Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
I’ve been adding some author names to volumes of the Patrologia Latina today. I’ve also been cursing WordPress, which proceeded to join together URL’s on the right hand side of the page, for no apparent reason.
It occurred to me yesterday that there can be relatively few people who have looked into all 161 volumes of the Patrologia Graeca, even if it is only to look at their tables of contents. Doing so certainly gives you a marvellous overview of what exists.
I have continued looking at the tables of contents in the Patrologia Graeca list on this site, originally compiled by Rod Letchford for the now defunct Cyprian Project, and adding notes about their contents to the list.
Today I finally reached volume 161 and last. It has been a mighty effort, just to click on 161 links and scroll down. But I hope the results are useful.
More work could usefully be done. I ought to go through the list again and harmonise the style. But … not just at the moment!
A comment by Dr Divna Manolova on my post about some of the Heidelberg manuscripts picked up on a problem; that I could not tell what the 141 folios of ms. Palatinus graecus 129 actually contained.
It seems that it consists of working notes by a Byzantine scholar, Nikephoros Gregoras (d. ca. 1359/1360). The manuscript contains a hand also found in codd. Vat. gr. 116 and 228, which are filled with letters, editorial notes, etc, by the same scholar.
That is, Pal. gr. 129, together with several other codices, is one of the material witnesses of the circle of scholars/scribes Gregoras was part of, or even presiding over.
She also drew our attention to the catalogue entry for the ms at Pinakes, which indicates that the ms. contains an enormous number of excerpts by some fifty different authors.
An email from George Christodoulou added more information. With his permission, let me give here (slightly edited) what he tells us:
Well, having just transcribed for my own use a small fraction of the text on fol.1recto, it seems as if what we have here is but a syncopated paraphrasis of random passages from Herodotus. My transcription points to Bk.I,178.1 sq., 179.4, 204.1.
I can also refer you to Edmund Fryde’s book, Early Palaeologan Renaissance 1261- c.1360 (Brill, 2000). He speaks of Nikephoros Gregoras, and the well known Byzantine scholar’s habit of using Greek authors “merely as a source of endless citations” (360). He singles out for especial reference his autograph codex Palatinus gr. 129, into which Gregoras would copy excerpts from a number of rare authors. In a note, Fryde also mentions a scholarly article by A. Biedl, “Der Heidelberger Codex Pal. gr. 129 – die Notizien-sammlung eines byzantinischen Gelehrten”, Würzburger Jahrbücher 3 (1948), 100-106.
He also transcribed some of the opening lines, which he confirms are taken from Herodotus, just as the Pinakes entry indicates, and has kindly allowed this to appear here:
I.178.1 sqq. ὅτι Νίνου ἀναστάτου γενομένης μεγάλης πόλεως τῶν Ἀσσυρίων τὰ βασιλήια κατεστήκεεν ἐν Βαβυλῶνι, ἣ ἐστὶ τοιαύτη πόλις. νέεται ἐν πεδίῳ μεγάλῳ τῆς Ἀσσυρίης. μέγα–θος ἐοῦσα μέτωπον ἕκαστον ρκ΄ σταδίων ἐούσης τετραγώ–νου. τὸ δὲ τεῖχος αὐτῆς πεντήκοντα πήχεων βασιληΐων τὸ εὖ- ρος, ὕψος δὲ διηκοσίων. ὁ δὲ βασιλήϊος πῆχυς τοῦ μετρίου ἐστὶ πήχεως μέζων τρισὶ δακτύλοισιν:
Ι.179.4 sqq. ὅτι ποταμός τις Ἲς ὄνομα εἰσβάλλει εἰς τὸν Εὐφρά-την ποταμὸν τὸ ῥέεθρον. ὃς ἅμα τῷ ὕδατι θρόμβους ἀσφάλ-του ἀναδιδοῖ πολλούς. ἔνθεν ἡ ἄσφαλτος εἰς τὸ ἐν Βαβυλῶ-νι τεῖχος ἐκομίσθη:
Ι.204.1 ὅτι ἀπὸ τῆς Κασπίης θαλάσσης, τὰ μὲν πρὸς τὴν ἑσπέ-ρην φέροντα ὁ Καύκασος ἀπείργει [γῆς ὄρος readings uncertain] μέγιστον καὶ ὑψηλότατον. τὰ δὲ πρὸς ἠῶ τε καὶ ἥλιον ἀνατέλ-λοντα πεδίον ἐκδέκεται πλῆθος ἄπειρον εἰς ἄποψιν. οὗ μοί-ρην οὐκ ἐλαχίστην μετέχουσιν οἱ Μασσαγέται, ἐπ’ οὓς ὁ Κῦρος ἐστράτευσε πέρην οἰκημένους τοῦ ὄρους καὶ τοῦ ποτα-μοῦ.
