As I mentioned earlier, I am trying to learn Syriac. A week ago I went down to London, and 5 of us had a day of intensive tuition. It was interesting that several had bought the grammars, but had been quite unable to get into them. We were taught how to form and transliterate the Serto letters — something that all the books do very badly indeed –, with the vowel-system of Jacob of Edessa, and given some homework. In the afternoon the mysteries of Syriac nouns and adjectives were laid out. My general impression is that the language is not complicated, and that the poor quality of the books is actually the main obstacle. The homework so far has really succeeded in teaching me the serto alphabet — much more easily than my struggles to learn the simpler estrangelo alphabet by myself.
Category: Thoughts on Antiquity
Monumenta Germanica Historica online
I have just discovered that someone has scanned a lot of the volumes of the MGH and placed them online. You can find them here. Sadly they have not made whole volumes downloadable (why not?). Among other things, the Chronography of 354 is there.
Useful books or peddling hate?
I learned from the bar of advertisements at the top of this page that a certain R.J.Hoffmann has published a translation of the fragments of Julian the Apostate Against the Galileans (i.e. Christians), through Prometheus Press.
Hoffmann published first a translation of Celsus’ work against the Christians, as reconstructed from the quotations in Origen’s Contra Celsum, which has often been translated in full. This was published by Oxford University Press, but received only two scholarly reviews, one nominal and the other which accused him of rewriting the text to ‘improve’ it and make Celsus Philosophus sound like a modern atheist. The translation is very punchy. But I had occasion to examine a couple of passages, and found that Hoffmann’s version did not represent the text in Origen at all accurately. On the other hand these passages were extremely acceptable to the lower forms of online atheist.
Next up was a translation of Porphyry’s lost work against the Christians. This in fact consisted not of a translation of all those fragments but only of those which came from the Apocriticus of Macarius Magnes. In other words, he was translating only what already existed in an English version. The general accuracy of translation is better, and the book only let down by poor editing and the omission of all the material for which at that time no English translation existed. It seems to have attracted less scurrilous use than the first.
In 2004 the new book appeared. The fragments originally come from Cyril of Alexandria’s Contra Julianum, which unfortunately does not exist in English; but Dr. H. has only translated those portions which have already been translated. Again he has used Prometheus Press. It will be interesting to see if the book is listed in l’Annee Philologique, since the Porphyry was not.
A good translator is a benefit to us all. A translator who shares the religious sympathies of his subject can be a great boon, and can make a text far more accessible. I have long believed that Tertullian should only be translated by young men, who can relate to the fire of his thought! Those influenced by the flower-power generation are ideal to translate those muddled-mystic gnostic texts, which sensible people like myself can only yawn over. We all benefit, and no-one is the worse for the enterprise.
But there is also the risk that shared sympathy can go too far. An early 20th century Italian priest-translator of Tertullian introduced into De praescriptione haereticorum a phrase which completely changed the meaning of the sentence in a papalist direction. No doubt the change was an honest mistake, but an editor of a different confession would have preserved him from it. This problem is still more acute when it comes to shared hatreds.
Dr Hoffmann has a talent for expressing ancient anti-Christian writing in an accessible way. But so long as he continues to rewrite ancient polemic while omitting material not already translated, certain doubtless unworthy suspicions will continue to fester. Do any of these books serve any pleasant or scholarly purpose? I would like to hope so. But if so, what?
Learning Syriac
I’m going to have a go at learning Syriac. It’s rather a lot of years since I left full-time education, so I face the prospect with trepidation. An academic here in the UK is going to run 4 intensive Saturdays for us, starting in December. The bad news is 5 weeks of homework between the first and the second. It will be most interesting to see if I can learn anything. I wonder if other people would like to recount their experiences of picking up a language as a mature student outside the education system. I don’t agree with the idea that no-one is entitled to use an ancient text unless they can read it in the original — how many academics even can consult most oriental languages (Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian, Persian, etc) in this manner? But I think that we can all agree that we would rather be able to!
Dionysius Exiguus and AD/BC
Isn’t the web wonderful? I’ve long wondered why there was no English translation of the work in which Dionysius Exiguus first stated the date using AD and BC. Indeed it should have been translated, surely, as part of the millennium celebrations, I thought. But quite by chance I find that a certain Michael Deckers has translated a large chunk of it, which appears on a Russian site here. A link to the full Latin text is also on that page. I have written to Dr Deckers to ask permission to include it in the Additional Fathers, and perhaps I will translate some more of the work.
Nestorius, The Bazaar of Heracleides — now online
I hope that I may be forgiven for a small announcement. Nestorius wrote in exile in his own defence. Since his books were ordered to be burned, and his name used in much the same way as moderns use accusations of ‘racist’ — to shut down discussion — he was obliged to circulate it under the name of Heracleides of Damas. It’s quite hard going, but since it has survived to our own day, people may like to know that the English translation is now online here. I have also translated some material about the manuscript find from the French edition and translation.
In some ways the story is familiar. A single manuscript had survived. A copy was taken “in secret”, since the owner clearly didn’t want copies made. The single manuscript was, it turns out, destroyed in WW1. Fortunately the owner’s wish to prevent copying did not lead to the loss of the text. Other texts extant in Syriac in 1914 were not so lucky, as I have remarked before. But what is it about people who own manuscripts that makes them so desperate to prevent the text circulating?
Medieval manuscripts for sale – part 2: “no, we won’t photograph our collection”
Well! It looks as if the Karlsruhe state library may really have to hand over 2,500 manuscripts (including some papyri) to the Counts of Baden. There is much scaremongering going on online (e.g. in the PAPY-L list) about what happens, how many books are involved, books being sold, “broken up”, etc. None of the mss seem to be online, and lots — they’re very shy about saying what — are unphotographed.
