Category: Information access

Google funding for discovery of ancient texts online — and some unforeseen difficulties

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Stephan Huller has drawn my attention to a press release from the university of Southampton:

A University of Southampton researcher is part of a team which has just secured funding from Google to make the classics and other ancient texts easy to discover and access online.

Leif Isaksen at the University’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) is working together with Dr Elton Barker at The Open University and Dr Eric Kansa of the University of California-Berkeley on the Google Ancient Places (GAP): Discovering historic geographical entities in the Google Books corpus project, which is one of 12 projects worldwide to receive funding as part of a new Digital Humanities Research Programme funded by Google.

The GAP researchers will enable scholars and enthusiasts worldwide to search the Google Books corpus to find books related to a geographic location and within a particular time period. The results can then be visualised on GoogleMaps or in GoogleEarth.  The project will run until September next year.

The PR people don’t seem to have really understood what is involved here.  This isn’t about placing ancient texts online, as far as I can see.  Rather it is about indexing volumes in Google books, so that they can be searched for using region and date.   The information will be accessible using a webservice.

There is one obvious difficulty with all this, tho.  Most books on Google books are not accessible in the United Kingdom!  This is because European publishers lobbied and threatened Google if it made material prior to 1923 available, for fear that some of it might still be copyright somewhere in the EU, and that that copyright might belong to one of them, and that maybe, just maybe, they might lose some money. 

Google listened this contemptible nonsense, scratched its head at the idea that people wanted to prevent access, and said, “Fine.  Do without!” They chopped access to Google books material after 1880 or something like that.  The euro-nuts lose, the US gains.

So … most of the results returned by this new webservice will be of no service to anyone.

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Religious persecution in Britain today

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I happened to see this item, which succintly highlights why Christians in the UK are in trouble.  The writer omits to mention the attempt by the last government to make any statement about homosexuality other than warmest approval liable to prosecution.  Attempts to introduce a free speech clause were repeatedly voted down.  A government minister gloated that the churches had better start hiring lawyers — in a country where no-one other than the privileged can afford to go to law.

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Severian of Gabala, sermon 1 on Genesis online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A little while back I started translating the six sermons of Severian of Gabala on Genesis from the French version of Bareille.  Not that this process  has any scholarly value, but it should help to get Severian better known.  Unfortunately I had to stop after the first sermon for pressure of other things.

I found the first sermon on disk this afternoon, and I have tidied it up and uploaded it here.  I place it in the public domain. Have fun!

A proper academic translation of the sermons of Severian on Genesis will be coming out at the end of the year.  Translated by Robert C. Hill, it’s published by IVP.

IVP have a big programme  to translate patristic bible commentaries.  I know it needs doing; but I’m not sure that I approve.  IVP has a defined mission, to publish popular books to support people doing the Lord’s work through evangelism at our universities.  I really do not see patristics as part of that.  SPCK once had a mission for the gospel.  It too once went down the patristic route.

IVP is doubtless accustomed to sharing in the hostility that its Master attracts.  Preaching the gospel is hard, in our selfish age, and living it still more so.  It is very easy to linger on the “plain of ease”, doing stuff for which men will mostly only praise.  I hope that this venture does not mark the dilution and extinction of the key Christian publisher of our days.

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English translation of book 15 of John bar Penkaye now online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

If we are going to get a BBC TV series on early Islam which mentions John bar Penkaye, there may be an opportunity to collect some interested people for Syriac studies.  John bar Penkaye is a non-Islamic witness to the first century of Moslem rule in the middle east, you see.  He was a Nestorian monk of that period.

For this reason (and because it was too hot to sleep last night!) I’ve taken Mingana’s translation into French of book 15 of the his history, the Rish Melle and run it across into English, with the aid of Google translator.  I must say that the latter has improved yet again.  Who would have thought that accurate translation was possible merely by an adaptation of a search engine to find the same words in two different languages?

Of course the translation has no scholarly value.  The academic will go to Sebastian Brock’s version of about 66% of the book.   But it might be useful to the general reader with no French and no access to Sebastian’s version. Dr Brock has been enormously generous with his time and efforts to promote access to Syriac literature, but his work suffers from the curse of the pre-internet age, that most of it is offline.

I’ve compared the result to Sebastian Brock’s translation, and it didn’t seem too unsound.  I also smartened it up in a few places or added extra footnotes.  The result is here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/john_bar_penkaye_history_15_trans.htm

I’ve also put a link in the Wikipedia article on John bar Penkaye to it.  I’ve also written a preface, aimed at that audience, which is here:

http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/john_bar_penkaye_history_00_eintro.htm

I’ve tried to presume no knowledge of Syriac studies.  If anyone has suggestions for improvements to either, particularly to the intro that might help promote Syriac studies, do post them in the comments or email them to me.

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Updates to the list of online CSEL volumes

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve held a copy on this blog here of Stefan Zara’s list of CSEL volumes.  A correspondent writes that he has detected some errors in the links, and sent me a couple of corrections already.  I’ll add these in today as they come in.

I’ve been intending to download the CSEL volumes for a while.  Maybe I will get to it today!