Ι.214.3 ὑπὸ τούτων τῶν Μασσαγετῶν τὸ πολὺ τῆς Περσικῆς στρατιῆς τότε ἐφθάρη ἐκεῖ καὶ αὐτὸς συντετελευτήκει ὁ Κῦρος. λέγουσι δὲ καὶ σκυθικὸν εἶναι τοῦτο τὸ ἔθνος:
[Herodotus’ original text underlined above in bold letters.]
My thanks to Dr Christodoulou for this!
One further point was made by Dr Manolova, and is also very interesting:
In Pal. gr. 129 Gregoras used two different styles of handwriting. I am not sure how common this is, but I found it intriguing that one could variate one’s handwriting for different purposes; with respect of different content and contexts.
Indeed so, and an interesting subject for research.
A piece at Dyspepsia Generation, “If only we could edit the bible” drew my attention this morning. It quotes a Huffington Post article.
I have often wondered–quietly and usually to myself–what would happen if we could edit the Bible.
After all, textbooks get edited and publishers bring out new and improved versions that are more in tune with how things are, instead of how things were.
Wouldn’t it be good if some ecumenical committee could go through the Old Testament and take out all the language about stoning people to death for breaking various rules?
In fact the author would like to see wholesale revision of the bible, to make it “more in tune with how things are”.
But what do we mean by “how things are” in modern America? Isn’t that an appeal to the climate of the times? To the values espoused by those who control the media agenda? Is it not, in fact, the product of a sustained campaign of social manipulation unparalleled in human history? Indeed it is.
Such a suggestion is a call for the bible to be edited to reflect the wishes of the winners of that civil war, what is sometimes called the “culture wars”. The winners are the people who wanted fornication in place of chastity, for instance. It is hard to see that these are people who have any respect for the bible; rather these are people who would seek to use it to impose their own wishes.
All this stirred a memory of William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and his description of the Nazification of the state Lutheran church. If my memory serves me correctly, a Nazi demanded the abandonment of the Old Testament, with its tales of goat-thieves and cattle herders, and the revision of the New Testament “in accordance with the principles of National Socialism”. The latter phrase meant that the New Testament should be edited to restore some pretended “original version” in which Jesus was not a Jew, and the church did not have Jewish roots.
Trying to find that quote, I stumbled across the Google Books preview of Susannah Heschel, The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in Nazi Germany. I have read a few pages, and I think that I had better get hold of the book. It illustrates brilliantly how a state controlled church can be corrupted by a political establishment that holds it in contempt, and the sort of antics that the establishment’s fellow travellers get up to. If we look past the fact that this is Nazis who want to bash Jews, and replace them with the kind of person who seeks to normalise unnatural vice, we find so many similarities.
And of course the specific cause is unimportant. It could be any cause. But the objective is always the same:
Christianity was not to be banned nor the churches outlawed; rather, as the historian Ernst Piper writes, Nazi strategy was to control the churches and lead to “a steadily advancing process of delegitimization and disassociation, of undermining and repression” that would undercut the church’s moral authority and position of respect.[1]
We may look at the demands made today upon churches, with the backing of the state. At the moment there is the demand to appoint women priests and bishops, to appoint gays to similar positions, to endorse vice of every sort. In this, do we not see the same process?
Those who make these demands of the church hold the church in contempt. They laugh as churchmen solemnly attempt to square the circle between the bible and demands made only because they are opposed to the bible. The fellow-travellers cause chaos as they force their demands through by a mixture of incessant dirty politics, backed by allies controlling the power of appointment, and a constant media atmosphere in their favour; and the establishment enjoys the chaos in an organisation that would otherwise opposite their policies.
Nor should we omit the constant drip-drip of “dirty vicar” stories, and the “church endorses child abuse” stories which somehow never apply the same rules to schools or Boy Scout groups. The urge to damn the whole organisation by association gives the game away.
You can serve God or the world. Ultimately all of us must decide which we intend to do.
It is easy, perhaps, to condemn the fellow traveller, if we are not in any way tempted to do the same. Let us not become proud. The devil has other temptations lined up for us!
The history of the church is made up of such struggles. The devil, the author of all this, does not care if any particular struggle is won or lost, so long as Christians are prevented from preaching the gospel. The worldly and contaminated archbishop is a constant figure in church history.
But he can only matter to us, if we let him. We must not focus on such things. Where two or three are gathered together, there is Christ. He is who we must focus on.
UPDATE: I have found in a snippet part of the quote from Shirer that I recall.
