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From Hell’s bookshelf: the official 1930 history of the Student Christian Movement

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Some books are fun to read.  Some are worth reading, fun or not.  Some are not worth reading.  And finally some are worse than that.

Last weekend I was reading Oliver Barclay’s From Cambridge to the World, a fine description of the work of God through student ministry in Britain over the last 120 years.  I was myself a member of the Oxford Intercollegiate Christian Union (OICCU) when I was a student, so it is a world that is familiar to me.  It’s not a long book, but it is full of interest.

I noticed that the author used extracts from the official Story of the Student Christian Movement by Tissington Tatlow, published in 1933, and this reminded me that I wanted to read this.  Now the SCM was an early attempt by the Cambridge intercollegiate CU (CICCU) to create an inter-university link for the Christian Unions, but it went badly off the rails into heresy, ran into trouble after WW1, and collapsed more or less finally – I think it still exists in name – during the 1960s.   Tissington Tatlow was the secretary of The Movement – they spoke of it in capitals, curiously – for much of its life, so his book has an official character.  Anyway I found a copy for sale for a few dollars, and ordered it.

I was leaving my house this morning, and to my surprise the postman called to me from up the road that he had a parcel for me.  So he did; and inside a thin plastic wrapper was Tatlow’s opus.  It’s almost a thousand pages long and three inches thick.

But the content!  Oh my goodness.  Even after a lifetime of reading corporate communications, the prose style is impenetrable.  Did anyone ever read this?  The author seems to feel that his work must glorify The Movement at all costs, and any hint of dissent or difficulty might scare people away.  But of course this means that most of the interesting episodes of the history of the SCM are omitted. That leaves only paper-shuffling.  It is the work of a bureaucrat.

A characteristic passage occurs early on, as early as page seven.  Dwight L. Moody ran a mission in the 1890s at Cambridge, which met violent opposition.  There were many striking scenes, of the highest interest to any reader.  Barclay tells the story at some length.  Tatlow, however, dismisses it in half-a-sentence; that “the first meeting was broken up”.  It’s not a good moment for the reader. That’s when he discovers that anything interesting is not likely to be described.

It’s not a very honest Story either, in that it misleads the reader.  The basic facts are that the SCM was created by men from the CICCU.  Over time the SCM drifted away from these roots into the theological liberalism prevalent in the Edwardian period.  The CICCU found it difficult to remain part of an organisation that believed in a different God and a different religion, and – not without great heart-burnings – disaffiliated.  But Tatlow conceals the role of the CICCU in founding the SCM.  The SCM just happens to arise at Cambridge, in his account.

In fact less than a dozen pages mention the CICCU throughout the thousand pages of his work, which is astonishing.  What on earth does he fill up the pages with?  For most of that time the CICCU was the Cambridge representative of the SCM, as well as its founder.  He does describe a mission at Cambridge which Barclay also describes.  Tatlow does not mention that only one of the missioners was backed by the CICCU, or that the CICCU thought the mission a failure.  Instead he tells us that the mission “shook the university to the core”.  A striking phrase; but what this means in concrete terms is not stated.  Instead he moves on.  Barclay’s much briefer account tells us rather more, including the salient fact that the mission meetings were well-attended, but produced no conversions.

Tatlow likewise misrepresents the break with the CICCU before WW1, somewhere around page three hundred and something.  Five pages are devoted to this episode, nor is there a lack of criticism of the CICCU for refusing to change as the SCM had changed.  But there is nothing to tell the reader that the SCM was sawing off its own roots by forcing its founding organisation to leave.  The description is quite bitter enough, however, to explain that the CICCU were very right to leave.  Sadly, within forty pages, Tatlow is telling us how the members of the movement no longer knew what truth was, and started having inward-looking meetings to try to find out!  One suspects that these efforts were unsuccessful.

The book is really very hard to read.  There is not a trace of Christian conviction within it.  Like everything else about the SCM, it was intended to give a message to adults rather than for students.  But the overwhelming impression is of a little man toadying to bishops and senior ecclesiastics.

It may be relevant that Tatlow himself was not of high social status, at a time when Cambridge was the preserve of the upper class.  He was merely the son of an Irish land-agent, who managed the estates of Lord Kingston. Perhaps he always felt the need to doff his cap?  His ecclesiastical career was not exciting.  For all of his efforts he did not obtain any real preferment in the Church of England, becoming only a canon of Canterbury.  But his real achievement was to lead a gospel movement onto the rocks.  He died as late as 1957, by which time the SCM was far gone in decay.  I wonder if there are obituaries around?  They might be interesting to read.  There is a rather dishonest Wikipedia article on the SCM; Tatlow himself has no such page, and is clearly a forgotten figure.

