Tag: From my diary

From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The sun shone today, so I drove up to Cambridge University Library.

My first objective was the articles by archbishop Michael Chub in Bogoslovskie Trudy, which gave versions of the Slavonic text of Methodius.  The articles appear in issue 2 (1961) and 3 (1964).

I don’t know a single letter of Russian, but the journal itself helped me quite a bit.  Remember that this is the period of KGB control of the church.  The journal was published by the Moscow Patriarchate, mainly to give a false impression of the freedom of the church in Soviet times.  Being intended for export, it had a table of contents in English and French, and Arabic numbers for page numbers.

The articles also were accompanied by monochrome photographs of pages of the Slavonic manuscripts.  Anyway I got a photocopy of the lot — slightly over A4, unfortunately, so some work with scissors will be necessary in order to scan it — and I will run it into PDF, OCR it, put it through Google Russian-English translate, and see what Dr Chub — let us hope that he wasn’t one of the KGB officers appointed as bishops — has to say.

It was a long drive to get this, and I had considered ordering a photocopy of the articles from my local library via the British Library.  But it would probably have cost no less, and the copies that I have received through the latter have often  been of very poor quality.

Last night I started writing a post on the bibliography of Hero of Alexandria.  I took the opportunity to verify a couple of references.  Amusingly, two of them were wrong!  One volume was supposed to contain a load of English translations of Hero; in reality it was a commentary, and contained none.  It is surprising how often people do not verify their references.

Meanwhile I have had a couple of interesting emails.  Andrea Gehrtz, who has translated various works by Porphyry, has had a go at book 1 of the ancient astrological writer, Vettius Valens.  It’s available for sale on Amazon.com here.

Andrea Gehrtz, Vettius Valens

Another correspondent advises me that Beth Dunlop’s translation of 4 Christmas homilies is accessible here.  The homilies are by John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Amphilochius of Iconium, and Gregory Nazianzen — all 4th century, and it is good to have access to them.  I did write to Beth Dunlop years ago, asking if I might place these online, but had no response.  Perhaps the author of this site has been more successful!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

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!

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C. S. Lewis died today

Posted on by Roger Pearse

N. S. Gill points out that today, 48 years ago, on Friday 22nd November, C. S. Lewis died at the age of 65.

I do not know what can be said about C. S. Lewis that has not been said many times before.  As with most Christians of my generation, my bookshelves are studded with his books.  The Narnia stories shaped my imagination at a young age — too young, indeed, and too isolated even to know that there was such a thing as Christianity.  Many years later, after my conversion, the slim cream-coloured paperbacks published by Fontana helped to form my understanding, while the outer space trilogy and The Great Divorce gave nourishment to my imagination again.  So it was with many of us.

A few years ago I picked up one of the Narnia books.  I was grieved to discover that the clear and transparent prose now seemed dated, and that it was not longer so simple to pass through it into Narnia.  I fear that they will not last much longer.  Can children today even enter Narnia?

Changes in language may mean that in a few decades the door to Narnia will be shut, and that learned pedants, and self-important scholars who have never been to Narnia, will write fanciful theories about the “meaning” of things that they do not understand with the utter certainty today reserved for books that no longer please the general public.

A few years ago, in a shop, I was turning over the pages of some jumped-up edition of The innocence of Father Brown.  The second story in the collection, The Secret Garden, ends with a flourish, as the murderer is proved to be the detective, Valentin and they rush to confront him:

The great detective sat at his desk apparently too occupied to hear their turbulent entrance. They paused a moment, and then something in the look of that upright and elegant back made the doctor run forward suddenly. A touch and a glance showed him that there was a small box of pills at Valentin’s elbow, and that Valentin was dead in his chair; and on the blind face of the suicide was more than the pride of Cato.

The annotated edition included a footnote here on the last word.  The exact words escape me, but they confidently informed the reader that here Chesterton meant the Devil, as only his pride was greater than the pride of Cato.

From this folly I learned instead that the annotator was a man without literary taste, unable to read or appreciate the text about which he was writing a commentary for the benefit of others.  For nothing of the kind is intended here; the reference to Cato merely informs us that this was a suicide, and “more than the pride of Cato” is merely a splendid literary flourish.  I myself read The Innocence of Father Brown long ago for enjoyment, as it was meant to be read.  I doubt that unhappy man enjoyed a line of the book.

No doubt similarly foolish people will soon write equally fatuous notes on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  It is a warning to us, in a way, to beware of learned ignorance.

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Where do we find a primer on Christian history?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An email, evidently from someone fairly young, reached me today.

I don’t find many who might give me some deeper information about the historic document of the Christian faith.

I am interested in learning more about the NT cannonization process.  I understand the Ethiopians, Orthodox, Protestants and Catholics have differences between their Cannons.   Which one do you believe is correct?

I wish there was a good book that I could recommend on this; solid, soundly referenced, and accurate.  I don’t know of one.

I’ve scribbled some notes in a response, but I also asked what sort of things people want to know.  Someone ought to produce such a book, I feel.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m still chopping away at Ibn Abi Usaibia, and I’m on p.463 now.  <sfx:groan>  I’m almost sure this was less hard work ten years ago.  Of course the OCR software wasn’t as good back then.  Maybe it’s just my imagination.  I shall have some time over the next couple of weeks to make real progress with this, tho — a training course that I had booked for the week after next is not going to run.  This leaves me at a loose end, suddenly and unexpectedly. 

