Category: Eusebius

Eusebius on Psalm 51 (52) uploaded in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A while back Andrew Eastbourne translated a portion of the Commentary on the Psalms by Eusebius of Caesarea (CPG 3467), starting at psalm 51.  The remains of the commentary on the first 50 psalms are recovered from catenas, but a manuscript of the complete text of the next 50 survives in Paris, so this was a good place to start.

I didn’t actually commission this, but it’s floated around since.  Rather than see it lost, I’ve stumped up for it, and released it into the public domain.  The word .doc file is on Archive.org, here.  You can get the same file from this blog here: Eusebius-Comm-in-Ps-51.  And I will turn it into HTML and add it to the Fathers collection this evening (or this weekend).

I hope it’s useful.  If people would like to see more psalms, let me know.

UPDATE: Html version here.  PDF version here: Eusebius-Comm-in-Ps-51.

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Montfaucon on Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Volume 23 of the Patrologia Graeca contains the start of Eusebius’ monster commentary on the Psalms.  At the start of it is a preface, presumably by Bernard de Montfaucon, the 18th century Benedictine scholar.  It’s the size of a small book itself!

It would be interesting to know whether Eusebius takes a literal or allegorical approach in this work.  He was very much a disciple of Origen, whose enthusiasm for the allegorical method led him to the curious statement that the literal meaning of some passages of scripture is of no importance.  But he was also his own man.

I had wondered about commissioning a translation of the preface; but not at that length!

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Evoe! Evoe! Let the wine flow tonight! (well, the diet coke anyway)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It is a time of solemn rejoicing here at Roger Pearse Towers.  The staff have been given the evening off to make merry, and are even now dancing on the lawn wearing masks and wreaths of vine leaves and in their Sunday best.  The maids are carrying candles and one and all are sampling the new wine — or at least, the decaf diet coke laid on copiously from the ancestral cellar.

The cause of all this merriment is that the last, the very last portion commissioned from someone else of the Eusebius volume  has come in!  Adam McCollum has transcribed all the Syriac text — 21 pages of it — which would be a job all by itself.  But the original editors were weak and cowardly men, and only printed the consonants.  Adam has added the vowels, which the original editors never had the courage to do.  And he did it to a deadline and on time, and in a beautiful Serto font.  Would that everyone I have worked with was so professional. 

What this means is that the book can now be finished and prepared for the typesetter.  I need await no-one but myself.  I need to spend a day or so on adding some cross-references between the Greek and Syriac text. I ought to build some kind of index.  I think there is a couple of days of editorial work; probably a couple of weekends. 

Once that is done, I shall approach the people with whom I have discussed typesetting.  They can typeset the Coptic, I think, as a sample.  That will test their nerves and their skill; if they can do that, I shall be confident they can do all of it.

Thanks be to God, to have got this far after more than 2 years.  My sincere thanks, not just to Adam who has been a tower of strength in all this, but also to David Miller who translated the Greek and Latin; Claudio Zamagni and the people at Sources Chretiennes who supplied me with the Greek text in electronic form;  Tom Schmidt who typed up the new fragments of the Greek and checked all the other fragments over against Mai’s text; to Carol Downer and the UCL Coptic Readers Group who translated the Coptic and came through after I had given up any hope of doing that; to Ambrose Boles who transcribed the Coptic quickly and well into Keft, and by no means least to Adam McCollum who translated and transcribed both the Syriac and the Arabic and whose professionalism cheered me no end during the dark days when I wondered if it would ever all be done. 

I’m not out of the woods yet.  But now we can move forward.

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Have asked Hercules to consider doing a swap

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve asked Hercules if he’d consider allowed me to clean the Augean stables, in return for cleaning up the word document containing the Coptic fragments of Eusebius Quaestiones.  At least, I would have done but I don’t have his mobile number.  And anyway, I think the big lunk would refuse. 

