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The dialogue of the Saint with the mummy of a Graeco-Egyptian: readings in the Life of St. Pisentius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Dioscorus Boles has sent me a couple of links from his Coptic Literature blog which I think will be of wide interest.  The posts are referenced copiously, and of a very high standard.

The first of these is an article on E. Wallis Budge, who published an immense amount of Coptic and ancient Egyptian material.  It includes a portrait picture – interesting to see! – as well as links to the five great collections of Coptic material that he produced.  These volumes are online, which is fortunate; for I remember how they disappeared off the shelves and into “rare books” rooms in our great libraries, shortly after the millennium.  Once in there, of course, they were effectively inaccessible.

The volumes were based on what he called the “Edfu codices”, after the region in which he obtained them.  They came from churches in the Edfu and Esna region.

He also sent me a link to a series of posts on death and the afterlife in Coptic literature.  I admit when I saw this, that I was not immediately enthralled!  But I clicked on a random post, and found treasure.

The fifth post in the series is on the encounter of St. Pisentius with a Hellene mummy, with whom he had a conversation on these subjects.  It is, of course, taken from the Vita or “saint’s life”.  The article begins by saying who St. Pisentius was — for which of us would know? He was,  in fact, a Coptic saint of the late 6th-early 7th century.  The article then continues by surveying the manuscript tradition for this work.  This also is very useful.  Myself, I always want to know how any text has reached us.  In the case of the Life of St. Pisentius, it has come down in Sahidic, Bohairic, and various Arabic versions.  Wallis Budge translated it.

Well, how interesting could a Coptic saint’s life be?  In this case, very interesting indeed.  The quotation is introduced as follows:

In the recesses of that mountain, Pisentius found a tomb in which he took refuge. It possessed “a large hall about 80 feet square, and its roof was supported by six pillars. This hall was made probably under one of the kings of the New Empire, and had been turned at a much later period, perhaps in one of the early centuries of the Christian era, into a common burial-place for the mummies of people of all classes. At all events, when John was taken there by his master the hall contained many mummified bodies, and the air was heavy with the odour of funerary spices.

Pisentius and his disciple opened some of the coffins, which were very large, with much decorated inner coffins. One mummy was swathed in silk, and must therefore have belonged to the third or fourth century of our era. As John was about to leave Pisentius he noticed on one of the pillars a small roll of parchment, and when Pisentius had opened it he read therein the names of all the people who had been buried in that tomb. The roll was probably written in demotic, and it is quite possible that the bishop could read this easily.”[21]

In that Pharaonic hall, used as little necropolis for some mummified dead from the Roman period, Pisentius had a curious encounter and intriguing conversation with a mummy, which was heard by John when he returned the following Saturday with water and food supply for the week, and later documented it in his book.

We know that the mummy belonged to a man from Erment;[22] and although we are not given his name, his parents’ names we are given as Agricolaos and Eustathia, and that they were Hellenes. Furthermore, we are told that the family worshipped Poseidon, the Greek God of the Sea. That encounter with that mummy reveals a great deal of what Copts of that age thought of death and afterlife.

Then follows the excerpt, and then a discussion of the content.  The post is everything that a scholarly post should be, and the text itself is fascinating!

I haven’t time today to look at the other posts.  But clearly the Coptic Literature blog has reached a high standard indeed.  Well done!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A virus has left me stuck at home, and I am therefore in need of  the less taxing kind of literature to pass the time.  I have fallen back on Cicero’s Letters to his friends, in the two volume Penguin edition from 1978, translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey.[1]

Letters are a strange form of literature to peruse, and require a certain state of mind to read with enjoyment.  They are usually short, which makes them slip down easily.  At the same time they are inevitably very “bitty”.  Each is a short piece of this, a short piece of that.  There is a correspondent whom we will not know and who needs to be identified by a brief well-considered footnote.  This may not be an end-note, under any circumstances, for the reader will die of flipping to and fro very quickly.  But it may be supplemented by a longer end-note for important personages now known only to specialists.

Cicero’s letters were collected in antiquity, probably by Tiro his secretary.  He kept copies of his letters — I have just read one where a correspondent had torn up a letter and then apologised for doing so, and Cicero replies that he need not worry, “I have it here”, and that a fresh copy can be sent.  Books of letters addressed to particular recipients circulated.  These included great men of the late Republic, like Cato and Julius Caesar, which have not come down to us.  But sixteen books of letters have reached us, so it makes for a lengthy correspondence even so.  Thankfully the Penguin translation reordered the letters into roughly chronological sequence.

