Author: Roger Pearse

Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies (GRBS) goes open access

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Editors of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies (GRBS) [ISSN 0017-3916] have issued the following announcement:

Volume 49 (2009) will be the last volume of GRBS printed on paper. Beginning with volume 50, issues will be published quarterly on-line on the GRBS website, on terms of free access. We undertake this transformation in the hope of affording our authors a wider readership; out of concern for the financial state of our libraries; and in the belief that the dissemination of knowledge should be free.

The current process of submission and peer-review of papers will continue unchanged. The on-line format will be identical with our pages as now printed, and so articles will continue to be cited by volume, year, and page numbers.

Our hope is that both authors and readers will judge this new medium to be to their advantage, and that such open access will be of benefit to continuing scholarship on Greece.

– The editors

The editors are to be congratulated for grasping the nettle.  But they are doing the right thing, and in the emphasis on wider access and scholarly quality are taking precisely the right approach. 

For the world is changing, and older methods of knowledge dissemination must change too.  Today I received an email from the French National Library, inviting me to take part in a survey and stating that they were rethinking all their services for the supply of reproductions.  Here too, we can hear the wind of change.

As the poet wrote (read the words aloud, as with all verse):

Say not the struggle naught availeth,
The labour and the wounds are vain,
The enemy faints not, nor faileth,
And as things have been they remain.

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars;
It may be, in yon smoke conceal’d,
Your comrades chase e’en now the fliers,
And, but for you, possess the field.

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,
Seem here no painful inch to gain,
Far back, through creeks and inlets making,
Comes silent, flooding in the main.

And not by eastern windows only,
When daylight comes, comes in the light;
In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly!
But westward, look, the land is bright!

— “Say Not The Struggle Naught Availeth” by Arthur Hugh Clough

Thanks to C.E. Jones at Ancient World Online for the tip.

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Unicode Greek font and vowel length

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I didn’t realise that doing Ancient Greek on computers was still a problem, but I found out otherwise today.  We all remember a myriad of incompatible fonts, and partial support for obscure characters; and like most people I imagined that Unicode had taken our problems away.  Hah!

Unicode character 0304 is the “combining macron”.  What that means, to you and I, is the horizontal line above a long vowel.  Character 0306 is the “combining breve” – the little bow above a short vowel.  The “combining” bit means that if you stick one after an “A” in a wordprocessor, the display will stick it above the preceding letter.  Both symbols are required to display dictionary material correctly, of course.  Poetry needs this stuff.

Today I find that neither character is supported in quite a range of fonts.  Palatino Linotype, found on every PC, doesn’t support either.  Ms Arial Unicode supports both, but of course most people don’t have it (or has that changed?).  The links I give above give you lists of supporting fonts, mostly conspicuous for not being present on most PC’s.

This is a bit silly.  Come on, chaps, I thought this was sorted out years ago.

I wonder if I can remember where I met a Microsoft font chap, and suggest to him that Palatino be extended to include these?

An interesting list of fonts tested by the TLG people is here.

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Patristics Carnival 24

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Phil Snider’s digest of patristic posts in the last month is now online here.  Many thanks, Phil, for alerting us all to what’s going on.

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More progress on translating Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first 5 chapters of homily 1 are now translated and in my hands, together with catena fragments, and the first 2 chapters are pretty much finished.  I’ve paid the translator for the latter, which is nice as well; it feels like we’re underway.

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Still thinking of Lebanon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’d like to go to Baalbek, and see the temple of the sun.  Indeed I’d like to visit Syria.  But these days I tend to insist on 5* hotels!

Some weeks ago I saw Voyages Jules Verne’s Restoration Story tour.  Seven days, including three in Beirut, including a trip to Palmyra and Baalbek.  It sounds wonderful.

But of course the political situation is a factor.  I have no desire to get involved in Near-East politics!  The Lebanese election this week returned a vaguely sensible government; but I think I will wait a little and see whether it calms things down before booking.

I’m in the process of dumping my existing credit card provider; when the new one comes through, I’ll look at this again.

Postscript: or maybe not.  Their September departure won’t accept any single travellers.  Oh well.

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Israelis visiting Petra

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This article cheered me up today.  It relates how Jordan and Israel are working together to facilitate tourism to Petra.  Israeli tour guides take parties to the border, and hand them over to Jordanian guides who take them to Petra for the day.

It’s pleasant to see animosity giving way to a chance to make money together.  And the Jordanians are quite right!  All these Israelis have money, and are willing to hand it over to the Jordanians in exchange for tickets to Petra, maps, souvenirs, cans of Pepsi, bus-travel, guide services, hotels…  the list goes on and on.  A lot of Jordanians will get rich.  Most Jordanians will become better off. 