The file contains any number of points at which the translator has indicated two possible meanings rather than one.  This leaves me as the editor to decide which best fits the context.  But I shall choose the more English-like, and place the other in a footnote unless it is simply an identical idea in a different word.

Another problem is where the text changes from translation to commentary or general remarks, all placed inline and not distinctly marked off.  This ought to have been in footnotes, I think.

But I have now processed the translators pencilled comments into the file, and am reworking it now.  I think the translation — which is what it is all about in the end — really is good, and sound.  All the rest is less important.

The translator also went over the transcription, which I had not expected, but which was good.  In truth the transcriber made some mistakes.  But he didn’t do a bad job (aside from omitting one entire line, by the process known to all manuscript buffs), and probably there are only four or five typos.

Onwards…

UPDATE:17:41.  A very hard day’s work, but the Coptic is now in the same form as the rest of the book.  I’m awaiting the Syriac transcription, but otherwise the heavy lifting is all done.

The next stage is cross-referencing the Syriac, Coptic and Arabic fragments with the Greek.  I’m fairly tempted to use Lulu and print off a copy of the whole thing in a spiral binding, with nice wide margins, so I can scribble on it.  We’ll see.   I also need to go through and remove the TODO marks in various places.

One issue I have not resolved is whether to use the translation of the introduction to Lagarde’s catena.  Lagarde wrote in Latin, but I had it run into English for the Coptic group.  It’s quite interesting; but out of date, of course.  That reminds me; some kind friends sent me some PDF’s of material relating to it, which I need to read.

But I’ve done enough for today.    I might bunk off and go and play Microsoft Freelancer instead this evening!

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Sympathy for Hercules

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An Augean day today.  I’ve received an A4 envelope containing a print-off of the translation of the 18 Coptic fragments of Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum) with pencil revisions in the margin, plus revisions of the Coptic transcription, plus notes on the translation of De Lagarde’s Latin preface.  Also an electronic file containing a new version of the translation.  All this has to be merged together, which would anyway be arduous and is hampered by a somewhat disorganised presentation.

De Lagarde benefited from the generosity of the then owner of the Coptic manuscript.  The latter was rather more generous than the British Library of our own day with its talk of copyrights on PDFs which has prevented me seeing it.

Now, since Robert Curzon, with that mindset whereby the British nobles are ever ready to help in every fine endeavour, had promised on 1 May 1866 (after I wrote to him from Schleusingen) to grant me free access to the very valuable books he had collected, in the year 1874 I asked Robert, Lord Zouche, the son of that most magnanimous man, who had meanwhile been summoned to heaven, to honour his father’s promise (I was intending to edit the Egyptian Psalter). 

He very kindly, with truly unheard-of benevolence, entrusted to my piety and learning both the most ancient fragments of the Egyptian Psalms and the codex of which I have just been speaking, sending them to Göttingen. 

This favour was all the more gratifying, the more certain it was that neither in my own Germany were such treasures possessed—for I was born after the riches of the globe had been distributed—nor in the whole of Europe was there to be found, apart from myself, a man who had both studied theology and had acquired some acquaintance with the Egyptian language, and was willing to expend toilsome and thankless effort—and to suffer a large enough financial loss—on the task of editing this catena.

Faced with such generosity, one might hope that De Lagarde would behave similarly.  Alas, at the end of the preface we read:

All those who wish to do so may use my volume, but only with the proviso that without my permission it is not permitted to reproduce what I have edited, nor to include it in the margin of an edition of either the Egyptian New Testament or of the Fathers.

I thank Robert, Lord Zouche, to the highest extent of my abilities for sending the manuscript to me in Göttingen to use.

De Lagarde’s failure to provide a translation was a more certain guarantee that his work would remain unused than this early claim of copyright.  It was successful; the catena remains unknown and unused by scholars.

Let us mourn the passing of the aristocratic spirit, in these days of small minded officialdom, and honour the shade of Robert, Lord Zouche.

