The first review of the Eusebius Gospel Problems and Solutions book by David Miller, Adam McCollum, Carol Downer and friends, edited by me, has appeared here at Bryn Mawr. It’s very kind and rather encouraging!
Tag: Eusebius
More on the Ge`ez version of the Coptic-Arabic gospel catena
It has taken some time since I wrote this initial article, but I am finally in a position to say somewhat more.
The Gospel problems and solutions by Eusebius was used by the compiler of a now lost Greek catena commentary. This catena was translated into Coptic (De Lagarde published it) and the Coptic into Arabic.
The Arabic version then seems to have furnished material for a composition in Ethiopian, in Ge`ez, to be specific.
The Geez adaptation of the Coptic-Arabic gospel catena gives the name of the magi’s ancestor as Zaradas, and continues with the information tabulated below [15]: …
15. The text I have primarily used is B.L. Add. 16220, fol. 10b-11a; EMML 2088 fol. 9a-b has only minor differences.[1]
The source for this is the mess that is Roger Cowley’s Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, where Cambridge University Press declined to do more than reproduce the typescript. The book is full of great scholarship, but, as here, subjects are raised without any introduction, on the assumption that everyone will know about this Ge`ez text. In this case Cowley is investigating the sources for a passage in the Amharic “Andemta commentary”, discussing the Magi, and doing so with great intelligence and learning, but, unfortunately, little concern for the reader.
“BL” is of course the British Library; “EMML” is the “Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (see 7.2 under W. Macomber and Getatchew Haile)”, which doesn’t take us a huge distance forward. It is a reasonable inference from Cowley’s careless remarks that these are two manuscripts of this Geez text.
The British Library is a major research library, so of course its website is useless to the researcher and its catalogues must be found elsewhere. What else do we expect, in return for our taxes? I found this information on Add. 16220:
The Manuscripts which here follow in the order of numbers, from No. 16,185 to No. 16,258 inclusive, are in the Ethiopic language, and were presented by the Church Missionary Society. They are all fully described in the “Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium, qui in Museo Britannico asservantur. Pars III.” Published in 1847. Folio.
In the 160 years following, it seems, nothing more has been done. The British Library, lazily, has not even troubled to place these paper catalogues online as PDFs. Thankfully Google Books has it. But even then, the volume is not organised by shelfmark, nor is there an index. Dear me, no. Fortunately Google again rescued me, and I find the item on p.10-11, as “ms. XI.”
It is a catena on Matthew, on f.9-46, preceded by 8 leaves of paschal tables. Named as being referenced ubique (everywhere) are: John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Severus of Antioch, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Clement of Rome, Athanasius, Benjamin, Epiphanius, Simon Eremita, Litus, Ausonius, Justus.
Sadly there is no mention of Eusebius. But I do not trust catalogues on such things, of course.
Ms. XII is also a catena on Matthew, I notice.
I suppose it is futile to wish that this Ethiopic catena — just 37 leaves — was edited and translated?
- [1]R. Cowley, Ethiopian biblical interpretation, p.49.↩
LICOSA.com — more thieving Italians
I don’t know why Italian booksellers are dishonest. But I have received precisely two orders for my book from them, and in both cases they did not feel any obligation to actually pay for the book.
Thief of the week is Licosa.com. Licosa ordered a book from me at the start of November 2011. I sent it, promptly, together with an invoice. The invoice went unpaid.
Six weeks later I sent a reminder. There was no answer from Licosa.
Today I have written again to tell them that I propose to name and shame them. So here is it: Licosa are dishonest.
German companies are honest. But I shall not be accepting any further orders from Italian booksellers without cash up front.
UPDATE: My letter demanding payment and threatening a post like this one has produced a reply, that the matter will be handed to someone or other. Humpf.
Sunday and Eusebius — a supposed quotation?
By accident today I came across a supposed quotation of Eusebius, used in a negative way.
Eusebius, in AD 324, wrote, “We have transferred the duties of the Sabbath to Sunday.” Who are the “we”? Certainly not the apostles. They could not do so after the testament was ratified by the death of the Testator on the cross. When Eusebius says, “We have transferred the duties of the Sabbath to Sunday,” it reminds us again of what Paul foretold about those who, after his death, would speak “perverse things, to draw away disciples after them.” (Acts 20:30.) This last quotation from these early Fathers is dated AD 324. [1]
I always want to see a reference when I hear something like this. Walker doesn’t provide one, and a search for the phrase brings up only copies of his book. I’m not sure what group he wrote for, in truth.
