The new issue of the Syriac studies academic journal Hugoye (vol. 12, no. 1) is out and available online here.
Tag: Patristics
Coptic Apocalypse of Daniel – now online
I’ve translated Macler’s version and placed it here. This translation has no scholarly value, of course, but is more like research notes. I place it in the public domain, so do as you will with it.
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The text was written, in Coptic, ca. 1187 AD. That means that Richard the Lionheart could have met people whose first language was this last dialect of Ancient Egyptian!
Mass manuscripts online? – The Virtual Manuscripts Room project
Possibly a very important announcement here. The project proposal is very badly worded, so I’m not quite sure of this, but it sounds as if the Mingana library is going to make all of its manuscripts available online. A German NT group is also involved. I’ve buzzed an email to the Mingana to see what it’s all about.
Later: OK, I think I understand what is going on. Here’s my understanding, and yes, this could be HUGE!
A bunch of people at Birmingham called ITSEE are developing a website to allow researchers to work on texts. If you want to see a passage in an ancient text, the idea is that you can just click and see the relevant manuscript witnesses, then and there, for each part of the text. The site will be a kind of manuscripts workbench.
Imagine you want to work on some text. First you get images of the manuscripts uploaded. Then you go into the workbench, and start tagging the page images — image 1 shows text chapter 1, verse 1; image 2 shows text chapter 1 verse 19, and so on. Repeat this for all the manuscripts in the system, and then you get a set of links for the text. Then enter some kind of raw electronic text, and link that in the same way. You then end up with a way to browse the text, and see whatever variants you want, in the manuscripts, at the click of a button.
In order to make this work, they need to prime it by uploading lots of images of manuscripts. This is the bit that will start everything else. At the moment, they have two sources to draw on.
Firstly, the Birmingham people have access to the Mingana collection of oriental (Syriac and Arabic) manuscripts. They’ve started to digitise these and upload them. At the moment the website isn’t working or displaying anything much (because someone forgot to install a Python library on the server; early days, all this), but there are definite signs of Syriac mss there.
Secondly a German institute have a load of New Testament manuscripts in horrible low quality microfilm, and are going to input these. Their particular interest is to make it possible to work on the critical text of the New Testament.
The images will need lots of tagging. This tagging will be a huge job, and the idea is to involve volunteers — suitably qualified scholars — to do this in their own interest as they work on the text. The more people contribute, the more valuable the results will be. We’ll start with raw manuscript pages, which will gradually — for some texts — grow tagging data (data like “this page starts at chapter 3, verse 2”, etc).
The project is being talked about a lot by people interested in the New Testament. But that’s really accidental; that’s just one community around one text and one set of manuscripts. But the clear intention is to provide this online workbench for all scholars to work — collaboratively or alone — on critical texts using the manuscript evidence from photographs.
Because the Mingana Syriac and Arabic mss will be digitised, this will have a really important effect on Syriac and Christian Arabic studies. Frankly it could revolutionise things!
If a community comes into being, as it will for the NT mss, then a Wikipedia-type effect will occur. That would mean that far more can be done, far more quickly, than is presently possible. Once the data base has a certain number of manuscripts in it, the hope is that it will snowball, and more and more material will be added.
There is a formal launch date in July. They aren’t ready yet, tho. But isn’t it exciting!?!
More on the Coptic Apocalypse of Daniel
Frederic Macler’s articles in the RHR 33 (1896) * discuss the various Apocalypses of Daniel. He knows of nine such texts; six in Greek, one in Coptic, one in Armenian and one in Persian, and lists the publications (p.33f). Clearly it was a popular vehicle to express your sentiments on your own times!
The Coptic text was printed by Woide, Appendix ad editionem N. T. graeci e codici Alexandrino, Oxford, 1799. This is a folio volume of 140 pages; let’s hope it comes online. The manuscript is in the Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds copte, no. 58.
