Not liking the desert fathers

Someone tried to be kind to me a couple of weeks ago.  They sent me, anonymously, a copy of “The desert fathers: sayings of the early Christian monks”[1].  I have to say that I can guess who sent it; and that was supposing from my interest in patristics that I might be amenable to something of the kind. 

What is the book?  Well, it’s a very decent modern translation of the Vitae Patrum volume 5, from the Patrologia Latina vol. 73, cols.851-1024.[2]  The same translator has also translated volume 1[3] and been involved with a translation of volume 2[4]

The introduction is interesting — I learned from it, for instance, that the Lausiac History by Palladius is volume 8 of the same work, and is so called because it was dedicated to a certain Lausus the Chamberlain, an imperial official.[5]  A useful note on the text tells us that the sayings were copied, extracted, attributed to different people and places, and so on, and translated from one language to another, compiled, excerpted and so on.  All this is normal for sayings literature such as gnomologia (“wisdom sayings”).

But there is a price to pay for this form of transmission.  A saying must be striking to survive the process.  It must appeal to those who will preserve it, or it will not be transmitted.  It will be rephrased to adjust to different tastes, it will be attributed to different people, often to famous people.  A certain kind of joke in modern English always becomes associated with Winston Churchill; another sort with Oscar Wilde; but the attribution is made casually in order to make the saying more striking, not as the product of some form of careful research!

What this note on the text does not say, then — and surely it should? — is that we cannot know for certain who actually composed any particular saying, and whether it reflects the views of the monks at all.  Many of these may be the product instead of what we might call the “fan base” — people who were not monks, lived in ordinary society, and simply admired what they believed a monk was.

Much of the material consists of sayings that suggest an attempt at humanising some ridiculously ascetic aspirations.  These, possibly, are indeed by the monks, faced with a torrent of people under the craziest misapprehensions as to what to expect; and awaiting massive disappointment and even psychological or physical injury in consequence. 

I’m afraid that I did not find wisdom in these pages.  It is, perhaps, best to dip into such a book rather than try to read it.  But I’m afraid it irritated me.  Possibly having a book wished on me had that effect; but also the fact that one couldn’t know whether the things were anything but fan-fiction annoyed me.  

These sayings of the fathers did not strike me as holy, or inspired.  I’m sorry, but there it is.  

Asceticism, as the translator rightly notes, is not particularly a Christian thing.  It’s something that human beings are drawn to, often as a reaction to a morally corrupt society.  It does not have spiritual value per se. A busy mother bringing up a brood of brattish children will learn more about mortification than any of these.

But Jesus was not an ascetic, and neither were the apostles.  I don’t see the point.

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  1. [1]Translated by Benedicta Ward, Penguin, 2003.
  2. [2]Thus the translator, p.xxvi.
  3. [3]Harlots of the desert, London:Mowbray, 1987, based on PL 73 cols 651-71
  4. [4]The lives of the desert fathers, translated by Norman Russell, London:Mowbray, 1981, based on PL 73, cols. 707-39.
  5. [5]p.xxix.

Automated microfilm readers to convert microfilms to digital form?

In Oracle Magazine this month, there is an interesting article about a genealogical firm who are systematically converting microfilmed records into digital format.

At one archival site, FamilySearch has been storing images of historic documents on microfilm since the 1930s and has amassed 3.5 million rolls of film containing 4 billion records.

“Microfilm is a very stable medium, but it is not very accessible,” says Randy Stokes, group architect for engineering services, storage infrastructure, at FamilySearch. “We knew that if we wanted to make it easier for people to do research and find their ancestors, we would have to put this information into digital form.”

It’s a huge job. Approximately 25 automated scanners are used to scan the microfilm to digital images. Additionally, new photographic images are continually coming in from 185 digital cameras in the field. These operations yield terabytes of new image data each day. The original lossless images are saved as JPEG 2000 images for long-term storage … One copy is written to an in-house preservation system and another to an offsite archival location.

…“Between the scanners and the cameras, we amass 10 to 12 terabytes of new image data each day.”

Manuscript images also exist in microfilm in great quantities.  I don’t know which brand of machines are used here — a Google search reveals several types — but clearly it is both practical and effective.

 

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From my diary

I’ve had an email with some material extracted from Matthieu Cassin’s thesis about Gregory of Nyssa, with the pages discussing the chapter titles in the manuscripts.  I’ve not had a chance to read it yet, but it looks fascinating.  Dr Cassin has done some real work here, and I will discuss it further.

Also I found myself thinking about Mithras today.  Readers will remember that between 2009 and the end of 2010 I revised the Wikipedia Mithras article, to produce something reliable, only to have the work hijacked by a troll.  The troll deleted all references to me — the author of most of it! — and changed it to “prove” that Mithras preceded Jesus, etc; and he has sat on it, dog-in-the-manger, ever since.  But in a way he did me a favour, since I was beginning to contribute far too much time to Wikipedia.

But the reason that I dedicated so much time to looking up and verifying and quoting so much material about Mithras was to dispose of the many myths that circulate online.  That reason is still valid, and it seems to me that it would be sensible to write a few pages about Mithras, using secondary sources of a reliable kind, in order to provide a useful resource to those who need it. 

The obvious thing to do would be to start with the last reliable version — nothing the troll did was of any value –, and remove whichever bits I have not written or validated myself, and then build on that.  

There would be a main page, consisting of short sections, each with a link to a page on that specific subject.  Each sentence in the short sections would be referenced; probably to a reference on the specific page, rather than on the main page.

It would be important to have a professional look to the pages.  I’m not sure how best to achieve that, short of hiring someone (which, of course, is an option).  Some nice graphics would be nice, if I knew a decent graphics designer who could draw…

Ideally the pages would be editable online; but at the moment I couldn’t spare the time for online editing anyway.  I don’t really want to install MediaWiki, so we may have to sacrifice that, and just fall back on some kind of HTML editing.

The object, as always, would be to allow a reader to access the subject, not to push a narrative or my opinions (indeed I have none on Mithras, except that I don’t want to see disinformation circulating).

As part of this, my policy is always to have references that quote the source in extenso, and to link to the online text where possible.  In this way the reader can verify for himself whether or not the reference is fair or accurate.  I did this, after I discovered that most of the references in the Wikipedia Mithras article, before I worked on it, were in fact bogus.  Quote and link makes that problem disappear, and I would continue it.

Naturally I would want to link closely to primary materials.  It would be right to do something about inscriptions and images, if one could.

A page on Mithra, the Persian deity whose name was probably borrowed by the unknown founder of the Mithras cult, would probably be useful.

A guestbook in which comments and feedback could be added would probably be useful also.

Ah, but when will I get the *time*!!!!

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