Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, freedom of speech, information access, and more
The anonymous sixth century novel, depicting a fictional dialogue between Christians, pagans and Jews at the court of the Sassanid Persians is also now online in English, thanks to the splendid efforts of Andrew Eastbourne. The HTML is here, after some efforts by me; and a PDF is at Archive.org here. As ever, these are [...]
There are quite a few fragments of the monster Christian History of Philip of Side around, but no complete English translation has ever been made — until now. Last year I commissioned Andrew Eastbourne to do it, and it is now complete and online. A PDF of the collection is available from Archive.org here. The HTML [...]
The project to translate all the fragments of Philip of Side is still progressing. A bunch of these are in a 6th century fictional text depicting a religious debate at the court of the Sassanids. More or less by accident, I seem to have commissioned a translation of this text, although it is turning out [...]
One of the drawbacks of doing too much is that you tend to deal with emails a bit too hastily. One of those too hasty “yes that is fine” has come back to bite me. Regular readers will remember that I commissioned a translation of all the fragments of Philip of Side. Five of these [...]
I’ve been really unwell this week, so all my projects are on hold. Fortunately, for most of them, the ball is in someone else’s court. One project has been abandoned. The translation of the remains of Polychronius’ commentary on Daniel will not go ahead. The translator has decided to write an academic article around what he [...]
I forgot to mention that fragment 7 of Philip of Side arrived over the weekend as well. It’s the bit which is alchemical in nature. I’m always wary of alchemical texts. I have a degree in Chemistry, but I find them quite hard to understand. However this one is clear enough, and refers to dyeing [...]
The project to translate all the remaining or supposed fragments of Philip of Side’s 24-book Christian History is going well. Regular readers will remain that the fragments were classified into seven groups. Nos 1, 2, 5 and 6 are done, and 7 is in progress. The translator is doing is very good job, and the [...]
Very busy this week with work-related stuff; too much so, to do anything useful! The fragments of Philip of Side are coming along nicely. The translator is doing his usual excellent job and ferreting out a lot of useful related information buried in articles in languages none of us know. The publication — which will be [...]
The first two fragments of the translation of the Christian History of Philip of Side have arrived! And they look very good indeed. The footnotes are very enlightening. The translator has also volunteered to write an introduction, bringing together an explanation of the various Byzantine epitomes from which the fragments are drawn. This will be of [...]
When dealing with a lost text, the comments by other ancient writers who read it are usually included with the fragments as testimonia. I need to pay attention to these for Philip of Side. There seem to be three for Philip of Side’s Christian History. Photius and Socrates HE, book 7, c.27. I would have [...]