It’s 8:57am.  The temperature is already unbearable here, and they are forecasting temperatures over 90F.  Naturally, then, today is the day when I have a job interview.  In half an hour I must put on a heavy interview suit and go off to be, erm, grilled.  Probably in more senses than one!

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Wolfenbuttel do something original with manuscripts

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This press release (Google translate here) is rather unusual.  The Herzog August library in Wolfenbuttel hold quite a collection of manuscripts and rare books.  They’ve just introduced a new service to allow you to look at these, via a webcam, in real time.

What you do is book an appointment with the library to look at a book.  Then when you telephone, a library staff member holds the book under a camera, and the page image is sent via a web cam.  In this way you can tell him to go back/forward, look at this page/that one, and consult the book remotely.

The party identifies using the catalogue (http://www.hab.de/bibliothek/kataloge) the signatures and titles of the books he wants to see, and then agreed with the information provided by the library for an appointment (Tel: 05 331 / 808-312, E-mail auskunft@hab.de:). At the agreed time, he accesses the page on http://www.hab.de/bibliothek/sprechstunde and dials the number +49 (0) 5331/808- 118th

The library honestly admit — what some German libraries will not — that for a researcher to fly over from Australia or Japan to see if a book contains anything of interest is “hardly possible.”  This is an alternative.  The article includes an  image of what is happening, which illustrates the process.

It is a very imaginative idea.   Well done Wolfenbuttel for thinking laterally on this one.

 

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The exegesis of Polychronius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It looks as if the Lord is going to answer my prayer for another contract rather sooner than I had expected.  If so, I shall  have money once more, and one of the items on the slate for translation is the remains of the commentary on Daniel by Polychronius.

“Who he?” I hear you cry.  Andrew Eastbourne has drawn my attention to a review in the 1880 Dublin Review, 3rd series, volume 3, p.535-6 of a book by old Bardenhewer on just this author.  The review is short and so I post it here.

Polychronius, Bruder Theodor’s von Mopsuestia und Bischof von Apamea. Ein Beitrag eur Geschichte der Exegese. Von Dr. Otto Bardenhewer. Freiburg. 1879. (Polychronius, brother of Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Bishop of Apamea. A Study on the History of Exegesis. By Dr. Otto Bardenhewer. Friburg. 1879.)

DR. BARDENHEWER, a young professor of the University of Munich, draws attention to one of the greatest ornaments of the school of Antioch. His book contains an account of the life and works of Polychronius, his views on canon and inspiration, and his hermeneutic principles, to which is added a translation and explanation of some portions of his commentaries.

Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus,[1] praises Polychronius as a successful ruler of his diocese of Apamea, and as a man of graceful eloquence and virtuous life. This is about all that is known of his life with any degree of certainty. According to Cardinal Mai,[2] Polychronius seems to have written commentaries on almost the whole of the Old Testament. There are, however, only fragments of them preserved, and these chiefly belong to his commentaries on Job, Daniel, and Ezechiel.

Polychronius (says Dr. Bardenhewer, p. 5) has happily avoided the extravagances of his brother Theodore, though not quite all his faults. In real exegetical accuracy and conscientiousness he has surpassed all Antiochean interpreters; in knowledge of history and languages not one amongst them wasjequal to him, nor has any one entered with such love and keen understanding into the depth of the Biblical text, nor made such correct allowances for actual circumstances.

Of all his works, the best preserved are his very valuable scholia on the book of Daniel (published by Mai, l. c. P. ii. pp. 105-160). It is strange that he, like S. Ephrem, explains Daniel’s prophecy of the four empires to mean, besides the Babylonian, Median, and Persian, the Macedonian (and not the Roman) empire. But he believed in the canonicity of all the deutero-canonical pieces of Daniel, perhaps with the exception of the Hymn of the Three Children in the fiery furnace. Bardenhewer gives us (pp. 63-65) some arguments for his opinion that Polychronius really denied the canonicity of Dan. iii. 25-90, Vulg. They rest on the passage : ” This hymn is not found in the Hebrew and Syriac text. It is said to have been afterwards added by some one, and founded upon what is narrated in the book. I shall, therefore, abstain from explaining this part, in order to keep exclusively to the interpretation of the book.” Granted, that Polychronius has written these words; but they only mention the doubts of others as a reason why Polychronius did not interpret the hymn.

It is clear from Dr. Bardenhewer’s book that Polychronius is worthy of the greatest consideration. Dr. Bardenhewer is well able to appreciate him, and shows a well-trained judgment in handling critical questions, and a great taste for patristic and exegetical studies.

May the author continue to encourage, and to facilitate the study of the Fathers, and the interpretation of the Scriptures, by works similar to the one mentioned here.

1 Eccl Hist., v. 40. 
2 Scriptorum veterum nova collectio. Tom. I. Romae, 1825, praef. p. xxxl.

I must say that I hope we manage to go ahead with this.  It seems clear that Polychronius has interesting things to tell us!

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The dialogue of a Montanist with an Orthodox

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In my last post, I mentioned the existence of this mysterious Dialogue of a Montanist with an Orthodox (Dialogus Montanistae et Orthodoxi).  Thanks to Jesus de Prado, I’ve been able to access the text. 

