Category: Information access

Book on Syriac historiography

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Several people have sent me a link to the Bryn Mawr review of Muriel Debié (ed.), L’historiographie syriaque, published in Études syriaques.  This discusses how historical writing went into the Syriac world, how it changed, how it was influenced by Armenian texts, and what the effect of the Moslem conquest was — which was to isolate it from the mediterranean world, ca. 720.  The review (by Daniel King) is very enticing!  A few snippets:

This latest instalment, on Syriac historiography, succeeds in bringing together some of the foremost scholars in the field, often writing on the very texts they themselves have edited or translated. Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.

The extent to which literature written in Syriac partook of the Hellenic cultural baggage of late antiquity is still only faintly understood, and even less appreciated, by historians of the Eastern Mediterranean. It is the principal achievement of this excellent and useful volume not only to have provided students and specialists alike with an overview of the subject at the current state of research, but also to have highlighted the lines of transmission that carried Greek historiography into Syriac (and thence Arabic). The point is both to indicate how well integrated was the latter within the cultures of the late antique Empire, and moreover to describe the transformation these forms underwent in their ‘Oriental’ afterlives.

…

We are rightly warned of too easily viewing the Miaphysite (West Syriac) historiography as the expression of a will to ecclesiastical independence – as late as Jacob of Edessa (d.710) the (Greek) universal ecclesia remained the dream of these historians. Yet around 720 a major break seems to have occurred and here, at the moment when Syriac historians cease to note the names of Emperors and Patriarchs and begin to date events according to caliphal years, we can glimpse that self-conscious break from the Hellenic tradition that constitutes the final fracture between East and West. Up to this point, the Fertile Crescent had remained part of a classical (Mediterranean) world.

An example of just this process, the Chronicle of Zuqnin (written in 775), is the subject of the next chapter, again written by the text’s most recent translator. This contributor helpfully surveys the arguments surrounding the authorship and sources of the chronicle, reaffirming his judgment that Joshua the Stylite was its author.

…

The Syriac and Arabic literature of the Eastern Churches remains one of those disciplines in which ancient and mediaeval texts, sometimes of some importance, are still regularly found in previously unexplored manuscript libraries. The next chronicle to be considered is just such a case. The Muhtasar al-Ahbar al-Bi‘iyya was first identified in Iraq in the 1980s, one of many Arabic manuscripts from the monastery of Notre Dame des Semences (Alqosh) later transferred to the Chaldaean monastery in Baghdad. They are now, since 2008, back in Alqosh for safe keeping. Hermann Teule provides an overview of this as yet little considered work which bares a close resemblance to the better known Chronicle of Seert but which is also an independent witness to the events it describes. Among the sources explicitly mentioned by the writer are a number known from catalogues of Syriac authors but whose work has hitherto been unknown.

…

The book is rounded off with a bibliography of editions and translations of all Syriac chronicles, organized by type and tradition (East or West), making the whole a handy instrumentum for the student or non-specialist.

All this sounds most interesting, and I would love to read it.  But how does someone like myself ever get to read such a volume?  It is, admittedly, not that expensive by comparison with the predatory pricing from Brill these days — only 35 euros.  But still…

UPDATE: I have just found the website for the French Societe d’etudes Syriaques, which lists the series Études syriaques.  There are 6 volumes, and they all seem to be of wide interest. 

  • vol. 1 : Les inscriptions syriaques (2004)
  • vol. 2 : Les apocryphes syriaques (2005)
  • vol. 3 : Les liturgies syriaques (2006)
  • vol. 4 : Les Pères grecs en syriaque (2007)
  • vol. 5 : L’Ancien Testament syriaque (2008)
  • vol. 6 : L’Historiographie syriaque (2009)

    • I want copies of them all!  Remarkably the volumes are issued annually free if you are a member of the society.

    UPDATE2: OK, I shall try an old-fashioned inter-library loan for the Historiographie volume.  That will loan me it for 2 weeks.  But really I’d rather have a PDF!

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    Literary activity of Sir Henry Savile

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    Following on from this post and this one, inter alia, I received an interesting email this morning about other work by Henry Savile, in his days at Eton.

    From John Warwick Montgomery, “Ecumenicity, Evangelicals, and Rome”, p. 52.

    Sir Henry Savile “was responsible for translating sections of the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Book of Revelation for the King James Bible”.

    “The Chrysostom was printed by William Norton, the royal printer, in a private press which Sir Henry erected at his own expense, and the type for it was specially imported by Sir Henry; the edition cost its editor eight thousand pounds.”