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More on the Alphabetum font

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My copy of the alphabetum font has arrived.  Unfortunately the email that supplied it added some extra conditions on use, not disclosed at time of purchase.  I bought the license that allows use in books, you see, for the Eusebius project.

First he wants purchasers who use it in a book to acknowledge the use of the font.  That’s just advertising, of course, and doesn’t really matter.

Much more serious is that he also wants a free copy of any book using the font.  Drat the man.  That’s an extra charge to use it for the purpose for which I bought it, and for which he advertised it.  In fact that must be illegal, I would have thought.  I’ve written to tell him so politely.  After all, I doubt he wants to annoy people. 

What all this brings home, tho, is how fortunate Syriac users are in having the Meltho unicode fonts.  Meltho are absolutely free, and indeed one of them even comes with Windows.  We all owe George Kiraz such a debt of gratitude for this.

By contrast Coptic users are crippled by lack of availability of a family of good quality unicode fonts, and are obliged to scurry around for whatever happens to exist.  Many of the fonts don’t handle dots and overscores very well — although Alphabetum does handle them exactly. 

A further problem is that you can’t pass around a Word document with material in Alphabetum; the recipient won’t be able to read it, unless they have a copy of the font.  You find yourself tangled up in a mess of problems that obstruct and hamper, for tiny amounts of money.

If I knew Coptic, I might fix all this by commissioning a font designer to make one.  But since I don’t know the alphabet, it’s out of the question.

I’m generally impressed with Alphabetum.  If you need a Bohairic Coptic font in Unicode, it will do the job.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Very busy this week with work-related stuff; too much so, to do anything useful! 

The fragments of Philip of Side are coming along nicely. The translator is doing his usual excellent job and ferreting out a lot of useful related information buried in articles in languages none of us know.  The publication — which will be free and online — will be an excellent one.

One interesting issue arose concerning the text to translate of the fragments contained in the Religionsgesprach text — a 6th century fictional dialogue at the court of the Sassanids.  This was printed by Bratke, but a critical edition does exist, in a thesis form, by Pauline Bringel.  The two texts are rather different, even aside from the fact that Bringel identified two recensions of the text.  We’re going to use Bratke, tho, and footnote differences.  Bratke is accessible.  Bringel will not be publishing her thesis any time soon, I learn, although the Sources Chretiennes would publish it, because of pressure of teaching duties.  There would be little point in doing a translation from a text that none have access to.

This weekend is deadline time for contributors to the Eusebius project.  There is more that could be done to the Coptic materials — but there has to be a limit some time!  The translator is sending me hard-copy of proof-changes, which I hope will arrive tomorrow.  I’m afraid it looks as if I may have to learn the Coptic alphabet to do some work on it, which is a nuisance, but there we are.  However I shall do the minimum possible!  With luck I can put the Coptic fragments to bed this weekend.  I still need to resolve issues with fonts, tho.  I’m still awaiting the transcription of the Syriac fragments, but I am told this will be ready on time, but not before.  The Latin fragments I revised last night and are now — thankfully — done.  An index of fragments and publications that I commissioned is in Excel, and needs more work and to be turned into a Word document.

The translator of the Origen Homilies on Ezechiel has found some more materials that probably derive from Origen’s Scholia on Ezechiel; these will be added in.  I have admonished him to remember to take a summer holiday!

On a quite different subject, I had to rebuild the installer of QuickLatin, the tool that I sell ($29) to help people with Latin.  My local anti-virus wailed about “unsigned code”, and I have been trying to work out how to sign a .exe file.  Apparently no-one wants to make it too easy, although why anyone would want to make a security measure hard to implement I can’t imagine.  I tried to f ind out this afternoon and failed.  Oh well.  It can go unsigned a while longer. 

I’m still thinking about going to the UK patristics conference at Durham in September.  I may yet go.  But I’ll wait until July at least, because I don’t quite know what will happen to me in my current freelance job.  I may need to find a new contract in a month, although I suspect that I shall end up with time off this summer!  And I shall take some time off too. 