The size and shape of the book is redolent of the late Victorian era.  I found myself wondering if he was ordered to write it by some imperious Barchester-type bishop, in order to fill a gap of that size and shape in his lordship’s palace library; and the bishop telling him firmly to “leave out the religious nonsense”.  It reads a bit like that!  There are some interesting photographs in it, however, which I have not seen elsewhere.

I really ought to make sure that Tatlow is online.  It is unlikely that anybody will consider it worth scanning otherwise.  There is no drearier sight than the “religion” section of a second-hand bookshop, full of rubbish, and Tatlow certainly belongs there.  But it is still data, with all its faults.  Even when Tatlow is wrong, or foolish, the fact that he thought so – that the secretary of The Movement thought in this way – is itself evidence.

Let us all hope that we use our lives more productively than he did.  Let us make absolutely certain that we do not write books like this.  The world does not need litanies of pointless self-congratulation, masking utter failure.  Only Hell enjoys such books; but one suspects they still go unread.

Edit: the CICCU split with SCM was before WW1, not after it, although there was an attempt at reunion in 1919.

Update: (Sept 2019).  The book itself is at Archive.org here: https://archive.org/details/TheStoryOfTheStudentChristianMovement/page/n6

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There will be stars: the life and death of Robert H. Schmidt

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ancient technical texts are very hard to work with.  Not merely do you need the usual Greek and Latin language skills, and a feel for the customs of the ancient world.  You also need a specialised understanding of the discipline in question.  Not many of us have knowledge of alchemy, or farming methods, or architecture.  So the manuals on these subjects tend to be understudied and few are translated into modern languages.

I’ve written a couple of posts about Project Hindsight.  This is a project undertaken by people interested in astrology in modern times, but consists of translations of ancient astrological texts.  Such an enterprise can only be valuable, and the collection of translations deserves to be more widely known.  Most are out-of-print but can be obtained as PDFs.

But this week I learned that the principal translator, Robert H. Schmidt, has died.  He was only 67.  He was an independent scholar, and he did the sort of things we do here, so it is very much appropriate for us to commemorate him.

He dedicated his life to ancient astrology, and especially hellenistic astrology; to understand what it was, and translating the primary sources so that others could work.  In most cases he prepared the first ever translation of the sources into a modern language.  He self-published his translations, which inevitably means that they did not find their way into academic research libraries.  This is unfortunate, and it means that they remain obscure.

The funeral home has a web-page with an obituary here, written by Bill Johnston, who also supplied me with some additional information.

Born on December 22, 1950, Robert H. Schmidt obtained a scholarship to study mathematical physics at M.I.T. But he chose instead to go to St John’s College in Annapolis as part of their “Great Books” programme to read philosophy.  There he was a student of Jacob Klein, one of Heidegger’s students.  But he also learned the importance of reading primary texts in the original language and “discovered his love of the Greek verb”.  Instead of pursuing an academic career, he chose to become an independent scholar, and to translate ancient astrological texts.

He settled in Cumberland, in Maryland.  To support himself he initially worked as a printer, and in a range of other blue-collar jobs, but by middle age he was well-enough known to support himself through his publications and recordings of lectures and seminars – presumably on the subject of astrology, although Mr Johnston does not say so.

A draft of one of his papers, The Problem of Astrology (2000), may be found online here. It repays reading by those seeking to understand what he did intellectually.  At one point he says something which perhaps explains how a university-trained philosopher came to be interested in astrology. He asks what we actually mean by the word “astrology”?

Why the title “Metaphysics of Metaphysics?” [as a description of astrology] Now I chose that title very deliberately because, in my mind, metaphysics has two completely different meanings. My background being in the study of ancient and modern philosophy, when I heard the word metaphysics, I always understood it to mean the study of Being, as it was for the Greeks. It was a great surprise to me when I first went into a bookstore and looked for the metaphysical section expecting to find some new books on Aristotle, and found instead books on crystals, out-of-body experiences, meditation, occultism, and astrology. This was long before I was involved in the astrological world, by the way.

…  There is a statement by a Neo-Platonist philosopher named Iamblichus in a strange book called On The Mysteries. In this book another neo-Platonist Porphyry is directing a number of questions about the Egyptian religion to an Egyptian priest.

In the course of the answering of these questions the priest says that the men who translated the Egyptian sacred writings into Greek — and these sacred writings included the their magical, alchemical, and astrological writings, all generally attributed to one of their sages names Hermes — the men who translated these sacred writings into Greek were men who were trained in Greek philosophy, presumably the philosophies of the Athenian Greeks Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

Now, this is a very astonishing statement and it made a great impression on me.

Such are the chances of life.

