Author: Roger Pearse

Eusebius of Emesa, Commentary on Genesis, reviewed at Bryn Mawr

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent writes to tell me about a new publication, the Commentary on Genesis by Eusebius of Emesa.  It’s reviewed by Mark DelCogliano at Bryn Mawr here.

The present volume reassembles the four branches of the tradition, providing new editions of each that are accompanied by annotated French translations on facing pages, in this order: the whole commentary in its ancient Armenian translation, the Greek fragments from the catena and Procopius, and the Syriac fragments from Isho’dad. Thus this volume enables for the first time a comprehensive view of Eusebius’s commentary on Genesis. … It is a model of what an edition of a fragmentary text preserved in multiple languages can and should be.

My own experience with Eusebius’ Gospel Problems and Solutions made this last an interesting comment indeed!

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Why imposters love the church

Posted on by Roger Pearse

An excellent article here.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve had a cold for the last few days, and so I have been lying on the sofa reading a rather low-grade Christian novel.  Nothing much is happening here.

One interesting thing is that I popped into the Premier Christian Radio forums.  Sadly the administrators have allowed them to be hijacked by atheist trolls.  It was bedlam in there.  Until the owners take charge, posting is futile.  It’s telling that unmoderated fora are now, to all intents and purposes, impossible.  That wasn’t so, once upon a time.

Long ago I read a post in a usenet newsgroup describing how a group of trolls could deliberately take over a news group and make it their own.  I wish I had it now; for the techniques, far from becoming marginal, have become mainstream.

I’m looking forward to getting back to scanning Theodoret’s commentary on Romans. It’s going much better than it might have done, in the second half.  Can’t do much today, but maybe on Thursday!

I have an event in Oxford on Saturday, and I was contemplating booking into the Randolph Hotel for two nights, rather than drive up on Saturday morning.  This is the grandest hotel in Oxford, in a great location, and it is where important people always used to stay.  However it’s ridiculously expensive — around 400 GBP –, and I simply don’t propose to throw money away like that.  A look at Tripadvisor reveals that it is about as good a standard as one might expect — swanky public rooms, but poorly maintained bedrooms and bathrooms.  It is the great, traditional, horrible British hotel experience, in other words, avoiding which made Premier Inn into a massively successful business.

All the Oxford town centre hotels are pricey, and indeed I have never stayed in any of them.  Who does, one wonders?  The Oxford Spires wants 300 GBP for two nights. 

The Holiday Inn Express looks better value — 150 GBP for  two nights — but is far away.  Maybe that would do.  But of course then one has to factor in car parking.  Oxford is really a mess, at least as far as visitors are concerned.

Maybe I will just drive up that morning.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been working on OCR’ing Theodoret’s Commentary on Romans, from the 1839 issue of the Christian Remembrancer.  I’m most of the way through this, although no clue as yet to the translator.  Notes are by a certain “E.B.”

A kind correspondent has sent me PDF’s of the rest of the commentary, which appeared in the 1840 issue.  These, unfortunately, were digitised at a very low resolution and do not OCR very well.  I can’t say that I am looking forward to dealing with those very much.

One comment by Theodoret has struck me so far:

For they who live in idle ease, and will not undergo the labours of virtue, cry out even against God Himself, for imposing this commandment.

In our day, that is a very familiar sight, isn’t it?

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At last! An unreasonable copyright claim is rejected!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Via the BBC:

Football match fixture list copyright claim rejected

Football authorities in England and Scotland have had a court claim over football fixtures’ copyright rejected.

European judges said compiling match fixture lists needed “significant” work, but did not entail the creativity required for copyright protection.

Yahoo, bookmaker Stan James and sports information firm Enetpulse had been accused of breaching EU copyright laws.

“A football fixture list cannot be protected by copyright when its compilation is dictated by rules or constraints which leave no room for creative freedom,” said the European judges.

“Since a 1959 UK decision that such lists were protected, the UK professional football leagues, most recently acting through Football Dataco, have obtained many millions of pounds from betting operators and newspapers for the use of the lists,” he said.

Needless to say, those claiming copyright are not taking this lying down, and are trying to get the UK courts to overrule.

The decision is an important one, in that it reaffirms the principle that creative work is protected, not just any type of work.

It will be interesting to see what happens next.