In a separate volume are the great mass of letters to Cicero’s friend and publisher, Atticus.  I confess that I have always found this very hard to read, partly because Penguin issued it in a single monster volume, rather than splitting it into two.  I could wish that some publisher took the obvious step and combined the two sets of letters, producing a  set of four volumes in chronological order.

For the “story” of the book is the story of Cicero’s life.  That is what unites the letters, and makes it possible for the reader to read such a mass of short pieces.  In two separate series it is quite difficult to do.

The Roman attitudes expressed in these volumes can sometimes be quite alien.  In one case Cicero writes to ask a friend to hunt down an escaped library slave of his own named Dionysius and return him, evidently for punishment.  In a later letter Vatinius, then on campaign in Dalmatia, writes to say he has heard that the slave is hiding among a local tribe, and states his intention of ferretting him out, wherever he goes, in order to please Cicero.  The idea that Dionysius should be left alone occurs to neither.  Their own advantage is all.

Likewise there is a casual indifference to marriage and divorce.  The noble Romans of this period dumped their wives at their pleasure, while the abuse of their slaves in every household was taken for granted.  Meanwhile their cradles were empty and their lineages perished.  Their society was morally bankrupt.  Tyranny followed.

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  1. [1]Pleasingly this is currently available from Oxford University Press repackaged into a single volume, here, ISBN13: 9781555402648, for a mere $32.  The translation is also in the current Loeb edition.↩

Press and web censorship to be introduced in Britain

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s mildly unbelievable, but apparently it’s true.

The new regulation will cover “websites containing news-related material” apparently.  That means not only ones such as this, but the one run by your local parish council too.  And the one written by just about anyone with a blog.

We now live in a world in which millions of people publish things each day.  Yet the system of regulation being proposed seems a throwback to a time when only a few newspaper editors wrote “news-related material”.  What is your twitter feed, if not a stream of “news-related material”?

I grew up in a central African country run by various dictators who controlled the newspapers.  Perhaps that is why I find the idea of state regulation of the press in Britain so shocking.

A big part of me thinks that this is a disaster in the making.  A small part of me hopes these proposals go through so we can see the utter balls up that follows.

The measure is being called “regulation”.  Unfortunately it seems unlikely to be anything but censorship.

I do not see how it can avoid meaning that a committee of establishment types will censor the media to prevent the expression of any opinions that they object to.  Furthermore the honest reporting of any news that they do not wish reported honestly will be prevented.  This may surprise; but I remember how the mention that criminals were black, or Romanian, or whatever — and very frequently the culprits were immigrants — was banned, on the grounds that it was “inflammatory”.  So we must expect this same approach to become endemic.  Members of favoured groups who commit crimes will not be associated with that group; members of unfavoured groups, such as Catholics, will be used to smear the group in question.  Indeed this happens quite a lot already.  But now the websites that do report the facts will be shut down.

The “independent regulator” will be run by the same sorts of people who run the “independent” BBC.  The establishment already decide who runs the latter; who else will they choose for the former?  Yet the BBC news on teletext is already so grossly censored (courtesy of political correctness rather than threat of legal punishment) that some of the news items on it make very little sense as read.

We do need to name the guilty.  The pressure for this evil has come from the political left.  I would imagine that their motivation is to control the UK printed media (which, being purchased by the public, is mostly of the right).  The addition about blogs only came to notice in the last few days.

It does, of course, affect this blog too.  While I post as little as I can on political issues, I have felt obliged to post on free speech.  This act will affect what I can say.

Milton, thou should’st be living at this hour…[1]

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  1. [1]http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174797↩

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been looking at some of the entries for Syria in the CIMRM, the collection of all Mithraic monuments and inscriptions.  In particular the two altars at Sia have drawn my attention.  One is easy enough to deal with — I have a photo from the original publication, plus another from the web.

But the other one is hard to deal with.  It hadn’t been published when the CIMRM came out in 1955.  All that existed was a note in Syria journal in 1952 (thankfully online at Persee.fr), promising publication together with other monuments from the Hauran by a certain Mr.  Sabeh, who was an official at the Damascus Museum at the time.  It’s really pretty hard to find a publication from that!

Google searching suggests that possibly any publication was in “Annales Archéologiques de Syrie”, whatever that is, and that the person was a Joseph Sabeh.

