Author: Roger Pearse

On giving too much

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Adam McCollum’s blog HMMLOrientalia came back to life a few months ago, and unfortunately I did not notice.  But he is now posting some very useful material indeed, with good bibliographies, and each post contributes measurably the increasing the quality of information online.

But this post caught my eye for other reasons:

At the beginning of CFMM 306 are a few maxims, first in Syriac, then in Arabic (Garšūnī) …

  • Don’t believe everything you hear.
  • Don’t tell* everything that you see.
  • Don’t say everything that you know.
  • Don’t do everything that you are able to do.
  • Don’t give all you possess.

These are maxims of reticence or prudent withholding, all of this basic theme, and they reflect the experience of those who, having given too freely of their means or knowledge, have gotten into trouble, lost relationships, and more.

I suspect those of us who blog, who contribute online, have all encountered these problems, from being too generous. 

All of us who give of ourselves must know our limits.  More, we must recognise that only we can enforce them.  There are any number of people who go around making demands of others.  Which of us has not received some ill-spelled and preremptory demand for information, evidently from a child too lazy to do his homework? 

To remain in good health, we must politely but firmly decline to exceed our boundaries, whether in response to sudden enthusiasm on our own part, or to urgent importunity from others.  The troll who seeks to lure you into an interminable correspondence is not your friend.  Have the courage to dismiss him.  To do otherwise is violate our boundaries, and to haemorrage ourselves for those who will do nothing for us. 

Often, too often, we find that those for whom we have sacrificed our time and energy suddenly go silent, without even a “thank you”; leaving us feeling flat, sore and abused.  Occasionally we even find that our labours are thrown back in our faces by those who could not have done anything without us, yet decline even to acknowledge their indebtedness. 

So … let us know our limits.

But Adam then goes on to make a valuable point about sayings literature, or gnomologia as some anti-populariser dubbed it:

There are, of course, notable traditions of maxims and proverbs spanning ancient near eastern and classical literature (at least Sumerian, Akkadian, Aramaic, Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, and Latin), and the sentiments indicated above are hardly unique among those traditions.

And he then references a number of these.

Arabic sayings literature — or, more accurately Christian Arabic sayings literature — seems largely inaccessible and unexplored.  We really could do with a corpus of the material listed in Graf (vol. 1, p.482 f.).  Little of it has even been published.

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Some notes on Ephraim the Syrian’s “Hymns against heresies”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been reading the prefatory material to E. Beck’s critical edition of this collection of hymns.[1]  The following is abstracted from these.

 Ephraim’s collection of hymns Contra Haereses was printed by Petrus Benedictus (Mubarak) in the 2nd volume (syr.-lat.) of the Editio Romana in 1740, based upon the only manuscript of this work contained in the Vatican library, codex vat. sir. 111.  He gave the hymns the title, Sermones polemici adversus haereses, since in this edition the Syriac terms madrâshâ and mēmrâ were both rendered as sermo.  The manuscripts have madrâshē (luqbal yulpâne).

Inevitably working from a single manuscript, which was not always legible, the Roman edition is unsatisfactory. 

The two oldest manuscripts also are the foundation for Ephraim’s hymns De Fide.  B is the basic witness, as A is missing more leaves.

  • B = Cod. vat. sir. 111.  6th century, from the Nitrian desert.  Described in CSCO 154 / Syr. 73, p.ii.  This is the only complete manuscript, but the writing is often very blurred, and becomes at times unreadable, as the manuscript fell into the Nile at one point.
  • A = British Library additional 12176.   6th century, from the Nitrian desert.  Also described in CSCO 154.  This was once complete, but is missing many leaves.  It is complete for the hymns De Fide.
  • E = British Library add. 17141.  A liturgical codex, of the 8-9th century, containing  hymns by Ephraim, Isaac of Antioch and Jacob of Serugh.  Contains extracts from the first 10 hymns against heresies, and selected verses from most of the others.
  • F = British Library add. 14574.  This is a few remaining leaves of a large codex containing collections of hymns by Ephraim: De ecclesia, de Virginitate, contra Haereses.  It is written in three columns.  The colophon refers to 56 hymns against heresies, but only a few pages remain.  It was probably written a bit later than B and A.

In B, A and F, we have the text of Ephraim as it was in the 6th century.

There are also two late manuscripts from the vaguely specified “patriarchal library of Homs”.  The first of these (H1) is 12-13th century, and contains a few pieces of the text.  The second (H2) is 15th century.

