Tag: Patristics

Abu’l Barakat’s catalogue of Arabic Christian literature

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Abu’l Barakat was a medieval Arabic Christian.  In one of his works, he devoted a chapter to listing Arabic Christian literature.  Of course this catalogue of what exists or existed is an invaluable guide to someone who is starting to explore patristic material surviving in that language.  Riedel published it long ago, with a German translation * , and a kind friend sent me a copy in PDF form today.  It urgently needs to go online.  If he’s OK with it, I’ll upload the PDF to Archive.org.

But we also need an English translation.  It’s about 154 words per page and 36 pages, in the German translation; if the Arabic is similar, that makes 5,544 words, or about $500 at my usual 10c per word.  I can afford that, I think.  I need to find a translator!

* Wilhelm Riedel, Der Katalog der christlichen Schriften in arabischer Sprache von Abu’l-Barakat, in Nachrichten der K. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Philologisch-Hist. Klasse, 1902 (Heft 5), pp. 636-706.

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Thank you for buying my CDROM

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Most readers will be aware that I sell a CDROM of the collection of the Fathers that I have online.  Quite a few copies have been sold lately.  So I’d like to thank all those readers who have recently bought one.  These sales are helping directly to pay for the translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezechiel, never previously translated into English.  These will go online in the end; and your money is helping this along enormously. 

I don’t know most of you, but I appreciate your support more than I can say.  Thank you.

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Origen; Homily 2 on Ezekiel received

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first draft of the translation of the second homily on Ezekiel has arrived!

At this rate, I’m going to have to find out about printers and the like rather more quickly than I had thought!

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Faulhaber on Roman mss of the catenas of the prophets

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translator for the Origen homilies is really doing an excellent job.  He ‘s been looking into the issue of why the excerpts from catenas printed by Baehrens in the GCS are shorter than those printed by Migne (reprinting the Delarue edition).

Translating some of the latter reveals that they contain material evidently not by Origen; indeed disagreeing with the Origen material that they quote.  Baehrens gives a reference to Faulhaber, Die Propheten-Catenen nach rom. Hss. (= Bibl.  Stud. 4, 2.3 [1899]) , which is actually online at Google books (for US readers).  Biblische Studien IV is here.

Faulhaber lists the 233 fragments by Origen on Ezekiel on pp. 153-5, and states that these are taken partly from the Homilies, and partly from Origen’s scholia on Ezechiel.  He also notes (p.154) that the material in Migne is often plainly from the Homilies, but needs further study.  It seems that Delarue had a catena manuscript rather different to the others.

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Origen translation: the catena issue

Posted on by Roger Pearse

All of the Latin of homily 1 on Ezechiel is now translated into English, and pretty much finalised.  But an issue has arisen.  Extracts of Origen’s original Greek exist in the medieval Greek commentaries, comprised as they are of chains (catenas) of extracts from the fathers.  These are printed where relevant at the bottom of Baehrens’ edition in the Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller edition.  But we have discovered that the extracts printed in the older Patrologia Graeca edition are fuller.  What do we do?

Do we just translate what Baehrens printed, presuming that he rejected the rest as inauthentic; or do we use the longer text?  We need to find out what Baehrens thought he was doing, if he tells us.

One thing that would help would be to consult the full text of the catena.  But of course this is very difficult.  Catenas do exist in print, but in general we just don’t have proper accessible editions of the major catenas.  This is a barrier, not merely to patristics, but also to biblical studies.

To edit one of these sprawling monsters must be difficult; but why don’t people have a go?

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A famous passage of Gregory of Nyssa… but where from?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Everyone has read this:

Everywhere, in the public squares, at crossroads, on the streets and lanes, people would stop you and discourse at random about the Trinity. If you asked something of a moneychanger, he would begin discussing the question of the Begotten and the Unbegotten. If you questioned a baker about the price of bread, he would answer that the Father is greater and the Son is subordinate to Him. If you went to take a bath, the Anomoean bath attendant would tell you that in his opinion the Son simply comes from nothing.

But… where in his works does Gregory of Nyssa say this?  And does an English translation exist?

UPDATE: From the discussion in the comments (which includes the Greek), I learn that the work is his Oratio de deitate Filii et Spiriti Sancti, (= Oration on the deity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit) which is printed in PG 46, and the passage is on col. 557, section B.   (It’s in the modern 1996 edition of Gregory’s works also, but of course no normal person would have access to that.[1])  An offline (!) German translation of the whole treatise exists in V. H. Drecoll and M. Berghaus (eds.), Gregory of Nyssa : The Minor Treatises on Trinitarian Theology and Apollinarism (Brill 2011).  But … a complete French translation exists, made by Matthieu Cassin, and is online! The direct link is here, and a PDF at the bottom contains the whole article. Our phrase is on p.11 of the PDF, p.591 of the article.   (For those without French, be aware that Google Translate does French-to-English very well.)  Thank you to everyone who contributed!

