I am cursing WordPress very much indeed. I’ve just translated three pages of a French article, and written some comments of my own, pressed “publish”, and it then demanded I log in — to my own blog — again and discarded most of it. That’s an hour of my life gone. It’s almost beyond bearing.
Author: Roger Pearse
Stick with your work
Some wise words from the Trevin Wax blog today:
Stick with your work.
Do not flinch because the lion roars.
Do not stop to stone the devil’s dogs.
Do not fool away your time chasing the devil’s rabbits.Do your work.
Let liars lie.
Let sectarians quarrel.
Let critics malign.
Let enemies accuse.
Let the devil do his worst.But see to it nothing hinders you from fulfilling with joy the work God has given you.
He has not commanded you to be admired or esteemed.
He has never bidden you defend your character.
He has not set you at work to contradict falsehood (about yourself)
which Satan’s or God’s servants may start to peddle,
or to track down every rumor that threatens your reputation.
If you do these things, you will do nothing else.
You will be at work for yourself and not for the Lord.Keep at your work.
Let your aim be as steady as a star.
You may be assaulted, wronged, insulted, slandered,
wounded and rejected, misunderstood, or assigned impure motives;
You may be abused by foes, forsaken by friends,
and despised and rejected of men.
But see to it with steadfast determination,
with unfaltering zeal,
that you pursue the great purpose of your life and object of your being
until at last you can say, “I have finished the work which Thou gavest me to do.”– Anonymous
Of course on this blog we wonder who wrote it and where it comes from…
There’s an excellent article by Seth Barnes on Responding to unfair criticism; it appears in a comment to this. A Google Books search reveals nothing before 1998. It would be interesting to know the source.
The Letter of Pilate to Tiberius
One item that floats around the web is the Letter of Pilate to Tiberius. It appeared in English translation in the Ante-Nicene Fathers vol. 8 (here), and from there to all sorts of other places. Another translation appears online in The Lost Books of the Bible, 1926[1]
Here is the ANF translation:
The Letter of Pontius Pilate
Which He Wrote to the Roman Emperor, Concerning Our Lord Jesus Christ.Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar the emperor, greeting.
Upon Jesus Christ, whose case I had dearly set forth to thee in my last, at length by the will of the people a bitter punishment has been inflicted, myself being in a sort unwilling and rather afraid. A man, by Hercules, so pious and strict, no age has ever had nor will have. But wonderful were the efforts of the people themselves, and the unanimity of all the scribes and chief men and elders, to crucify this ambassador of truth, notwithstanding that their own prophets, and after our manner the sibyls, warned them against it: and supernatural signs appeared while he was hanging, and, in the opinion of philosophers, threatened destruction to the whole world. His disciples are flourishing, in their work and the regulation of their lives not belying their master; yea, in his name most beneficent. Had I not been afraid of the rising of a sedition among the people, who were just on the point of breaking out, perhaps this man would still have been alive to us; although, urged more by fidelity to thy dignity than induced by my own wishes, I did not according to my strength resist that innocent blood free from the whole charge brought against it, but unjustly, through the malignity of men, should be sold and suffer, yet, as the Scriptures signify, to their own destruction. Farewell, 28th March.
So what is this item? The ANF introductory notice is very unhelpful. New Testament Apocrypha[2] does not mention it at all. Nor does a Google Books search produce much.
Fortunately I have on my shelves a copy of J. K. Elliot’s The Apocryphal New Testament[3] and this has a section on the apocryphal Pilate literature. Our item appears on p.206-8.
The work is written in renaissance Latin, probably in the 16th century.[4] The letter cannot be traced any earlier than the renaissance,[5]. It was composed in Latin[6].
Tischendorf printed the Latin text,[7] based on four witnesses, which he obtained from earlier publications:
-
Chas. — the text printed by Chassanaeus in part 4 of his catalogi gloriae mundi, 1571.
-
Flor. — the text printed by Florentinius in Martyrolog. vet. Hieronymi, p.113 (and reprinted by Fabricius).
