The new issue of the Syriac studies academic journal Hugoye (vol. 12, no. 1) is out and available online here.
Category: Syriac
Mass manuscripts online? – The Virtual Manuscripts Room project
Possibly a very important announcement here. The project proposal is very badly worded, so I’m not quite sure of this, but it sounds as if the Mingana library is going to make all of its manuscripts available online. A German NT group is also involved. I’ve buzzed an email to the Mingana to see what it’s all about.
Later: OK, I think I understand what is going on. Here’s my understanding, and yes, this could be HUGE!
A bunch of people at Birmingham called ITSEE are developing a website to allow researchers to work on texts. If you want to see a passage in an ancient text, the idea is that you can just click and see the relevant manuscript witnesses, then and there, for each part of the text. The site will be a kind of manuscripts workbench.
Imagine you want to work on some text. First you get images of the manuscripts uploaded. Then you go into the workbench, and start tagging the page images — image 1 shows text chapter 1, verse 1; image 2 shows text chapter 1 verse 19, and so on. Repeat this for all the manuscripts in the system, and then you get a set of links for the text. Then enter some kind of raw electronic text, and link that in the same way. You then end up with a way to browse the text, and see whatever variants you want, in the manuscripts, at the click of a button.
In order to make this work, they need to prime it by uploading lots of images of manuscripts. This is the bit that will start everything else. At the moment, they have two sources to draw on.
Firstly, the Birmingham people have access to the Mingana collection of oriental (Syriac and Arabic) manuscripts. They’ve started to digitise these and upload them. At the moment the website isn’t working or displaying anything much (because someone forgot to install a Python library on the server; early days, all this), but there are definite signs of Syriac mss there.
Secondly a German institute have a load of New Testament manuscripts in horrible low quality microfilm, and are going to input these. Their particular interest is to make it possible to work on the critical text of the New Testament.
The images will need lots of tagging. This tagging will be a huge job, and the idea is to involve volunteers — suitably qualified scholars — to do this in their own interest as they work on the text. The more people contribute, the more valuable the results will be. We’ll start with raw manuscript pages, which will gradually — for some texts — grow tagging data (data like “this page starts at chapter 3, verse 2”, etc).
The project is being talked about a lot by people interested in the New Testament. But that’s really accidental; that’s just one community around one text and one set of manuscripts. But the clear intention is to provide this online workbench for all scholars to work — collaboratively or alone — on critical texts using the manuscript evidence from photographs.
Because the Mingana Syriac and Arabic mss will be digitised, this will have a really important effect on Syriac and Christian Arabic studies. Frankly it could revolutionise things!
If a community comes into being, as it will for the NT mss, then a Wikipedia-type effect will occur. That would mean that far more can be done, far more quickly, than is presently possible. Once the data base has a certain number of manuscripts in it, the hope is that it will snowball, and more and more material will be added.
There is a formal launch date in July. They aren’t ready yet, tho. But isn’t it exciting!?!
Christian literature in Middle Persian
Now here’s a thought:
The century again witnessed several periods of open warfare between the two empires, but by this time the Sasanian authorities no longer felt any serious need to doubt the loyalty of their Christian subjects. It is significant that the synod of 576 instructed that prayers for Khosroes I always be included in the liturgy. Worth mentioning too in this context is the fact that the sixth century also saw the growth of a Christian literature in Middle Persian (whose existence is only known indirectly today). — Sebastian Brock, The church of the East in the Sasanian Empire up to the sixth century, in Fire from Heaven (1988)p.77)
I don’t know a sausage about Middle Persian literature. Indeed my only knowledge of it is of a introductory treatise on Aristotle by Paul the Persian, which Severus Sebokht translated into Syriac.
I wonder if any of this literature exists today? Sadly Brock gave no footnote.
More Michael the Syrian
A crisp sunny morning, a free afternoon at home, and an email arrives telling me that volume 2 of Michael the Syrian is available for collection at my local library. Sometimes it all just comes together. I wonder how much of it I can scan today?
