Charles Sullivan has written a chapter of his forthcoming book in which he goes through all the works of Origen and looks at what is said about the gift of tongues. The chapter is here. It can only be read online, tho, and not downloaded. I’ve skimmed it, as I don’t read stuff online all that well, but it contains some interesting ideas.
Author: Roger Pearse
The Chronicle of Zuqnin (ps.Dionysius of Tell-Mahre)
In the Vatican library there is a manuscript written in Syriac containing a world chronicle in four parts, ending in 775 AD. The shelfmark of the volume is Vatican Syriac manuscript number 162. The manuscript contains 173 leaves or ‘folios’ in manuscript-speak, each with two sides, the front (‘recto’) and the reverse (‘verso’). The manuscript seems to have been written in the early 9th century, if we look at the letter-forms in use.
On folio 66v at the bottom there is a scribal note or colophon. The leaf seems to have been lost and recopied. It reads:
Pray for the wretched Elisha of the monastery of Zuqnin, who copied this leaf, that he might obtain mercy like the robber on the right hand (of Jesus). Amen and amen. 1
Another British Library manuscript (Oriental ms. 5021) mentions a scribe, Elisha of Zuqnin. A colophon dated to 903 says that he lived in Egypt as an anchorite. Presumably he wrote the Vatican ms. while at Zuqnin, and moved to Egypt later.
The manuscript was found in Egypt at the monastery of Deir el-Suryani (Monastery of the Syrians) in the Nitrian desert in Egypt. This monastery acquired a very rich collection of Syriac manuscripts. In 926-932 AD the Archimandrite Moses of Nisibis collected manuscripts from monasteries in Syria and Iraq and transported them to Egypt, forming the basis of the collection.
One of the early Syriac scholars, J. S. Assemani, brought a bunch of Syriac manuscripts to the Vatican library in 1715. One of these was the manuscript of the chronicle. He didn’t get the whole manuscript, tho; a century later Henry Tattam bought nearly all the remaining manuscripts at the monastery and donated them to the British Museum, in 1842. Among the piles of parchment are some leaves missing from Vatican Syr. 162. These are today in the British Library, bound under the shelfmark Additional Ms. 14,665, folios 1-7.
The chronicle used old parchment. Underneath the Syriac text are Greek letters of the 7-8th century, containing excerpts from the Old Testament. 123 folios of the Vatican manuscript and all the London folios are from this old manuscript.
The text has deteriorated since the 18th century. A copy was made by Paulin Martin in 1867, which is in the French National Library (shelfmark Syr. Ms. 284 and 285). The copy contains errors, but is valuable since the original can no longer be read in various passages. Chabot, the editor of the text in the CSCO edition — the only one — was forced to rely on the copy at various points. It would be interesting to see what modern technology could do to improve this edition!
Partial publication of chronicles is the curse of Syriac studies. This chronicle is not immune. There were two partial editions in the 19th century. Fortunately the CSCO text is complete, but only the first half received a Latin translation! The second half was not translated until 1990, when R. Hespel translated it into French.
Earlier, the fourth part was also edited and translated into French by Chabot in 1895.2 This portion (from fol. 121 to the end) is of interest for Islamic history. Parts 3 and 4 were translated into English by Amir Harrak in 1999.
Would that this was online!
1. Incerti auctoris Chronicon Pseudo-Dionysianum vulgo dictum, ed. J.-B. Chabot, CSCO 91 and 104 (S.Syr. 43 and 53), Paris 1927, 1933. Vol. 1, p. 241, note 6.
2. Chronique de Denys de Tell-Mahre; quatrieme partie, publ. et trad. par J.-B. Chabot, Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes: sciences philologiques et historiques 112), Paris, 1895. Online here and here.
3. Amir Harrak, Chronicle of Zuqnin: A.D. 488-775. Mediaeval sources in translation 36. Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1999. A limited edition preview is in Google books here. Harrak also collated the whole CSCO text against the manuscript and gives critical apparatus omitted by Chabot.