The first two pages of the translation of Methodius, De lepra have come through and I think that they are basically sound.  The translator actually translated the entirety of the page and laid it out in Word, notes and apparatus and all, which was rather impressive.  At the moment we’re discussing what to do with all of Bonwetsch’s notes: first a set of biblical and other references, and then an apparatus.  It looks as if we’ll just translate a few of the major notes where these would affect the meaning.

But I haven’t managed to pay for any of it yet.  Indeed I’m still learning how www.peopleperhour.com’s website works.  But the system requires a large deposit, which I have paid.  Thankfully this can be done from Paypal, so your purchases of CDROM’s etc can be used to fund the new work directly.   I have no strong feelings either way, so far, about whether www.peopleperhour.com is a good place to get work done.  I suppose that means that it is basically going well.

One interesting problem is that, while the translator knows his German, he isn’t familiar with the bible, or the ecclesiastical-speak that we find in so many patristic works.  One sentence confused him rather seriously, because he didn’t recognise the reference to the parable of the mustard seed.

Nor could this be expected, necessarily — a general translator probably specialises in contemporary documents where everyone is thinking in the same culture-pattern, whatever language they are writing those common thoughts in.  We, on the other hand, are accustomed to work which is honeycombed with biblical language and ideas. 

But it’s a warning to us all, in a way.  Material that we think is clear and obvious does in fact involve a jargon, and some unusual ways of assembling sentences and referring out to the biblical text.

I wish Bonwetsch had written in French.  I could probably have done the whole text myself in a day or two.  But German always hurts, when I have to translate it.  I suppose it just means that I need to read much more stuff in German, and get used to it, in the way I did for French.  But when would I get the time?

UPDATE: 9pm, I’ve just completed p.500, and it’s now time to back up my PC for the weekend!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today has been dedicated to life’s little chores.  But there is a little news.

Last night I did some more OCR on Ibn Abi Usaibia.  We passed the page 320 mark.

I’m still negotiating to translate Methodius, De Lepra from the mixture of German and Greek that Bonwetsch printed in GCS 27.  The price is quite a bit higher than I wanted, but I’ll find the money for this one and treat it as an experiment.

I’ve also done a bit of work on the GCS page.  A correspondent has pointed out that there is a way to download the volumes from the Polish library as a single .djvu file, rather than a zip file of myriads of pages.  This works (not in IE8 tho — I got it working in Firefox 5), and I’m redownloading some of the files now.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m continuing to scan the History of physicians by Ibn Abi Usaibia.  I’ve done another 40 pages lately, which takes us up to 288.  But we’re still only about a third of the way through.

I’ve had a possible bid at PeoplePerHour.com to translate Methodius De lepra; the first bid was too high, but we’re much closer now.  It’s still more than I ever wanted to pay, but I’m willing to give it a go, so long as the quality is there.

The sales figures for November for Amazon for Eusebius: Gospel Problems and Solutions have arrived.  14 copies were sold through Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.  My company also sold a few copies directly.  It seems that sales are gradually increasing each month, which is good.  There’s quite a delay between the orders being placed and money reaching me — at least 3 months — but the money for June and July has now arrived.  Of course those months were early days and the sales were fairly small numbers, but at least some money is now coming in.  It’s fairly clear, though, that by 5th April the project will still be in debit, but perhaps not by as much as I had feared. 

So, if you need a Christmas present for the patristic scholar in your life, why not buy him a copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk?  (sorry to bang the drum a little: I’m not that good at this marketing stuff, but even I know that Christmas is coming).

A correspondent has been pointing out various errata and corrigenda in the GCS page that I’ve set up.  I must look some more at this.

If the sun ever comes out — it’s been dull here for five days now — I shall do a trip up to Cambridge University Library.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Thankfully my PC decided that it would boot second time around.  Windows is quite an unstable platform these days, I find.

A correspondent writes that there is now OCR software available which can recognise Arabic.  It’s sold by Novodynamics of Michigan and called “Verus”.  Sadly it is ridiculously expensive — $1300 for the “standard edition” and they don’t dare print a price for the “professional edition”. 

An extraordinarily advanced OCR solution, VERUS™ Professional provides the most innovative Middle Eastern language and Asian optical character recognition in the world. VERUS™ Middle East Professional recognizes Arabic, Persian (Farsi, Dari), Pashto, Urdu, including embedded English and French. It also recognizes the Hebrew language, including embedded English. VERUS™ Asia Professional provides support for both Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Korean and Russian languages, including embedded English. Both products automatically detect and clean degraded and skewed documents, automatically identify a page’s primary language, and recognize a page’s fonts without manual intervention. VERUS’™ intuitive user interface allows users to quickly review and edit recognized text.

http://www.novodynamics.com/verus_pro.htm

I would imagine that it should be possible to adapt this software to recognise Syriac, if the manufacturer would agree.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I decided that I’d better upgrade the blog software — WordPress — to the latest version.  You worry, if you don’t, about security.  Just done the deed from 2.9, and we’re now on 3.2.1.  I don’t really think the new look and feel is an improvement, in truth, but if you use someone else’s free software, you get what you’re given.[1] 

Expect a certain degree of instability this afternoon!

UPDATE: A note to WordPress users: DO NOT INSTALL JETPACK!  It will lose you your stats.  When you revert, and try to use your old WP-STATS, it seems to work; but when you try to look at your stats you get “Your WordPress.com account, xxxxxxx is not authorized to view the stats of this blog.” 

Blast the wretches!

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  1. [1]A footnote to check that footnotes are still working.↩