Beck’s text, despite his criticism of Petrus Benedictus, is also that of B, as this is the only complete manuscript where no pages have been lost.  But the codex fell into the Nile during its adventures, and so is damaged.  In hymns 22, 34, 35 and 38, where comparison with other codices is not possible, it is necessary to infer the readings, although I do not see large lacunae in Beck’s text.

I do wonder at this point, however, what modern multi-spectral imagining would make of this?  Could the text be recovered?

The work has been of interest to theologians ever since it was published, because of the valuable testimony that it bears to Marcion, Mani and Bardaisan.  Consequently it was translated into German by P. Zingerle from the Roman edition for the original Bibliothek der Kirchenvater series,[2] and again by A. Rücker for the new BKV series in 1928.

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  1. [1]E. Beck, CSCO 169-170, 1957. The second volume is the German translation.↩
  2. [2]In the 1834 series, and in the 1873 series also.↩

Some Roman law on adultery

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From Julius Paulus, book 2, title 26:

(1) In the second chapter of the Lex Julia concerning adultery, either an adoptive or a natural father is permitted to kill an adulterer caught in the act with his daughter in his own house or in that of his son-in-law, no matter what his rank may be.

(2) If a son under paternal control, who is the father, should surprise his daughter in the act of adultery, while it is inferred from the terms of the law that he cannot kill her, still, he ought to be permitted to do so.

(3) Again, it is provided in the fifth chapter of the Lex Julia that it is permitted to detain witnesses for twenty hours, in order to convict an adulterer taken in the act.

(4) A husband cannot kill any one taken in adultery except persons who are infamous, and those who sell their bodies for gain, as well as slaves, and the freedmen of his wife, and those of his parents and children; his wife, however, is excepted, and he is forbidden to kill her.

(5) It has been decided that a husband who kills his wife when caught with an adulterer, should be punished more leniently, for the reason that he committed the act through impatience caused by just suffering.

(6) After having killed the adulterer, the husband should at once dismiss his wife, and publicly declare within the next three days with what adulterer, and in what place he found his wife.

(7) An angry husband who surprises his wife in adultery can only kill the adulterer, when he finds him in his own house.

(8) It has been decided that a husband who does not at once dismiss his wife whom he has taken in adultery, can be prosecuted as a pander.

(9) ….<illegible in manuscript>….

(10) It should be noted that two adulterers can be accused at the same time with the wife, but more than that number cannot be.

(11) It has been decided that adultery cannot be committed with women who have charge of any business or shop.

(12) Anyone who debauches a male who is free, against his consent, shall be punished with death.

(13) ….

(14) It has been held that women convicted of adultery shall be punished with the loss of half of their dowry and the third of their estates, and by relegation to an island. The adulterer, however, shall be deprived of half his property, and shall also be punished by relegation to an island; provided the parties are exiled to different islands.

(15) It has been decided that the penalty for incest, which in case of a man is deportation to an island, shall not be inflicted upon the woman; that is to say when she has not been convicted under the Lex Julia concerning adultery.

(16) Fornication committed with female slaves, unless they are deteriorated in value or an attempt is made against their mistress through them, is not considered an injury.

(17) If a delay is demanded in a case of adultery it cannot be obtained.

These are portions of Roman law that our modern politicians might not entirely find welcome.

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A new work by Aristotle in the Green collection?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Today I  learned of the Green Collection, a large private collection of manuscripts and papyri.  It is owned by the Green family of Oklahoma, who are (a) billionaires and (b) Christians.  In consequence they have been collecting material of wide interest. 

Brill have announced a new series of publications for the papyri:

The new series fits well among Brill’s strong portfolio of Classical Studies and Biblical and Religious Studies publications, as well as its extensive list of digitized primary source manuscript collections. Comprising of one to two new volumes per year, the new series will publish approximately 20 papyri with a thorough description, commentary with images, and web-based support for further resources.

The first forthcoming volume in the series, planned to be released in early 2013, is dedicated to an early 3c BCE papyrus containing an extensive, undocumented work by Aristotle on reason, and is currently being analyzed by a research group at Oxford University.

The Green Collection contains over 50,000 items, and now holds nearly 15,000 papyri acquired from private collections in Europe, and continues to grow. The collection is approximately 70% Greek, 15% Coptic and 15% late Egyptian. The collection is currently unpublished and contains items of extraordinary importance, including some of the earliest Greek literary texts known, dating to the early 3c BCE. A major building near Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. was purchased in July 2012 to house an international museum for these items.