But of course in 1956 the Suez incident took place, at which the USA attacked its own allies, Britain and France, and gave support to its enemy Nasser.  The collapse of British and French power left a vaccuum in the region which has never been filled, and caused 50 years of constant violence and tyranny, so that was a very strange policy for the US government of the time to pursue.  But it also meant the collapse of westernising initiatives in all these countries, and it may be that Mr Sabeh ended up hanging from a lamppost, as savagery returned to the region, rather than publishing anything.

It is annoying to be unable to find material of this kind.  Interestingly all the later references to these altars suggest to me that nobody else has ever seen the publication either!

Worse yet, I have found a photograph of a smashed and reassembled tauroctony, apparently held in the Damascus Museum.  There is no indication anywhere as to its origins, and I do not find it in CIMRM.

It’s all a sobering reminder that, while the web has made much information more accessible, it has largely done so within the region of Christendom, of western Europe and the US.  Outside that pale, little is available.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been collecting images of Mithraic monuments from the web and identifying them, and adding them to my Mithras site.  It’s fun; and there are more to do.

I’ve also written a short section in the site on Mithras and the Taurobolium.  Did the cultists of Mithras perform the taurobolium, a ceremony of being washed in bull’s blood?  No, they didn’t.  Or, if they did, no evidence records it.  It’s a ritual of Cybele, not Mithras.

Jolly useful to find that I had a PDF of Duthoy’s monograph on the taurobolium on disk when I needed it!

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Christians rescue snowed-in motorists in UK: story in Daily Mail

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From the Daily Mail today:

Thank Heavens for Snow Angels! How a group of Christians got through to help stranded drivers hours efore the emergency teams arrived

  • Motorists stranded on A23 towards Brighton for up to 13 hours
  • But more than 30 Plymouth Brethren turned out to lend a helping hand
  • Airports and railways also hit during traffic chaos

Pity the poor souls out there on the highway to hell.

Cars were skidding into ditches or ploughing into snowdrifts … truckers were forced to abandon jack-knifed lorries … people were wrapped in blankets and shivering against the cold.

For up to 13 hours, motorists were stranded on the A23 towards Brighton when a few miserable inches of snowfall turned the road into a skating rink.

But – praise the Lord – salvation was at hand. For the only True Grit that seemed to work was the resolve of a modest group of Christian evangelists, undaunted by the chaos.

They became ‘Angels of the A23’ by working until dawn to help desperate motorists who must have wondered if hell would freeze over before they were rescued.

More than 30 Plymouth Brethren, as they are called, turned out in a fleet of trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles to tow cars to safety, care for shivering casualties and dispense that most quintessentially English of comforts – hot tea and Bakewell tarts.

Yesterday they were hailed as ‘snow saviours’ by those stuck for hours at Handcross, a few miles below the end of the M23 in West Sussex. ‘They were absolutely brilliant,’ one driver said. ‘It would take the council a week to organise something like this. They were angels and everyone was really grateful to see them.’

The Plymouth Brethren is a 200-year-old religious fellowship group without structured hierarchy or  formal membership.

Among those on the rescue mission was Mark MacIntyre, who works in the medical supply industry.

He initially arrived around teatime to find his nephew, who was among those stranded.

Yesterday he said: ‘When I got up here I realised the severity of the situation and organised the others.

‘The road obviously hadn’t been gritted, or the snow was too much, and there were cars stuck as far as you could see. The snow was just blowing across the road and was gradually turning to ice, making it really treacherous.

‘There were about 30 of us with seven 4x4s. It was a kind of rapid response unit … we were on the scene within about 45 minutes.

‘One of the Land Rovers we have has the facilities to make tea and coffee and had plenty of supplies on board, so we were dishing those out to the police as well as people who were stuck in their cars.

‘Everyone was really grateful. A hot drink can mean a lot when you are stuck outside at night.

‘By the time we left at about 4.30am the snow ploughs seemed to be on top of the situation.’

Alas, the Brethren couldn’t reach all parts of the country yesterday.

Despite Highways Agency teams working at ‘full capacity’ through the night, dozens of stranded Sussex drivers bombarded the internet with complaints that they never saw a gritter or a snow plough. 

The chaos caused by Britain’s worst spring freeze for 27 years spread rapidly across the country. As well as the roads, airports and railways were also hit, bringing most of the south east to a standstill. All Eurostar rail services were suspended.