The most accessible work by Eusebius has always been the Church History, so it’s probably in there. But a search through the ANF version, online, in all 10 books for “sabbath”, brings up no such words.
Coptic-Arabic gospel catena also known in Ge`ez?
This evening I found the following snippet in Google Books, given as in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1989, p.380:
… Ethiopia’s access to foreign commentaries (including that of Iso’dad of Merv and the other Syrian scholars) is through the Geez version of Ibn at-Taiyib’s exegetica and the Geez adaptation of Coptic-Arabic Catena….
Now call me daft, but this sounds as if the Coptic gospel catena published by De Lagarde, which was translated into Arabic, was then onward translated into Ethiopic, or more precisely Ge`ez. And that someone out there knows this. It’s in a book review of some kind.
Unfortunately I have no access to the article in which this appears. Poking around the website for the JRAS of 1989, p.380 belongs to Michael Loewe, of “East Asian civilizations: a dialogue in five stages. By Wm. Theodore de Bary. (The Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures, 1986.) pp. xi, 160. Cambridge, Mass, and London, Harvard University Press, 1988. £15.95.” That doesn’t sound right, nor does the abstract look right. Cambridge University Press greedily demand 20 GBP to access the article, the swine.
Wish I could find the article. Anyone got any ideas?
UPDATE: I think the Google Books snippet must be in error in some way, probably in the page number? I’ve found the book itself reviewed above, and it has nothing relevant in it.
UPDATE: Found it! I took the snippet and pasted it into the general Google search, and up it came as a JSTOR review in JRAS 1990, p.379f. The article is a review of Roger W. Cowley, Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, CUP, 1988. Now that sounds like an interesting book. Amazon list it at a fantastic price, unfortunately.
Eusebius book update
The sales figures for last month through Amazon for Eusebius of Caesarea, Gospel Problems and Solutions, have just arrived. Sales continue fairly level, with no evident sign of diminishing, which is good news.
The total sold through Amazon so far, since June, is 55 copies. That includes both hard back and paper back copies, but not the ones sold directly by myself. I’m also getting orders through the book trade, mostly from European dealers.
We’re not at breakeven point yet by any means, but the fact is that the book is selling far better than I had any reason to expect.
This is down to everyone who contributed; Nick who did the cover design and Bob who did all the typesetting and made sure it was all professional; David who translated so much of it and went through bits that I had missed and corrected them; Adam who translated all the stuff that I couldn’t get done, and transcribed the text; and Carol and her friends at UCL who did such interesting things with the Coptic. And it is of course to all the other people that I have not mentioned, but whose role was critical. The list of credits is a very long one!
The links to the Amazon pages are:
I can’t quite imagine this book as a Christmas present, but if you can, please oblige!
Copies can also be bought direct from me through this site.
From my diary
I’m still proofing the OCR of the English translation of Ibn Abi Usaibia, and reached p.639 last night.
The translation of Methodius De lepra is creeping forward. I prompted the translator last night, and another couple of (short) pages arrived this morning, and I have just annotated them and sent them back. These pages from the German need to be completed by a translation of a Greek fragment. The translator has subcontracted that bit out, so it will need to be checked. It will be interesting to see what that is like.
But great joy — a draft translation of John the Lydian’s section on December arrived this morning. And in fact I had no comments on it, so it is pretty much done, and all I shall have to do is pay for it and upload it.
The translator of John also sent me a comment on the “cline” issue for the Sol Serapis post.
He’s also been working on the Origen Homilies on Ezechiel book, which I do hope we will manage to get out of the door sometime. Most of it is done, and I think both of us will be glad to draw a line under it.
Meanwhile I’ve heard nothing from Chicago University since I accepted their price for digitising Loviagin’s Russian version of Methodius. It’s hard to believe that any institution takes a week to answer an email. I hesitate to nag them!
One of those winter viruses laid its cold hand on me at the weekend, so I’ve been a little under the weather since. This morning the sun came out, and, feeling rather more normal, I drove up to Cambridge and visited the university library. I think I got the very last free car parking space there!
It’s been a while since I’ve been — my pass ran out in June. They will only issue me a pass for 6 months, which is tiresome. There’s some noodle in the library administration with the fidgets — every time I turn up and reapply for another 6 months, there is some extra demand for evidence of this or that or the other. But I got through the assault course OK.