Macler notes in his article that none of the texts exist in French translation, and that producing one would be of more service to most people than a scholarly article. Consequently he prints a translation of the Coptic and Armenian texts. The nine texts have no real relation to one another, or so I gather.
* Non-US readers will need to use an anonymizing proxy to access this.
The Coptic apocalypse of Daniel
Ian Tompkins pointed me to an interesting article on this little known Coptic text, in RHR 33 (1896), 163-176. Since I don’t know anything about this text, and M. Macler is willing to tell me (in French), here is a running translation of excerpts of his article.
It’s name, The fourteenth vision of Daniel, is because in the manuscript in which it is found, it follows the book of Daniel which is divided into thirteen visions, as in the Alexandrian manuscript. [Ms. BNF copt 58]
This apocalypse begins by imitating the canonical book of Daniel; it borrows from it the notion of four great monarchies; it even borrows entire phrases…
After a very detailed historical-seeming introduction, which resembles that of the canonical book, the prophet has a vision concerning the realm of the sons of Ishmael. Nineteen kings of this race shall reign over the land (over Egypt); in the reign of the nineteenth and last, Pitourgos, his enemy will return, put him to flight and kill him; then the king of the Romans will rise up and govern the Ishmaelites; then Gog and Magog will shake the earth…then Antichrist will appear… then the Ancient of Days will come, who will put Antichrist to death, and whose kingdom will have no end. Finally Daniel is commanded to seal up all these things until the time when they happen.
Our Apocalypse offers this characteristic, that at first sight all the quoted facts seem historical and easy to identify; but on looking at there more closely, this semblance disappears, and there remains nothing except a bizarre collection of treatises gathered by a less than faithful memory. If the reader, not wanting to remain in that state, reviews in more detail his study, he will see that the author of the Apocalypse has juxtaposed some historical facts which he remembered preciselywith other vague and erroneous data, intended to replace the events which he could not remember.
We will add the results at which we arrived in the notes. We do not claim to have the complete story, but our hypothesis cannot be very far away from the truth.
The author of the Apocalypse enumerates nineteen kings, but he characterizes them only starting with the tenth; as he writes in Egypt, it is probable that he is speaking about Fatimids of Egypt, and in our explanatory notes we will see that Pitourgos indicates the Turks, and more especially Saladin; the Romans (Roumis) arrive, they are the Crusaders: so we believe that our Apocalypse was created around the time of the Third Crusade, a little after 1187.
There then follows a French translation of the text, which I have translated into English and will put online tomorrow.
A couple of interesting Coptic texts
An email asks me whether I have come across a couple of texts, previously unknown to me; the Coptic apocalypse of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of Samuel of Kalamoun. It continues:
The Apocalypse of Daniel was used during the Crusades to predict the downfall of Muslim rule. The Apocalypse of Samuel contains the strongest denunciation of language shift in the Middle Ages of Egypt by which Coptic was replaced by Arabic.
I think we can agree that both sound very interesting! I’ve been unable to find out anything about either. Does either exist in English, even?
Agapius can be tedious
I hope no-one ever tries to translate Agapius from Arabic by starting at the beginning. I started my translation from French at the time of Jesus, mid-way. That’s not too bad, and the material to the end is moderately interesting.
But the first quarter of it… yuk!
I expected it to be largely based on embellished versions of biblical narratives. But I had not expected it to go round and round, repeating calculations of the years from the creation to the time of Christ again and again. I’ve now seen the same material come round three times, and my patience is beginning to fray. And in each case, he attacks the Jews for forging their Old Testament, in comparison to the “genuine” Torah of the Septuagint.
Obviously it’s wrong in point of fact; but I could cope with that. However I’m currently wading through a long fictitious story, told with obvious glee, about how Constantine consulted with the bishops and the Jews and “discovered” the truth. It’s unbelievably tedious.
So advice for future translators; leave the first quarter until last, or you may never get further.