Another article is here.  More materials can be found on his website, Project Hindsight.

Robert H. Schmidt died on December 6th, 2018. Mr Johnston writes:

A GoFundMe site has been set up on Ellen’s behalf to help with medical bills and funeral expenses at https://www.gofundme.com/support-robert-schmidt039s-medical-costs. We would like to give our sincere thanks to the many people who have contributed so far, and for the outpouring of condolences and expressions of appreciation for Bob and his invaluable contributions to the art and science of astrology through his remarkable research over the last two decades.

Few of us would find it possible to read an ancient astrological text with any enjoyment.  Yet he evidently did.  Most people who read such a text would find themselves baffled by the technical language.  But he was not baffled.  I do not myself possess any overview of the subject of Hellenistic Astrology; and evidently Mr Schmidt found the same, for he composed one.  He made all these translations, and did so from hard, granite-like material in Greek and Latin.  The world owes him a debt for so doing.  Few professional academics have ever even attempted such a  thing.  He did not receive recognition or honour for what he did.  But I suspect that little that has been written on astrology in the universities in the last 30 years will be half as useful or well-informed as his little series of self-published books.

Thank you, Mr Schmidt, for all your efforts.  You sought truth in the heavens.  May you find mercy and the real source of all heavenly truth on the Last Day.  Requiescat in pace.

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Ancient Greek / Latin translator available for hire

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A gentleman wrote to me enquiring if I knew anybody who could use someone with knowledge of ancient Greek or Latin, primarily patristic.  He’s a PhD student who is already doing some work as a volunteer.

Now I’ve not seen his work, and at the moment I can’t offer him some work myself. But if you would like to offer him some paid translation work, drop me a line and I will put you in contact.

I’d recommend that any such work starts with a  page or two, and see how that goes, before committing to a large project.  I generally find that I have to guide my translators a bit in matters of style!

Here are some excerpts (with his permission) from his letter.  I certainly will get him doing some Ephraem Graecus once things settle down here!

 I am very happy to see that you have turned your attention to Ephraem Graecus, since translating, producing critical editions of, and ascertaining the authenticity, authorship, dating, and doctrinal content of these works is a career goal of mine (an overwhelming task, I know).

In October 2017… I was asked by a philosophy professor at Christendom to deliver the first ever extracurricular, academic student lecture in the college’s history, which I did on the topic of Mary as Mediatrix of all graces in the previously untranslated hymns of Ephraem Graecus (the last time a major study was conducted on that topic was by J.M. Bover in 1926!).

Moreover, in May 2018, my college awarded me the William H. Marshner Award for Outstanding Senior Thesis, in exchange for my 146-page thesis on the cult of Mary and the saints, which included 295 citations from the Fathers which I personally translated from the Latin and Greek. A large amount of the research was in the area of Ephraem Graecus (42 citations of the 295).

…I am a volunteer Greek translator for Oxford University’s Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity Project. … I’d like to find a paid job in the area of Patristic translation/research.  … Would you happen to know of any scholars/professors in need of a translator or assistant?

I would add that … I am fluent in both Classical and Ecclesiastical Latin. Accordingly, the “ad” should probably say “Greek and/or Latin Patristics.” In fact, I am more than comfortable doing translations of any Latin texts from any time period – I have experience translating Classical, Patristic, Medieval, and Early Modern works -, though Christian texts would be preferable to me.

Contact him via my form here.

Update (March 2019): The gentleman has now gone silent, so I’m guessing that he is otherwise engaged.

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Memories of the polemical and literary activity of Earl Doherty

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Few today will have heard the name of Earl Doherty.  But in the late 90s and early 2000s, if you were one of those posting online in the religion groups in Usenet news, you would inevitably encounter some atheist gleefully parotting his theories.

Doherty was a Canadian atheist, who used the nascent internet to push the claim that Jesus never existed.  Doubtless he found this in long-forgotten intellectually disreputable atheist literature.  But the popularity of the claim among online teenage atheists is entirely his work.  Others would come later, but he was the first.

Doherty has faded from the internet in the last decade.  His Wikipedia page gives his date of birth as 1941, which would make him very elderly now.  So my own memories of his activity are therefore historical data now.

He started with a website, jesuspuzzle.org.  This contained his theory, in the form of a series of pages or essays, all of them written with the utmost certainty.  The original versions could be pretty crude.  The Christian apologist J.P.Holding attacked them fiercely.  His essay on Minucius Felix, reflecting very outdated views on his priority to Tertullian, came to my notice through postings on usenet.  I felt obliged to add a page to my site debunking them.

