Year: 2009

UK museums get the web: it’s snowball time!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Eight UK museums have got together to set up a website to put their collections online and get members of the public to contribute their own photos and information, and use the data to compile their own albums of data.  It’s called Creative Spaces. At the moment it’s in beta.

Andie at Egyptology News tells us it’s a project of…

… The Royal Armouries, The V&A, The Imperial War Museum, British Museum, Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Sir John Soane’s Museum and The Wallace Collection.

The site allows you to search all the collections at once, tag and store items in notebooks and groups, and upload your own images, videos and notes to share creative inspiration with others – effectively creating your own collection from some of the world’s greatest museum collections.

This is a nonprofit, public sector project, and it’s the first time that national museums have collaborated in this way.

This is precisely the sort of thing to do: make the stuff accessible.

Everyone will gain, no-one loses. These tax-funded collections become more accessible to the world.  They get more visitors, as people realise what they hold and want to get a better photo or examine the original.  Thus the collection users start to add value.  Other sites start to link to the data. The wins just go on and on, like a snowball gathering weight and momentum as it rolls downhill.  Brilliant!

I see that you can order higher-resolution photos of V&A stuff.  I looked at this medal of Constantine, and couldn’t make out the lettering, which was a bit disappointing.  I then tried “papyri” which led me to this page from a 7th century Coptic codex of a life of Shenouda.  Only one side, tho.  But this is clearly a very good idea.

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A little too much jargon, Yared

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A conference notice tells us that this paper will be given:

Deacon Andualem Dagmawi, University of St. Michael’s College:
The Reception of St. Ephrem’s Apophaticism in the Hymnography of St. Yared the Ethiopian 

Erm, you what?  Who?

I know who Ephrem the Syrian is — 4th century very important Syriac writer, big on hymns and poems, who wrote one against Julian the Apostate. 

But I have no idea what “apophaticism” might be.  I have never heard of St. Yared the Ethiopian.  If I don’t — and I consume patrologies as light reading — I can’t imagine who does.

 

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News snippet: Wiley overcharging for theology journals?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are angry faces at a lot of small theological libraries across the world today.  American publisher Wiley bought a load of academic theological journals recently, and have jacked up the prices by as much as 100% or more.  Worse yet, they bundled the increase with a compulsory electronic subscription which — in stupid countries — is an item heavily taxed.  If the library only has electricity for a few hours, as third-world countries do, they can’t use it anyway.

I’ve today seen an angry letter written by a bunch of people to the VP of marketing.  The basic complaint is that Wiley have applied commercial pricing of the kind paid by huge US pharmaceuticals, that it will prevent the libraries taking the journals and probably destroy the journals as well.

The letter is a gem, which sheds a hideous light on the industry that battens off our tax dollars.  Why precisely do we need Wiley anyway?  What do they do, that we can’t do ourselves with printing at lulu and a bit of effort?

UPDATE (20/3): It looks as if Wiley have got the message.  More news when I have it.

UPDATE (19/3): I’ve asked for specific details, which should come out in a day or so.  “I do know that the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is one of the journals in question, and has gone from around £30 a year to something like £144…”

UPDATE: (19/3) Here’s the letter.

Subject:   Pricing of Wiley’s theological journals
From:   “Alan Linfield” <…>
Date:   Thu, March 19, 2009 12:06 pm
To:   ABTAPL…

All of us have been suffering widespread consternation at the number of steep rises in journal subscriptions which have recently hit us.  This consternation is not just affecting us in ABTAPL; some of you who are members of the BETH discussion list will have seen postings on the subject there, and it was also evident at the Forum of Asian Theological Libraries convention in Singapore, showing that this is a grave issue affecting theological libraries across the world.

Those of us in Singapore representing the various associations present at the conference have therefore agreed and jointly signed a robustly-worded protest, which has just been been emailed to Ms Reed Elfenbein, who as VP for Marketing at Wiley’s global HQ in the USA is the highest placed marketing executive in the company.  This protest is reproduced below…

From: Alan Linfield
Date: 19 March 2009 11:47:56 GMT
To: relfenb…
Subject: Wiley’s theological journals

Dear Ms Elfenbein

This is being addressed to you by representatives of four associations which together represent a large number of libraries in the UK, continental Europe, India, SE Asia and Australasia specialising in theology. We have taken the opportunity to confer together and send this joint communication while we have all been attending a convention of the Forum of Asian Theological Libraries, which took place last week in Singapore.

