J.B. Piggin draws my attention to a marvel – a timely scholarly edition! You may remember how, in 2012, a bunch of unknown homilies on the psalms were found in the Bavarian State Library in Munich? This itself was a wonderful find: and the Bavarians went further, and put the manuscript online – a process that taught a few eager amateurs that Greek palaeography is hard!
Well today I learn that the text has now been edited! The new volume of the GCS – Origenes Werke XIII, 2015, edited by Lorenzo Perrone and colleagues, is now apparently available. The book is 640+ pages! In the foreword we learn that Dr Perrone felt that the priority was to present the text to the public – and how right he was!
Better yet, Dr P. has uploaded the table of contents and foreword to Academia.edu here. This means that those of us with little German can use Google Translate to read the foreword. And, of course, to make a case for our library buying it!!
How utterly impressive to get the thing out there and available, instead of sitting on it for a decade! I am deeply impressed. Well done, Dr P.!
I wonder how to get hold of a copy, tho. Cambridge University Library probably won’t even receive it, on subscription, for a year or two.
The GCS publication page for the item from DeGruyter is here. The eBook cost is … wait for it … $196!!!!?!? In fact so is the hardback – not very forgiveable, that. But even DeGruyter know that we really want eBooks, so both together is a modest (!) $293.
None of us can afford those prices, of course. What a shame! It’s a pity that Dr Perrone and his colleagues – who did all the work – couldn’t just make it available for free. But we’re not at that point yet.