UPDATE: (Early Afternoon) I’d forgotten how HEAVY the volumes are. The physical labour in picking them up, turning the page, placing it on the scanner, turning it round, etc, it pretty exhausting. The paper is yellow-ish, which makes for speckling when scanned. 70 pages so far, tho. The speckling seems to affect the margins most.
It’s an interesting question, whether to trim the margins or not. Why bulk out the file with speckled white-space?
UPDATE: (3pm) 123 pages. Groan. One page had a bit of foxing, which came out as black splotches in black/white scanning. So I did that page in colour.
UPDATE: (5pm) I’m aiming for 200 pages. On page 190 at the moment, although I had to stop when the plumber arrived. Then I can have dinner! Somewhere in the reign of Justinian at the moment; I saw the name Belisarius a moment ago.
Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon Ecclesiasticum vol. 1 now online
Thanks to Stephen C. Carlson, I learned a few days ago that volume 1 of Bar Hebraeus Chronicon Ecclesiasticum was online in PDF form at Google Books here. Unfortunately this 1872 book is kept behind their “US-only” firewall, although it is out of copyright everywhere in the world.
I’ve placed an ILL for volume 2, which I will scan if it arrives and place online at Archive.org.
In preparation for this, I’ve also put the volume 1 PDF on Archive.org where non-US viewers can see it. It’s here. I suggest US viewers use the Google books link, which is faster.
The work itself consists of short entries on figures in the Syriac church from the beginning down to the author’s own time. A parallel Latin translation is provided. The first volume is the important people in the West Syriac church; the second is their opposite numbers in the East Syriac church. I don’t know what volume 3 is, tho!
Michael the Syrian: preface to his history
The largest medieval Syriac Chronicle is that of Michael the Syrian, published with a French translation early in the 20th century by J. B. Chabot. A single volume of this is online here.
https://morrisburgdental.ca/lasix-online/
The preface survives only in an Armenian translation, also with French translation. My memory is probably playing tricks on me, but I have an uncomfortable feeling that I have translated this before. But here it is (again?), from the French, which is online here.
Devoted and studious brothers, when I was considering the facts which it is important to know, in the great number of Chronicles, I refrained from going into detail about those which can be learned from the great number of existing accounts, and I have compiled, in the process, from ecclesiastical and profane writers what was useful and appropriate; so as to reveal this way the mortal laziness of many, and to enlighten the shadows of ignorance, lifting the sight towards the reward of my efforts. I shall leave this treasure to the church, and to the Teachers of the children of the new Zion, so that it will survive after my time.
https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/zithromax-azithromycin/
In first place we must place the first of all mankind, Adam, so that we start at the beginning. This will be useful to those who speak and those who listen. But first we must give the names of the historians from whom we propose to take the material of our edifice.
https://morrisburgdental.ca/xanax-online-without-a-prescription/
[Julius] Africanus, Jesus, Hegesippus, Jews, covered up to the coming of Christ. Annianus, a monk of Alexandria, covered from Adam until the emperor Constantine.Eusebius Pamphili composed his book with the help of their writings and called it Church History.
Zosimus, Socrates and Theodoret the heretic began their writings with Constantine and [went down] to Theodosius the Younger.
John of Antioch and of Djebel, Theodore Lector, of Constantinople and Zacharias, bishop of Melitene, covered from Theodosius to Justinian the Elder.
John of Asia covered from Anastasius to Maurice.
Gouria covered from Justinian to Heraclius, and on the invasion of the Arabs into the lands of the Syrians, which took place in the time of Heraclius.
Saint James of Edessa made an abridgement of them all.
Dionysius the patriarch covered from Maurice to Theophilus, emperor of the Greeks, and Haroun, emir of the Arabs.
Ignatius, bishop of Melitene, Saliba the Elder, of Melitene, John of Kaisoum and Dionysius (of Alexandria), Bar-Salibi, made several chronicles from Adam to their own times.
Now we have enumerated the chroniclers who, considering the studious disposition of listeners in their own times, wrote with rich colours, we who live in a lesser age, seeing our indolence, [will write] briefly passing rapidly over each of their accounts.