As far as I can tell, no English translation exists.  But I find that the Dialog was edited with an Italian translation by Anna Maria Berruto Martone, Dialogo di un montanista con un ortodosso, Biblioteca patristica 34, EDB, Bologna 1999.  Interestingly no copy seems to be listed in COPAC, but then Italian editions are generally poorly represented in UK libraries.  Fortunately a copy is available on the web and I have ordered one.

The text was first edited by G. Ficker as Widerlegung eines Montanisten in ZKG 26 (1905), p.447-63.  This is online.  The Greek text fills some eight pages, which isn’t a lot.  I find that the text is also known as the Dialexis Montanistae et Orthodoxi.  It’s CPG 2572, I believe.

There seems to be a French edition and translation: Pierre de Labriolle, DIDYME L’AVEUGLE, “Dialexis Montanistae et orthodoxi” (introduction, traduction française et notes), although I can find no more details of it than that.  Is it possible that it formed part of his Les sources de l’histoire du Montanisme (1913)?   Hum.

So… more searching to do!

UPDATE: I had second thoughts and cancelled the order for the Italian edition.  I can’t believe that no translation exists of this already.

UPDATE: And I was right to be cautious.  It looks as if it exists in English in Heine, The Montanist Oracles, 1989, text from Ficker, plus English translation pp.112-27.  See the preview here.

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Don’t let readers photograph rare books – let thieves steal them instead

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An interesting story in the Guardian a few days ago highlights the criminal foolishness of the British Library policies.  These prohibit legitimate readers from photographing pages. 

A Cambridge graduate who stole more than £1m worth of rare books during his career as a professional book thief was today found guilty of stealing £40,000’s worth of books from a celebrated library.

William Jacques, nicknamed “Tome Raider” after stealing hundreds of rare books in the late 1990s, drew up a “thief’s shopping list”, targeting the most expensive books that he could access.

He used a false name to sign in to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley library in London before hiding valuable books under his tweed jacket, Southwark Crown Court was told.

Detective Constable Paul Howitt said Jacques, the son of a farmer from Selby, North Yorkshire, was an “extremely arrogant man, a very greedy man who was obsessed by money” and was “responsible for the biggest ever raid of our leading libraries”.

The Cambridge graduate began selling stolen books at auction houses in the late 90s. The haul that led to his previous conviction, some 500 rare antiquarian books and pamphlets from the British Library, Cambridge University Library and the London Library, was one of the biggest of its kind in British legal history, and many of the works were damaged in an attempt to disguise their origins.

Jacques was jailed for four years in May 2002 by a judge at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court for 21 counts of theft. He now faces a similar time in jail after his most recent offences.

Libraries cannot be secure unless they stop being libraries and turn into vaults.  It is of the highest importance to record the holdings of all our libraries, and especially of unique items.  Any long-established collection contains items that once belonged elsewhere.  Indeed medieval manuscripts travel more widely than all but a few of us!  They flit around like bumble-bees.

Any library that believes that preserving the collection means preventing photography is criminally negligent.  Instead it should manage such a process.

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More on the ancient Greek and Latin at Google

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A few days ago I gave a link to 500 ancient Greek and Latin texts at Google.  What I had not realised was that this list was not just a bunch of pointers, but a new set of scans, done at high resolution specifically to aid OCR.  A reader has emailed me a link to an article on the Inside Google Books blog — itself new to me. This states, after an intro:

I’m pleased to announce that Google Books is now assisting this work by sharing high-resolution digital scans of over 500 volumes of Ancient Greek and Latin, dating from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries. (Of course, downloadable versions of over a million volumes in all fields are available from books.google.com, in a more compressed form.) Jon Orwant and I created this collection using a list of several thousand important Classics volumes identified by our collaborators Professor Gregory Crane and Alison Babeu of Tufts University. We are analyzing additional volumes and expect to be able to release more high-resolution scans in the future.

These scans will aid the development of accurate OCR (Optical Character Recognition) algorithms for Ancient Greek, and provide the basis for electronic versions of important editions of these Classics texts; but perhaps their greatest value will be for the development of new methods in this emerging field. We’re honored that Professor Crane called this donation “a major contribution to what scholars can do.”

It also mentions something equally interesting:

… scholars around the world can now consult a high-resolution digital scan of Venetus A, one of the best manuscripts of the Iliad, at the Center for Hellenic Studies.

Mind you, I find on linking to it that someone at the website decided to block people using Internet Explorer.  That’s strange, but a minor thing.  The great thing is to get the thing online.

Among the manuscripts of the Iliad, one of the oldest and most important is the manuscript in the Biblioteca Marciana, shelfmark gr. 822.  This is given the reference letter (=siglum) “A” in the editions.  It is not merely a very important copy, beautifully written, nor merely one of the oldest outside of the very extensive papyrus fragments.  It also contains the ancient scholia to the text, originating in the text critical school at the Museum in Alexandria ca. 150 BC.   I have yet to manage to see any of the pages, thanks to the quirk above, but it can only be a very good thing indeed!

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