    “At the present time this magnum opus can be most readily consulted as University Microfilms No. 20191 (STC entry 14629).” [written 1969]

    There’s been a lot written since on the translation process and editorial revision of the KJV – one does wonder what became of the press (Etonae – still in some storeroom there?).

    A press is a big and bulky thing, and might well still exist.  On the other hand the types could equally well have been melted down to throw off a wall during some siege during the Civil War.

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    Digitizing your own library, and how to build your own book scanner

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    The existence of Google books is causing some interesting ripples.  Some people are now wondering whether they really need all those books in paper form. From Ancient History Ramblings I learn of this interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Digitizing the personal library:

    Books take up space. That’s a problem for any librarian tasked with finding room on overcrowded shelves. It’s also a problem for a book-loving scholar who lives in a small New York City apartment with a toddler and more than 3,000 books. Under those conditions, something’s got to give. Chances are good it won’t be the toddler.

    Alexander Halavais, an associate professor of communications at Quinnipiac University, found a partial solution to his city dweller’s no-space-for-books dilemma: Slice and scan. A digital file takes up a lot less room than a codex book does.

    In a post on his blog, A Thaumaturgical Compendium, Mr. Halavais described what he had done to some 800 of his books so far: “First I cut the boards off, and then slice the bindings. I have tried a table saw, but a cheap stack cutter works better. Then I feed [the pages] into my little page-fed scanner, OCR them (imperfectly) using Acrobat, and back them up to a small networked attached storage device.” (See before-and-after pictures, above.) Many of the scanned books he also stores as image files. …

    Read the whole article.  It contains much of interest.  Alex Halavais is using a Fujitsu Scansnap, although he doesn’t say which model.  I use one myself, and the speed is definitely a selling point, as is the PDF output.

    The comments on the article are also interesting.  Some worry about whether this is allowed under copyright, although since they aren’t wealthy publishers, and probably never make any money from copyright, you have to wonder why they are rushing to defend someone else’s profit stream.  But comment 27 is perhaps the most relevant:

    I hope after all of the effort and expense put into this project there is a plan in place for preserving the digital files. Digital files are unstable and subject to corruption. It would be unfortunate if the drives on the networked storage device failed and Professor Halavais lost not only his printed books but the digital surrogates as well. With books on the shelf you can be assured that when you open them in 20 years the words are still the same words, without active management of the digital files this simply isn’t true in the digital world.

    When I talk about digital preservation to people I often help people understand the issues by referencing things like eight track tapes, zip discs, floppy discs, Wordstar, etc.

    This issue is a very real one, and I don’t know what the answer is.  I myself had to throw away some old backup tapes from years gone by, being unable to persuade the old tape drive to read them.  Both drive and tapes went into the skip.

    The comments also link to a forum of people engaged in designing and building their own book scanners.  I have not read  through it all, but it is quite clear that it is not difficult to do.  This is what you do with books too large for an A4 scanner.

    Do we want to slice up our books?  I certainly do not.  But I do have quite a lot of academic books which I could really use better in PDF.  It’s interesting.  But scanning a book without cutting it up is very slow indeed.

    The world, once again, is changing.

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    Google translate does Latin?

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    The Daily Telegraph has an article that Google has added 50 languages, including Latin, to the translator.  It’s here.

    So…. does it work?  Well, not very well as yet.  I grabbed the start of Friderici’s book on ancient books, which starts thus:

    Quamquam plurimae fere quaestiones, quae ad antiquorum rem librariam pertinent, his temporibus pertractatae atque propremodum expIicatae sunt, tamen de una vel altera re disputatio nondum ad finem est perducta. Huc spectant, quas mihi tractandas proposui, quaestiones de libris antiquis in capita divisis, de  capitum inscriptionibus, de indicibus capitum sive summariis.

    This Google gave as:

    And yet the most of, by questions, which the thing to its former secretaries belong, at the present time, and handled propremodum expIicatae are, however, one or two out of the discussion, the thing to the end is not yet degree. Refer to this, which I proposed to me to be treated, the questions concerning the ancient books in the first assigned to the heads of the, of the head of inscriptions, of the informers, heads or summaries.

    Um.  The first sentence should probably be something like this:

    Although most of the questions, which relate to the copying of ancient books, at the present time have been drawn out and explained, however, one or two items of the discussion have not yet been bottomed out.

