very tetchy and less-than-honest press release which was duly savaged by the press. The church building was empty and the officials prepared to dispose of it; the congregation had started a new free church; and the church officials looked like fools and liars.
Such stories have happened before. They happen whenever a church ceases to exist for its principles and becomes governed by bureaucrats concerned only with “business as usual”. When the parishes come into conflict with the church bureaucracy, the latter invariably behave very badly. But I thought that this was the end of the story.
It would seem not. Today I happened to look at the Wikipedia page for the church, St Georges Tron, which I last looked at back in 2012. And … miraculously, the story had vanished! There was a bland paragraph about how the congregation had “seceded”, and that was it. The paragraphs, with references, that described what had happened and why the church was now empty, had all vanished.
A little investigation revealed that someone had created an account, “User:BigAl246”, and used it solely to do those edits to that article. It had also made an edit to the article the minister of the church, William Phillips.
It is pretty difficult to think of anybody outside of the Glasgow Presbytery of the Church of Scotland who would have a motive. Who else would want to conceal the facts? The editor is, presumably, a press officer for the Church of Scotland, or one of the guilty men behind the scandal.
I do wish we knew the name of the wicked man in the Glasgow Presbytery who orchestrated all this evil. I suppose it comes as no surprise that this man and his friends are willing to try deception afterwards.
It is always curious to see a rotter at work. Apart from anything else, it is amusing to see someone willing to do something wicked, and ashamed of the bad publicity, but not of his evildoing.
It will be interesting to see if anyone at Wikipedia cares.
I have just returned from a coach tour around parts of Turkey. One of the places visited was Iznik, formerly Nicaea.
Nicaea stands at the eastern end of a substantial lake, and at the western end of a considerable plain filled with endless olive groves. The lake itself is surrounded by mountains, with a breach at the western end through which the lake waters empty into the sea.
The town is now little more than a village, but it still shows the Hellenistic street plan. It is surrounded by two sets of tremendous medieval walls from the Byzantine period. The gateways themselves are Roman, built in Trajan’s reign, and incorporated into the Byzantine walls. The walls also run along the lake-side. It is a tranquil, pleasant place, and a house in Nicaea overlooking the lake would undoubtedly be a restful place to be.
When our party were driven down to the lake-side, we were intoduced to the remains of a stone structure running out into the lake. This, we were told, was the “Senatus Palace”, built by Constantine, and in which the First Council of Nicaea was held.
One would not, of course, trust unreservedly any statement uttered by a dragoman, from whatever source, but it is certainly the case that there is masonry here, and fragments of the Roman town. It would be entirely remarkable if the site of the council was still to be seen.
Unfortunately I have been unable to verify any of the information given. The following photos were all taken on the spot.
Via AWOL I learn:
The Claremont Colleges Digital Library is serving some interesting open access material relating to antiquity: …
Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia The Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia (CCE) will initially include approximately 2800 articles published in The Coptic Encyclopedia (Aziz S. Atiya, ed. NY: Macmillan, 1991). The CCE will continuously add updates and new topics from the growing body of scholarship in Coptic studies at institutions worldwide. The scope of articles includes Coptic language and literature; Copto-Arabic literature; Coptic art, architecture, archaeology, history, music, liturgy, theology, spirituality, monasticism; and biblical, apocryphal, social, and legal texts.
Nag Hammadi Archive
The Nag Hammadi codices, thirteen ancient manuscripts containing over fifty religious and philosophical texts written in Coptic and hidden in an earthenware jar for 1,600 years, were accidentally discovered in upper Egypt in the year 1945. … The images in this collection were taken during the excavations and translation project of the 1970’s and record the environments surrounding excavations, visiting dignitaries, and the scholars working on the codices. …
The Coptic Encyclopedia project is very welcome!
The photographs taken during the 70’s project by James M. Robinson to publish the Nag Hammadi texts are of historical interest.
Sarah Biggs at the British Library Manuscripts blog writes:
The British Library holds one of the most significant collections of Greek papyri in the world, including the longest and most significant papyrus of the Aristotelian Constitution of Athens, unique copies of major texts such as Sophocles’ Ichneutae, and the Egerton Gospel, as well as a wide range of important documentary papyri from Oxyrhynchus, Aphrodito, Hibeh, Tebtunis, and the Fayum. The Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum was at the forefront of the new discipline of papyrology at the turn of the nineteenth century, and many of our predecessors are well-known to anyone who has ever consulted a text preserved on papyrus: Kenyon, Bell, and Skeat, to name just three.
Today, we are happy to announce that selected key papyri have been digitised and are now available to view on Digitised Manuscripts, along with completely new catalogue descriptions. Five papyri are available online now, and two more items will appear in the coming weeks …
Papyrus 229 (P. Lond. I 229): Latin deed of the sale of a slave boy, retaining the seals of its signatories
Papyrus 1531 (P. Oxy. IV 654/P. Lond. Lit. 222): Fragment of the Gospel of Thomas, in Greek
Papyrus 2052 (P. Oxy. VIII 1073/P. Lond. Lit. 200): Fragment of Old Latin Genesis, from a parchment codex
Papyrus 2068 (P. Oxy. IX 1174/P. Lond. Lit. 67): Sophocles, Ichneutae
Egerton Papyrus 2 (P. Lond. Christ. 1/P. Egerton 2): The Egerton Gospel
Excellent news, I’m sure we all agree.