But studious men should not consume their energies in working out greater or lesser numbers in the computation of dates, because of the truth of the saying of the Saviour, “The Father has kept for himself the knowledge of times and dates.” In fact there seems a great deal of difference between the version of the Septuagint and that which the Syrians possess, that which king Abgar had translated, and which James of Edessa revised by using the artifice of a pretended conversion to Judaism, so that the Jews wouldn’t hide their information from him.
E. W. Brooks and the Chronicle of James of Edessa
Chronica Minora III (CSCO 6, AD 1906) contains Latin translations of a number of Syriac historical texts, each with an introduction. I thought that I would give the introduction to the Chronicle of James of Edessa here in English, since this text is an important one for the early history of Islam. Notes by me are in square brackets.
The text was around 340 words of Latin, and took me about 45 minutes, although I read over it last night first, and only had to look up about 3 words.
II. Chronicle of James of Edessa, translated by E. W. Brooks.
Fragments of this chronicle are preserved in British Museum manuscript Additional 14,685, which according to Wright [the cataloguer of the BM Syriac mss] was written in the 10th or 11th century. The author given as is James Philoponus, or “lover of work”, who is the same as James of Edessa, in Wright’s opinion, because excerpts from the work of James of Edessa are quoted by Michael the Syrian. The canon-table itself, which begins on folio 10r, is a continuation of the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea; to it a preface is prefixed in which the work of Eusebius is corrected and supplemented.
In the manuscript as we now have it, the fragments are wrongly ordered: fol. 12v must be read before fol. 12r, and fol. 18v before 18r [i.e. these pages have been bound in backwards], fol. 11 and 13 come from the same folio, and likewise fol. 19 and 20; and two fragments which contain fol. 19 are stuck together.
The fragments go no further than 942 A. S. [=the Seleucid era, or year of the Greeks], = 631 AD, but the canon, as we learn from Michael the Syrian, was continued to 1021 A.S. Michael notes that James died two years before this, so that the last two years must be supposed to be the work of a pupil. But Elias of Nisibis says that James composed the Chronicle in 1003 A.S. = 692 AD; and if this is true, then 18 years must be ascribed to the continuator. The canon of years was copied by Michael, so portions now missing from the manuscript can easily be restored. The same author quotes several places from the preface in a complete form which are now mutilated in our manuscript. We have also edited from Elias of Nisibis material both from the preface, which he calls the Chronicle, and excerpts from the canon itself, to fill up the gaps.
Among the sources for the Chronicle the following must be included: Socrates, Theodoret, the Chronicle of Edessa, John of Ephesus, the history generally ascribed to Zacharias Rhetor, and perhaps lists of emperors, kings and bishops. In the preface, besides Eusebius, James used certain Alexandrian chronographers, perhaps Anianus and Andronicus, and, as we see, a catalogue of kings of the Persians.
The beginning of the preface was translated [not so; edited] in the Catalogue by the excellent Wright; I myself edited the Canon in 1899 with an English translation and commentary: the complete text of the whole work is now translated for the first time [into Latin]. Many places which in the previous edition of the canon were left lacunose or wrongly filled up I have now restored from Michael and corrected. [Michael was published between 1899 and 1906] I have imitated the layout of the manuscript where possible in both text and translation; in the translation I have restored lacunas in the canon of years, but in the text it did not seem worthwhile to do so.
Bibliographical note:
You can read a description of the manuscript in Wright, Catalogue of Syriac MSS in the British Museum, p. 1062-1064 [online here, vol. 3; the PDF is p.1062 also. This gives the text of the start of the work, not a translation].
Editions: W. Wright, op. cit., p. 1062, 1063, London, 1872. Text of the start.
E. W. Brooks, The Chronological Canons of James of Edessa (Zeitschr. d. Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, Bd. LIII, p. 261 ff and p. 550). Canon with English translation. — Cf. also ibid. p. 534 ff (notes by Sigismund Fränkel) — See also F. Nau, Notice sur un nouveau ms. de l’Octoechus de Severe d’Antioche et sur l’auteur Jacques Philoponus (Journ. asiatique, ser. IX, tom. XI, p. 346 ff).