Although snowfall in isolated patches reached 4.7inches, the worst-hit areas of Sussex and Kent experienced only a couple of inches. But thanks to the fact that the snow did not settle but turned to ice as temperatures plummeted as low as -3C, it became unusually treacherous. The AA was expected to have attended more than 15,000 calls by the end of last night – almost double the normal rate. Guernsey and Jersey airports were closed. The Channel Tunnel shut for six hours, causing huge delays on the M20 in Kent.  …

The story is also mentioned briefly in the Guardian.  The Telegraph has a picture of another group of the Brethren shovelling snow away from the entrance to the doctor’s surgery at Stow in the Wold.

Well done, Mr MacIntyre, and the Plymouth Brethren.  I don’t know whether these are open or exclusive brethren, but the service rendered was very timely, and well done, and Christ was honoured in it.

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Dishonesty at Wikipedia: “they don’t like it up ’em, sir”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An amusing story from Wikipediocracy, the Wikipedia criticism site.  A user at Wikipedia has now banned any link to Wikipediocracy from Wikipedia, by adding the site to the “spam” blacklist.  Of course Wikipediocracy is not spam; this is censorship of an external site.

Since Google privileges Wikipedia so much, this reduces traffic to Wikipediocracy and therefore reduces the number of people who are aware of the criticism site.  Which is, of course, terribly convenient to evildoers at Wikipedia, of whom there are rather a lot these days.

And why, we may ask, was it felt acceptable for Wikipedia to impose a ban on another legitimate internet site?

WO has regrettably decided to out a Wikipedia user on its pages (the link is available from its main page, and several sub-pages that link to what’s on the front page) and several en-Wikipedia users have gone on a crusade to mention this site as much as possible to push drama and in some cases to further the outing.

That’s right.  Someone in Wikipediocracy dared to mention the real name of one of the editors hiding behind a pseudonym in Wikipedia.  This is strictly forbidden in Wikipedia — where abuse is so endemic that it is unsafe to use your own name — and, apparently, Wikipedia feels that it has the right to forbid any other internet site to do it either.  Or else.

Dear me.  And I thought Wikipedia was all about sharing knowledge?

The serious point is that the people in power in Wikipedia today are unfit to hold such a role, as such impudence demonstrates.  Wikipedia is too important to the internet, and has too much power over Google ranking, to be left to the administration of fools, trolls and children.  It’s got to stop, and needs regulation now.

Yes, crowdsourcing content is a marvellous idea, and I have used it myself for translation projects.  But there is no point whatsoever in trying to “crowd-source” control of such projects.  Doing so merely allows the most determined trolls to self-select themselves as kings and lords of the project.  Rarely will such people be fit to hold such a role.  What follows will be mainly a “Lord of the Flies” experience. 

It is now time for the administrators of Wikipedia to be retired.  Instead a group of paid administrators should be introduced, with transparent, fair and adult administration. 

Until this happens, sleazy events like anonymous users banning other internet sites for daring to leak information will continue to occur.

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Finding interesting things at the Christies web-site

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Few of us will be aware that there are good quality images of past sale objects on the website of Christie’s, the fine art dealers.  But an accident took me there this evening, and I found half a dozen objects relating to Mithras, which had been sold over the last 20 years.  There were photographs of most of these.  I rather doubt that any of them appear in the catalogue of Mithraic monuments and objects, the CIMRM, although of course it is very hard to tell.

Naturally I have added these to my own modest catalogue online of monuments and objects.  I hope that Christie’s will not mind.

One item in particular caught my eye; a statuette supposedly of Mithras-Sabazios.  Sabazios is usually identified with Jupiter or Dionysus.  What I do not see, however, is why we should suppose this to be Mithras?  Merely wearing a phrygian cap is not enough … is it?

There were no such items in the CIMRM, which is telling, perhaps.  I have included it in my own catalogue, but with misgivings.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I did a little more on the Mithras pages.  I was able to identify one of the images that I found online and create a CIMRM page for it.  The section in CIMRM on material from Alba Iulia is not very easy to work with, and I was reduced to looking through the limited number of illustrations in the same volume, just to find out which relief I was looking at.  There must have been several Mithraea at Alba Iulia, judging from the number of reliefs of Mithras killing the bull; yet none are mentioned in the CIMRM.  One was discovered in 2010.  There must have been others.

Still, it is impossible for a single amateur like myself to do more than scratch the surface of Mithraic archaeology.  I console myself by thinking that what I do is at least useful, as far as it goes.

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Eusebius on the Psalms – some old quotations on the sabbath

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A couple of years ago I discussed a quotation from Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms.  An incoming link alerts me to a discussion which gives a longer quotation, and a source for it.

