Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, freedom of speech, information access, and more
Following on from Hugo Lundhaug’s paper on Origenism in 5th century Upper Egypt: Shenoute of Atripe and the Nag Hammadi codices, delivered at the Oxford Patristics Conference, I wrote to him, asking about the sources: the letter of Archbishop Dioscorus of Alexandria, and a text by Shenoute himself. Today I received an email from Dr Lundhaug, [...]
I forgot to mention that at breakfast I found myself in the queue, and talking to a chap who, like myself, wasn’t wearing his name badge (the name badges this year were excellently readable). It turned out to be Mark DelCogliano, who has translated a number of the prefaces to books of the Vulgate and [...]
Up with the lark, and off to breakfast at 7:45. A queue of disappointed people outside, tho, because it turns out that on Saturday it’s at 8:15. It’s another warm day, and is raining slightly. I’m going to leave my bags in the porter’s lodge for an hour or two and wander around Oxford!
I spent the evening trying to get the Kindle application to install on my mobile phone, and enduring various obstacles and difficulties. At 8:30pm there was a session at the university church of St. Mary the Virgin, and I was eventually obliged to leave my phone downloading that application, pop it in my pocket, and [...]
I returned to my room ca. 1pm, and uploaded the last blog, got photos off the mobile phone, ordered various books for purchasers and so forth. But a couple of further ideas caused me to return to the Examination Schools. As I did so, it became clear that all the major publishers were packing up. [...]
I made to breakfast this morning in Queens College. This is from 7:45-8:45. Rather foolishly I presumed that no-one would be there at 7:45, and arrived just after 8. I had difficulty getting seated! Then off to the Examination Schools, and into the South School, an immense area with a handful of people. But the [...]
In the afternoon I bunked off. I really did. There were three sessions on Chrysostom in Syriac, but I looked at the abstracts and the urge to go waned. The sunshine called to me, and I went out instead. First I walked up to the Bodleian Library, and dropped into the admissions office. My pass [...]
I then went to hear Hugo Lundhaug talk about Origenism in 5th century Upper Egypt: Shenoute of Atripe and the Nag Hammadi codices. This was fascinating, and discussed two texts. The first was a letter from Dioscorus of Alexandria, telling people — and Shenoute in particular — to hunt out heretical books associated with Origenism [...]
Between 10:20 – 11:20, I spent my time in the marquee at my stall. I arrived to find that a group of Russians with a film crew had positioned themselves with a table right in front of my table, thereby preventing anyone from visiting it. Promises that they would not be long proved empty. By [...]
I’ve just attended a truly fascinating paper “Marginalizing Paul of Samosata: scholia and Origenism in the exemplar of codex von der Goltz“, given by Eric Scherbenske. The codex is a biblical ms., Aland number 1739, Ms. 184 B64 of the Lavra monastery on Mt. Athos. This contains extensive scholia, which clearly come from the scriptorium [...]