Doherty’s response to these attacks was always the same.  He would use the material supplied by his critics to improve his material.  He never changed his mind, or withdrew his claim, but instead he would edit or reword parts of the essay to blunt the criticism or make the objection irrelevant.  In the meantime he would trade angry responses with critics in the online forums, often resorting to ad hominem arguments or insults.

I remember watching this process in progress.  It came to me then that, rather than achieving anything, J.P. Holding was effectively acting as an editor, helping Doherty make his book more convincing.  I had no desire to do the same, so I did not engage much with Doherty.

At the end of this, he worked up his material into a book, The Jesus Puzzle: Challenging the existence of an historical Jesus.  This has a copyright of 1999, and doubtless appeared at that time.

The book was very well received by those at whom it was aimed.  The prose was immensely convincing.  I remember reading it, and I had to step back in one passage, put the claim made into my own words – rhetoric is a means of persuasion, I was reminded – and sanity-check it.  The song of the words lulled and convinced many.

Doherty continued to work.  But somehow he became less important.  Newer peddlars of the same idea such as Acharya S gained notoriety, and publicised themselves.  The claim itself was nonsense, but it enjoyed quite a vogue.  Doherty published a revised version of his book in the mid-2000s, but nobody noticed.  Other publications likewise failed to attract attention.  He was, by this time, yesterday’s man.  His task was done. I believe he last published in 2009.  I have not seen him online since before that.

He did some real harm.  Online atheists were always noxious, but few believed that Jesus never existed until he came along.  He helped to add nonsense and misinformation to the internet.

His influence on history online, insofar as lay with him, was entirely baleful.  The book’s influence on the lives of others was also pernicious.  Even atheists such as Richard Carrier, who held an ancient history degree, might have remained sane longer were this theory not around to lead them into nonsense.  I would imagine that a few teenagers were induced to abandon a good upbringing and indulge in the horrid vices of our period under the influence of his claims.

On the positive side, the whole school of “Jesus myth” that he founded doubtless stirred many of us to look at the data, and think out clearly how we know what we know about antiquity.

The school seems to be  fading in influence now; searches on Twitter for atheism show a raggle-taggle lot.  No doubt some other craze will arise.

Yesterday I found a copy of his book on my shelves.  I bought it for reference on the 16th May 2002, from a bookseller in this country.  Atheists like Doherty or Acharya S often cynically responded to critics with “you haven’t read my book”.  In those days there no PDFs around, so I thought that it would be useful to have on-hand.  But, unknown to me, it was already fading in influence.  I don’t think that I ever used it.  So for 16 years it has occupied space in my house.  No longer: I converted it to a PDF last night.

Sic transit gloria mundi.  So too passes every nonsense of fashion, to become dust, merely material for the musings of antiquarians.

    *    *    *    *

Let us also remember this man in his old age, forgotten as he now is.  His life work was nothing or worse.  In the end he was only a tool for the enemy of all mankind.  May he find God, and find mercy.  Amen.

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A Roman ring with “Pilato” on it found in Israel?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A story today in Haaretz, here, has been repeated across the news outlets:

Ring of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate Who Crucified Jesus Found in Herodion Site in West Bank

The ring was found during a dig led by Professor Gideon Forster from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 50 years ago, but only now has the inscription been deciphered

Nir Hasson | Nov 29, 2018 8:12 AM

A far better article by Amanda Borschel-Dan – timestamped 4:08pm – appears in the Times of Israel here.  This references the actual scholarly publication.

Views and cross-section of finger ring that may have belonged to Pontius Pilate (drawing: J. Rodman; photo: C. Amit, IAA Photographic Department, via Hebrew University)

The ring was first found among hundreds of other artifacts in 1968–1969 excavations directed by archaeologist Gideon Foerster, at a section of Herod’s burial tomb and palace at Herodium that was used during the First Jewish Revolt (66–73 CE). Recently, current dig director Roi Porat asked that the engraved copper sealing ring be given a thorough laboratory cleaning and scholarly examination.

The scientific analysis of the ring was published in the stalwart biannual Israel Exploration Journal last week, by the 104-year-old Israel Exploration Society. It was also popularly publicized — with slightly differing conclusions — on Thursday in Haaretz, under the headline “Ring of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate Who Crucified Jesus Found in Herodion Site in West Bank.” …

The IEJ article is vol. 68 (2018), pp.208-220, although I don’t have access to it.  The abstract in the IEJ site reads:

208.  SHUA AMORAI-STARK, MALKA HERSHKOVITZ, GIDEON FOERSTER, YAKOV KALMAN, RACHEL CHACHY and ROI PORAT: An Inscribed Copper-Alloy Finger Ring from Herodium Depicting a Krater

ABSTRACT: A simple copper-alloy ring dated to the first century BCE–mid-first century CE was discovered in the hilltop palace at Herodium. It depicts a krater circled by a Greek inscription, reading: ‘of Pilatus’. The article deals with the typology of ancient representations of kraters in Second Temple Jewish art and with the possibility that this ring might have belonged to Pontius Pilatus, the prefect of the Roman province of Judaea or to a person in his administration, either a Jew or a pagan.