-
Bodl. — the text printed by Abrah. Gronovius in the preface to his edition of the works of Tacitus in 1721, from an ms. or mss. of the works of Tacitus from the Bodleian library in Oxford.
-
Ven. — the text which Tischendorf himself obtained from a manuscript in Venice, Marcianus class. X. num. CXXXIV. The ms. is 16th century.
The text had previously been edited by Fabricius[8], Thilo[9], and Giles[10].
Note that the Letters of Pilate and Herod exist in a Syriac version of the 6-7th century,[11], followed by that of Walker in the ANF in 1870.[13] Another translation appeared in 1915 from A. Westcott.[14]
A Google search reveals an “epistola Pilati” is contained in the British Library ms. Cotton Titus D. xix, on f.88-89, but this is probably the epistola Pilati ad Claudium.[15]
There is also a Letter of Tiberius to Pilate, in Greek.[16] This also is a late production, not earlier than the 11th century. This takes an unfavourable view of Pilate and alludes to a journey by Mary Magdalene to Rome to accuse Pilate.[17]
- [1]Copied from the Cowper translation of 1867. The introductory words may be found on Cowper, p.389, here.↩
- [2]W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 2 vols, Eng. tr. 1991.↩
- [3]J. K. Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament, Clarendon 1993.↩
- [4]Z. Izydorczyk, The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus, Arizona, 1997, p.8, gives the following description: “Epistola Pilati ad Tiberium: Pilate reveals that he sentenced Christ partly through his own weakness but partly through his loyalty to the emperor. This letter, which again presents Pilate in a positive light, was written in Renaissance Latin, probably in the sixteenth century.” and “Geerard, Clavis no. 68; Starowieyski, Apokryfy, 476″. Online here.↩
- [5]Elliot, p.206.↩
- [6]Elliot, p.207↩
- [7]Tischendorf, Evangelia Apocrypha, Leipzig, (2nd) 1876, p.lxxvi-lxxviii, p. 433-4. Online here.↩
- [8]J. A. Fabricius, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, 4 vols, Hamburg, 2nd ed., 1719. p.300-1.↩
- [9]J. C. Thilo, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamentum, vol. i, Leipzig, 1832, p.801-2↩
- [10]J. A. Giles, Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti: The uncanonical Gospels and other Writings, London, 1852, vol. ii, p.14; so J.K.Elliot, but in the online copy of that work, I found that the reference did not seem to be correct.↩
- [12]↩
- [11]Texts and Studies, 5, p.xlviii.[/ref] but the Letter of Pilate to Tiberius is not one of these.
The first English translation was made in 1867 by B.H.Cowper[12]B.H.Cowper, The Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents relating to the History of Christ, Edinburgh, 1867, p.398-9. Cowper tells us, p.xx, that he is translating Tischendorff. There is no introduction to the “Epistle of Pontius Pilate” in Cowper.↩
- [13]A. Walker, Apocryphal Gospels, Acts and Revelations, Ante-Nicene Christian Library vol. 16, Edinburgh, 1870. The Ante-Nicene Fathers series is a rearranged and pirated US edition of the Edinburgh series.↩
- [14]A. Westcott, The Gospel of Nicodemus and Kindred Documents, London, 1915, p.119-20. I was unable to access this, but possibly US readers may be able to do so, in which case I should be glad of a copy.↩
- [15]A catalogue online here, where the work follows the Gospel of Nicodemus. Compiled by Nigel Ramsay, who gives a bibliography including, “The Gospel of Nicodemus. Gesta Salvatoris, ed. H.C. Kim (Toronto, 1973), chapter xxviii. [Epistola Pilati.]”↩
- [16]Epistola Tiberii ad Pilatum. Edited in Texts and Studies, second series, vol. 5, 1893. Introduction on p.xlix-l; Greek text on p.77-82.↩
- [17]See this post on this letter.↩
Advertising Standards Authority threatens the Cranmer blog
The Advertising Standards Authority, a minor government body which exists to stop dodgy businessmen running dishonest adverts, has started to engage in some curious activity lately. For instance it recently told a Christian group that it couldn’t mention God’s healing powers on its website (why?). Of course there must be some specific person — an atheist, perhaps? — responsible. I wonder just who the evil-doer is?