…the Old Testament “with its tales of cattle merchants and pimps” and the revision of the New Testament, with the teaching of Jesus made “to conform entirely with the demands of National Socialism …
The same quote, in a somewhat different form, is referenced to p.237 in a web page, although in what edition is not indicated. But clearly the author has read the same material that I did:
On November 13, 1933, the day after the German people had overwhelmingly backed Hitler in a national plebiscite, the ‘German Christians’ staged a massive rally in the Sportspalast in Berlin. A Dr. Reinhard Krause, the Berlin district leader of the sect, proposed the abandonment of the Old Testament, ‘with its tales of cattle merchants and pimps’ and the revision of the New Testament with the teaching of Jesus ‘corresponding entirely with the demands of National Socialism.’ Resolutions were drawn up demanding ‘One People, One Reich, One Faith,’ requiring all pastors to take an oath of allegiance to Hitler and insisting that all churches institute the Aryan paragraph and exclude converted Jews…
This latter form is repeated around the web in various places.
I’ve added some more contents to the page of Patrologia Graeca PDF’s. This is going well. I’ve been trudging through the writers who describe the fall of Constantinople in 1204. I hope these exist in English. There’s one in there, describing the ancient statues destroyed by the Franks.
One thing I haven’t worked out is how to indicate what date range each volume covers. Migne does specify this, but it would take an extra column, on the face of it.
Horribly busy this week with work things. If I owe you an email, I do apologise. I’ll get to it!
Judging from their RSS feed, the university library at Heidelberg are actively digitising their manuscripts. Another one popped up today, in addition to those that I mentioned last week:
A useful volume!
A little while back I started developing some PHP scripts to support the new Mithras Project pages that I intend to create. Today I went back to look at these, to see if I could merge them into what I have been doing with a top-level menu. And I found … that I don’t seem to have the latest version. Oh rats!
I know that I created a version that worked. It included automated tests as well. But it isn’t here. Nor is it on my travelling laptop.
I hope … hope … that I left a copy on my work machine. Because I shall be pretty annoyed with myself if I have inadvertantly deleted it!
Meanwhile something jogged my memory. Years ago I discovered an unpublished translation into English of Stephanos of Alexandria’s alchemical discourse 4. It was made by Sherwood Taylor, who founded the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry and published discourses 1-3 in their journal Ambix. I wrote to the journal’s modern editors, and offered them a copy. Back in 2010 there was talk of publishing it in 2011. I ended up corresponding with a certain Dr Jenny Rampling. And … then I heard no more.
I’ve written asking for an update today.
UPDATE: And Dr Rampling kindly wrote back this evening. It seems that the item will not be published. The labour involved in bringing the draft translation up to a standard publishable for 2012 was considered too great, particularly since it was based on a pre-critical edition. The clincher was that, earlier this year, the editors learned that Stephanos scholar Maria Papathanassiou is actually preparing a critical edition of the discourses, together with commentary and French translation.
This last is excellent news, of course; I didn’t actually know that this scholar existed, and the new edition and translation will make the text much more accessible.
I’ve continued to add contents to the page of Patrologia Graeca PDF’s. I’m now moving into the period post 1000 AD, which means that I am now well out of my comfort zone. This poses some problems, in that I have no idea what is important and what is not. So writing a summary is difficult! Still, onwards and upwards. Up to vol. 121 so far.
Chris Nighman writes:
A few weeks ago I uploaded digital transcriptions of Anianus’ Preface to his translations of Chrysostom’s Homilies 1-25 on the Gospel of Matthew and also the texts of Homilies 1-8 from Migne’s PG 58, 975-1058, onto the PGL Project website here.
Today I uploaded digital transcriptions of Anianus’ translations of Chrysostom’s homilies 9-15 on Matthew from the edition princeps published in 1503 at Venice on the PGL project website (http://web.wlu.ca/history/cnighman/PGL/page2.html).
If I can secure another internal grant to complete this transcription project, homilies 16-25 will follow sometime in the new year. Keep your fingers crossed…
This is an unusual project, and all the more valuable for it. We tend to ignore the Latin translations of works by Chrysostom, and Anianus of Celeda is not a figure with whom most of us are familiar. Yet his work is very early, and very informative on the early circulation of Chrysostom’s works.
And what a blessing to have this in electronic form!
I’d like to get translations of Anianus’ prefaces into English.
I have updated the page of PDF’s of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca again. I’ve added summary contents for each volume as far as volume 100. That’s enough for the moment. We’re already well into the iconoclast period, and the number of interesting works is diminishing very quickly.
The contents information is a little quirky. It isn’t possible, in the format on that page, to have a straight copy of Migne’s table of contents, useful though that would be. The quantity of entries would drown the collection of links, which is the main purpose of the page. Rather I have to abbreviate. I have done my best, leaving writers whose output appears to be a single ascetical letter or a bunch of sermons or the like as just their name, and highlighting material of possible interest (at least to me). I hope the information is useful and, as ever, provokes people to browse.