* * *
From Wright:
DCCCCXXI. Paper, about 12 in. by 7, consisting of 23 leaves, all of which are more or less stained and torn. There are from 36 to 40 lines in each page. This volume is written in a good, regular hand of the 10th or 11th century and contains…
New Department of Syriac at Mardin University
I learn from George Kiraz on the Hugoye list of a newspaper announcement that Mardin University in Eastern Turkey is to create a department of Syriac studies. Apparently Oxford University is the only other university in the world with such a department. The university is based in the middle of the remaining Syriac-speaking population, which makes it a natural place for such study. This is good news! Let’s hope that they hunt for books in the region and publish texts which have escaped the attention of researchers. Who knows what may sit on rural shelves, awaiting attention?
Revue de l’Orient Chretien on Google books
A bunch of these are available here.
Problems with the CSCO edition of Jacob of Edessa’s Chronicle
The Chronicle of Eusebius may not be his best known work, but it is still fairly widely known. The second half of this consisted of tables of dates, rulers, and events, in a form which has now been imitated and continued for some fifteen centuries (Jerome’s version here).
Among the continuators was the 7th century Syriac scholar, Jacob of Edessa. His main claim to fame is that he realised that Syriac needed vowels, and was able to induce his Syrian Orthodox co-religionists to adopt Greek vowels, albeit written as tiny letters above the line. Their rivals in the Church of the East dogged stuck with swarms of dots above and below the line to indicate vowels; a practise disastrously followed by Arabic. Indeed Jacob even tried to get the vowels written on the line with the consonants, but here he failed.
His chronicle starts where Eusebius ends, in the 20th year of Constantine. He begins with several pages discussing an error of calculation in Eusebius, and then a table of kings of Rome and Persia, years of their reign, “total years” (from the start of his chronicle) and events against each year makes up the rest of the Chronicle. A badly damaged manuscript from the Nitrian desert in Egypt now in the British Library contains what survives of the text. The work is of importance as one of the earliest mentions of Mohammed — as king of the Arabs — in a non-Moslem text.
The tabular portion of the work was printed in the ZDMG 1 early in the 20th century by E. W. Brooks, who appended a non-tabular translation in English of the events. He revisited the text for the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium series; vol. 5 consists of the Syriac text in a volume of Chronica minora, while vol. 6 contains a Latin translation in tabular form, including the introduction.
I have scanned the English translation from the ZDMG, with the intention of placing it online. I obtained the CSCO volumes, and intended to format the text in tabular form, and simply replace the Latin translation with Brooks earlier English translation. Simple?
I am encountering several problems doing so, which seem interesting themselves.
Firstly, it is by no means as clear as it might be what the layout on the manuscript page actually is, when these seem to start in the middle of a page in the printed edition. Are those running headers “PERSIANS: Sapor” really present half-way down the manuscript page, as Brooks suggests by printing them at the top of the page of the printed edition? How is it that alternate pages seem to be non-tabular; is that a feature of the original; table and facing text? Are any of those headings colour coded, as Eusebius coded his original text? The only way to find out is to consult the original manuscript.
In addition, Brooks was unable to read the text in many places. In some places he resorted to patching it from Michael the Syrian, who quotes extensively from Jacob, it is true. But this is a risky thing to do. We want Jacob’s text, as it exists. We don’t want Michael here, except in a footnote.
As for the unreadable text, I wonder whether it would become readable under UV light?
Comparing the English translation with his Latin translation, the latter is longer, and words that were uncertain the first time are not so the second. His use of Michael is probably the reason for this new certainty. But there are worrying differences. I have already come across one event which is labelled as one year in the English, and the following year in the Latin. There is no indication of why the event is supposed to happen a line later in the text. Which is right? Did the printers do this?
Clearly we need a new edition of this work. It’s not a long text, perhaps 20 pages. We need an English translation of the discussion of Eusebius. We need good pictures of the text, not the partial ones that Brooks had – perhaps using Multi-Spectral Imaging. None of this should be beyond the skills of any Syriacist.
Is anyone interested?
1. Zeitschrift fur deutschen morgenlandischen Gesellschaft, 53 (1899) 261-327