Author: Roger Pearse

Palimpsest ms image of Severus of Antioch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Over at Juan Garces blog, there are a couple of images of a page from a Syriac treatise by Severus of Antioch, Contra impium grammaticum, (=Against the impious John the Grammarian).  The treatise was composed in the early 6th century, and the argument forms part of the political arguments taking place in the Byzantine empire in the guise of religious disagreements.

The image is very nice, and shows a clear and readable Serto hand.  What is particularly interesting is that the parchment was itself second-hand when the ms. was written.  The previous text had been washed off, but not very well, and it is clearly visible in the areas not written over.  The text was a Greek bible in uncial.  Juan also shows a UV image which brings up the under-text very clearly.  The manuscript itself is one of those acquired in the 1840’s from the abbey of Deir el-Suryani (=monastery of the Syrians) in the Nitrian desert in Egypt.

I don’t know whether this work by Severus has ever been translated into English.  It would certainly be nice to have the whole ms. online, tho.

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Devreesse, Eusebius and the catenas on Luke

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve already posted a translation of what Devreesse said about material by Eusebius of Caesarea in catenas on Matthew, Mark and John.  Here’s what he said about material on Luke.

Eusebius. — Cardinal Mai has given us several editions of the fragments of Eusebius contained in the catenas on St. Luke.  The first attempt is found in Script. vol. 1, 1, p. 107-178, based on Ms. Vatican gr. 1933 and the Nicetas in Vatican gr. 759 (in the second edition of the first volume of Scriptores, Rome, 1825-1831, p. 143-160, ms. Vatican gr. 1611 was used as well as 759).

For a new edition, the cardinal made use of Vatican gr. 1611 (A), Vatican Palatinus gr. 20 (B), of Macarius Chrysocephalus (E), of Vatican gr. 1642 (H), and Vatican Ottoboni gr. 100 (L).  The texts thus collected appeared in Nov. Patr. Bibl. vol. 4, p. 159-207, Rome, 1847, and were reproduced in the Patrologia Graeca vol. 24, col. 529-606.  Again it is from the catena of Nicetas that the important pieces of the gospel questions of Eusebius (Letters To Marinus and To Stephanus) gathered in P.G. vol. 22 col. 952-965 were taken.

But were all the pieces taken from Vat. gr. 1933 really by Eusebius?  It could be that some really belong to other authors, Mai having often printed under the name of Eusebius paragraphes which really derived from someone else.  On the other hand it must be noted that the citations from Vat. gr. 1933, when compared with Nicetas, often have the appearance of summaries.  Are we dealing with a commentary on Luke?  It does not seem so; some pieces bear an indication of their origin: ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἰστορίας, εὐαγγελικῆς θεοφανείας, περὶ τοῦ πάσχα.  Cf. Sickenberger, Titus von Bostra, p. 86-87. 

Let us note again that Eusebius is named six times in the catena of pseudo Peter of Laodicea which is at the end of ms. Vindobonensis gr. 117 (Rauer, Der dem Petrus von Laodicea zugeschriebene Lukaskommentar, Munster, 1920, p. 39).

I hope to add Devreesse’s introductory remarks to all the catenas on Luke later.

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An Irenaeus at Lulu

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A group of post-graduate theology students wrote to me as follow:

I wonder if you might put in a good word for our new publication, in a single volume, of the complete English text of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies.

The text is freshly re-typeset, but retains the complete translation from the Ante-Nicene Fathers series, modified only to remove some of the controversialist footnotes and elucidations inserted by the american Bishop Coxe.

The book is available at http://www.lulu.com/content/2169582  (softcover) and http://www.lulu.com/content/8416937  (hardcover).

We would appreciate a mention on your site, both for our own exposure to a greater market and to the greater utility of your readers. We created this book to provide for a need among students of the Fathers, and we hope that we will be successful.

Many books cannot sensibly be read online.  Naturally I wish them success in this venture.

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Greek mss at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been hunting around to see which Greek manuscripts at the British Library it might be interesting to get digitised.  It is remarkably difficult to find out.

