Category: Chrysostom Project

Lots of progress

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It never rains but it pours.  Today, in my inbox I find:

  1. The first draft of the translation of Origen’s 10th Homily on Ezekiel.
  2. The sample chunk of the translation of the lost 60% of John Chrysostom’s Oratio 2 adversus Judaeos.
  3. Portion 15 of the translation of Sbath’s collection of Arabic theological and philosophical texts.

It is nice to see all these projects coming along, tho!  I’ve asked the Eusebius translator to look over the Chrysostom sample.  The other two translators are well known to me for the quality of their work.

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Origen updates, and more

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Just to let you know that Homily on Ezechiel 7 has been done and paid for. I’ve also seen the draft of homily 8, which will be done soon I think.  The “Tammuz” fragment has been revised and is paid for also.  So some very good progress.

The chap who agreed to translate the recently discovered 60% of Chrysostom’s Oration 2 against the Jews has written to tell me that he has broken his ankle and can’t get around much. 

No progress on any of the Arabic since last time.  The lady who knows about the Coptic Eusebius has told me that she’s very busy, as is no doubt the case.

I’ve spent today wondering if the blog had a virus.  Fortunately not; it just had a bad plugin installed (phew!).

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Update on Chrysostom Project

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve readvertised that I want to hire someone who will translate the recently rediscovered 60% of Chrysostom’s Oratio II adversus Judaeos into English. 

This time I tried CLASSICS-L and got quite a bit of interest. Three people responded, one of whom can’t be available for 3 months, and I was forwarded to someone else who would be interested to do it as a project non-commercially (but I really need to find a Greek translator I can hire). 

So I’ve sent out the text to those interested, and we’ll see how they respond.  If they like it, I’ll choose one and ask for a sample of the first page, as I always do, and pass that to someone I already know and trust for checking.  The others will go into the “possible” tray, and I may use them for something else patristic or Chrysostomical.  Looking good.

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Undoubtedly the funniest reason to refuse work I ever saw

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Well the project to translate the untranslated passage of Chrysostom’s Adversus Judaeos has collapsed; and for such a curious reason!  The translator who offered himself turns out to be politically correct.  My experiences with Lebanese translators who expect to be paid for writing gibberish “translations” has led me, invariably, to ask to see a sample page or two first, and to explain why I ask.   The translator himself is not Lebanese, of course.  I received this delicious epistle in reply:

After serious consideration concerning your conditions I feel in the need to decline your offer. I have too much respect for people coming from any other country and from any background (religious included) to accept an offer from somebody commenting about “awkward experiences with people in Lebanon offering translations”. I find this regional specification rather politically incorrect. Saying that you have experienced problems with other scholars is enough to justify your conditions, without reference to their place of origin.

Can any of us imagine writing to someone who is offering money and lecturing him on how to write a private email?  But best to know now.

I’ll seek out another translator, then. 

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Untranslated portion of Chrysostom vs Jews – translator found

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Further to this post, a Chrysostom scholar has written to me and expressed interest in having a go at translating this “lost” portion of Oratio 2 against the Jews by John Chrysostom.  I’ve offered my usual terms, and he’s going to look at the Pradels text and (German) translation and see what he thinks.

My intention is to make the translation public domain.  Chrysostom’s sermons against the Jews are found in English in various places on the web (some of them polemical anti-Jewish sites).  My intention would be to try to get all these sites to add the extra material on the bottom of their version, and thereby ensure that the full text is the one available everywhere, rather than the mutilated version. 

In that way the damage would finally be healed, and become a historical footnote.  If I don’t do that, it is likely that the translation of the extra material will simply be forgotten, and the “vulgate” text of this oration (about 30% of the whole thing) will remain the standard text.

 

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