    Still, it can only get better, and is a very, very welcome addition.  I am using Google translate to work with Albino’s Italian article on chapter titles this morning, and it makes it possible for me to read and understand her article.  I also have Systran translator, which sometimes is better, mostly not so good; and an online dictionary. 

    And it means that ordinary herberts like me can work with information encoded in funny languages!  Magic!

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    284 Greek manuscripts online at the British Library

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    I learn from here via here that Juan Garces, the go-ahead curator of Greek manuscripts at the British Library, has got 284 manuscripts online.  It’s well worth browsing the four pages of the list.  There’s a manuscript of Zosimus New History in there, for instance.  Despite pleas from Biblical people, it’s mostly classical or patristic or bits and pieces, which is all to the good.  Synesius is well-represented too.

    Note that the short list in the browse is not everything.  If you click on one of the text links you get a break down of all that the manuscript contains.  Works in the TLG are given the TLG reference too.

    Turning the pages is quick and easy, thankfully, unlike early and very clunky online interfaces.  This one is almost usable!

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    Putting the RealEncyclopadie online

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    An article here tells us that people unspecified are beginning to create an electronic version of Paulys RealEncyclopadie at the German Wikipedia.  Some 3,957 articles have been turned into text.  Someone has noticed that the early volumes are all in the public domain (although the whole work was only completed in 1980).

    Google books and Archive.org have led the way.  Sensibly the people on the project have created a page with a list of volumes accessible (here).  There’s a list of what is in the volumes here. 

    But of course OCR’ing the text will make it searchable, and thereby increase markedly access to it.  It will show up in search engines, for instance.  And if part is online and part is not, when all German scholars start to use it — and why wouldn’t they? — sooner or later pressure will build to add the remainder.  Already there are pirate versions of the whole series circulating around the web. 

    Here is the entry page for the digitisation project.  The index of articles (which is not very helpful, actually — they need to get this on one page) is here.

    “But I don’t speak German!” I hear you cry.  No matter.  Google translate gives you the means to read this stuff.  Just find the article, then pop the URL into Google translate, and you’re away. 

    Magic.  And well done to the Germans in the white hats.

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    Finnish translation of Tertullian’s Apologeticum uses an image from my site?

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    I had an email today from a chap in Finland which interested and amused me.

    Here in Finland, Tertullian’s Apologeticum has just been published in Finnish  translation made by certain Lutheran emeritus bishop Juha Pihkala. The publisher is Kirjapaja, and it looks like they have used in the cover your photo of the codex Romanus S. Isidoriensis 1/29; compare for example the lights in the middle of the foto. You can see the cover here. The publisher’s own net site (http://www.kirjapaja.fi/) shows a different picture on the cover of the book, but this one (the Isidoriensis) is on the actual book, I’ve seen it.

    My friend was concerned, I think, in case I felt robbed or something.  But of course I don’t.  I’m glad to see those images, which few ever seem to look at, getting wider circulation.  I went to quite a lot of trouble to get permission to photograph those half-dozen manuscripts; indeed the effort was too much after a while.  So I am glad that they are being used to spread the good word!

    I get so much email that I don’t remember for certain, but I may have had an email from the people concerned asking about permission.  If I did, I would have referred them to the Abbey that owns the manuscript.  I hope they made a donation in that direction either way.  But for myself, I rejoice to see it.

    It’s also very good news that a Finnish translation has appeared.

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    Islamic attack on Livius.org

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    Last night the Livius.org ancient history site was hacked and defaced.  It is down at this moment.  The vandalism indicated that the culprits were a Turkish-speaking Islamic group. We don’t quite know why they did this, or what they disliked about the site. 

    Jona Lendering created the site, which is invaluable for people interested in ancient history and the raw historical data.  I don’t agree with every opinion expressed, but Jona has researched in detail some areas of ancient history which are of wide interest.  To attack this site is no better than burning books. 

    In a week when I have been researching the stories about the supposed Moslem destruction of the library of Alexandria, it is curious to witness an actual, real-life Moslem attempt to destroy literature.

    We live in fortunate times.  Out of pure generosity, the USA has given the internet to the world, and it has made freely available a huge mass of data and enjoyment and learning to us all.  It has made it possible for ordinary people to contribute, in such a way that every one of us benefits.   It is an act of astonishing beneficence, which we take for granted.  In turn we lesser contributors do our best to increase the amount of knowledge available online, accessible to everyone and anyone.

    Then there are those who take this gift, and seek to abuse it.  It is inevitable, given recent history, that there would be Moslems who do this.