Our specific reason for contacting you personally is to make it known at the highest possible level within your company our intense anger at the pricing of a number of major theological journals whose publication you have recently taken over. In many cases the new subscriptions our members are being charged has increased by over 100% – indeed in some cases by considerably more. We have to tell you as emphatically as we can that these price rises are completely unacceptable, and in very many cases will now put these key journals beyond the reach of many of our members, (who of course collectively constitute the natural and most obvious market for them).

Given Wiley’s historical association and track record with science and technology publishing, it appears to us that you have simply applied the same basic business model to theology journals as you have done with scientific journals, assuming that similar business dynamics will apply. This however shows a complete lack of research and an utter failure to appreciate the nature of the market for theological journals. In the majority of cases these are bought not by well-funded university libraries and the scientific research establishments bankrolled by big business that your company is more accustomed to dealing with, and which are well able to afford these kind of prices. Rather, they are typically bought by small, private theological seminary libraries, largely funded by small endowments and private donations, and whose total library budget is probably a good deal less than your annual salary; indeed many of them are in the majority 2/3 world, and their typical annual budget is probably a good deal less than your PA’s annual salary. These journals are, as you must be aware, highly important and strategic resources for our member libraries; by putting them out of reach of the great majority by these huge price increases you will risk not only losing a great many customers, but you will also be putting the future of the journals themselves in jeopardy, as there will now be a very real danger that you will end up with too few subscribers to make the journals viable.

It was also disappointing to note that you have also followed the tired old ploy of trying to give a semblance of justification for these price rises by bundling in an electronic subscription. An electronic subscription to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is of little use to the small seminary library in Myanmar which only has an electricity supply at night; or to another in Indonesia which has only very unreliable dial-up internet access. You seem to assume that all the libraries which take theological journals are of the high-tech variety, whereas the opposite is more typical, demonstrating again your crass failure to research the market properly. Moreover, electronic subscriptions also attract sales taxes in many countries, thus driving the price up even more. It is particularly distressing that two of the journals which have suffered the highest rise in subscription price are those formerly published by the World Council of Churches, which historically has always had a bias to supporting the mission of the Christian church in majority-world contexts by making their journals affordable there, something which is now being completely undermined by your brutal business policies, which appear to us to be nothing more than rank profiteering.

We therefore call upon you as a matter of urgency to rethink your subscription rates for these theological journals, and in doing so also carry out proper market research in order to identify subscription levels your clients can realistically sustain;  We also call upon you to reinstate a print-only subscription option for the many (and often disadvantaged) libraries that for one reason or another are unable to make use of an electronic one, so that they do not have to pay for anything more than they actually need.

In order to demonstrate the worldwide depth of feeling which exists on this issue, we are also asking all the individual libraries of our associations that have been affected by these inordinate subscription increases to contact you as well, so that you can learn in more detail their exact circumstances and the effect your misguided policies are having on them. We are confident you will soon realise that we have not been exaggerating.

We shall also be distributing press releases, with copies of this communication, to appropriate publishing and librarianship journals.

Yours sincerely

Alan M Linfield
Chair, Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries
(ABTAPL)

Rosemary Watts
Western Australian Chapter Chair of Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association (ANZTLA)

Elizabeth Pulanco
Chair, Forum of Asian Theological Libraries (ForATL)

Odile Dupont
President, Biblioteques Theologiques Europeen (BETH)

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Patristics and inerrancy

Posted on by Roger Pearse

For some time I have been wondering how the early Christians discuss issues like inerrancy.  The obvious thing to do is to collect statements from the first 3-4 centuries of Christian writing, and see what sort of attitude to scripture these have.  Indeed it is so obvious that surely someone has already done this?  Suggestions would be welcome!

From general reading I know that Tertullian in De praescriptione haereticorum 8 advises Christians not to argue with unbelievers using the bible.   But, living at the end of the second century as he did, he had a special reason.  At that period unbelievers routinely forged gospels and other texts, supposedly by apostles.  The canon existed, but only in a basic form.  Thus it was too easy for the malevolent to simply toss believers into a whirlpool of crooked arguments.  Tertullian recommends following something easier to argue with, the united testimony of the churches that can prove their apostolic origin.  His argument is pragmatic, and the Fathers tended to follow him.

Modern Christians have a specific issue in mind.  Do we treat the Bible as an infallible authority on matters of history and science, or consider that those elements are incidental?  (Some feel that the Old Testament and New can be treated differently on this issue). 

