Category: Information access

Vatican ms orders received

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On May 19th I ordered reproductions of two manuscripts of the unpublished Arabic Christian historian al-Makin from the Vatican.  I didn’t receive any acknowledgement, so wasn’t expecting much.  Anyhow a UPS man arrived a few minutes ago, bearing a parcel.  So it took just under 7 weeks to get, from posting the order to now.  That’s really not too bad.

Less good is the payment arrangements.  They’ve sent me an invoice, which has an international bank account number (IBAN) and a SWIFT number on it, so I can do a bank-to-bank transfer.  These are marvellously expensive things to do from the UK (because the banks rip you off).  There seems no facility to do a credit card payment.

The images arrived as two PDF’s  — which is good.  The images are scanned from black-and-white (not even monochrome) microfilm — which is terrible.   The consumer really should be protected from this rip-off racket of selling substandard images at very premium prices.  The price for the two mss. was 215 euros; the charge for postage and packing was 15 euros; quite a bit for 43Mb of data, which could perfectly well have been made available for download. 

Of course the library is profiteering pretty heavily here.  The microfilms already existed, so to produce these PDF’s required them to load them in a microfilm scanner, hit “scan”, and go and have a coffee.  200 euros for a trivial bit of work; nice if you can get it, eh?

I was amused to find a “copyright” notice included.  This is almost certainly fraudulent, as ever; these images cannot be considered creative works of art!  Only in the UK could this even possibly be in copyright, because of the foolish wording of the law in this country.

Still, the failings of this service are historic and traditional; the advantages of it are all new, and I think we may expect radical improvements in service.  Everyone will expect better quality, and we may hope to get it.

UPDATE: I discovered by chance that HSBC customers can do their own international transfers from their online system, at a price of 9 GBP; far cheaper than Lloyds TSB at 15 GBP, etc.  So that’s the way to do it, if you have such an account.

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The limitations of PDF textbooks

Posted on by Roger Pearse

We all know that textbooks are often best in searchable PDF form.  But yesterday I came across a case where they were not.  I wanted a French grammar, so that I can brush up on stuff for Agapius.  I found a bootleg PDF, thereby saving myself $25.  But… I found that what I wanted to do was read the thing in bed, just a bit at a time, skip pages, and generally absorb interesting stuff by osmosis.  I needed a book, in short.

So, yes, I went out and bought one.  It was the only way!

Worth remembering, when we talk about the death of the book.  Only some books will die.

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EThOS – still impressed

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email from the British Library EThOS service popped into my inbox a couple of days ago.  It told me that a PDF of a PhD thesis was now available online for free download.  I’d “placed an order” (free) for this some time back, and here it was.

The thesis was The indica of ctesias of cnidus : text (incl. MSS monacensis gr. 287 and oxoniensis, holkham gr. 110), translation and commentary by Stavros Solomou, London 2007.  This link should find it.   The quality is excellent –  far better than the scans at the Bibliotheque Nationale Francais.

It would help if the site gave permalinks to theses.  Likewise, when an order is available, a link to the thesis details would help.

But I’m still dead impressed.  Whoever could have accessed something like this, before EThOS came along?  I have some slack time today; I would never have hunted this out, but now… here it is.  I get to read it, the author gets read, everyone benefits.

Well done the British Library.

The thesis itself is of considerable interest.  The Indica of Ctesias was used widely in ancient times, until John Tzetzes; and then suddenly is no longer mentioned.  This leads us to suppose that the last copy or copies perished in the sack of Constantinople in 1204 by the renegade army originally hired for the Fourth Crusade. 

An epitome exists in Photius.  But the author has obtained two additional unpublished mss, and edited these also.

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Printing the original text of Origen on Ezekiel

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m now looking at including the original text in any printed version of Origen on Ezekiel.  We’re using the edition by W. Baehrens, published in the GCS 30 (1921) [1], as reprinted in the Sources Chretiennes edition.

According to Wikipedia, Baehrens died in 1929, which is more than 70 years ago and so makes his work out of copyright in the EU (including Germany).  The US copyright position is less clear, but I doubt anyone will care, once it is out of copyright in its ‘home’ country.

So it looks as if I can just use this.

I do wish, tho, that I could actually obtain a copy of Baehrens’ edition!

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  1. [1]Origenes Werke VII. Homilien zum Hexateuch (1. Aufl. 1921: W. A. Baehrens)↩

Origen update – the ride’s back on

Posted on by Roger Pearse

After sleeping on the problem, I’ve decided to continue with the translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezechiel.  After all, just translating and uploading three would look a little sad, I think.  If my translator is willing to continue, then it will go ahead.  The only difference is that it will be much more difficult for me to sell any copies of a printed edition, so probably means that I just have to accept that I’ll lose the cost of this.  Oh well.  Fortunately I can afford it.

UPDATE: the translator has agreed to continue, and I have received the first draft of homily 3 which I will read over tomorrow night.  And I’ve thought up some possible new sales approaches on printed copies to help with the costs.

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Patristic Greek translation tips

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On ScribD there is a downloadable PDF by Charles A. Sullivan full of very useful information about working with Patristic Greek, websites, tips, etc.  It’s here.

Thanks to Robert Bedrosian for pointing out that a search for “patristics” and “syriac” will produce results of considerable interest.  The same is true for “coptic”.

You have to register for a free account, and not all material is downloadable; but much is.  I suspect at least some of this is less than legitimate; other material; such as the PDF above, is undoubtedly legal.  I was amused to discover some material from my own websites appeared, reformatted, as well (which is all to the good, of course).

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A rival translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Quite by accident I today learn of another projected translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel.  It’s due to appear in January 2010 as part of the Ancient Christian Writers series, and translated by Thomas Scheck, who has translated several other volumes of Origen’s homilies.  The Amazon advert is here.

Frankly this is a nuisance and a half.  We’ll probably beat that deadline; but who needs two competing translations?  More to the point, is it a sensible thing to do with my money?

Not sure what to do now.

UPDATE: I’ve written to Dr Scheck to ask the status of his work; but from his home page it appears to be complete.

I’ve done some calculations.  The whole lot is about 200 pages of Latin in the SC edition, at $10 per page is $2,000.  Of this, about a quarter is done and indeed paid for.  So we’re talking about a further $1,500.

Perhaps the answer is to go upmarket, and add a Latin text as well as a translation.

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Coptic monastic revival – Matta al-Maskeen

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’d very much like to know more about the astonishing revival of monasticism that has taken place among the Copts in modern Egypt.  A central figure is the mysterious Fr. Matta al-Maskeen (various spellings seem to be around).

Quite by chance I’ve stumbled across a digest of translated newspaper articles on him here.  Sadly you have to be a subscriber to access the articles, but the summaries alone are interesting.  The site itself says that

We publish Arab-West Report, an independent weekly electronic magazine. It is dedicated to fostering understanding of the Arab World. We do this partly through summary translations of Arabic newspaper articles into English…

Guys… you’ll foster understanding better if you make it possible for people other than specialists to read the articles!  You need free content, really you do. Make the current year and last year subscription only, and let everyone read before then.

Back to Fr. Matta.  I think there may be a book or two about this renewal by John H. Watson, but I haven’t seen any of them.

The search in Google on “matta al-maskeen monks” brings back such interesting results.  I find there is a Coptic forum here, where the merits (and otherwise) of Fr. Matta are hotly debated.

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Origen; Homily 2 on Ezekiel received

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first draft of the translation of the second homily on Ezekiel has arrived!

At this rate, I’m going to have to find out about printers and the like rather more quickly than I had thought!

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