I went to have a look at Vermaseren’s Mithras: the secret god. I’ve only ever seen extracts of this, and I was looking to see whether he gave any sources for some of the line-drawings of reliefs. And … he doesn’t! I have a copy on order by ILL from my local library, so I will look at this some more then. Curiously Cambridge did not have the original Dutch version of the book, nor the German translation.
Another item that I went to look for was the German original of Manfred Clauss’ The Roman cult of Mithras. This was indeed present, but I couldn’t make much of it — I think the virus was trying to make a comeback at that point and my head grew fuzzy.
But what I did find was Reinhold Merkelbach’s Mithras; and I also found next to it the two volumes of Mithraic Studies edited by John R. Hinnells, Turcan’s book, and a few other items. I was impressed with Merkelbach’s book — it looked very sound. He surveys the data about Persian Mithra, and then starts a new section for Roman Mithras and states plainly that the latter was a new cult, using systematically elements borrowed from the Iranian mythology. That seems to me to hit the nail on the head.
Finally, a bit of vanity: I went to the catalogue and searched for my own name, to see if the Eusebius book had been added to the library. And it had! Off I went, to find it next to all the other editions and translations of Patristic literature, but sadly minus its beautiful dustjacket. I felt quite indignant for a moment at the loss of what had cost me so much time and labour; but then they do the same with all their books. Nice to see it there, anyway.
I think I shall spend some time on the sofa now. It’s been a busy day!
ALDL demanding copies they aren’t entitled to?
A letter arrives today, addressed to my company, Chieftain Publishing, from the “Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries”.
In the UK there is a duty on publishers to supply a free copy of each of 6 libraries: The British Library, Oxford, Cambridge, National Library of Scotland, ditto of Wales, and Trinity College Dublin. It is a much resented provision among publishers, especially publishers of expensive limited-run books. It’s not that useful a provision, when you consider that none of these libraries will make copies available by inter-library loan to people like you and I.
The letter demands 5 copies of the Eusebius book paperback, under the Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003.
But they’ve already had 5 copies of the hardback, and indeed I have an acknowledgement of receipt. So I’m rather baffled. Can they really be entitled to yet more copies of a book which are basically the same?
But the web is a wonderful thing. The Act itself is here, and laid out — thankfully — in a very readable form. And what do I see at the top?
Duty to deposit
1.Deposit of publications
2.New and alternative editions
3.Enforcement
“New and alternative editions” sounds relevant, so I open it up. And I find…
(1)This Act does not apply to a work which is substantially the same as one already published in the same medium in the United Kingdom.
So I have written back and queried their request. After all, whatever would the libraries whom they represent do with TWO copies of the book? I shall await a response with interest.
But I wonder how many publishers just sent copies regardless? And what happens to them?
Eusebius supplementa update
The Latin preface of De Lagarde’s Coptic gospel catena was translated into English for the project, but not included in the book. The translation has now been uploaded to the Supplementa page in PDF and Word .doc format.
Eusebius update
Now that the Eusebius book is ‘live’, and selling reasonably well, the question of errata arises. That’s right — errors that we didn’t spot during development.
There are also things that we should have done and did not. We could have done with more cross-referencing between the Coptic materials and the rest, for instance.
In addition there is a modest amount of material which was created during the project, but which did not make the final cut.
I’m thinking here particularly of a couple of items associated with the Coptic fragments. These fragments, published for the first time, came from the Coptic gospel catena published (without translation) by Paul de Lagarde. The introduction to De Lagarde’s edition was about three pages, all in Latin. I was under the impression that Latin might be a problem for the Coptic translators, so I had this translated into English and sent over. It didn’t seem that appropriate to include in the book; but it might be useful generally.
Likewise the Coptic team translated a catena fragment by Chrysostom, which they felt was important to have in order to understand the sense. I, in an unfamiliar role as ruthless editor, cut it out. But it exists.
There won’t be a second edition of the book: sales don’t justify it. But there is a place for a collection of errata and supplementa, I think.
So I’ve started a page on this blog to contain this sort of material, and I shall add stuff to it as and when it comes in. The page is here, and, if you spot errors in the book, please feel free to add a comment to this effect at the bottom of the page.
There’s not really any supplementa there yet. I shall have to dig it out, and polish it up! This will probably be during November when I hope to get a bit of free time.