All Christians believe that it is an infallible authority on matters of Christian teaching.   Indeed it is mildly amusing to hear some people attack “inerrantists” for refusing to “accept that scripture is fallible on matters of science”, when we then find that they don’t actually believe that it is infallible in any other respect, and their argument is not with some small group but with every part of Christendom, from Jesus and the apostles down to myself!

But perhaps the real reason why we don’t find any specific comment in the early Christians is that this particular issue wasn’t one that they had to answer.  This happens in other areas also, and invariably means that they make comments which tend to one side or the other, without being definitive.  The question simply isn’t present to their minds, which makes them useless as a source of information on the specific question.

Maybe so.  I’d like to see the evidence before I decide on this. 

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What about “Google manuscript”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just download manuscripts as PDF’s, rather than go through the gruesome and expensive process of obtaining whatever rubbish the libraries feel like selling us? 

Last week I wrote to Google suggesting that they do a project to make medieval manuscripts accessible.  We all know how difficult archives make it for us to access texts in this form!  Today I got a reply:

Hello Roger,

Thanks for your email and interest in Google Book Search.

I appreciate you taking the time to offer us this feedback about including ancient and medieval texts. I have passed along your email to the other members of my team. As this is still a young program, new ideas are under consideration and your feedback is very helpful. Please continue to share your suggestions with us.

Sincerely,

Tom
The Google Book Search Team

Interesting to know that Google DO reply.  If you’d like to see Google take an interest in getting text-only manuscripts online, why not tell them so?

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Syriac words in the Koran

Posted on by Roger Pearse

To what extent does the Koran contain Syriac words?  I’ve been reading a review of Christoph Luxenberg’s book about the Koran  by Martin F. J. Baasten in Aramaic Studies 2.2 (2004), pp. 268-272 (here), and finding it rather excellent.  It has been claimed — he cautiously states — that 80% of all loan-words in the Koran are from Syriac. 

Luxenberg has asked whether some passages in the Koran, which are difficult to understand, make more sense if you strip off the vowel-markings, thereby discarding the standard understanding of the text, and imagine that they contain Syriac loan words.

During the first century of the Arabic period, texts were written without all the marks above and below the line which indicate vowels, and indeed distinguish some consonants.  As Baasten rightly remarks, Arabic is a seriously defective script in this respect; worse than Syriac, where only two letters can be so affected.  Only seven Arabic letters — the rasm — are unique without some dotting.

Apparently some passages really do make much more sense if you do this.  Baasten gives a single example.

The implications of this for the transmission of the Koran are considerable.  If this can be proven, then it means that the Koran did not initially circulate orally, but passed through an early stage in written form, without vowel markings.  Only such a stage can account this symptom.

This would not be unreasonable.  There is no real reason to suppose that early followers of Mohammed memorised the new document, which was dribbling out chapter by chapter anyway.  It is likely that writing was used.  Thus we have the situation where early Korans differed, and a recension had to be created by the early Caliph Othman.  This situation also indicates that a good many people did NOT know the Koran orally, and relied on a written form of the text.

It seems that Luxenberg has overstated his thesis, however, and derived far more than this from Syriac sources, and much more tendentiously.  This is unfortunate, as it tends to undermine the credibility of his work.  But thus far, it would seem likely that he has indeed discovered something solid. 

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Christian literature in Middle Persian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Now here’s a thought:

The century again witnessed several periods of open warfare between the two empires, but by this time the Sasanian authorities no longer felt any serious need to doubt the loyalty of their Christian subjects. It is significant that the synod of 576 instructed that prayers for Khosroes I always be included in the liturgy. Worth mentioning too in this context is the fact that the sixth century also saw the growth of a Christian literature in Middle Persian (whose existence is only known indirectly today). — Sebastian Brock, The church of the East in the Sasanian Empire up to the sixth century, in Fire from Heaven (1988)p.77)

I don’t know a sausage about Middle Persian literature.  Indeed my only knowledge of it is of a introductory treatise on Aristotle by Paul the Persian, which Severus Sebokht translated into Syriac. 

I wonder if any of this literature exists today?  Sadly Brock gave no footnote.

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Two snippets

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The $400 PDF-microfilm of the unpublished 13th century Arabic Christian historian al-Makin was rubbish and unreadable.  I complained and was ignored.  I complained again two days ago, and threatened to involve VISA.  Today I got a note asking me to return the CD for checking, which makes no mention of the first note.  Clearly persistence is necessary in dealing with the BNF.   I always feel rather helpless, confronted by a massive bureaucracy.  I’ll let you know how I get on.

