Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, freedom of speech, information access, and more
A new blog from the author of Antiochepedia: Diogenes was an Epicurean Greek from the 2nd century AD who carved a summary of the philosophy of Epicurus onto a portico wall in the ancient city of Oenoanda in Lycia. The surviving fragments of the wall, which originally extended about 80 meters, 25,000 words long and [...]
Via News from the Valley of the Kings, I learn that an online Egyptology magazine, Egyptological, has been attacked: Kate and Andrea are very sad to announce that Egyptological will be unavailable for the forseeable future. It has been targeted by a professional hacking group as part of an onslaught on Egypt-related web sites during the [...]
A wonderful retelling of the Old Nubian legend of St. Mena, published by F. L. Griffith in 1903 in Nubian texts of the Christian period, is given at Suburban Banshee here. Read and enjoy! It makes plain why hagiographical texts have an appeal!
A fascinating post at Aliens in this world, about an unusual version of a biblical story, in Isidore of Seville, and its consequences.
An incoming link draws my attention to a blog previously unknown to me, All along the watchtower. The blog has begun a series of posts by “Chalcedon451″ on Cyril of Alexandria. It is certainly the case that few of the Fathers enjoy a lower reputation in the English-speaking world than Cyril. “Chalcedon451″ suggests that we have Gibbon [...]
Rod Letchford has written and let me know that he has taken down the Cyprian Project, and allowed its domain name to expire. This is sad news. But apparently the number of visitors was too low for him to carry on. Various snapshots of the site may be found in the WaybackWhen machine at www.archive.org. [...]
Via the eChurch blog I learn that secularist scholar R. J. Hoffmann is getting a little fed up with some of his atheist co-religionists. In this post he outlines the tactics the latter employ. The Sure-Fire Atheist Rapid Response Manual When I wrote Atheism’s Little Idea I said atheists were small. But (and this is embarrassing [...]
My posts on the works of Methodius in Old Slavonic here and here have attracted a wealth of learned comment, for which many thanks. Mikhail Vedeshkin kindly left links to online Russian resources about Methodius. Here you can find a few works of Methodius translated into modern Russian. http://mystudies.narod.ru/name/m/methodius.htm “The feast of 10 virgins or about virginity” [...]
From time to time all of us who upload content to the web get to wondering what we’re doing and whether it’s worth it. This happens, even if you don’t have someone spitting insults at you — it’s a normal part of human nature. This was brought on by a question asked at eChurch blog, Does anybody [...]
I’ve found some rather good photographs of a fresco in a Mithraeum at Marino in the Alban Hills near Rome on a blog entry here. The fresco depicts the “tauroctony” — Mithras killing the bull. This is present in every temple of Mithras, but in this case it is a colour painting on the wall, [...]