James of Edessa, Chronicle now online
I’ve placed online an English translation of the table of years and events in the Chronicle of the Syriac writer James of Edessa. This continues the table in the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea from where that ends, in 325 AD, down to the early Islamic period ca. 700 AD. Naturally it focuses on eastern events, and includes one of the earliest mentions of Mohammed.
The material is here:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm#James_of_Edessa_Chronicle
The original publication of this material was frankly a mess. I’ve written a preface explaining a bit more clearly what we’re looking at. I’ve also uploaded the translator’s preface, and also translated the Latin preface by the same editor to his publication of a Latin translation some years later. In addition I’ve added fragments from Elias of Nisibis scattered across the publications.
All this material is public domain, so please help yourselves, do whatever you like with it, place copies online and so on.
Other free material by the fathers can be found in the same collection:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/index.htm
If you want to support the work of the site, a CDROM is available for $37:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/all_the_fathers_on_cd.htm
Funds from sales are currently going to pay translators to do the homilies on Ezechiel of Origen, the Gospel problems and solutions of Eusebius, and a 13th century catalogue of Arabic Christian literature by Abu’l Barakat which should help us see what patristic material got into that language. None of these have been translated before.
UPDATE: I have also placed a PDF of the ZDMG article online at Archive.org:
http://www.archive.org/details/TheChronologicalCanonOfJamesOfEdessa
From my diary
Driving in the sunshine can be very therapeutic. I spent quite a bit of today doing this. I’ve been wondering how to write a preface to the Chronicle of James of Edessa. The steady beat of tyre on tarmac helped, and I’ve just written the first draft of the preface. The problem is how to present the data in a clear and intelligible way. But I think I’ve got it!
Where misty mountains rise and friendly fires burn
How quickly the past vanishes. A few memories came back to me this evening.
Back in the 1980’s, I bought my first PC. It was a plasticky Amstrad PC1640, with a hard drive on a card. I bought it with a bank loan, and returned it very quickly for the screen was of poor quality and the colours faded in one corner. I remember the feeling of bitter disappointment on the day, and the stress of the loan — perhaps £1,000, a month’s income in those days — and the following day I rang the vendor and asked to return it. He, more aware than I of my legal rights, obfusticated only a little before accepting it. It cost me £50 to return the hard drive, bought elsewhere. I forget what the bank charged me to cancel the loan, but it was a large sum for only a week’s loan, and I never took out a bank loan again. The relief when it was repaid was enormous.
Later I bought a PC with a proper metal box. It had only a monochrome screen, but the lettering on this was actually yellow. Everything about it was real, tho. I bought a modem, again on a card, and used it to dial up a bulletin-board system (BBS). The telephone numbers for these were printed in PC magazines. The high-pitched noise vanished as it connected, and the screeen gradually filled with blocky text and characters from the remote system. It was the most exciting thing I had ever seen; and it was all going on before me on my PC. There was no internet in those days, although usenet existed, if you were at a university and could access it. It was a closed book to me.
Over time I visited quite a number of BBS. I learned to post to the forums, which were syndicated across the Fidonet network that connected them together. I settled on one BBS, which called itself “Rivendell”, and had the motto “Where misty mountains rise, and friendly fires burn”. The motto was added to messages you sent.
There were downloads too. Pictures of asteroids and of earth, from NASA could be downloaded. More dubious images also circulated; and I recall at least one BBS which was, in retrospect, clearly rather dodgy. There was no search engine; most of the downloads were technical.
One element that was less welcome was the telephone bill that arrived at the end of the month. There were no special arrangements in the UK at that date, and it was something like £40, a big sum in those days. After that I was more cautious! Rumours circulated of incredible bills run up by people using BBS’s. In the US, we knew, enviously, that free local calls made BBS’s possible.
The arrival of the internet in the UK was severely hampered by this sort of problem, until some bright soul thought of a solution. He negotiated with British Telecom whereby he could charge a flat fee a month for access (about £18), and get an 0800 number which his subscribers could use. A bulk discount and the fact that most people would surf at the low bandwidth available then for only a few hours a week meant that this could work; and ISP’s rapidly proliferated. Today we all have broadband, but the price remains about the same.