 

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m rather busy with other things, but I’ve done some work on OCR-ing the translation of Theodoret’s commentary on Romans from the Christian Remembrancer of 1839.  The 1840 volume of that serial has still not become available to me, unfortunately, in which the remainder of the translation probably appears.

It’s a wearisome business, in truth.  The energy with which I scanned materials, ten years ago, has departed.  Clearly I shall not be scanning huge amounts of texts in future.  However did I do it, in the past?  I must have been young and foolish.

This dislike is made worse by all the thee’s and thou’s.  The text, unless read carefully and mentally retranslated into modern English as you go, quickly becomes unintelligible.  And I’m not reading it that carefully — I’m correcting OCR errors. 

Oh well.  I’m about half way through the 1839 portions of the text.  I admit that I shall be relieved when I get to the end.

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Ethiopian biblical commentaries — the Amharic “Andemta commentary”

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In Amharic, the main biblical commentary is known as the Andemta commentary.  This is divided into four sections, which cover the Old Testament, the New Testament, Patristic works, and Monastic canons and texts.[1]

The Andemta commentary is an explanation in Amharic of passages in the Ethiopian biblical, patristic and liturgical books, themselves written in Geez.  The commentary does discuss textual variants and emendations, showing that the authors are aware of scribal issues.  The Geez OT is based on the Septuagint, rather than the Hebrew text.[2]

The commentary is little known in the West.  Manuscripts are uncommon.  The late Roger Cowley (d. 1988) worked in Ethiopia for 15 years, and managed to amass copies of the entire collection, which he bequeathed to the British Library.  He encountered great difficulty even in identifying manuscripts.[3]  However the Andemta commentary has now at least been printed for a number of books of the bible; Psalms, the 5 books of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, Ezekiel, the 4 gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul, the Catholic letters, and Revelation.[4]

Cowley does refer to the commentary on Philoxenus (of Mabbug) in the Andemta commentary in his own book on Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, but otherwise I have been unable to find anything on the subject of the patristic commentaries.

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  1. [1]British Library Endangered Archives project 336, here. “This project aims to digitise the andemta (Ge’ez – Amharic commentary) manuscripts of biblical and patristic commentaries made according to the lay bet exegetical tradition. The formerly famous exegetical school of thought known as lay bet has survived only in the much endangered codices which are kept mostly in private and in rare monastic collections in Eastern Gojjam and Southern Gondar regions, Ethiopia. The material includes 70-75 codices which cover the Ge’ez – Amharic commentary of the four sections of Ethiopian Exegesis: Old Testament, New Testament, Patristic Works and Monastic Canons & Writings.”↩
  2. [2]K. Stoffregen-Pedersen, Traditional Ethiopian exegesis of the book of Psalms, 1995, p.5↩
  3. [3]K. Stoffregen-Pedersen, Traditional Ethiopian exegesis of the book of Psalms, 1995, p.2↩
  4. [4]K. Stoffregen-Pedersen, p.3.↩

More on the Ge`ez version of the Coptic-Arabic gospel catena

Posted on by Roger Pearse

It has taken some time since I wrote this initial article, but I am finally in a position to say somewhat more.

The Gospel problems and solutions by Eusebius was used by the compiler of a now lost Greek catena commentary.  This catena was translated into Coptic (De Lagarde published it) and the Coptic into Arabic. 

The Arabic version then seems to have furnished material for a composition in Ethiopian, in Ge`ez, to be specific.

The Geez adaptation of the Coptic-Arabic gospel catena gives the name of the magi’s ancestor as Zaradas, and continues with the information tabulated below [15]: …

15. The text I have primarily used is B.L. Add. 16220, fol. 10b-11a; EMML 2088 fol. 9a-b has only minor differences.[1]

The source for this is the mess that is Roger Cowley’s Ethiopian Biblical Interpretation, where Cambridge University Press declined to do more than reproduce the typescript.  The book is full of great scholarship, but, as here, subjects are raised without any introduction, on the assumption that everyone will know about this Ge`ez text.  In this case Cowley is investigating the sources for a passage in the Amharic “Andemta commentary”, discussing the Magi, and doing so with great intelligence and learning, but, unfortunately, little concern for the reader.