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  1. [1]“De deitate filii et spiritus sancti et in Abraham” in Gregorii Nysseni Opera vol. X part 2 (ed. E. Rhein), Brill, 1996.↩

Irving Woodworth Raymond and Orosius

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first English translation of Orosius was made by I.W.Raymond and published in 1936.  It’s probably still in copyright in the USA, unfortunately, which keeps it off the web.  A later translation exists in the Fathers of the Church series.

Someone wrote to me about Orosius today.  Apparently he is the first writer to mention the term “Asia minor”.  This led me to look again at the copyright.

When did Raymond die? (he was born in 1898, according to COPAC)  A google search led me to an obituary in the St. Petersburg Times, August 11, 1964:

NEW YORK — Dr Irving Woodworth Raymond, 65, professor of history at Brooklyn college here, died Monday at his home in York Harbor, Maine.

Isn’t Google books wonderful?  I remarked yesterday how the British Library, in putting newspapers online, made sure to charge for access; Google gives it to us for free, and we all benefit.

Sadly it looks as if his work won’t come out of copyright in the EU (life+70 years) until 2034, by which time I will be dead myself, I suspect.  In countries with life+50 years, that reduces to 2014.  And I can’t tell you when it comes out of copyright in the US, as I don’t understand the current situation; publication + 95 years, i.e. 2031?

What a mess this copyright law is!  Who benefits from keeping this offline?

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Origen, Homily 1 on Ezekiel now translated

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first sermon in Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel is pretty long.  But the whole thing has now been translated, at least in draft.  This is very good news, and means that we’re making real progress.  Most of the other sermons are much shorter.

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Fresh Cyril of Alexandria

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Ben at Dunhelm Road has the following very interesting note:

There’s a new translation of Cyril of Alexandria’s Festal Letters 1-12, by Philip R. Amidon, S.J., in The Fathers of the Church series (Vol. 118). See here.  This look at his pastoral side will be interesting.

This piggy-backs on works on his commentaries on the 12 Prophets (3 volumes: FOTC 115, 116, & tbd) and also a recent publication of his Commentary on Isaiah, all of which were done by Robert C. Hill.

There is also a proposed re-translation of Cyril’s majesterial commentary on John–it runs some 1300 pages if I remember correctly–as part of the Ancient Christian Texts series by IVP.

I’m thinking about proposing to do some translation for a post doc here at Durham since we’re staying longer, so it’s good to see other work being done on him.

The IVP series is interesting, since it includes Origen’s Homilies on Numbers which I had in mind to do.  Here’s their list of proposed translations:

  • Commentaries on Romans and 1-2 Corinthians by Ambrosiaster, translated and edited by Gerald L. Bray
  • Commentaries on Galatians-Philemon by Ambrosiaster, translated and edited by Gerald L. Bray
  • Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus imperfectum), Vol. 1, translated by James Kellerman; edited by Thomas C. Oden
  • Incomplete Commentary on Matthew (Opus imperfectum), Vol. 2, translated by James Kellerman;l edited by Thomas C. Oden
  • Homilies on Numbers by Origen, translated by Thomas P. Scheck; edited by Christopher A. Hall
  • Commentary on Jeremiah by Jerome, translated by Michael Graves; edited by Christopher A. Hall
  • Commentaries on the Pauline Epistles by John of Damascus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, translated by James R. Blankenship and Charles David Gregory; edited by Michael Glerup
  • Commentary on John, 2 vols, by Cyril of Alexandria, translated by David Russel Maxwell; edited by Joel C. Elowsky
  • Commentaries on the Prophets by Ephrem the Syrian, translated by Marco Conti; edited by Thomas Buchan
  • Commentary on Isaiah by Eusebius of Caesarea, translated by Jonathan Armstrong; edited by Joel C. Elowsky
  • Commentaries on Genesis by Severian of Gabala and Bede the Venerable, translated by Robert C. Hill and Carmen Hardin; edited by Michael Glerup
  • Commentary on the Gospel of John by Theodore of Mopsuestia, translated by Marco Conti; edited by Joel C. Elowsky
  • Greek Commentaries on Revelation by Oecumenius of Isauria and Andrew of Caesarea, translated by William C. Weinrich; edited by Thomas C. Oden
  • Latin Commentaries on Revelation by Victorinus, Apringius, Caesarius, and Bede, translated and edited by William C. Weinrich

Good though these look… if they aren’t online, how will most of us ever access them?

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