Author: Roger Pearse

Gifts at Christmas, “strenae” on 1st January

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Catholic Encyclopedia tells us that the Romans gave gifts on 1st January (the Kalends of January), called strenae. 

Pagan customs centering round the January calends gravitated to Christmas. Tiele (Yule and Christmas, London, 1899) has collected many interesting examples. The strenae (étrennes) of the Roman 1 January (bitterly condemned by Tertullian, de Idol., xiv and x, and by Maximus of Turin, Hom. ciii, de Kal. gentil., in P.L., LVII, 492, etc.) survive as Christmas presents, cards, boxes.

Tertullian says:

By us, to whom Sabbaths are strange, and the new moons and festivals formerly beloved by God, the Saturnalia and New-year’s and Midwinter’s festivals and Matronalia are frequented — presents come and go — New-year’s gifts (strenae) — games join their noise-banquets join their din! (ch. 14) … New-year’s gifts likewise must be caught at, and the Septimontium kept (ch. 10).

A google search reveals that “Tiele” is Tille, and on Google books here.  I will have to read this, as it seems copiously referenced.  Not sure whether the text is quite sensible, but it does contain interesting snippets.

But I can see at once, on p.84 n.3, a reference to Plautus, Stichus, iii. 2, 6; v. 2. 24; Ovid, Fasti, i. 187; Martial, viii.33, xiii.37; Seneca, Letters, 87.  There are two unreferenced claims; that money took the place of New Year’s gifts under Augustus, and that the custom persisted to the time of Honorius and Arcadius.

There is a reference to the Kalends and the celebration of Janus in the Acts of the Council of Turin in 567 AD. (p.87 n.1), which calls him a king, not a god.  In the capitula of Martin of Braga, chapter 73, we read:

Non liceat iniquas observationes agere Kalendarum, et otiis vacare gentilibus, neque lauro aut viridate arborum cingere domos.

Hanging up green boughs seems to be the custom.  It would be interesting to know more about this.

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Further letters of Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In his cell outside the Egyptian city of Pelusium, ca. 430 AD, Isidore of Pelusium is still writing spiritual advice to us all. 

Some are doing well.  But it can be risky to be proud of success in overcoming temptation:

1225 (V.10) TO SYMMACHUS

In the civil wars, even if the conquerors are more unfortunate than the conquered — indeed they have more to blush about, precisely because they did whatever was done more than the others did — they will in any case oppose each other with the idea of a reconciliation in mind. But in us, where the warfare is more relentless than in the civil war — because it takes place inside a single being — it takes place without the idea of a reconciliation in mind. On the contrary, one sees he who has done more of it than his adversary glorify himself for it, whereas he should blush! Because punishment is reserved for the author of the drama, rather than for those who are simply its victims.

Others haven’t quite grasped why they need to renounce what they imagine to be the “innocent pleasures” of contemporary society:

1226 (V.11) TO MARTINIANUS, ZOSIMUS, MARON, EUSTATHIUS

My dear chaps, flee from vice: it is capable of making its devotees mad and foolish. Pursue virtue: it is capable of rendering those who stick to it wise, and of maintaining in them a good disposition. Because there is often gentleness and serenity in their eyes, this shows that in them a spirit full of wisdom has entered everywhere.

The legislation of Constantine made it financially profitable to become a priest and thereby avoid the ever-increasing taxes that finally destroyed the late Roman economy.  A century later, the theological standard of the ordinary priests could be low.  Some didn’t even understand that Jesus was God.  Gently Isidore addresses this:

1227 (IV. 166) TO ARCHIBIUS THE PRIEST

You were saying that you did not understand the expression “In him all the fullness of the divinity dwells, corporeally“; myself, I think that this expression is put for substantially. Because this is not an operation of the divinity produced by the substance who governed this immaculate temple, but a substance with innumerable operations: it was not a fraction of a gift, but the source of all good. It is, he means, He himself who reigns with the Father, who reigns in heaven and governs the earth, who was made man and, with the weapons of a combatant, took up position in the line of battle, at the same time organizing the world, ensuring victory to mankind, putting to rout the demon kidnappers, throwing down their chief who was swollen with pride, and filling the Church with innumerable gifts. This is a king, he says, who has been a general, not a general who could have been spared the title of king; this is the king who in the shape of a slave hid his own dignity in the battle, not a simple soldier who assumed the title of king. He was a king when he legislated, not a simple soldier starting to legislate: because the expression “I say to you” is that of a king; “I do want, be purified!” is that of a sovereign; “May it be for you as you wish” comes from someone with absolute power; “Be silent, silence” is that of a lord; and all the expressions of this kind which I don’t want to enumerate in full so as not to lengthen my letter.

But if you are shocked by the Passion, an audacious temptation against God which reached only his flesh, listen to the choir of the apostles: “But, he says, as Christ suffered in his flesh.” If thus He who had received in His hands the keys of Heaven has shown that the flesh suffered in a real sense — it alone was accessible to suffering because the divine is impassive — if even, because they had put the heir to death, the Jews suffered more than in any tragedy, don’t let yourself be disturbed by the Passion, but let it lead you to make full thanksgivings, because the king, the impassive one, who could not accept the shadow of a change, has delivered his own flesh, and appearing many times as a weak man, thought up a stratagem to surprise the evil one, and having produced brilliant trophies of victory, has risen up to Heaven, and returned to the dwelling of his nature.