Errors in Cramer’s catena publication
I’ve made use of the medieval commentary published by J. A. Cramer for fragments of Eusebius, but some of the attributions have seemed a bit odd. Quite by accident today I was skimming through volume 6 of the Journal of Theological Studies, when I came across an article by Claude Jenkins on p.113-116 about the Origen citations in the portion of Cramer from 1 Corinthians.
The author notes that Cramer was dependent on copyists for access to the manuscripts, which he could not inspect himself. Comparison of Cramer with his source, Paris Cois. gr. 204 (a copy of Vat. gr. 762, unknown to Cramer) reveals that Cramer’s text routinely assigns passages to Origen which are clearly assigned to Chrysostom in the manuscript. The article assigns the blame for miscopying a very clear 16th century manuscript to the scriba Parisinensis whom Cramer was obliged to use.
Some of the fragments assigned to Eusebius in the catena on the gospels that I have had translated have looked very like portions of Chrysostom. So this is probably a general problem.
What this means, of course, is that we cannot depend on Cramer. We urgently need someone to correct the text and reissue it.
Academic books are doomed
Ever wanted to consult a text or translation of an ancient author in volume of the Sources Chrétiennes and then realised that the library is closed, or doesn’t have it? Or to look up an author in the Clavis Patrum Graecorum? It’s a pain, isn’t it?
I have here a volume of Isidore of Pelusium’s letters, and I’ve just had to walk down to the library and renew the loan this morning. That was a pain. And I’ll still have to return it, to lose access to it, in due course. I can’t afford to buy a copy, not with the recession and all.
But I have a scanner; why don’t I just copy the pages I want? Hey, why don’t I just scan the whole thing and make a PDF which I can keep forever? (In my case, I actually just don’t have time; but work with me on this a bit, hmm?)
Those thoughts must occur to an awful lot of people. They must occur to every student. They must occur even more to every post-graduate, or young PhD. All of them have no money, and lots of need for the book, and they have the means to do something about it.
I’ve gradually become aware that people are making PDF’s of these copyright but unobtainable books. More, that little networks exist whereby people swap them around. We’re all aware that this happens with music, and how upset it makes the big recording companies. But music mp3’s are a luxury. Access to a complete collection of the Sources Chretiennes, whenever you want, wherever you are? That’s essential, for many people.
At the moment, the only people buying these books are the major libraries. This is natural. But the question is, why bother to buy them, why bother to have libraries other than as museums, when in fact the books are being pirated to PDF? The only reason is so that those who don’t have the right contacts, who don’t know the right bootlegger, can still access the text. Well, I myself am such a person. But I don’t suppose for a moment — recalling my own student days, and illegal music swapping — that people at college are using them. Most of them must be accumulating huge collections of books, reference books, articles, lexica, in PDF form.
If this is how people want their information, is there any point in taking a PDF, sending it to a publisher, having it typeset and printed, sending out copies to libraries, borrowing the paper copies, scanning it back in again, and OCR’ing it, and storing it on your hard disk? Why do this? Why not just sell the PDF?
It’s over. The whole process of publishing an edition, translation, study — still more a handbook or patrology — is finished. The whole business of having a library is finished too — why bother? Just ask around, see if anyone has a PDF.
This must be how things are now. Every year, this will get more so. Why should it not? It’s easy convenient, and superior in almost every respect for the user. Why pay to produce things that are inconvenient?
There are a couple of teething problems with this model of book circulation. For instance, some books can’t be read onscreen. You really do need a printed copy of (e.g.) Fabricius, as I remarked earlier this week, to master it. The PDF’s that I have seen aren’t of good enough quality to send to a print-on-demand service. But I imagine this is the next step. People will make sure they scan b/w PDF’s at 400 dpi. Give it a couple of years.
The next step must be to start supplying books in electronic-only form. One problem is that the editorial process of producing a book markedly enhances the quality of the content. This is true for novels as well as textbooks — I have seen early drafts of books, prior to a professional editor working on them, and the difference is amazing. If this is cut out of the loop, something must replace it; and so far there is nothing. The mechanisms of modern publishing are not just an overhead; we all benefit from some of them.