Tourism is such a big business that only really, really stupid countries don’t get in on it.  Arnold Swarzengger appears on UK television, promoting tourism to California, because it’s serious money.  Even the most hideous despot — and Jordan is not run by one! — recognises that coaches full of foreign tourists bearing dollars is A Good Thing, and a very profitable form of farming.  Egypt runs Luxor these days pretty much as a tourist farm; and quite rightly too.

Someone in Jordan has had a very clever idea.  Good for them.

(Thanks to Paleojudaica for the tip).

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Islamic Manuscripts conference, Cambridge

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This via BYZANS-L:

…registration is now open for The Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference, Cambridge 24-26 July 2009.

http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/Conferences.html

The Islamic Manuscript Association is pleased to announce that the Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference will be held at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, UK from 24-26 July 2009. It will be hosted by the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation and the Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge. We invite you to register online at http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/ConferenceRegistrationForm1.html<http://exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/ConferenceRegistrationForm1.html>

In 2009, the Conference will specifically address the issue of access to manuscripts. Improving access to manuscripts through digitisation and electronic ordering and delivery systems whilst ensuring their proper long-term preservation is fundamental to the successful future study of the Islamic heritage. Presently, technologies are available that have the potential to transform the way manuscripts are studied; however, the access these technologies can allow is counterbalanced by collection holders’ concerns regarding their legal rights and the financial sustainability of their organisations. During the Fifth Islamic Manuscript Conference these vital issues will be discussed by our invited speakers and selected paper presenters.

As in previous years, the Conference will be organised around the Association’s four main interest groups: cataloguing, conservation, digitisation, and publishing and research. The first day will also feature two special panels, a ‘Collections’ panel introducing less well-known collections from Africa, the Balkans, and Turkey, and a panel devoted to the conference theme of Access featuring invited experts who will discuss how such issues as security in libraries and online, financial considerations, and the understanding of international copyright law inform users’ experience of accessing materials for research.

Posters advertising the conference can be found at
http://www.islamicmanuscript.org/conferences/Posters.html The full schedule will also be available online shortly. We look forward to welcoming you to Cambridge in July.

A bit depressing, this one.  They’ve grasped that digitisation is necessary, but are still seeing the images mainly as a revenue stream!  I’ve written to the conference contact, expressing my concern.  They ought to be trying to get the things on the web, freely accessible to all.  They ought to be encouraging people to look at them, to read them, to comment on them and translate them.  Instead they’re trying to find ways to keep them off the web, out of circulation (vain hope) and charge while doing so.  Eating the seed corn of Islamic studies, in other words.

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UK: police threaten preacher with arrest for saying homosexuality is a sin (even though he didn’t mention it)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This, with video, from the Cranmer politics blog:

From The Christian Institute, it transpires that police officers told an open-air preacher in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, that it is a criminal offence to identify homosexuality as a sin. They said this to Andy Robertson, even though he had not mentioned anything to do with homosexuality in his preaching.

Also here and here. 

Only in oppressive societies do the police threaten Christian preachers with arrest for preaching. 

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Origen on Ezekiel – thinking about bible versions

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Four chapters of the immense sixteen-chapter first sermon on Ezekiel by Origen have now been translated, with copious footnotes; and I have the first draft here.  The translator has also discovered that Migne prints fragments of the original Greek preserved in the catenas, and is using these as a control.  It’s going to be very good.

One issue with any patristic work is whether to use an existing English bible translation for the biblical quotations, in order to avoid unnecessary unfamiliarity.  At the moment we’re using the RSV, except where Origen departs from the normal text.  We’re also trying to preserve a balance between undue literalness in translation and undue freedom.

But it occurs to me that non-academic readers might like a freer rendition, which is slightly less faithful to the word-by-word approach, and somewhat easier to read and understand.  If so, one might use a different bible version for the quotes.

Which one would one use?  Perhaps if a version of the Homilies was made, directed at a popular Catholic audience, we’d use… well, whatever version most Catholic use.  I don’t know what that is.

On the other hand any book aimed at US Christians in general would have to use the NIV, I would have thought.  I suppose one would need to get permission from someone to do so.

Is there any real reason not to target all three audiences; an academic version, a Catholic popular version, and a Christian popular version?

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Pricing John the Lydian, De Mensibus

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I got hold of the 1898 text of John the Lydian and did some calculations.  There seem to be about 7 words per line, about 26 lines per page, and 177 pages of text.  That comes out at 32,214 words, which is probably a fair-ish estimate of how long the text is.

If I were to pay someone 10 cents a word to translate it, that would be $3,222.  I don’t have any such sum to spare, so I won’t do so.  But it’s interesting.  To a corporation such sums are almost petty cash. 

Ah, if I were a rich man…!

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