They are also working with scholars at Tyndale House in Cambridge:

The Green Collection has announced that the Codex Climaci Rescriptus – containing the earliest-known texts of Scripture in something close to Jesus’ household language – will return to the University of Cambridge in collaboration with the collection’s international research arm, the Green Scholars Initiative.

Top manuscript scholars from Cambridge’s Tyndale House will conduct intensive, high-tech research on the codex’s 137 reused vellum leaves, which feature overlapping layers of text. Recent technological breakthroughs developed by Green Scholars at the University of Oxford allow once unreadable, underlying text from the codex to be “lifted” to the surface for enhanced study through a process known as “multi-spectral imaging.”

In selecting Cambridge as the official research home of the Codex Climaci Rescriptus, Green Scholars Initiative Director Dr. Jerry Pattengale said, “Tyndale House is a perfect fit for this project given both its excellent scholars and its reputation in biblical studies. We are pleased with the strength of their ancient languages, from Aramaic, Syriac and Hebrew to Greek and Coptic – and, just as important, their passionate interest in biblical studies.”

They have launched the Green Scholars Initiative:

The Green Scholars Initiative is an international research project involving dozens of institutions under the auspices of The Green Collection, the world’s newest and largest private collection of rare biblical texts and artifacts.

Through thousands of cuneiform texts and papyri, Dead Sea Scrolls and Coptic texts to Gutenberg, Wycliff, Tyndale, Thomas à Kempis, Erasmus, King James and a litany of Reformation and post-Reformation original texts, the Green Scholars Initiative brings established and young scholars together to pioneer groundbreaking biblical discoveries

There will be a new museum in Washington:

A sampling of the Bible museum’s offerings — from the collection of more than 40,000 artifacts — have been displayed in the Passages Exhibit at the Vatican and in Oklahoma City and Atlanta and will soon appear in Charlotte, N.C.

All this is very encouraging for papyrus and manuscript studies: a family with the resources to collect and publish materials, and the desire to do so.  And for once it is being done from a Christian perspective too.  Well done!

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Eusebius book update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Eusebius: Gospel Problems and Solutions book is still selling copies, which is pleasing.  I put so much of myself into producing that book, and of course there was never any certainty of sales.

This evening I received the monthly statements from Lightning Source (US and UK), which tells me how many copies were sold via Amazon.  Rather chuffed to find that during July 3 copies sold in the US, and another 3 in the UK.  All of them were paperbacks.  6 copies at this stage … wow! Thank you, whoever you are!

Sales earlier in the year had dropped to pretty much nothing, so this is a surprise.  But then I have no idea what influences sales on Amazon.

In fact a total of 24 copies have sold in the US this year (6 hardbacks, 18 paperbacks), and 17 copies in the UK (all paperbacks).   I haven’t previously had a breakdown of what format sold, so this too is useful.

The book still has not broken even, but we’re doing much better than I had feared!  I need to sit down and work out total sales at some point, and find out exactly where we are.

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Did early heretics call themselves “Christians”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was answering an email in great haste earlier today, which contained the assertion that heretics like Marcionites or Valentinians (there was no specific) referred to themselves as Christians.  I think that I sort of assented, or at any rate did not disagree, in the rush to disagree with other parts of the email.

But I found myself wondering.  Do we know that this is true?  Did they, in fact, using the word for themselves?

We are accustomed to different church groups all identifying themselves as Christians.  We are accustomed to modern heretics — liberal clergy who endorse unnatural vice and don’t believe in God — demanding indignantly to be referred to as Christians (to the amused cynicism of everyone else).  But … do we know that the same was true in antiquity?  For antiquity was a different world, and anachronism is always our enemy.

Modern heretics demand the Name, because the name of Christian has a residual positive image in the modern western world: what was once Christendom.  But in ancient times, was this the case?  After all, “christianus” was the name of an illegal cult: non licet esse vos, — you are not allowed to exist, the pagans jeer in the pages of Tertullian’s Apologeticum.

The heresies essentially were pop-pagan philosophical schools, which is, of course, why the early Christians referred to them by the word “haereses”, used, with no pejorative context, for those schools.  But every philosopher made his living by teaching pupils for pay.  And what he had to teach was his own special teachings.  If he was the disciple of some famous earlier philosopher, he would innovate, unless he inherited the school from his master, in order to attract pupils and distinguish himself from other pupils.  To such people, a fresh source of ideas, such as Christianity, was just grist to the mill.  It is telling that the same is true of gnostic groups.  The disciples of Valentinus, such as Apelles, did not teach classical Valentinianism, but their own flavour of it.

