Kristian Heal has announced 35 additions to the Syriac books online here. Nothing wildly exciting, but all very useful, solid stuff!
Tag: Syriac
Dionysius Bar Salibi’s “Commentary on the Gospels”, Papias and Eusebius
The massive commentary on the Gospels of the 13th century Syriac writer Dionysius Bar Salibi has never been translated into English. But at one point it looked as if it might be. An Irish scholar named Dudley Loftus made use of a manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin, and made a Latin translation of the whole thing. This still exists, in manuscript, and I have seen it in the Bodleian, among the mss. of Dr. John Fell, where it is numbered #6 and #7. The ms is crumbling, and probably unphotographed; of course I wasn’t allowed to take a copy.
But it seems that Loftus found that he could not publish his translation. Instead he made an English version of extracts, which he did publish as “A clear and learned explication of the history of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ: taken out of above thirty Greek, Syriack, and other oriental authors: by Dionysius Syrus, … and faithfully translated by D. Loftus. / [by] DIONYSIUS BAR SALIBI, Bishop of Amadia ; Loftus, Dudley ; JESUS CHRIST. (1695)”
This contains some interesting material. It contains a passage from Papias, which my friend Tom Schmidt is going to blog about. But while looking for this, I also found a quotation from Eusebius! The work is really something of a catena, and thus the statement of Eusebius about how the Lord was dead for 3 days appears in it, on p.58.
Eusebius; Mathew by way of Exposition adds after this, of the Evening of the Sabbath the dawning of the Firstday of the Week, denoting the Hour and time of the Night after the Sabbath, which was when the First day of the Week dawned. ‘Tis true, Mathew wrote in the Hebrew, and he who Translated the Scripture into the Greek Language, rendered the Dawning of tbe Day, the Evening of the Sabbath; and Mathew, by the Evening, means the whole Length and Evening af the Night; as John calls the passing away, or the least Part of the Night, Day; and therefore adds, whilest it was yet dark, least it should be thought, that he spoke of the Morning; so Mathew also, when he said, the Evening of the Sabbath, lest Men might think it was spoken of the Evening Season, he adds, When the First day of the Week began to dawn.
I suspect this is more the sense of Eusebius’ thought than his words; it will be interesting to see, when the Syriac fragments are properly published, how this compares.
Michael the Syrian, book 12, chapter 1 — have a quick translation!
Today is pretty much done, but since I read the first chapter of book 12 of Michael the Syrian, perhaps I could give a quick translation of it here.
Book 12.
With the aid of the divine power that perfected the twelve holy apostles, we shall commence the twelfth book of the chronicle, which begins in the year 1088 of the Greeks, which is the year 157 of the empire of the Arabs, who are the Taiyaye, the year 6260 from Adam, i.e. since the beginning of the world, and the year 758 from our Lord.
Chapter 1. — Of the era from the beginning of the reign of Leo, (emperor) of the Romans, and of Mahdi, (king) of the Taiyaye, when the holy patriarch and martyr Mar Georgius came out of prison.
In the year 1088 Leo son of Constantine began to reign over the Romans. In the same year, 25 days later, Mahdi, son of Abu Jafar, began to reign over the Taiyaye. Both set free all the prisoners who had been imprisoned by their fathers.
Mahdi opened the treasuries of his father and gave away his riches, as with the van, not only to his soldiers but also to women, his concubines; because he was debauched and addicted to pleasures. He was also interested in magic, divination, sortileges, and he collected books of magic and divination. This is why Leo, emperor of the Romans, sent him the book entitled Janes and Jambres, which contains all the magic of the Egyptians, and all that they did when they encountered Moses.
In the year 1090 Mahdi went to Aleppo, and the Tanoukaye came out to meet him; [479] they lived in tents in the surroundings of Aleppo. He saw that they were mounted on Arab horses, and were richly dressed. Then someone said to him, “All these people are Christians.” He was inflamed with rage and ordered them to become Moslems. He forced them to do this by tortures, and the men apostasised, to the number of five thousand; the women were saved and to the present day are found in the churches of the west. A venerable man among them, named Leith, suffered martyrdom.
