Tag: From my diary

This morning I opened volume 1 of the Loeb edition of Pliny’s letters, and read a few.  I also read the introduction.  This was fine, but I found it infuriating that the text did not include the chapter titles from the front of each book, since these alone supply the names of the people to whom Pliny was writing.

This afternoon I worked on my Mithras site a bit more.  I’m still coding, and still not confident that everything is right, but it’s getting there.

This weekend was the end of another job, and gives me a chance for a break for a couple of weeks.  I wonder what the Lord has in store for me next, for I feel His hand in the choice of my next location.  It is quite weird to see it everywhere, after so many years in which I could not feel His leading at all, and just carried on in trusting.  God does that in our lives.

This Saturday I went down to London.  A meeting with a friend was delayed, so I detoured to Holborn, and went to the Forbidden Planet ‘Megastore’, a sci-fi and comic-book shop specialising in American imports.

When I first started work, back in the early 80’s, I spent a month training in Holborn.  I stayed in one of the depressing little hotels in Bloomsbury, which lie east of the British Museum.  Thankfully I have not stayed there in 20 years, for I remember nothing pleasant of them.  To a young lad fresh from university, now cut off from company and the merry friendship of others, they were a sad, lonely and alien place.

At that time Forbidden Planet was in Denmark Street, next to the guitar shops.  Now it’s in Shaftesbury Avenue, not far away.  In the window, then as now, were models in various sizes of American superheroes like Captain America — things strange and alien, belonging to a USA that really does not travel across the Atlantic.

I stood and looked in the window, and something triggered a memory of that young man, ill at ease as he was with the big city.  It is odd how slivers of our past can be brought back by some image, some scent or sound.

Of course I went in, and browsed the shelves in the basement.  It was a special opportunity.  Trashy science fiction and fantasy — escapist literature for the tired businessman — is not so accessible as it was, in some ways.   In these days of Amazon, it is very easy to only buy books by authors you already know.  But most authors only write a few books; which means that after a while, you find that Amazon is barren of material that you want to read.  So here I went and looked for authors that I did not know.  As I did back then, I came out with half a dozen books.

I’m now having a little downtime, before my next job.  It is misty and cold and grey here, and my inner child — or inner hamster — desires nothing so much as to burrow into a pile of leaves and sleep until spring!

I still want to do some more with Mithras.  Theodoret’s Commentary on Romans remains on my hard disk, and I correct a few more pages sporadically.  It will get done, if only to get rid of it.  I can’t recall whether I converted the translations that I commissioned into HTML and placed them all on the website.  I ought to upload the translation of Antiochus of Athens that I did.  And so on.

I have installed the wptouch plugin to this site.  It should mean that it is now possible to read my posts on your mobile phone. 

I’ve been working some very long days this week, which has left no time for anything in the real world.  So here are a few notes about this and that.

On my bedside table here in the hotel is an interesting book, which I have had no time to read.  It’s published by the Cerf, and is entitled, Christianismes orientaux.  The unpromising title hides a very important book.  It’s essentially a patrology of the oriental Christians; Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Georgian, etc.  There’s an excellent bibliography after each section.  The blurb on the website reads:

Filling a gap in French literature, this work was conceived by its editors as an introductory guide to the languages and literatures of the Christian Orient.  Its six parts, consecrated to Arabic, Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopian, Georgian and Syriac, are intended to help beginners to orient themselves by means of a bibliography on the subject.  An overall introduction allows the reader to understand the essential unity of a religious thought which expressed itself in different languages, periods and places.

The only portion that I have even looked at so far is that on Georgian, written by Bernard Outtier.  It’s very excellent, I can see at once.  Sebastian Brock has said that he thinks that an English translation of this section would be a good thing, and I can see why.  I wonder if one could induce Dr Outtier to do the sort of thing that Sebastian Brock has done for Syriac; to produce a Brief introduction to Georgian literature in PDF form for circulation online, and perhaps an English tome on the same subject. 

The other item on my table has, I confess, at the end of some hard days of concentration, taken precedence over reading a volume in French.  It’s Assassins, volume 6 in the Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.  It’s a thriller, of course, but it is marvellous to see Revelation translated into such a format so believably! 

It is really important to read Christian books.  The mental environment in which we swim will determine our attitudes.  People wrote them for us.  Enjoy them!

Mark Vermes has been in contact to say that the Chrysostom sermon that he is translating is nearly done.  I had hoped to get him to do a selection of other Greek texts as well, but sadly he will be otherwise engaged shortly.  Pity!

The first draft of a translation of Ephraem’s Hymn 22 against heresies has reached me; will look at it tomorrow.

It seems that papyrologist Colin H. Roberts states that the papyri do not support the Bauer thesis as regards Egypt.  I have not looked into that chapter of Bauer, since I still need to complete work on chapter 1 (Edessa).  But it’s interesting all the same.

Someone has written to me, mentioning a translator who has done a couple of English translations of “spiritual classic”-type patristic works, and is open to translating more.  The results will be sold, unfortunately.

What should I suggest to them?  That has not been translated before?

I’ve been adding some author names to volumes of the Patrologia Latina today.  I’ve also been cursing WordPress, which proceeded to join together URL’s on the right hand side of the page, for no apparent reason.

It occurred to me yesterday that there can be relatively few people who have looked into all 161 volumes of the Patrologia Graeca, even if it is only to look at their tables of contents.  Doing so certainly gives you a marvellous overview of what exists.

I have continued looking at the tables of contents in the Patrologia Graeca list on this site, originally compiled by Rod Letchford for the now defunct Cyprian Project, and adding notes about their contents to the list.

Today I finally reached volume 161 and last.  It has been a mighty effort, just to click on 161 links and scroll down.  But I hope the results are useful.

More work could usefully be done.  I ought to go through the list again and harmonise the style.  But … not just at the moment!

I’ve added some more contents to the page of Patrologia Graeca PDF’s.  This is going well.  I’ve been trudging through the writers who describe the fall of Constantinople in 1204.  I hope these exist in English.  There’s one in there, describing the ancient statues destroyed by the Franks.

One thing I haven’t worked out is how to indicate what date range each volume covers.  Migne does specify this, but it would take an extra column, on the face of it.

Horribly busy this week with work things.  If I owe you an email, I do apologise.  I’ll get to it!