In each case, the members of the heresy were not a church in the way that a modern church is organised.  They were more like “hearers”.  The loose organisation of these groups is commented on by Tertullian in De praescriptione haereticorum, who in chapter 6 lists the old-time philosophies from which the new heretics draw their teaching, and towards the end remarks on this lack of structure and definition.

Someone following a school would usually take, I believe, the name of his master, or of the school.  Thus we have the cynics, the Stoics, the Epicureans, and so forth.

Likewise in Corinth, Paul has to tell the Christians not to do the same.  “I follow Paul … I follow Apollos …” is perhaps the same tendency. 

So … do we know that heretical groups generally did not do the same? 

When I read Ephraim the Syrian’s Madrasha 22 against heresies, I do not find that the Marcionites are saying “We are the Christians”.  What they are saying to the Christians is, “You are the followers of Palut”, an early Bishop.  And Ephraim spends a lot of time telling the Christians of the 4th century NOT to name themselves after anyone but Christ.  Do other patristic writers witness to this sort of thing, I wonder?

Did the Valentinians generally call themselves “Valentinians”, perhaps?  Or the Marcionites “Marcionites”?  What is the data, I wonder?

Of course the heretical groups of this period mainly sought to influence Christians, to persuade them to sacrifice and to take on board pagan teachings of one sort of another.  So perhaps it is possible that they found it useful to claim the Name.  I don’t know.  What we need to see, as always, is evidence.

As ever, we need to be so wary of an unconscious anachronism.

UPDATE: See the comments for a couple of examples.  The most interesting is that in the Life of Persian Syriac saint, Mar Aba.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve commissioned a translation of Ephraim the Syrian’s Hymns against Heresies 22.  I’ve also found somewhere that I can get hold of the text.  I also have a promise of an unpublished translation of the same work; and I have had an interesting email from someone working in the same area who has various translations of parts of the Hymns.  All this is grist to the mill, of course.

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More on Ephraem Syrus’ “Hymni contra haereses”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 56 Hymns against heresies of Ephraim the Syrian are not online in English, and it does not seem that any published English translation exists.  Sidney H. Griffith has published extracts in English.  The work was published by E. Beck in CSCO 169 (text) and 170 (Latin translation) in 1957, but of course none of us can access this.

Yet a German translation of the work appears in the old Bibliothek der Kirchenvater series, so this suggests that an older edition must exist, which might be online somewhere.  I can only suppose that it is buried in some complete edition of Ephraim’s works. Hmm.

The NPNF series includes some works by Ephraim, translated by John Gwynn, and the introduction refers to “the great Roman edition, S. Ephraemi Syri Opera Syriaca (Rome, 1743).”  The old Library of the Fathers series included a volume of Selected works, which includes a “rhythm against the Jews” which does not seem to be elsewhere and might profitably be placed online.

The “Roman edition” is not easy to find, unless you know that Brigham Young University has  a collection of Syriac books.  It is here.

UPDATE: Yes, well, it might be “here” but I can’t persuade the site to work, either in IE8 or in Chrome.  Why can’t I just download a PDF?!

UPDATE2: Looks as if another copy is here, at the Goussen library.    But it looks as if one can’t download whole volumes, which is very frustrating.  Looks as if there are two series, each of three volumes; series 1, the Greek and Latin works; series 2 the Syriac ones.

UPDATE3: Yay! Found one volume at Google books, here.  Wonder which one? Ah, it’s vol.2 of the Greek and Latin series.  Hit the “About this book” link, and somewhere down the bottom I’m getting other volumes (isn’t Google Books useless for multi-volume works?).  Here’s what I get, after much poking around:

OK, well, that’s something … indeed better than something! Now searching using “Sancti Ephraem Syri Opera omnia quae exstant, Graece” … and this gives me different results again, from what look like Spanish libraries.

Phew.  That was hard work.  But there we have it … all the volumes of this series.

Wonder if any of them contain the Hymni contra haereses?  I think that might be a question for tomorrow!

UPDATE4: vol. 1 of the Syriac is Old Testament commentaries.  Vol. 2 of the Syriac (TOC on p.35 of the PDF) continues this, Job-Malachi, and then has 11 “sermons” on various passages of scripture; then 13 on the Lord’s birthday; then 16 “sermones polemici adversus haereses”, on p.437 (p.472 of the PDF).  We have found our text!  Yay!