Mahdi invaded the territory of the Romans and fixed his camp on the river Pyramus, in the region of the town of Arabissus.
He sent his son Haroun to ransack Beit Roumaye; himself he captured Syria and returned to Jerusalem to pray; his son, after capturing a fortress called Semalus, finished pillaging and moved off.
In the year 1092 of the Greeks, the Taiyaye penetrated into the region of Ephesus and made captive around seven thousand men. The emperor Leo, on his side, sent an army which took into captivity the orthodox Syrians and settled them in Thrace.
One of the Chalcedonian writers says that this emperor Leo detested images and wouldn’t allow anyone to venerate them, and that he adhered to the Orthodox, like his father.
In the year 1092 Leo died, and his son Constantine [Porphyrogentius] began to reign. Since he was a child of 12, his mother Irene governed and was proclaimed as ruler with him.
In the year 1094 Mahdi sent his son [480] Haroun, with two generals, into the land of the Romans. `Adb el-Malik beseiged Nacolaea; his army was shattered in pieces and he returned covered in shame. Bournike gave battle and killed ten thousand Romans. Haroun advanced towards the imperial city. The Romans made use of a ruse, and encircled the Taiyaye near the river Sangarius between the mountain on one side and the sea on the other. The Taiyaye were in great straits. They asked for peace; Irene, following the feminine spirit, agreed. A truce of three years was made, and the Taiyaye emerged from their difficulty.
In the following year `Ali built the town of Hadeth.
In the year 1095, Mahdi died. His son Mousa [began to reign], for two years.
In the year 1097 the Romans advanced with a considerable army and reached the town of Hadeth, which had been newly built by the Taiyaye, on the frontier. The inhabitants fled and it was deserted. The Romans then destroyed the walls completely and demolished all that had been constructed.
In the month of Tammuz [July] Mousa, [king] of the Taiyaye died; and after him reigned his brother Haroun, surnamed Rashid [=the Just, a name given by his father].
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At the time when Mahdi began to reign over the Taiyaye, he sent a man named Mohtasib to destroy the churches which had been built in the times of the Taiyaye, and he ordered that the Christian slaves should be sold. Many churches were demolished, and the slaves fled. The church of the Chalcedonians at Aleppo was destroyed. He also stirred up a persecution against the Manichaeans everywhere. Many of the Taiyaye were convinced of this heresy and were put to death because they would not renounce it. A place called Padana Rabta was destroyed, which was quite filled with Manichaeans. Some Christians were arrested because they were unjustly accused of being of this heresy. A Persian also denounced some women of the family of the Goumaye, and they were arrested. The motive (for this) of this Persian was that they had not given him lodging in their house situated in the town of Hinan. He was annoyed at this, and when he saw at Baghdad [479] that (a persecution) was being stirred up against the Manichaeans, he denounced the people of the Goumaye as being Manichaeans. Eight of the principal men among them were seized and thrown in prison. After many torments, three died in prison and the other five were delivered and came out, thanks to the Saviour who saves. [A long passage on a locust plague in 1095 follows] |
After nine years of the imprisonment of the patriarch Georgius at Baghdad, Mahdi, son of Abu Jafar, began to reign and released the prisoners. The patriarch came out with them. Mahdi banned him from exercising the patriarchate, and from calling himself Patriarch. The blessed man went back to Tikrit, and was received there like an angel of God. He was received the same way in going through Mosul and all the towns of Jezira [=Iraq], and was treated everywhere with honour. He came to Antioch. There he ordained ten bishops in that year; he deposed those of David, and created others in their place. However he left some of them, making the concessions which the situation of the moment demanded. He excommunicated and deposed Plotinus, who had been installed by Sandalaya, and made Constantinus return to Samosata. Some time later, when Constantinus died, the inhabitants of Samosata asked him for Plotinus [479], and he sent him back to them. After the