Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Yes, it’s that time of year again. Time to BASH THE CHRISTIANS! Time to dig out those dog-eared bits of hearsay, and prepare to throw them. Whenever someone dares to suggest that Christmas should be about Christ, rather than drink, gluttony, fornication and selling stuff to morons who should know better, you’ll be ready! Just […]
An article at Lacus Curtius on the temple of Sol Invictus in Rome contains the following interesting statement: The last reference to it in antiquity is in the sixth century (Anon. de Antiq. Cpl. IV.66, ed. Banduri) when eight of the porphyry columns were sent to Constantinople for the church of S. Sophia… These abbreviated references in older literature […]
In the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris is an early fourth century papyrus codex (ms. supplement grec 574) which contains a variety of texts, spells, hymns, etc. It is 36 folios in length – large for a papyrus, and contains 3274 lines. The manuscript was acquired in Egypt by the collector Giovanni Anastasi (# 1073 in his collection) […]
I now have the final version of the translation of the Greek, and also of the Syriac fragments, of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Gospel questions and solutions. Unfortunately the Greek material will now need editing and sorting out. I hope to get into this in the next week or so. In the mean time I’m only […]
I am continuing to revise the Wikipedia Mithras article. I’ve added a whole load of material about the earliest archaeological remains, none of which can be securely dated earlier than 80 AD as far as I know. There is quite a lot to be gleaned from books present in limited preview on Google books, and […]
I started translating Firmicus Maternus some months ago, in what feels like a different world. But it has sat on my desktop since, looking at me, and yesterday I did some more. It was painless, so I will probably carry on. There is already a perfectly good English translation of this curious anti-pagan work from […]
Following on from my previous post on Mithras in Zenobius, who is this Theo of Smyrna who also mentions a list of the eight elements, probably from Persian sources? All I have is an edition, ‘Hiller’ and “p. 104, 20”. There are times when Wikipedia is a useful summary of whatever there is online. Theon of […]
Did you know that images of the papyrus of the Gospel of Peter are online? Well, they are, here. Monochrome, of course (O ye uncircumcised!), but far better than nothing. A photographic archive of other documentary papyri in the Cairo museum are here (courtesy of the Andrew Mellon foundation which is funding all sorts of […]
It is always good to have a clear idea of how a book comes into our hands. In 1562 Mattias Flacius, who was writing a church history in the Lutheran interest, happened upon a handwritten medieval book at Minden in Germany, which contained an ancient text previously unknown. The work was De errore profanum religionem (On […]
Welcome to my blog, which at this instant has posts containing words (these are dynamic figures). I’m interested in the ancient world, and the early Christians within it; in the ancient texts and the manuscripts in which these reach us; and in the free circulation of information about all this online. Finding related posts I […]