I’ve also had a lot of correspondance this week, much of it very interesting.  One chap who is interested in Coptic turns out to have a PDF of the British Library manuscript containing De Lagarde’s catena.  This is the catena which I am publishing the Coptic from.  He declined to give me a copy of it, because of fears about copyright — not entirely unreasonable, considering that today there was an announcement about more enforcement measures by the regulator, OFCOM.  But he did let me see a  page with the first Eusebius entry on it.  The Coptic text was extremely clear, and interestingly there was a difference from De Lagarde’s printed version.  De Lagarde runs the text together, and the names of the authors of each bit appear inline.  But in the ms. the “Eusebius” was actually on a separate line!  I’d show you, but apparently the British Library don’t want you to see it unless we pay them money. 

It did leave me wondering what the point of running a public collection of manuscripts is, when circulation of images is prohibited!  But I think I’ve asked that question before.

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Bad news — the chap who was to help with the editorial cleanup, indexing, cross-referencing of the Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions is over-committed and has had to withdraw. 

I need to find someone with plenty of time and an appetite for sorting out the dull but necessary stuff.  I’m paying, of course.  Anyone any suggestions as to how I find such a person?

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Very little remains to do of the Eusebius volume.  There’s some editorial work to do, probably only a few hours of it.  But … I don’t seem able to get to it.  The muscle injury in my hip that prevented me going to Syria is also preventing long periods of work at my laptop.  So … I need to get someone to help out.  I’ll offer $20 an  hour, and I’ve approached someone who would be ideal.

Some may like to know what’s left.  This is it:

1.  Do some work on the Latin text and translation.  They exist; but the page references to Mai and Migne and to the CSEL text and the Sources Chretiennes text need adding in some sensible form.  For part of it, the book number and chapter number of Jerome need adding.  Also Mai / Migne has cross-references to the Greek in the margin; the corresponding cross-reference needs adding to my version.  In truth I would usually expect the translator to do all this; unfortunately the Eusebius translator did not.  I’ve learned not to let that happen next time!

2.  Look over the format of all the material and make sure it’s consistent.

3.  Create a short index of whatever people will want to use.

4.  Create some kind of look-up table from Mai / Migne to my sections.

5.  Title page, table of contents, stuff like that.

6.  Write some sort of short intro “from the publisher”.

7.  Make some intelligent decisions about how to present some of the oriental stuff, and how to cross-reference it.  If need be bring in some material from references and translate it.

8.  Anything else!

The output will be a set of Word .doc files.  The text and translation for each section will be in separate files, so that the typesetting can run them into separate boxes (or whatever).

It will be good to get this done, and get to typesetting.  I’d do it myself, except that I can’t!  Ah well…

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Eusebius Update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation of Eusebius Gospel problems and solutions (Quaestiones ad Stephanum/Marinum) is nearly done.  The one big chunk to do is the transcription of the Syriac fragments.  Producing an electronic file containing the text is not quite as simple as it sounds, tho; and not merely because of the Syriac alphabet!  The words were originally printed without vowels, and I feel that these should be added.  It’s going to be fairly expensive and time-consuming, but a sample appeared today which looks very good, and I am promised it by the end of May.

I also need to finish off the transcription of the Latin text, which I am doing myself, but which is trivial.  There are minor tasks such as adding cross-references to be done.  I suppose I ought to add some kind of index. 

I expect the book to be done by the end of May, all the same.  Then the whole book needs to be typeset, and then marketed.

It will be worth the wait.  The material is excellent, the translation is good, the inclusion of the original language will  give readers the chance to check particular wording, and all in all I think it will be a good thing.  Eventually the translation will go online as well, but not until I have managed to recoup some of the cost by book sales!  So far it’s cost around $4,000, which is quite a lot!

 

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