patriarch had spent two years in travelling around and supporting the churches, some calumniators accused him to `Ali, emir of Jezira, of using the orders of the king to clean his feet. Annoyed, (`Ali) had him brought from Harran to Callinice. Before he appeared in the presence of the emir, Theodosius, the bishop whom Sandalaya had deposed, went in and calmed the heat and anger of the emir. He demonstrated to him that the patriarch had been accused falsely. When the blessed man went in, and when the emir set forth the accusations against him, he made his apology admirably, and was very well received, above all because Theodosius who interpreted his words into Arabic, and who was well thought of by the emir, made a eulogy of the patriarch, saying that he was a good and holy man and that those who accused him of having imposed charges and tributes on the church were not truthful. The emir was appeased by this acceptable discourse, and the patriarch retired victorious, and after that he governed the church of God without fear until the end of his life. At Alexandria the patriarch was Maiana for 9 years; then Iwannis [=John]. In the year 1095 the Edessans fell out with Zacharias their metropolitan for various reasons, but principally because they told him to bring back his brother Simeon, because of his bad conduct, and because he never did anything. This is why the patriarch Georgius ordered him to leave the town, and he was no longer received there. |
And so on it goes.
Syriac origins for the Gospel of Thomas? Not convinced, I think
Paleobabble is a useful blog on some of the factual mistakes that go around. He’s suspicious — as I am — of the idea that the Gospel of Thomas is “obviously” earlier than the canonical gospels; the way in which this idea is asserted and disseminated has that characteristic smell of a bit of paleobabble.
The Gospel of Thomas: Is it Really Earlier than the Canonical Gospels?
Many scholars think so, especially those trotted out by the Discovery Channel, PBS, etc. A lot of scholars disagree, and for good reasons, but that isn’t as media-sexy.
Here’s a good article on recent re-consideration of the “earliness” of Thomas. It’s by Nick Perrin of Wheaton College, whom I know. Nick spoke as part of a lecture series I coordinated in Bellingham, WA a couple years ago on this topic. The article is a bit technical, but I think non-specialists in biblical studies will follow it. I post it since there is so much paleobabble surrounding the Gospel of Thomas. You all ought to know that it’s not so neat a picture as the popular media would have it.
The article by Nick Perrin is interesting. But in truth it is merely a summary of research, reflecting its origins as a paper given as an address. I think to be happy with the thesis made, we would need to see all the supporting evidence. Bits of this paper make me feel unhappy with the argument.
The first bit to do this appears on p.69, where a table of Matt. 8:20 with its version in the GoT and the Diatessaron appears. This is given to show that the GoT agrees with the Diatessaron. But … the table is in English! We need, instead, the original languages, albeit with an English gloss. I feel deeply uneasy relying on quite as many layers of translation as this table must involve!
The general argument seems to be that there are more “link words” between the sayings if we translate the text into Syriac than if we do into Greek, or in the Coptic. The reason is that the same Syriac word may represent more than one word in Coptic, thereby creating links not visible in the other two languages. Likewise the fact that in Syriac families of words all derive from one tri-literal root naturally creates links that won’t exist in other languages.
But … won’t the same apply to every translation into Syriac? I’d like to see a control test; look at one of Chrysostom’s sermons, extant in Greek, and its Syriac version, and see if exactly the same thing happens, and how often. It seems to me that it must do. Because, after all, both things are features to the language. If so, the statistics quoted may be simply meaningless, unless adjusted for a possible general feature.
The other issue that will come to mind is to ask why the Diatessaron is not, then, using GoT? If the latter was composed in Edessa (? why?), surely such a thing is likely? We’re not told this.
In my bones, the paper feels forced. It feels clever rather than convincing.