Today I learn via the eChurch blog that the ASA has decided to threaten the Cranmer blog, on the grounds that an advert that appeared on his site supporting marriage is “homophobic”.
Oh, and they demanded that he keep quiet about the threats. Being a brave man, he rightly told them to go to hell. Bullies love silence!
I do hope that this is raised in Parliament. The ASA clearly needs reform, once it starts behaving like the Gestapo. For there can be no free speech, when this kind of thing is going on.
Read the post in which Cranmer — well done! — blows the gaff on this. The tone of the communication from the ASA is sickening.
Apparently there have been a number of complaints about one of the advertisements His Grace carried on behalf of the Coalition for Marriage. He has been sent all manner of official papers, formal documentation and threatening notices which demand answers to sundry questions by a certain deadline. He is instructed by the ‘Investigations Executive’ of this inquisition to keep all this confidential.
Since His Grace does not dwell in Iran, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany, but occupies a place in the cyber-ether suspended somewhere between purgatory and paradise, he is minded to ignore that request. Who do these people think they are?
In the US and Canada, it is a recognised form of attack on someone to denounce them for their opinions to some officious “human rights” body, which will then solemnly harass them for months or years for daring to say something inoffensive. In real courts people are considered innocent until found guilty; in the kangaroo courts like the ASA, they are guilty until they can prove that they are innocent of Wrong Thinking. And so, we see, Cranmer is required to “justify” what he wrote.
In this process, it matters not whether the victim is found guilty — because “the process is the punishment”, as Ezra Levant — himself attacked in this way — put it. Few will dare to volunteer for months or years of harassment, merely for expressing an opinion.
It reminds me of the bad old days in the reign of Charles II, when Samuel Pepys was kept hanging on and hanging on under arrest, by his political enemies, who simply kept deferring the hearing (at which, in the end, he was found not guilty of being inclined to Roman Catholic opinions — the ridiculous charge made against him).
So … who was it that denounced this UK blogger to the authorities? Well, we’re not told. Anonymous accusations … the lovely fruit of the hater and the bigot.
The ‘Issue’ here is that 24 anonymous complainants, ‘including the Jewish Gay & Lesbian Group’ (doubtless disclosed to give weight to the allegations), challenged whether the claim ‘70% of people say keep marriage as it is’. However, His Grace is not required to respond to that point, since he did not conduct the research. But it transpires that 10 of these 24 complainants objected that the ads were ‘offensive’ and ‘homophobic’, and he is requested to respond to these allegations ‘under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 4.1 (Harm and offence)’.
And so the punishment begins.
From my diary
I’ve been trying to get into a mass of material about chapter titles that Matthieu Cassin has kindly sent me. I hope to blog about some of this over the next few days. In particular he has located scholarly material which tries to develop some criteria for the authenticity of these things. This certainly sounds very interesting to me!
But blogging will be light for a bit, for a daft reason. You see, for the last few weeks I’ve been working out of a hotel. The hotel has an air-conditioning system which has the kind habit of generating noise at regular intervals, thereby waking me up every four hours during the night. Somehow it manages to do this, even when turned off by the room switch.
It’s remarkably difficult, after a while, to concentrate on anything, under the effect of that treatment. This weekend, indeed, I was almost drunk with tiredness. Why is it, I wonder, that it is nearly impossible to get a good night’s sleep in any hotel with which I am familiar? In an type of establishment that exists for no other purpose than to supply sleeping chambers for rent?
So of course I have not got very far with the material in Latin and German.
The hotel have promised me that tonight the problem will not recur. So … cross your fingers for me!
And let’s laugh at the absurdity … for this, friends, is the stuff of life; the things that we spend our lives on, while planning to do something else!
I saw this evening that Mark Goodacre was commenting on the curse that email has become to many scholars. I’m luckier than most, in that I tend to get a reply eventually. But I too get a fair amount of email myself; but then I try to handle each email only once, and reply as soon as I read it. I do not envy him, tho.