On a different note, I wonder just how many unknown medieval manuscripts of the bible there are?  I came across a press release by Norfolk Record Office (NRO), about an exhibition of manuscripts belonging to a now deceased collector, one Denys Spittle:

The oldest book in the exhibition is a copy of the four Gospels, probably from Constantinople that dates from the 10th century.

 This sounds like a job for CSNTM!  So I wrote to the NRO, asking if the ms. has an Aland number, etc.  No-one seems to know, and NRO won’t give me the contact details of the owners.  The Denys Spittle Trust isn’t in the Charities Commission database, nor at Companies House.  Still, if they’re willing to lend the manuscript for an exhibition like this, they ought to be willing to allow the experts at CSNTM to catalogue it properly and record it.  I’ve forwarded the details I have to them.

But of course this naturally leads you to wonder just what else exists in private hands?

I’ve been feeling rather unwell for the last few days, after an unsuccessful dental root treatment, so don’t expect much substantive from me this week.

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Two maps of ancient Antioch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Whenever I read a fantasy novel, I love to see a map.  Likewise I love to see maps of ancient cities.  In a way, the latter are like the former, except that they once actually existed.  Imagine entering the city, and walking along the main street!

Chris Ecclestone has posted two maps of ancient Antioch here.  Somehow this makes his excellent Antioch site much clearer.  I hope that he will make  a permanent link to them from the top of his site.

I notice outside the walls the shrine of St. Babylas, which caused Julian the Apostate so much upset when he tried to restore the oracle at Daphne.

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A little-known find of Coptic books in 1910

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While perusing the Book-Think blog, I came across mention of a find of Coptic books at the Monastery of St. Michael in 1910.  This was interesting, since although I am interested in Egyptian manuscript discoveries, I had never heard of it.

I find an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia which deals with the find.

The most important of these discoveries was undoubtedly that of the library of the Monastery of St. Michael in the Fayûm (Spring, 1910). Most of the fifty-eight volumes of which it consisted found their way to Paris, where they were purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (Dec., 1911), in whose library (at New York) they are now preserved. 5000 volumes remained in Egypt, and, with a few fragments of the same origin, are kept [in Cairo]… Mr. Morgan’s collection is no less remarkable as a group of dated manuscripts of absolutely certain provenance. … the Morgan collection contains eighteen dates ranging from A.D. 832 to 914… Many of the manuscripts are still in their original bindings…

Why do we have so many fragmentary books?

One of the most important features of the Morgan collection is that it consists of complete volumes, while other collections, yet reputed so valuable, those of Rome, Paris, and London (see below under British Museum Collection), to name the principal ones, consist mostly of fragments. It is an inveterate habit with the Arabs of Egypt to tear the manuscripts they discover or steal, so as to give each member of the tribe his share of the spoils, and also in the hope of securing higher prices by selling the manuscripts piecemeal, a process fatal to literature, for while some leaves so treated will be scattered throughout the public or private collections of Europe and America, a good many more will either meet destruction or remain hidden indefinitely by the individual owners. Most of the manuscripts of the Monastery of St. Michael had already been divided into small lots of leaves and distributed among a number of Arabs when they were rescued at the cost of untold toil and expense.

The same happened to the Gospel of Judas, the Exodus, the Greek Mathematical Treatise and the Letters of Paul manuscripts, half a century later.

The Catholic Encyclopedia article lists the books (bless them!).  There are biblical texts, liturgical stuff, and masses of Saints’ lives.  There are also some homilies by Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, Shenuda, among others.

Interestingly, at the end of the page in the CE, are details of other purchases by the British Museum of Coptic mss.  Among the texts found is a “discourse of Eusebius of Cæsarea on the Chanaanite woman” [Ms. Or., 5001, item 10].   Has this ever been published, or translated?  The article gives as sources:

On Or. 5000 and Or. 5001 cf. CRUM, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts of the Brit. Museum (London, 1905), Nos. 940, 171; WALLIS BUDGE, The earliest known Coptic Psalter in the Dialect of Upper Egypt from the unique Papyrus oriental 5000 in the Brit. Museum (London. 1908); IDEM, Coptic Homilies in the dialect of Upper Egypt (from Or. 5001 text and English tr., London 1910).

The last item is at Archive.org, which is a blessing, believe me.  For I saw a bound copy of this book, thick, small, fat and with a tight binding impossible to photocopy, and my heart failed me and I passed by on the other side and did not try to scan it.  Thankfully someone else has.   From this I find that the homily is of Eusebius of Caesarea in Cappadocia!

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