    The suicide bombings of 9/11 raised the question in some minds of whether Moslems should be permitted to use aircraft at all.  It wasn’t Moslems who invented aircraft — they enjoy something which they could never have created by themselves. And then they abused it, as guests in someone else’s land. 

    Must we now ask whether Moslems should be allowed access to the internet?   Is that what it will take, to put an end to this sort of activity?

    Of course I doubt that this is practical politics!  Nor, in calmer mood, would it be quite fair to penalise ordinary Moslems who have committed no crime for the actions of those who claim to represent them.  But this was an evil act, and we need to stand up and resist attempts to intimidate us of this kind.

    UPDATE: Jim Davila presses the claims of Russia and China for priority of disconnection here, although perhaps he didn’t realise it.  Surely, in a tolerant and diverse world, we could agree to disconnect all three?

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    Speculative invoicing for copyright violation

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    Online piracy of games and DVDs is widespread, or so I gather.  I don’t myself play computer games and I don’t have a DVD player, and furthermore I’m not really the right generation.  But considering how music sharing worked in the 70’s and 80’s, I fully believe that it is widespread.  Notoriously peer-to-peer networking has been used for this purpose. 

    Some of the lower forms of life in our society have seen an opportunity in this.  They get a firm of unscrupulous lawyers to start sending out letters intended to frighten ordinary people into paying up.  Not that the chancers actually know whether the recipient is guilty — the letters are (a) fishing for money, since most people pay rather than be dragged through the courts and (b) fishing for some real information about the recipient.  Often all the toerag has is an IP address, obtained from a complaisant ISP.  In consequence there have been some juicy tabloid stories, where the chancers accused frail pensioners with no internet access of using p2p and demanded money!

    This link from beingthreatened.com contains details of how to respond if you receive a speculative invoice of this kind.  It makes interesting reading, and I recommend it.

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    Tertullian in Norwegian

    Posted on by Roger Pearse

    Ten years ago I was still scanning material for the Tertullian Project.  One thing that I started to do was acquire foreign-language translations.  In a way this was a mistake; it was quite hard to scan and proof these, and really those who speak that language group will be far better at it.  So after a while I stopped.  But I had by then acquired a fair collection of Tertullian translations. 

    These have languished in a  pile of books ever since.  Nor are they of value.  When I took a whole load of books to sell in Oxford, the dealer wouldn’t even look at the Italian translations.  These I ended up giving to Oxfam there, in the faint hope that they might find a reader.

    One translation that I bought, in January 2001, was Tertullian: Udvalgte Skriften (=Selected Works).  This was a small collection of works by Tertullian in Norwegian translation, published in 1887.  It’s about small paperback size, and some 260 pages long.  Unfortunately when it arrived I found that it was in the ‘gothic’ font (or ‘Fraktur’) favoured in Germany up to WW2 and then deep-sixed by an edict from Hitler himself (or so I am told).  That meant that I couldn’t even OCR it.  OCR for Fraktur was developed eventually, in collaboration with Abbyy, the owners of Finereader, but then stitched up so that no-one could have access to it.

    I found the book again a couple of weeks ago, when I pulled all my academic books out of the cupboard and piled them on the side.  I felt morally obliged to create a digital copy, and today I’ve done so.  It’s just a PDF full of page images, but at least it exists.  So … if you speak Norwegian, and can read text in Fraktur, enjoy!

    The PDF is now online at Archive.org, here.

    Would anyone like the book itself?  It’s unbound, and coming apart a bit, but everything is there.  It cost me around 110 Norwegian Kronor.  It’s yours for $10 by Paypal, plus whatever postage costs to wherever you are.  If not, I think I know a Norwegian scholar who would probably give it a home.

    The book is volume 15 in a series.  The volumes were listed inside the back cover.  I can’t even read the letters but these seem to be the texts.

    1.  Two of Cyprian’s works.
    2. A Tertullian work – maybe the Apologeticum?
    3. A work by Augustine.
    4. Clemens Romanus, 1st letter.
    5. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechical lectures
    6. Cyprian, another two works (one about Donatus)
    7. Justin Martyr, Apology.
    8. Augustine again.
    9. Augustine, Enchiridion.
    10. Selected works of Chrysostom.
    11. Ignatius and Polycarp, letters and martyrium.
    12. Minucius Felix, Octavius.
    13. Augustine.  Something about Donatism.
    14. Athenagoras, Tatian, Letter to Diognetus.
    15. Tertullian, Selected Works.

    I see the word “subscriptionen” so I suspect there were more.  But who would know?

    Is there a norseman in the house?

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