I don’t know what became of the BBS’s. I found that having a computer at home as well as at work was stressful, and in the end, ca. 1990, I disposed of mine with some relief. I never had a computer at home again until I became a freelancer, and even then only bought a laptop that I could place in a drawer, out of sight, out of mind.
Michael the Syrian quotes Theodosius of Edessa on James of Edessa
I’m looking at Michael the Syrian, and in the first volume of the French translation, I find the following:
Note by Theodosius of Edessa. — You should know that Eusebius, in the Chronography he wrote, began with Abraham the Canon of years and continued until the year 20 of Constantine. But James, of the city of Edessa, who transcribed the book from Greek into Syriac, added the dates and coordinated the events not only from Adam to Abraham, but also from Constantine until his time, when there reigned over the Romans, Justinian, and over the Arabs, `Abdallah. He carefully reviewed all the Chronicle, both about the empires which Eusebius ignored, and because of other things that this venerable [Jacques] commemorates. And when he starts to dispose them by year, he ties the year 20 of Constantine to the year 21. — As for us, so that the computation is not disturbed after the Canons of Eusebius we put those that Jacques himself has made.
Like so much of what Michael quotes, the history of Theodosius is not extant.
Comparing the introduction to James, printed by Brooks in the CSCO text, with Michael’s quotes, it is clear that Brooks has more of James’ words than Michael the Syrian does. There are a dozen pages of introduction, all interesting, but probably beyond me to translate at this time.
More Origen and James of Edessa
I’ve now finished skimming through James of Edessa, and straightening it out. I did about half of it in the last couple of days, interestingly. All those evenings in the hotel trying to do a page or two didn’t really achieve a lot.
The first draft of Origen’s 13th Homily on Ezekiel has arrived. With luck I’ll be able to comment and return it this evening.
A knock on the door downstairs tells me that the blasted American custom of “trick or treat” on middle-class estates on Halloween has started. It never happened when I was young; this is purely the effect of the mass media. I don’t have a door-bell, so they won’t be sure I heard. With luck I shan’t suffer any harm.
James of Edessa: update
I’ve just typed the last line of the table of years and events in the Chronicle of James of Edessa, not without relief. Now I need to go back and review it from the top, as I started it so long ago that there will be consistency errors. Ideally I’ll add dates AD to it, and some notes at critical points too.
Olympiads in the 6th century AD
I’m still transcribing the Chronicle of James of Edessa, who wrote in the mid 7th century. He starts with the reign of Constantine, continuing the Chronicle of Eusebius. Naturally he has a new line for each new olympiad, just as Eusebius does.
I’m typing in the table of years. Tiberius II becomes Eastern Roman emperor; and then Maurice ascends the throne. But the chronicle continues to mark the olympiads. Maurice becomes emperor in the second year of the 340th olympiad, according to James. He continues to mark olympiads right down to olympiad 352 — the 20th year of Heraclius. The chronicle then omits them.
There is something both beautiful and sad to see this writer of the 7th century continuing to use the ancient Greek reckoning, centuries after the abolition of the olympic games. These vanished, presumably as part of the anti-pagan legislation of Theodosius I, before 394 AD.
How the human mind holds on to things gone past! How we seek to ensure continuity, especially in troublesome times, and build whatever framework we can against the chaos and the ruin that must in the end engulf all our endeavours, and indeed ourselves. A man must be very comfortable and very complacent indeed not to feel the tug of antiquity and tradition, and to treat it as nothing! James, at least, was not such a man. Nisi dominus frustra.
Updates on Origen, and Stephanos of Alexandria
I’ve received a revised version of Origen’s 12th homily on Ezekiel, and paid for it, and apparently homily 13 is in an advanced state. So very good news here. I need to review it and comment, which I will do in a day or so.
Meanwhile my alchemical friends have transcribed the unpublished English translation of the 4th lecture by the 7th century philosopher Stephanos of Alexandria. They did a nice job. I’ve sent a copy of it to the editor of Ambix; and also invited someone who tells me he knows Greek and is interested in alchemy to revise it. Let’s see if he can!
I did a couple more pages of James of Edessa’s Chronicle today as well!