The Times of Israel continues:

The IEJ’s analysis, “An Inscribed Copper-Alloy Finger Ring from Herodium Depicting a Krater,” was written by a collective of scholars including Kaye Academic College’s Art & Aesthetics Department professor emeritus Shua Amorai-Stark, and several archaeologists and academics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: Malka Hershkovitz, Foerster, who excavated the ring, Yakov Kalman, Rachel Chachy, and Porat. Epigrapher Leah DiSegni, also of the Hebrew University, is credited with deciphering the inscription.

While it is unclear exactly when the ring was forged, it was discovered in an eastern garden built on a porch in a room constructed of secondary building materials. The room offered an archaeological layer which dates to no later than 71 CE, with “a wealth of finds,” including an array of glass, ostraca, pottery and decorated mud stoppers, and “an abundance” of metal artifacts, such as iron arrowheads, a large number of First Jewish Revolt coins, and one copper alloy sealing ring.

At the center of the ring is an engraved krater, a large wine vessel, which is encircled by minute “partly deformed” Greek letters spelling out “of Pilatus.” Interestingly, according to DiSegni, the direction of writing for the two words is different, and one word is “disturbed by a defect” in the metal.

According to the scholars, the bezeled ring, which has a narrow outer rim, was cast in one unit by a less-than-expert craftsman. There is evidence that the “mold for this ring was engraved quickly before pouring the melted metal or that the device was not prepared by a master smith,” they write.

The design at the center of the ring, write the authors, was likewise not necessarily elite. They reference a still unpublished clay sealing bulla that was discovered in the Temple Mount Sifting Project and archaeologists have tentatively dated to the first century CE.

The unpublished clay impression has at its center a single vessel, which is described in the IEJ article as “flanked by Greek letters placed in a manner similar to that of the letters on the ring bezel from Herodium. Like the inscription on the ring, the one on the bulla gives the name of a person (or his nickname or title).”

Of note, a motif close to the handleless large wine vessel appeared on a bronze pruta coin, which dates to 67-68 CE, years two and three of the Jewish Revolt, and depicted a handled amphora. These coins date to the same archaeological layer in which the ring was found. …

The authors, however, conclude that there is nothing in the ring’s design that makes it particularly either Roman or elite. They write that during the Second Temple period, the vessel “served as a meaningful Jewish symbol on sealing rings.”

“We propose, therefore, that this ring was made in a local workshop, perhaps located in Jerusalem,” write the authors. …

To the authors, the man described in historical texts such as Josephus, “Antiquities and Wars”; Tacitus, “Annals”; Philo, “De Legatione ad Gaium” and the New Testament would not have worn such a simple ring.

“Simple all-metal rings like the Herodium ring were primarily the property of soldiers, Herodian and Roman officials, and middle-income folk of all trades and occupations,” they write. “It is therefore unlikely that Pontius Pilatus, the powerful and rich prefect of Judaea, would have worn a thin, all copper-alloy sealing ring.”

As to whose ring it actually was, the authors offer a few suggestions, including other Early Roman period men called “Pilatus.” Likewise, the name may have referred to those under the historical Pilate’s command, a member of his family “or some of his freed slaves,” they write.

“It is conceivable,” write the authors, “that this finger ring from a Jewish royal site might have belonged to a local individual, either a Jew, a Roman, or another pagan patron with the name Pilatus.”

It did not, they conclude, belong to the Roman prefect himself.

This is sober and sensible.  Good to see that the excellent and careful scholar Leah Di Segni is the transcriber.

For those wondering, note that in the depiction of the ring that the inscription goes round with the letters “backwards” P I and then (left to right) O T A L.  To my ignorant eye this looks odd; but of course I know nothing about such items.

It is really curious that the two items from Israel both referencing the famous Pilate should both be discovered by the same archaeologist, tho.

Could this be fake?  It seems to have a provenance, but one might wonder just where it has been over the last 50 years.  People produce fakes to obtain fame or fortune, and anything like this would ordinarily be suspicious, precisely because its discoverer would be likely to obtain both.  It is reassuring to see a collective publication, therefore.  It is a great pity that no normal person can access it.

It would not be particularly surprising to find a ring associated in some way with the household of Pilate at Herodium, of course.