What can we do? Well, I have been emailing the library, and suggesting that they get a bunch of volunteers in to take photos of the lot with digital cameras, or as much as can be done in the time. After all, if the library doesn’t put the interests of scholarship first — which is access and preservation — then it doesn’t deserve to have the books.
The responses have been interesting, but negative. Apparently, despite all the scaremongering, the library still can’t face the idea of scholars taking photographs. This is very odd indeed; surely books at risk should be photographed?
Even more interesting was the response of a certain poster from Heidelberg University on the PAPY-L list, which I will quote as it probably reflects very accurately just why many state-funded libraries have obstructed public access to images of mss online:
“…I want to stress that I would not appreciate either having anyone here who seemingly does not realise that certain differences between original and copy still exist, but who is interested only in taking pictures of our collection and distributing them all over the world just as he likes it.”
I admit that, in my innocent way, I rather thought that getting the public looking at images of books all around the world was what state-funded libraries were for. It makes one realise how far many libraries have to go. We live in a world in which google book is freely available to Americans, yet here we have people actively hostile to the idea.
“… To put it briefly, I am not in any way willing to accept either this attitude nor that of our government. … Any do-it-yourself attempts of this sort do not appear to be very helpful at this point because they almost seem to condone the selling.”
I worry about this, whether the attitude behind this is that the manuscripts belong to the institution, not the public. I myself have more manuscripts online at my website than the Karlsruhe library. Anyone who wants to work with them can. The world has not ended. The trouble is that very few people care much about mouldly old books. Unless we publicise them, no-one will. That’s part of the reason that the problem has arisen — the politicians do not care about a collection of books.
Collections should not be broken up. The bureaucrats may be wrong-headed about digital photography — although I bet they all own digital cameras, and I bet more than a few of the staff have snapped pages for their own use. But in fighting against an indifferent legislature handing over a collection to be auctioned, aren’t they serving us all? Perhaps: if it were not that they were so determined that this collection would be of so very little service to the world. Then again, if they had spent more time serving the public, perhaps the law-makers of Baden would have a better idea of how the public benefits from keeping the collection together.
I’m ambivalent, not least because there is no material known to me at Karlsruhe that is relevant to my research interests (attempts to find out what the collection contains have been ignored). It doesn’t matter to me who owns manuscripts, so long as they are safe, recorded and accessible to the public. But is the public interest served by breaking up this collection? Surely it would be better to simply get rid of the obscurantist staff, and keep the books together?
It will be most interesting to see what happens. If only we had a handlist of the books, online!
Thefts from the British Library
An article in the Times today tells us that a reader who used a razor-blade to remove 98 rare maps from books in the British Library and other libraries has been jailed for three years and fined one million pounds (around $2m). The maps, we are told, were then sold to dealers and collectors. He was found with 7 maps, alone worth around $1m. US readers will be amused to learn that the reader will be released automatically after a year, unless he annoys the turnkeys, and in any event after two. The Library officials are said to be furious at the leniency of the sentence.
The story has many interesting aspects. The weak sentence means that it is now open season on the collections of British Libraries. Many will consider the possibility of becoming a multi-millionaire well worth the chance of a year in conditions not markedly worse than a boys’ boarding school. Fortunately the number of criminals equipped to sell the items must be limited.
The Times report glosses over the motive, which is said to be “resentment” of the library. I wonder what the nature of his resentment was. Could it possibly be that, like so many other readers, he was tired of being robbed blind in charges for reproductions of material that he wished to examine?
Medieval manuscripts for sale
The Baden state library (Badische Landesbibliothek) in Karlsruhe has a problem. Some of its manuscripts actually belong to the House of Baden, not the state. The family is now short of cash — all those redistributive taxes beloved of the political Left, no doubt — and is proposing to sell them off at auction. An article appeared in the Stuttgarter Zeitung, and posts about this have appeared in the MEDTEXTL, and MEDIAEVISTIK listserves (the latter in German), reposted in PAPY-L (papyri) decrying the “cultural atrocity” and inviting us to join them in condemning the move.
But I have mixed feelings. The library hasn’t photographed any of these mss, as far as I know. Indeed there doesn’t seem to be a full list of them, even. They have just one (!) manuscript online. I suspect that readers have been prevented from photographing them. One scholar, when I queried why they weren’t online, suggested that it was good for scholars to have to travel to Karlsruhe to consult them! Frankly, it would be better if these mss were in hands that would record them and place them online. Perhaps the House of Baden would be agreeable to a proposal to do so!
I have written to various people suggesting that a few volunteers take digital cameras and record them. It will be interesting to see whether those involved would rather allow the ‘atrocity’ than allow people to photograph them.
Alqosh monastery bombed?
This link, written in 2004, describes damage to the Christian churches at Kurdish hands in Iraq. It mentions “Rabban Hormizd, the ancient stone monastery outside Alqosh on the Nineveh plain which was bombed so severely that many of its magnificent epigraphic memorials, dating from a hundred centuries ago, have been shattered. These memorials were some of the most precious classical Syriac stone carvings in the world. They lie in a makeshift museum in Alqosh in desperate need of restoration.” Addai Scher catalogued the books at this monastery, also known as Notre-Dame des Semences. Some at least of these were taken to Baghdad, to the Chaldean Patriarchate (since bombed by the insurgents). Those are apparently safe. It all highlights the need to photograph manuscripts urgently; no-one in 1950 would have expected that we would be losing manuscripts like this in 2006!