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Whoopee!!! Pray-o-mat installed at Manchester University, UK! That’ll show ’em, man!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I thought this story must be a spoof.  But apparently it isn’t:

A multi-faith praying machine called the Pray-O-Mat has been installed at the University of Manchester.

The specially converted photo booth offers more than 300 pre-recorded prayers and incantations in 65 different languages via a touch screen.

The free-to-use machine, designed by German artist Oliver Sturm, is part of a three-year project on multi-faith spaces by the university. …

Project leader Ralf Brand, senior architecture lecturer, said: “Though the Pray-o-mat is a bit tongue-in-cheek, there is a serious message to what we’re doing.

“Successful multi-faith spaces do not need to be flashy or expensive.

Other than to the taxpayer, no doubt, who carried these clowns for three years.

I was under the impression that there was a real problem for young scholars in obtaining teaching posts in UK universities.  A young scholar with skills in Syriac and Coptic will still find himself on the dole, unless he emigrates.  Young archaeologists and classicists fight over a handful of opportunities, and the money spent educating the rest is wasted. 

Perhaps Manchester University might consider terminating the contract of Dr Ralf Brand and his merry pranksters, and using the money instead to fund some junior research fellowships in real academic disciplines.  That is, after all, what the education budget is supposed to be used for.

UPDATE: This rubbish cost you and me 452,000 pounds UK, or around $700,000.  It costs around 5,000 GBP — about $7,000 — to translate a 10,000 word ancient text into English.  That’s about the size of a “book” in most ancient texts, and perhaps relates to the size of a papyrus roll.  So for the same money we could have funded the translation of 100 texts which are unknown and inaccessible to everyone. 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Marcionism in Edessa.  The idea that being a Christian in Edessa meant that you were a Marcionite seems to originate (rightly or not) from Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy.  Thankfully Robert Kraft arranged to translate this into English, and — mirabile dictu — to place the translation online.  The Edessa portion is here, and I need to take the time to read it and see what is actually being said, and why.  It’s rather hard to read online tho.

The excellent Andrew Criddle added a comment pointing me to a very useful paper by Sidney Griffith in After Bardaisan.[1]  This contains excerpts of Ephraim the Syrian’s Hymns against Heresies in English, all of them most interesting.  Unfortunately the Google Books preview omits selected pages.  I’d really quite like to read this book — it is infuriating that it is inaccessible.

I have been asking around to see if an English translation of Hymns against Heresies exists.  No luck so far; but a correspondant suggested that Sidney Griffith (again) might have made one.  I have written to him to ask.  If there is no translation of hymns 22 and 23, I might see if I can commission one.

Meanwhile I have resumed work on the proofing of Theodoret’s Commentary on Romans.  I got rather discouraged when I couldn’t export the results from Finereader 11 in any sensible form.  But I have started to go through the second half of this work, italicising the gospel quotations (which is how they appear in the printed version).  It’s a bit slow, but this will go online eventually.

I have also been communicating with a gentleman named Mark Vermes, who made a number of translations of interesting works back in the day, including the ‘Halkin’ Life of Constantine — a Byzantine Saint’s life — and two works by St. Augustine against the Manichaean Secundinianus.  All this material is unpublished (although I have just learned that one of the Augustine works was published somewhere), and he is willing in principle to allow it to appear online.  The next stage is to get hold of copies of these items, and digitise them.

There is no more news on the in-progress translation of the Acts of ps.Linus. 

I’ve been invited to the launch of a book down in London, wine and nibbles.  That has never happened to me before, and probably never will again, so I think that I shall go.  The book is a collection of posts in one of the Times blogs, and I am invited because I wrote a rather sarcastic comment on one of them, which the publishers decided to include. 

Watching the TV one evening I found myself viewing a BBC4 documentary about Pompeii.  I had never known that, among the finds at Pompeii, was a statue from India.  The item was in exactly the style of sculpture we see today — no question as to where it came from!  Doubtless it was one of the items that came across the Indian Ocean on the ships on which Cosmas Indicopleustes was to travel, centuries later.

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  1. [1]Sidney Griffith, The marks of the “true church” according to Ephraem’s ‘Hymns against heresies’, in G. J. Reinink (ed.), After Bardaisan, Orientalia Louvaniensia Analecta, Peeters, 1999, p.125-140↩