“BL” is of course the British Library; “EMML” is the “Ethiopian Manuscript Microfilm Library (see 7.2 under W. Macomber and Getatchew Haile)”, which doesn’t take us a  huge distance forward.  It is a reasonable inference from Cowley’s careless remarks that these are two manuscripts of this Geez text.

The British Library is a major research library, so of course its website is useless to the researcher and its catalogues must be found elsewhere.  What else do we expect, in return for our taxes?  I found this information on Add. 16220:

The Manuscripts which here follow in the order of numbers, from No. 16,185 to No. 16,258 inclusive, are in the Ethiopic language, and were presented by the Church Missionary Society. They are all fully described in the “Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium, qui in Museo Britannico asservantur. Pars III.” Published in 1847. Folio.

In the 160 years following, it seems, nothing more has been done.  The British Library, lazily, has not even troubled to place these paper catalogues online as PDFs.  Thankfully Google Books has it.  But even then, the volume is not organised by shelfmark, nor is there an index.  Dear me, no.  Fortunately Google again rescued me, and I find the item on p.10-11, as “ms. XI.”

It is a catena on Matthew, on f.9-46, preceded by 8 leaves of paschal tables.  Named as being referenced ubique (everywhere) are: John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Severus of Antioch, Gregory Nazianzen, Basil the Great, Clement of Rome, Athanasius, Benjamin, Epiphanius, Simon Eremita, Litus, Ausonius, Justus. 

Sadly there is no mention of Eusebius.  But I do not trust catalogues on such things, of course.

Ms. XII is also a catena on Matthew, I notice.

I suppose it is futile to wish that this Ethiopic catena — just 37 leaves — was edited and translated?

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  1. [1]R. Cowley, Ethiopian biblical interpretation, p.49.↩

LICOSA.com — more thieving Italians

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I don’t know why Italian booksellers are dishonest.  But I have received precisely two orders for my book from them, and in both cases they did not feel any obligation to actually pay for the book.

Thief of the week is Licosa.com.  Licosa ordered a book from me at the start of November 2011.  I sent it, promptly, together with an invoice.  The invoice went unpaid.

Six weeks later I sent a reminder.  There was no answer from Licosa.

Today I have written again to tell them that I propose to name and shame them.  So here is it: Licosa are dishonest.

German companies are honest.  But I shall not be accepting any further orders from Italian booksellers without cash up front.

UPDATE: My letter demanding payment and threatening a post like this one has produced a reply, that the matter will be handed to someone or other.  Humpf.

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More on Zeno of Verona

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The correspondent who first asked about Zeno of Verona (d. 371-2) has written explaining why he was looking for a translation:

I am presently researching and compiling early church commentary on 1 Tim 2:15-3-1a, and more precisely, trying to ascertain which interpreters ascribed either a typological or illustrative reference of Eve to the church, and/or which interpreters believed that 1 Tim 2:15 was a “faithful saying”.   As you are likely aware, this text has been a difficult one for interpreters.  I had come across a reference to St. Zeno (here) and I wanted to verify his quotation form the original source.

The reference is in A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature by David L. Jeffrey (Eerdmans, 1992), p.252, in the article on Eve, which fortunately appears in the Google Books preview.  The relevant portion reads as follows:

The NTs depiction of the Church as the bride of Christ, together with Paul’s parallel between “the first man Adam” and Christ “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45), led to an explicit association in the writings of the Church Fathers between Eve, mother of the living, and “mother” church, mater ecclesia. Zeno of Verona declared that just as Eve was created from the side of Adam, so the Church was created from the side of Christ, from which flowed blood and water, figuring the martyrdom and baptism wherein the Church actually took its beginning. In this way, says Zeno. “Adam is restored through Christ, and Eve through the church” (PL 11.352). The same idea is expressed by St. Augustine: “Eva de latere dormientis, Ecclesia de latere patientis” (PL 37.1785) — “Eve from the side of the sleeping one, the Church from the side of the suffering one.” This parallel became commonplace in the Middle Ages …

The remark of Zeno is thankfully referenced to the Patrologia Latina, vol. 11, column 352, which is online.  The remark appears at the end of chapter 10 of Book 1, tractatus 13:

… ut legitime Adam per Christum, Eva per Ecclesiam renovarentur.

… so rightly Adam was restored through Christ, Eve through the Church.

The German translation of the whole chapter is here, and the Google translate version of it is here.

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