The BL catalogue is online; but it is largely useless because there is no way to restrict results to Greek mss only.  So a search for Chrysostom — every collection must have these — is pointless, because most of the results will be Latin manuscripts of translations.  This is really quite frustrating.  So far I have managed to find only a handful of mss which I might put forward.

One possible source of information would be Henri Omont, ‘Notes sur les manuscrits grecs du British Museum’, Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 45 (1884), 314-50, 584 (p. 335).  This is online here.  Maybe this will list some interesting volumes, if it ever downloads!

UPDATE: Indeed it does.  After a survey of the main collections, it lists the interesting previous owners and what they owned.  I need to digest this down into a list of suggestions.

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Never mind the New Testament – digital mss at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

All the NT people are getting excited about Juan Garces’ plan to digitise 250 manuscripts at the British Library.  But of course the rest of us have views too!  I have written today to Dr Garces asking for some classical manuscripts to be done as well.

Some time ago I went through the introductions of a large number of Loeb editions in order to get an overview of what mss of what existed where.  Since the list of mss in a Loeb is always limited, anything mentioned is probably important.

Here’s what I found that was held by the BL — 9 manuscripts in all:

  • Letters of Alciphron — British Library Harleianus 5566.  Paper. ff.141r-167v.
  • Apollodorus — British Library Harleian 5732.  (16th c).
  • Babrius, Fables — British Library, Additional 22087 (codex Athous).  Contains fables 1-122.  Corrections in the margins and above the lines by Demetrius Triclinus. 10th c.
  • Herodotus – British Library 1109 (Greek papyri in the British Museum III p.57 = Milne, Catalogue of the literary papyri in the British Museum no. 102) 1/2nd century
  • Homer, Iliad, — British Library Burney 86, 11th c.
  • Isaeus — British Library, Burneianus 95 (=codex Crippsianus).  This is a vellum manuscript containing Andocides, Isaeus, Deinarchus, Antiphon, Lycurgus, Gorgias, Alcidamas, Lesbonax and Herodes.  This was first discovered in the library of the monastery of Vatopedi on Mt. Athos.  It was then acquired by the Phanariot Greek Prince, Alexander Bano Hantzerli of Constantinople.  John Marten Cripps bought it from him at the start of the 19th century.  It then passed into the collection of Dr. Charles Burney, and thence with the rest of that collection by purchase into the British Museum in 1827.  It also has two corrector’s hands.  The first is the original scribe correcting his work against the exemplar, with the occasional conjecture.  The second may or may not involve the use of a different ms.  13th c.
  •  Isaeus — British Library, Burney 96. 15th c.
  • Thucydides — British Library 11727. Parchment  11th c.
This taken from my notes about the traditions here:
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Digitised mss at the British Library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

From Evangelical Textual Criticism I learn that the excellent Juan Garcés is revolutionising things at the British Library.   He’s leading a project to digitise 250 Greek manuscripts and place them online so scholars can consult the things.  He has obtained funding from the Stavros Niarchos foundation.

He’s also created the Digitised Manuscripts blog to report on progress.

It seems that the British Library described the project in their “Annual Reports and Accounts 2008/2009”:

Digitisation of Greek manuscripts

We are very grateful to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation for making it possible for us to undertake a project to digitise 250 of our Greek manuscripts to make them fully accessible to researchers around the world through the internet. We will also create catalogue records for each item and create a website that will enable researchers to search using key words and interactive technology that will allow them to upload notes and collaborate with other researchers virtually. We aim to launch the website in summer 2010. We are continuing to fundraise to enable us to add the remaining Greek manuscripts and papyri to the site in the longer term.

Let us hope that they understand that we will all want downloadable PDF’s.

It might be interesting to think what mss we would like scanned.  I know that New Testament people will be lobbying; but classics and patristics mss would be nice.  I realise that I don’t actually know what Greek mss at the BL I would like to see.

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Classical Text Editor – useful?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was wondering about how to turn the .doc files for the Eusebius and Origen books into something printable, with properly kerned text, etc.  An email suggested that I might like to look at the Classical Text Editor.  So I pulled down the demo and had a play.