All the same, it is generally wise to be wary around spectacular finds.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It’s been a very nice break at home, this summer and autumn.  But all good things must come to an end, and on Monday I shall have to go out an earn a living once more.  So I’m tidying up and winding down.

One problem that I have been struggling with for some time is that I have too many books.  Not that I keep everything I buy!  That stopped decades ago.  But I do have rather a lot of books from my youth, which I cannot bear to part with, yet which occupy many shelves in my bookcases.  I was thinking of double-banking, putting books less often consulted lower down, etc.  But then another thought came to me.

Last night I was looking at my “black library”, of technical books and materials that I keep hidden inside a bedroom cupboard – my study is a converted main bedroom – so that I don’t have to look at them on Sundays.  These have thinned out a lot lately, for nobody in IT really reads “computer books” any more.  The days when local bookshops would have groaning shelves full of them, on topics from Learning Microsoft Word to Java Enterprise in a Nutshell, are long gone.  Everybody googles for it.  The technology changes faster than ever, and the books were always less than concise.

I idly picked up a couple of standard references, not looked at in some time.  Will I need these on my new contract, I wondered?  Probably not.  I found a download of one on a pirate site, and added the book to the “out” pile.  The other I decided I could live without, and put it with the other.

One of the two “black library” cases, as it is today

The library is contained in some planks from a nearby DIY store, sawn to length at my direction and screwed together on my study floor with the aid of a power drill.  Consequently it was designed exactly to contain four shelves of computer manuals.  At the bottom it contains still training notes from commercial training courses.  All of these date from my days as a permanent employee – who but a corporation could afford those courses? – and so they are all very old.  A small space at the top was left for this and that.  The whole construction is held to the wall in the middle by a big screw through a small vertical section underneath one of the shelves.

It’s not really being used to capacity any more.  But the shelves are deep and would take two rows of books, double-banked.  So why not redesign it and use it for storing paperbacks?  The shelves are only screwed in position, and could be moved and fixed in another position.  An extra shelf or two could be inserted.  The “white oak” furniture board – which I liked a lot – does not seem to be manufactured any more, so they would not match, but with the cupboard door drawn, who would know?  Or it would not cost a huge amount to rebuild it completely.

It’s a very tempting idea.  I will turn it over in my mind, as I sit in my hotel bedroom this winter.

I must start to dispose of some of the other items too.  Luckily all the rare books have already gone.  But do I really need my paper copy of some of the books on hoaxes that I keep?  Surely a PDF would do?  On the other hand my old copy of Becker’s Catalogi Bibliothecarum Antiqui will be kept, come what may, for leafing through it is such a pleasure.

What shall I do with the piles of old external hard disks that stand atop some of these shelves?  Packed with old copies of my hard disk as it then was, they are not exactly used often.  Probably they will be best placed in the loft!

I have a whole shelf of little C.S. Lewis paperbacks, obtained when I was at university and afterward.  These have become so much part of my mental furniture that I probably will never read any of them again.  They are perfect candidates for storage in the new black library.  But I wish I could get a PDF containing the lot, for those occasions when I need to check a quotation.  There ought to be one, surely?

Decluttering… is much more hard work than one imagines!

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Another engraving of the buried Roman west gate of Lincoln

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in March this year I wrote a post on the 19th century rediscovery of the west gate of Roman Lindum, modern Lincoln.  The Norman castle mound had buried it; and it was rediscovered when a nearby businessman sought to enlarge his own property by digging away at the mound.  Out came the gatehouse, more or less complete, only to promptly collapse!  It was then quickly reburied.  A single etching of the gate is known, which I gave there.

All this I owe to a twitter thread by the excellent Dr Caitlin Green.  But last night that thread was updated.  There is not, it seems, just the one etching.  Julian Parker wrote:

There’s another. I bought this 1836 Day & Haghe lithograph of the Western Entrance into Ancient Lindum inscribed to John, Earl Brownlow by Samuel Tuke in a Lincoln auction last night. I cannot find any other copy of it, which is intriguing …

Mr Parker then kindly posted a picture of his purchase:

This is, of course, marvellous.  Clearly the Earl instructed someone to draw the discovery.  Another tweeter added, “A great find!”, to which Mr Parker responded:

I think it may be: it shows better detail than the engraving from The Gentleman’s Magazine, the whole in a slightly less catastrophic state of collapse; possibly drawn just as they realised they’d better backfill it to avoid worse disasters!

And then he found another example of the print:

Just tracked down one at Belton House in the National Trust Collection; that would be a likely spot to find one, given it was Earl Brownlow’s house and the lithograph is inscribed to him.

Which is online here, in this rather low quality image:

We owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Parker for making this known so promptly, and to the right people.  This is marvellous to have.