The source given is Moses Stuart’s Commentary on the Apocalypse (vol. 2, p.9, p.40; Andover: Allen, Morrill, Wardwell, 1845).  But a quick look at the 1850 reprint suggests that something is awry.  A better source is Harmon Kingsbury, The Sabbath, 1840, p.218 f. As Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms does not exist in English, it seems useful to repeat what is said:

Professor Stuart says:

“The important testimony of Eusebius, (fl. 320,) in the time of Constantine has been unaccountably overlooked by all the patristical investigators whom I have yet been able to consult. It is contained in his commentary on the Psalms which is printed in Montfaucon’s Collectio Nova Patrum and some of it is exceedingly to our purpose and withal very explicit.

“In commenting on Ps. xxi. 30 (xxii. 29 in our English version) he says ‘On each day of our Savior’s resurrection [i.e. every first day of the week] which is called Lord’s day, we may see those who partake of the consecrated food and that body [of Christ] which has a saving efficacy after the eating of it bowing down to him.’ pp. 85, 86.

“Again on Ps. xlv. 6 (xlvi. 5) he says ‘I think that he [the Psalmist] describes the morning assemblies in which we are accustomed to convene throughout the world.’ p.195

“On Psalm lviii. 17 (lix. 16) he says ‘By this is prophetically signified the service which is performed very early and every morning of the resurrection day [i.e. the first day of the week throughout the whole world].’ p.272

“But by far the most important passage of all remains to be adduced. It is in his commentary on Ps. xci (xcii) which is entitled ‘A psalm or song for the Sabbath day’. He begins his commentary by stating that the patriarchs had not the legal Jewish Sabbath but still, ‘given to the contemplation of divine things and meditating day and night upon the divine word, they spent holy Sabbaths which were acceptable to God.’

“Then observing that the Psalm before him has reference to a Sabbath he refers it to the Lord’s day and says that ‘it exhorts to those things which are to be done on resurrection day.’ He then states the precept respecting the Sabbath as addressed originally to the Jews and that they often violated it. After which he thus proceeds: ‘Wherefore as they rejected it [the sabbatical command], the Word [Christ] by the New Covenant translated and transferred the feast of the Sabbath to the morning light and gave us the symbol of true rest, viz. the saving Lord’s day, the first [day] of the light in which the Savior of the world, after all his labors among men, obtained the victory over death and passed the portals of heaven, having achieved a work superior to the six days creation.’ … ‘On this day which is the first day of light and of the true Sun, we assemble after an interval of six days and celebrate holy and spiritual Sabbaths, even all nations redeemed by him throughout the world AND do those things according to the spiritual law which were decreed for the priests to do on the Sabbath, for we make spiritual offerings and sacrifices which are called sacrifices of praise and rejoicing, we make incense of a good odor to ascend as it is said, Let my prayer come up before thee as incense. Yea we also present the shew bread, reviving the remembrance of our salvation, the blood of sprinkling, which is of the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world and which purifies our souls. … Moreover we are diligent to do zealously on that day the things enjoined in this Psalm, by word and work making confession to the Lord and singing in the name of the Most High. In the morning also with the first rising of our light we proclaim the mercy of God toward us also his truth, by night exhibiting a sober and chaste demeanor; and all things whatsoever that it was duty to do on the Sabbath [Jewish seventh day], these we have transferred to the Lord’s day as more appropriately belonging to it, because it has a precedence and is first in rank and more honorable than the Jewish Sabbath. For on that day, in making the world, God said Let there be light and there was light; and on the same day the Sun of righteousness arose upon our souls. Wherefore it is delivered to us [paradedotai, it is handed down by tradition] that we should meet together on this day and it is ordered that we should do those things announced in this Psalm.’

“After some interval he speaks again of the title to the Psalm and says that it does not so much respect the Jewish Sabbath for ‘it signifies the Lord’s day and the resurrection day as we have proved in other places.’ ‘This Scripture teaches that we are to spend the Lord’s day in leisure for religious exercises (twn qeiwn a)skse)wn) and in cessation and vacation from all bodily and mortal works which the Scripture calls Sabbath and rest.’

It is useful to have this material.  I wonder what else in the way of patristic material lies buried in elderly English bible commentaries?

How I love these forum arguments! I have gained so much from them over the years.  How sad it is that, today, it is simply impossible for me to even find the discussions online, since it became impossible to search only for forums online.

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