Unfortunately all you are presented with on start-up is a blank screen.  This is not very helpful.  I tried importing a word document, and it did import.  But it wasn’t at all clear what the benefit was, once I had done so.  Possibly the output to print is better — but in the demo version this is disfigured every inch with a logo indicating that this is an unregistered copy, so I couldn’t be sure.

In short, I found it baffling.  The help suggested using templates; but none seemed to be supplied as default.  Like most people I edit in Word.  What does this tool give me?

Probably it is a good tool.  But without a guide, it’s useless.  I would imagine that most people using this have been shown how to use it by someone else.  That must limit the take-up.  I couldn’t find anything useful online.

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Theodore of Mopsuestia on Genesis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My attention has been drawn (as the libel lawyers say), by this discussion, to the remains of the commentary on Genesis by Theodore of Mopsuestia.  These are not extensive, but are interesting.

Migne prints a bunch from the catena of Nicephorus in vol. 66, cols. 633-646.  These are in Latin, not Greek, so I presume are from a publication of the catena which only consisted of an early modern Latin translation.

A bunch of fragments were also found in Syriac, and printed in Sachau, Theodori Mopsuesteni Fragmenta Syriaca (1869).  Finally some more were printed in French, according to Quasten (I don’t have the details here).

The upshot is that most of what Theodore wrote on Genesis 1-3 is actually extant, if collected.  It doesn’t sound like a great volume of data.  Probably $500 would translate the lot.

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Origen problem

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation of Origen’s Homilies on Ezechiel is going very well, and we are deep into fragments from catenas.  These tend to make sense only if you have the biblical (=septuagint) quotation before you.  The NETS text and translation is the modern standard, but of course is heavily copyrighted by Oxford University Press.  I’ve been meaning to approach them for permission to use this, little as I like the idea. 

But I have at this very instant had a horrible, horrible thought. I don’t think I can use NETS.  Indeed I cannot use anything copyright on the English side at all, or only for portions appearing only in book form.

The end objective is to make the translation freely available online.  I will never be able to do that if portions are copyright someone else!

Oh bother. I’ve literally thought of just now, so I haven’t a solution to hand.  What to do?  Any suggestions would be welcome. Maybe the answer is simply to translate the biblical passages ourselves in all cases.

Isn’t copyright a bother!!!

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Eusebius update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve signed a contract with Les Editions du Cerf to use their Greek text for the Eusebius book.  Today I wrote to them asking where I can actually get the Greek text they print in electronic form.  I’m devoutly hoping that the answer is not “retype it”!

Portions of Cramer’s catena are getting typed up, and the friend who is doing this is also picking up some strangeness.  Various Greek words have more than one accent, for instance.

Meanwhile I have commissioned fresh translations of the two Syriac bits in Severus of Antioch and Ishodad of Merv, for inclusion in the “Syriac fragments” section.  I’ve also been in contact with the Coptic translator, although this grinds forward very slowly.  I think I’ve given up on the idea of using the Arabic version of the Coptic — it would take forever to get this coordinated with the Coptic.   I have not been able to find any information about Armenian gospel catenas, although I am positive they exist, so this will also be omitted.

I’m starting to think again about the process of turning the Word documents into print-ready text.  It seems that desktop publishing packages such as Adobe InDesign and QuarkXpress can kern the text.  But I would much rather have someone else work this over, rather than me do it! 

It will be good to get the Eusebius done.  The main remaining steps are to finish the manuscript.  I need to assemble the Greek and Latin text (and probably the Syriac and Coptic too), which is begun, and then to write indexes and odd bits of text.  Once this is done I can send it to the Cerf (a condition of their permission) and start to get it typeset.

There is a question in my mind about the Syriac.  Would there be merit in printing the Roman letters under the Serto letters?  Perhaps in smaller type, interleaved between the lines, and right-to-left?  A lot of people know Hebrew, but can’t read Syriac letters.  If the text appeared in this manner,  a lot of them could work with the Syriac.  I’ve never seen this done, but I don’t see why not.

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