Mingana manuscripts ignored, Korans placed online instead
I saw today an announcement of the Virtual Manuscripts Room at the Mingana collection in Birmingham. This is now available here. They’ve scanned 71 mss. But… disaster; political correctness has struck. They’ve ignored nearly all the collection, in favour of the stray Islamic items that Mingana picked up. Only about a dozen Syriac and a handful of Arabic Christian mss have been digitised. The press release doesn’t even mention non-Islamic items.
I must say that I feel gutted. Alphone Mingana must be bewailing that he ever left his mss in Birmingham. Edward Cadbury must be apologising to him and wishing that he had chosen his heirs with more care.
UPDATE: I’ve emailed David Pulford at the library and it seems that JISC — who funded it — is to blame for the way this was presented. They’re doing some “Digital Islam” thing at the moment, and the press release reflected that pretty much exclusively. Still wish we had fewer Korans and more digital Dionysius bar Salibi, tho.
A palimpsest of Menander in the Vatican
Menander did not reach us. The New Comedy dramatists works were not part of the Byzantine school curriculum, and, at some time in the Dark Ages, the last manuscript was reused for other purposes.
A post in the CLASSICS-L list tells me that a manuscript was found in the Vatican in 2003, manufactured from reused parchment from a late-antique codex containing works by Menander. Apparently hundreds of verses of this author can be recovered from the pages.
A reference is given, with a mention of Wikipedia, which has a link to an article in German about this by D. Harlfinger (which says the Vatican ms. is a *Syriac* manuscript!):
F. D’Aiuto: Graeca in codici orientali della Biblioteca Vaticana (con i resti di un manoscritto tardoantico delle commedie di Menandro), in: Tra Oriente e Occidente. Scritture e libri greci fra le regioni orientali di Bisanzio e l’Italia, a cura di Lidia Perria, Rom 2003 (= Testi e studi bizantino-neoellenici XIV), S. 227-296 (esp. 266-283 and plates 13-14).
But the posters says that this “did not publish entire Greek text, and that in 2006 we were “still waiting” for an edition. “
New Hugoye is out
The new issue of the Syriac studies academic journal Hugoye (vol. 12, no. 1) is out and available online here.
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!?!
Christian literature in Middle Persian
Now here’s a thought:
The century again witnessed several periods of open warfare between the two empires, but by this time the Sasanian authorities no longer felt any serious need to doubt the loyalty of their Christian subjects. It is significant that the synod of 576 instructed that prayers for Khosroes I always be included in the liturgy. Worth mentioning too in this context is the fact that the sixth century also saw the growth of a Christian literature in Middle Persian (whose existence is only known indirectly today). — Sebastian Brock, The church of the East in the Sasanian Empire up to the sixth century, in Fire from Heaven (1988)p.77)
I don’t know a sausage about Middle Persian literature. Indeed my only knowledge of it is of a introductory treatise on Aristotle by Paul the Persian, which Severus Sebokht translated into Syriac.
I wonder if any of this literature exists today? Sadly Brock gave no footnote.
More Michael the Syrian
A crisp sunny morning, a free afternoon at home, and an email arrives telling me that volume 2 of Michael the Syrian is available for collection at my local library. Sometimes it all just comes together. I wonder how much of it I can scan today?
UPDATE: (Early Afternoon) I’d forgotten how HEAVY the volumes are. The physical labour in picking them up, turning the page, placing it on the scanner, turning it round, etc, it pretty exhausting. The paper is yellow-ish, which makes for speckling when scanned. 70 pages so far, tho. The speckling seems to affect the margins most.
It’s an interesting question, whether to trim the margins or not. Why bulk out the file with speckled white-space?
UPDATE: (3pm) 123 pages. Groan. One page had a bit of foxing, which came out as black splotches in black/white scanning. So I did that page in colour.
UPDATE: (5pm) I’m aiming for 200 pages. On page 190 at the moment, although I had to stop when the plumber arrived. Then I can have dinner! Somewhere in the reign of Justinian at the moment; I saw the name Belisarius a moment ago.