The stately homes of England retained their art collections until after the second world war, since when punitive taxes have progressively despoiled them.  But who knows what is out there?  Who would have thought that this existed?

Marvellous.

UPDATE July 2021: Here is a better photograph of the print, from Twitter here.

Julian Parker bought this in a Lincoln auction in Nov 2018. It’s an 1836 Day & Haghe lithograph of the Western Entrance into Ancient Lindum inscribed to John, Earl Brownlow by Samuel Tuke.

In the same thread Peter Lorimer posted here some useful photographs of the lumps and bumps outside the medieval gate, where the Roman gate lies buried, with a reconstruction, and also some maps of the area.  These he has kindly allowed me to post here:

Location of the Roman west gate of Lincoln
The grassy mound under which lies the Roman west gate, to the left of the medieval gate.
Reconstruction of the Roman wall and gate in the modern landscape by Peter Lorimer.

Thank you Peter for posting these!

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Beatitudines aliae, part 5

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Continuing!

ϛʹ. Μακάριος ὁ | ἔχων | ἐν νῷ | τὴν ἡμέραν τὴν μέλλουσαν τὴν φοβερὰν | καὶ σπουδάσας ἰάσασθαι | ἐν δάκρυσι τὰ τραύματα τῆς ψυχῆς αὑτοῦ. (VI.  Beatus, qui mente versat formidabilem illam futuri judicii diem, & qui lacrymis vulnera animae suae curare studet.)

A slight change at the front: ὁ rather than ὃς, reflecting the fact that it is followed by a vowel.  But we still have “Blessed [is he] who” plus verb plus something it does.  We’re back to a participle, tho – “having” or better “keeping” – and then “ἐν νῷ”, “in mind”.

Then a bunch of accusatives with the definite article in between, as normal. The noun “τὴν ἡμέραν” = “the day”, its adjective “φοβερὰν” = “fearful”, and a present active participle in the same tense, number and gender, μέλλουσαν which might be given as “forthcoming”.  So: “Blessed [is he] who, keeping in mind the dreadful forthcoming day [of judgement]”?

Then into the main clause.  The word order that follows is the same as for English.  First a verb plus an infinitive: σπουδάσας is an aorist participle, active, masculine, nominative singular, “having been earnest”.  ἰάσασθαι is an aorist infinitive – presumably aorist in order to agree with σπουδάσας –  which means “to heal”. So: “and having been in earnest to heal”.

Then “ἐν δάκρυσι” the latter dative plural, so meaning “in tears”; “τὰ τραύματα”, accusative, so the object of the verbs, meaning “the wounds”.  Which wounds? Three words in the genetive singular follow: “τῆς ψυχῆς αὑτοῦ”, “of his soul”, understanding “psyche” as “soul”, as Traversari does.

But we have a problem.  There is actually no main verb.  Both clauses have an aorist participle as their verb.  This we would usually translate with an English simple past, but the aorist is not that simple. As one writer offers: “But when the aorist participle is related to an aorist main verb, the participle will often be contemporaneous (or simultaneous) to the action of the main verb” (but if the main verb is a present, the aorist will be a past tense).[1]

Traversari wimps out and renders both verbs as active present – “Blessed is he who keeps in mind … and is in earnest…”.  But that won’t do.

Morwood  tells us that the aorist is really about a single event, rather than about time.  Something happened.  The aorist indicative and its participles may place that event in the past, but even that is not always the case.[2]

I am not clear how to resolve this, so perhaps there is not alternative but to bodge it.  Doing so produces interesting effects.  If we try to insert a main verb somewhere, like “is”, it has to go in the first clause, and then the second clause must go into the present also: “Blessed is he who is keeping in mind xxx and has been in earnest to yyy”.  In fact I find that the second clause must be modified to an indicative, do what you will.  So perhaps this?

Blessed [is he] who has kept in mind the dreadful forthcoming day [of judgement], and has been in earnest to heal in tears the wounds of his soul.

Let me finish with a postscript.  While looking vainly for help on the two aorists, I encountered a most interesting looking book on sentence analysis, by none other than the excellent Eleanor Dickey, author of an essential book on Greek scholarship and scholia.  It is An Introduction to the Composition and Analysis of Greek Prose, Cambridge 2016.  There is a preview here.  Sadly the book is neither online, nor sold at a price that a man can afford.  Which is a pity.  Worth a look, if you can access it.