But some emails are blessed. One email this evening cheered me more than I can say. It showed that God had heard some prayers of mine, made every Monday for many years, and answered them fully. Very cheered by this.
Gregory of Nyssa on chapter titles
In his work De hominis opificio (On the making of man), in the praefatio, Gregory alludes explicitly to a list of chapter titles for the work:
…and for clearness’ sake I think it well to set forth to you the discourse by chapters, that you may be able briefly to know the force of the several arguments of the whole work.[1]
The Greek text of Migne does not print any chapter titles, but the English translators embedded them following this sentence.
The word rendered “chapters” is, of course, kephalaia. Here at least we see that Gregory is familiar with the idea of a work which may be summarised in this way.
- [1]PG 44, col. 128B. English translation from the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series, which then inserts a translation of the chapter headings which do not appear at this position in the Greek text of Migne.↩
Ancient texts with “indices”
A little while ago a kind correspondent sent me a partial list of ancient works where the manuscripts contain “indices”, or “tables of contents” of the chapters or subjects covered in the book or books.
I had meant to go and investigate each of these, but my work life is eating all my time at the moment. However the list is well worth publishing as it is (i.e. before I mislay it!):
Pline l’Ancien, Naturalis Historia livre I. C’est l’exemple le plus célèbre. L’auteur est évidemment Pline.
Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia, édition Briscoe, 2 vols., Teubner Stuttgart et Leipzig, 1998. Je ne sais pas si la récente édition de la Loeb contient les indices. Les éditions plus anciennes ne comportent pas les indices.
Hygin, Fabulae (ed. Schmidt sur Google)
Jérôme, De Viris Inlustribus et Gennadius, De Viris Inlustribus (ed. Richardson et Gebhardt, Texte und untersuchungen 14, 1896). Sur Google.
Florus, Epitomae Libri II, ed. Rossbach, Teubner 1896 (sur Google), ou édition de la collection Loeb.
Cassius Dio, Histoire Romaine, édition Boissevain, tomes 1-3 (sur Archiv.org). Les indices sont conservés pour les livres 37-59 et 80 (à vérifier dans le détail). Ils sont aussi dans l’édition de la Loeb.
Eusèbe de Césarée, Histoire ecclésiastique
Eusèbe de Césarée, Vie de Constantin
John of Nikiu, traduction anglaise Charles, 1916 (site Roger Pearse)
Fréchulf (orthographe très variable) de Lisieux, Historiae (début du 9e siècle), édition Allen, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis CLXIX et CLXIX A, Brepols 2002. N’est évidemment pas sur Internet. L’édition de la Patrologie de Migne (PL 106) ne contient pas les indices. Le meilleur manuscrit, de Saint-Gall, contemporain de l’auteur, contient les indices et se trouve sur Internet. Les indices sont sûrement de l’auteur.
Orose, Adversus paganos. Les éditions de Zangemeister, CSEL 1882 et Teubner 1889 (toutes les deux sur Archiv.org) donnent des indices différents.
Cassiodore, Variae, édition Mommsen, Monumenta Germaniae Historica
Cassiodore, Institutiones, édition Sir Roger Mynors
Cassiodore, Historia ecclesiastica, édition Hanslik 1952. Absente sur Internet …
Isidore de Séville, Etymologiae, ed. Lindsay, Oxford, OCT 1911 (2 volumes). A consulter par exemple sur le site de la « Bibliotheca Augustana ».
Grégoire de Tours, Historia Francorum (Monumenta Germaniae Historica)
Frédégaire, Chronique (Monumenta Germaniae Historica). Plusieurs indices.
I hope to investigate each of these, bit by bit.
“How long is in living memory”, part 2
A little while ago I asked, “How far back is ‘living memory'”? I got some interesting answers, but, far more interesting, Tom Schmidt was inspired to dig out some family memories of his own. His post here deserves to be read by us all. It includes mention of memories of both C. S. Lewis, and the US Civil War.