Finally authors need to publish books in order to get jobs. A mechanism to replace this is needed, and dead-tree printing will continue until this is solved. But the printers will find sales dropping, as occasional sales to scholars pretty much cease. Probably this will make little difference, as they mainly sell to libraries. But their clock will be ticking. The financial viability of the old model is draining away. Stupid publishers will try to pass laws to stop all this. It won’t work, of course, because the incentive to pass around books in PDF is so enormous. At most it might retard scholarship in some areas and some countries.
So I think that this chicken must be dead. It just hasn’t realised it yet.
Manuscripts of the history of al-Makin
The 13th century Arabic Christian chronicle of George Al-Makin or Ibn Amid has never been published in full, or translated into any other language. However it contains a version of the so-called Testimonium Flavianum, based on that in Agapius. Some access to this text is desirable, therefore. It’s a big text, in two halves. The first need is to get hold of copies of manuscripts.
This has drawn my attention before. I ended up ordering copies from a Paris manuscript, which cost a lot and turned out to be wretchedly poor quality; too poor to be usable. I’ve gone back to them, and we’ll see if they will send me something useful.
In the meantime a scholarly friend has been going through this, listing the sections and how long they are, so that we can get an idea of contents. The poor state of the Paris microfilm has become very apparent during this process.
According to Georg Graf’s Geschichte der christlichen arabischen Literatur, vol. 2, p. 349, the following manuscripts exist of the first half:
- Vatican arab. 168 (16th c.). 215 folios.
- Borg. ar. 232 (in Karshuni, 1659 AD)
- Paris ar. 294 (14th century) – of which I received so poor a copy at so very high a price
- Paris ar. 4524 (1672 AD; “sehr fehlerhaft”)
- Paris ar. 4729 (19th century). 176 folios.
- Bodleian ar.683 (Pococke 312 = DCLXXXIII). 170 folios. AD 1591. Catalogued here.
- Bodleian ar.773.
- Bodleian ar.789.
- Gotha ar. 1557 (karshuni, 1661 AD)
- Breslau, Stadtbibliothek ar. 18 (ca. 1270 AD) – Graf leaves it unclear whether this is merely extracts of two lives.
- Munich ar. 376, by the same copyist as the Oxford ms.
- Vienna or. 884.
- St. Petersburg or. 112 (1672)
- Cairo 572 (1685)
- Coptic patriarchate 1103, 1 (1876)
- Sarfeh syr. 16/4 (karshuni)
- Sbath 1938 (13th century) but only pp. 155-168 so is an extract.
Manuscripts exist of the second half, as does a printed text, Thomas Erpenius Historia Saracenica (1625) with Latin translation.
- Paris ar. 295 (1854) breaks off at 1023 AD – I got a somewhat better microfilm of this.
- British Library ar. 282, I (17th century)
- Bodleian ar. (Uri) 715, 735.
- Leiden or. 758
- Leipzig university or. 643 (17th century), containing fragments on 1123-1259 AD.
- Beirut 6 and 7 (18th century)
- St. Petersburg As. Mus. ar. 161 (but probably copied from Erpenius, as several other copies are)
I need to have another go at getting manuscript copies from the Vatican. Last time my email was ignored. I don’t know that the Bodleian has changed its policy of charging the customer vast prices for full-colour images, but only supplying him low-grade monochrome derivatives. Being poor, such a policy amounts to prohibiting access. But it may be possible to obtain images from some of the other institutions.
Isn’t it odd, what a struggle it is to just obtain access?
UPDATE (16th Dec. 2013). I have added some notes from Martino Diez, “Les antiquities greco-romaines entre al-Makin ibn al-`Amid et ibn Khaldun”, Studia Graeco-Arabica, 3, (2013) 121-140.