{"id":52880,"date":"2024-12-19T13:43:34","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T13:43:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/?p=52880"},"modified":"2024-12-19T13:43:34","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T13:43:34","slug":"review-saints-of-ethiopia-an-english-translation-from-scriptorium-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/2024\/12\/19\/review-saints-of-ethiopia-an-english-translation-from-scriptorium-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Saints of Ethiopia \u2013 An English Translation from Scriptorium Press"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.scriptoriumpress.ca\/\">Scriptorium Press<\/a> is a new publisher, and offers a growing series of English translations of hagiographical texts.\u00a0 Most of these are from the Greek.\u00a0 All of them seem intended for use by the educated general reader with an interest in the lives of the saints.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">An interesting volume is their <em>Saints of Ethiopia<\/em> (140 pages, C$16).\u00a0 ISBN 9798300901172. This is an anthology of texts which throw light upon the origins of the Ethiopian church.\u00a0 This is a welcome attempt to make this little-known area of orthodox life more accessible.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Not everything in it is newly translated.\u00a0 The editors do not seem to know Ge`ez, and so they have done their best with whatever they could translate.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The volume contains translations of the following texts, which are translated from the following sources.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>On the Captivity of Frumentius (from Rufinus, <em>Church History<\/em>, book 1, c. 9; PL 21: 478-480)<\/li>\n<li>The Life of Saint Moses the Ethiopian (from Palladius, <em>The Lausiac History<\/em>, c. 22; PG34:1063-70)<\/li>\n<li>The Sayings of Abba Moses (from the <em>Sayings of the Desert Fathers\/Apophthegmata Patrum<\/em> \u2013 Alphabetical Collection; PG 65:281-9)<\/li>\n<li>The Life of Saint Pantaleon the Recluse (CSCO 26, Scriptores Aethiopici 17, 39-56)<\/li>\n<li>The Martyrdom of Saint Arethas (in 9 chapters; BHG 166-166b; Anecdota Graeca 5 , Paris (1883), p.1-62.)<\/li>\n<li>The Life of Saint Jared the Melodist (CSCO 26, 3-21).<\/li>\n<li>The Cannibal of Kemer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">The first of these tells the story of how Christianity came to Ethiopia, and is therefore an excellent introduction to the rest.\u00a0 The next two, about Moses the Black, relate to life in Egypt, but are probably an inevitable inclusion.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The remaining texts will be less familiar.\u00a0 The <em>Life of Saint Pantaleon<\/em> is a 15<sup>th<\/sup> century Ge`ez text, for which a reader must otherwise consult the modern Latin translation of Rossini.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The <em>Martyrdom of Saint Arethas and his companions<\/em> \u2013 the martyrs of Najran, ca. 523 AD \u2013 is a Greek text.\u00a0 It records the war of the Christian Ethiopians against the Jewish Himiyarite king responsible.\u00a0 It makes use of earlier texts extant in Syriac, and makes a very welcome addition to the literature for this period.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The <em>Life of Saint Jared (or Yared) the Melodist<\/em> is a Ge`ez text of unknown date &#8211; the saint is 6th century -, but considerable length.\u00a0 It\u00a0is a very useful thing to have.\u00a0 The editors have perforce abbreviated it, and they have included E. Wallis Budge\u2019s translation of the corresponding portion of the Ethiopian Synaxarion.\u00a0 This interesting figure seems to have begun the musical tradition of the Ethiopian church, and created a system of musical notation.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The <em>Cannibal of Kemer<\/em> is an extract from the <em>Book of the Miracles of Our Lady Mary<\/em>.\u00a0 This is an Ethiopian translation of an 11<sup>th<\/sup> century Coptic text.\u00a0 The version given here is that of Budge, somewhat modernised, rather than a new translation.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The translation style is perfectly good and clear.\u00a0 It is sometimes a little stiff \u2013 \u201cJared sojourned in Aksum\u201d is perhaps not a phrase found in current use \u2013 but probably from following the text particularly closely.\u00a0 Anybody who has had to work with dictionaries will know that the need for an exact equivalent often has this effect, where an older English had a word, but modern English does not.\u00a0 It\u2019s probably right to stick with the older word.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">For some of the texts, the footnotes are extensive, and very useful to the general reader.\u00a0 Few of us will be familiar with any of the context, after all.\u00a0 These are admirably done, identifying unfamiliar people and places, and referring to other texts.\u00a0 For others the notes are fewer \u2013 the <em>Life of Pantaleon<\/em> is much more annotated than the <em>Life of<\/em> <em>Jared<\/em>, for instance.\u00a0 But I do not think this will trouble the reader.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">Something that is missing in the book is running titles.\u00a0 This is consistent with the style of the series, but in an anthology, it makes it harder to find particular texts.\u00a0 I suspect that copies of the book will get corners folded down, or sprout postits, at the start of each text.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">The 23 page introduction assumes no knowledge of the origins of the Ethiopian church, and therefore stands as a useful primer for newcomers.\u00a0 The statements made are all carefully referenced, and so, in a short space, it gives a vast amount of useful information.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">As in other volumes, the short bibliography is at the back.\u00a0 At the front there are two nice and very necessary maps of the region, and of the location of important Ethiopian monasteries.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">All in all this volume is a success.\u00a0 It gives us texts in English that we did not have before.\u00a0 It collects useful material.\u00a0 May it sell well and bring knowledge of Ethiopia to many.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Ethiopia_cover-1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-52881\" src=\"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/Ethiopia_cover-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"581\" height=\"873\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scriptorium Press is a new publisher, and offers a growing series of English translations of hagiographical texts.\u00a0 Most of these are from the Greek.\u00a0 All of them seem intended for use by the educated general reader with an interest in the lives of the saints. An interesting volume is their Saints of Ethiopia (140 pages, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19],"tags":[322,654],"class_list":["post-52880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-my-diary-announcements","tag-book-reviews","tag-ethiopian"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52880\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/roger-pearse.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}