C. S. Lewis died in 1963. That’s almost 60 years ago. Yet it does not seem very long ago, and meeting people who met Lewis is far from improbable. We have a wealth of information about him.
Yet 60 years after the death and resurrection of Jesus in AD 30 is AD 90. I think that most of us would feel that by AD 90 the number of living witnesses might be getting thin. But quite probably we are wrong to think so, simply by analogy with C.S.Lewis.
Not liking the desert fathers
Someone tried to be kind to me a couple of weeks ago. They sent me, anonymously, a copy of “The desert fathers: sayings of the early Christian monks”[1]. I have to say that I can guess who sent it; and that was supposing from my interest in patristics that I might be amenable to something of the kind.
What is the book? Well, it’s a very decent modern translation of the Vitae Patrum volume 5, from the Patrologia Latina vol. 73, cols.851-1024.[2] The same translator has also translated volume 1[3] and been involved with a translation of volume 2[4]
The introduction is interesting — I learned from it, for instance, that the Lausiac History by Palladius is volume 8 of the same work, and is so called because it was dedicated to a certain Lausus the Chamberlain, an imperial official.[5] A useful note on the text tells us that the sayings were copied, extracted, attributed to different people and places, and so on, and translated from one language to another, compiled, excerpted and so on. All this is normal for sayings literature such as gnomologia (“wisdom sayings”).
But there is a price to pay for this form of transmission. A saying must be striking to survive the process. It must appeal to those who will preserve it, or it will not be transmitted. It will be rephrased to adjust to different tastes, it will be attributed to different people, often to famous people. A certain kind of joke in modern English always becomes associated with Winston Churchill; another sort with Oscar Wilde; but the attribution is made casually in order to make the saying more striking, not as the product of some form of careful research!
What this note on the text does not say, then — and surely it should? — is that we cannot know for certain who actually composed any particular saying, and whether it reflects the views of the monks at all. Many of these may be the product instead of what we might call the “fan base” — people who were not monks, lived in ordinary society, and simply admired what they believed a monk was.
Much of the material consists of sayings that suggest an attempt at humanising some ridiculously ascetic aspirations. These, possibly, are indeed by the monks, faced with a torrent of people under the craziest misapprehensions as to what to expect; and awaiting massive disappointment and even psychological or physical injury in consequence.
I’m afraid that I did not find wisdom in these pages. It is, perhaps, best to dip into such a book rather than try to read it. But I’m afraid it irritated me. Possibly having a book wished on me had that effect; but also the fact that one couldn’t know whether the things were anything but fan-fiction annoyed me.
These sayings of the fathers did not strike me as holy, or inspired. I’m sorry, but there it is.
Asceticism, as the translator rightly notes, is not particularly a Christian thing. It’s something that human beings are drawn to, often as a reaction to a morally corrupt society. It does not have spiritual value per se. A busy mother bringing up a brood of brattish children will learn more about mortification than any of these.
But Jesus was not an ascetic, and neither were the apostles. I don’t see the point.
Automated microfilm readers to convert microfilms to digital form?
In Oracle Magazine this month, there is an interesting article about a genealogical firm who are systematically converting microfilmed records into digital format.
At one archival site, FamilySearch has been storing images of historic documents on microfilm since the 1930s and has amassed 3.5 million rolls of film containing 4 billion records.
“Microfilm is a very stable medium, but it is not very accessible,” says Randy Stokes, group architect for engineering services, storage infrastructure, at FamilySearch. “We knew that if we wanted to make it easier for people to do research and find their ancestors, we would have to put this information into digital form.”
It’s a huge job. Approximately 25 automated scanners are used to scan the microfilm to digital images. Additionally, new photographic images are continually coming in from 185 digital cameras in the field. These operations yield terabytes of new image data each day. The original lossless images are saved as JPEG 2000 images for long-term storage … One copy is written to an in-house preservation system and another to an offsite archival location.
…“Between the scanners and the cameras, we amass 10 to 12 terabytes of new image data each day.”
Manuscript images also exist in microfilm in great quantities. I don’t know which brand of machines are used here — a Google search reveals several types — but clearly it is both practical and effective.