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  1. [1]Daniel B. Wallace, The Basics of New Testament Syntax: An Intermediate Greek Grammar, Preview, or here, p.624.  The phrase is quoted by other writers, so clearly struck a chord.↩
  2. [2]Morwood, Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek, p.61.  Forms other than the aorist indicative and its participles convey no information on the time of the event.↩

Gaffiot’s massive Latin-French dictionary online; plus Du Cange’s medieval Latin glossary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A kind correspondent wrote today to supply some obscure words in the ancient catalogue of the Regions of Rome (and their monuments) attached to the Chronography of 354.  In the process I learned that a couple of really important dictionaries for Latin have come online in searchable form.

The first of these is Felix Gaffiot’s Dictionnaire Illustré Latin-Français of 1934, which was quite unknown to me despite its importance.  Various versions are online, as the Wikipedia article indicates – there is also a downloadable PDF -, but I used this one.  Gaffiot is good for very obscure words that other dictionaries do not include.  This had entries on such obscurities as “cochlis“, meaning a stair inside a column.

The second of these is Du Cange’s Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis, 1883-7, online here.  This is for medieval Latin.

I shall add both as links on the right-hand side in just a moment!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This evening I wanted to check a point of Greek grammar, so I went to my “black library”, where the Greek and Latin grammars are stored.  My study is in a converted bedroom, which has the floor-to-ceiling sliding mirrored doors that were fitted in the 90s.  Inside this are not the clothes that such wardrobes are designed for, but shelves, at least at one end.

Upon these shelves stand books that I don’t want to see when I am weary or on holiday; which is why I call it the “black library”.  It used to contain a wide selection of computer manuals.  It does so no longer.  These days nobody reads such books, and all the materials are online, often on YouTube videos.  Only a dozen or so remain, most of them in case I need to relearn some older skill.  The rest have long since gone to a charity shop.

It also contains computer equipment, and my language books.

The Latin books I found easily enough.  Some were copies of schoolboy Latin texts, familiar to me from my schooldays, and so worth having for that reason alone, to prompt errant memory.  Most were purchases from the days when I was developing QuickLatin.

But where were my Greek books?  I could find none at all.  I was looking vaguely for a basic grammar of NT Greek, which I knew that I had.  But no luck.  I was taken aback.  Where could they be?

After some time, my tired brain offered up a faint memory.  I dimly remembered a decision to dispose of them, of deciding that I would never look at Greek again, and of the need for more space and fewer books.  How I disposed of them I could not remember.  Did I give them to a charity shop?  I suspect that I did.  But gone they certainly were.  In truth I know that I hardly ever looked at any of them.  Maybe it was a good decision.  I hate clutter, and I have too many books.

One book alone had survived, mainly – I recalled now – because I remembered annotating it when I was developing QuickGreek, and thinking that it was splendidly clear, comprehensive and concise.  It was James Morwood’s Oxford Grammar of Classical Greek (Oxford, 2001).  Off to bed I went, and turned it over in my hands.

Excellent it is indeed.  The first half was devoted to grammar; the second half to syntax.  I swiftly found the point I wanted, which – fortunately for me – was in line with my understanding.

As I handled it, a yellowed till receipt fell out from underneath the front cover.  This told me that I bought it in Cambridge, in Heffers Bookshop, together with two other books, for £9.99, in 2001.  Dimly I recalled making the purchase, downstairs in their classics department.  It seemed an age ago.

In those days I was quietly full of optimism.  My trips to Cambridge were a joy, usually undertaken in sunshine on a day-trip.  I would park at the university library, and photocopy articles.  At lunch I would walk into the city centre and buy books, and not a few of these.  The terrible experience of my first and only full-time job – fourteen wasted years of covert bullying, stress, sickness and misery – was behind me. For four years I had worked successfully and happily as a freelancer.  The Tertullian Project was well underway.  QuickLatin had been written during 1999. Most of it had been written in Microsoft Access in idle office hours on an incredibly misconceived government project that should have been completed in three months, but was running seven years late.  In 2001 I was starting to work on the never-to-be-finished QuickGreek project.  Books I needed, and Amazon was in its infancy.  Trips to Cambridge, and visits to its academic bookshops, were a delight, for it served to remind me of my Oxford days, a time when I was really very happy.

Seventeen years have passed since then.  They were good years, at least compared to those that went before.  I remember mostly sunshine.  They have passed very swiftly indeed.

It’s interesting to see that the book today is actually sold for less on Amazon UK than I paid for it 17 years ago – a mere £7.86 today in the UK ($15 on Amazon.com), and free postage with Amazon Prime.  How fortunate we are, to have Amazon.

The author, James Morwood, is dead, I see.  He was master of Wadham college, and he died last year.  This is a pity, for otherwise tonight I might have written to thank him.  It is indeed a fine, concise work.

I do not think that I shall buy back the lost Greek books.  These days much is online.  Still, looking for them brought back happy memories.  Those of us whose life is in books can always use more of those.

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