But if, as some say, he was simply a man, lacking in divine grace, why then did the Jews, when they killed a great number of the saints, not undergo the same fate in turn, while, because of Him, no tragedy can bear comparison with their sufferings? Well, it is obvious that the first were only saints, while Him, he was the only-begotten God who had condescended to be made man. They did not have same dignity when they went to the torment: they were servants. He, he was the Master; this is what involved the Jews in relentless punishment. “Here the heir,” they say. The vine growers threw themselves on the heir to kill him, and not on a servant like themselves, on the real son of the Master, and not on one of themselves which had been raised to the dignity of son. How indeed was the Son was sent after the servants, He should be respected? How was it that he was called the second man come from the sky? How did God come here, if he cooperated with man? How did He abase himself, when He was the equal of God? How did God send his Son with a flesh similar to that of the sinners? Or how is there not scorn for the Sacred mysteries, when they claim to be the body and the blood of a man? How did he say: “You have provided me with a body”? How must He also have something to offer to him? How, by His own blood did he release the prisoners? How did they crucify the Lord of glory? How was the Word made flesh? How did the Father, having spoken on several occasions and in many ways in the prophets, then speak in His Son? Or again, how did the Son share much the same living conditions (as ourselves)? Well, rather than overpower your attention by an exhaustive enumeration, I will say just one thing which summarizes them all: to pronounce humble words while being God, this is to carry out effectively the economy of salvation, and that causes no damage to His immaculate substance; on the other hand, to pronounce divine and supernatural words, when one is just a man, is the height of presumption. Because, while a king can allow himself to be ordinary in his remarks and his thought, for a soldier or a General, to speak like a king is prohibited. If thus he were God, as precisely he was, by being made man there is a place for the humble things; while if he were only a man, there is no place for that which is above.

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UK museums get the web: it’s snowball time!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Eight UK museums have got together to set up a website to put their collections online and get members of the public to contribute their own photos and information, and use the data to compile their own albums of data.  It’s called Creative Spaces. At the moment it’s in beta.

Andie at Egyptology News tells us it’s a project of…

… The Royal Armouries, The V&A, The Imperial War Museum, British Museum, Tate, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Sir John Soane’s Museum and The Wallace Collection.

The site allows you to search all the collections at once, tag and store items in notebooks and groups, and upload your own images, videos and notes to share creative inspiration with others – effectively creating your own collection from some of the world’s greatest museum collections.

This is a nonprofit, public sector project, and it’s the first time that national museums have collaborated in this way.

This is precisely the sort of thing to do: make the stuff accessible.

Everyone will gain, no-one loses. These tax-funded collections become more accessible to the world.  They get more visitors, as people realise what they hold and want to get a better photo or examine the original.  Thus the collection users start to add value.  Other sites start to link to the data. The wins just go on and on, like a snowball gathering weight and momentum as it rolls downhill.  Brilliant!

I see that you can order higher-resolution photos of V&A stuff.  I looked at this medal of Constantine, and couldn’t make out the lettering, which was a bit disappointing.  I then tried “papyri” which led me to this page from a 7th century Coptic codex of a life of Shenouda.  Only one side, tho.  But this is clearly a very good idea.

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A little too much jargon, Yared

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A conference notice tells us that this paper will be given:

Deacon Andualem Dagmawi, University of St. Michael’s College:
The Reception of St. Ephrem’s Apophaticism in the Hymnography of St. Yared the Ethiopian 

Erm, you what?  Who?

I know who Ephrem the Syrian is — 4th century very important Syriac writer, big on hymns and poems, who wrote one against Julian the Apostate. 

But I have no idea what “apophaticism” might be.  I have never heard of St. Yared the Ethiopian.  If I don’t — and I consume patrologies as light reading — I can’t imagine who does.

 

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News snippet: Wiley overcharging for theology journals?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are angry faces at a lot of small theological libraries across the world today.  American publisher Wiley bought a load of academic theological journals recently, and have jacked up the prices by as much as 100% or more.  Worse yet, they bundled the increase with a compulsory electronic subscription which — in stupid countries — is an item heavily taxed.  If the library only has electricity for a few hours, as third-world countries do, they can’t use it anyway.

I’ve today seen an angry letter written by a bunch of people to the VP of marketing.  The basic complaint is that Wiley have applied commercial pricing of the kind paid by huge US pharmaceuticals, that it will prevent the libraries taking the journals and probably destroy the journals as well.

The letter is a gem, which sheds a hideous light on the industry that battens off our tax dollars.  Why precisely do we need Wiley anyway?  What do they do, that we can’t do ourselves with printing at lulu and a bit of effort?

UPDATE (20/3): It looks as if Wiley have got the message.  More news when I have it.

UPDATE (19/3): I’ve asked for specific details, which should come out in a day or so.  “I do know that the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is one of the journals in question, and has gone from around £30 a year to something like £144…”

UPDATE: (19/3) Here’s the letter.

Subject:   Pricing of Wiley’s theological journals
From:   “Alan Linfield” <…>
Date:   Thu, March 19, 2009 12:06 pm
To:   ABTAPL…

All of us have been suffering widespread consternation at the number of steep rises in journal subscriptions which have recently hit us.  This consternation is not just affecting us in ABTAPL; some of you who are members of the BETH discussion list will have seen postings on the subject there, and it was also evident at the Forum of Asian Theological Libraries convention in Singapore, showing that this is a grave issue affecting theological libraries across the world.

Those of us in Singapore representing the various associations present at the conference have therefore agreed and jointly signed a robustly-worded protest, which has just been been emailed to Ms Reed Elfenbein, who as VP for Marketing at Wiley’s global HQ in the USA is the highest placed marketing executive in the company.  This protest is reproduced below…

From: Alan Linfield
Date: 19 March 2009 11:47:56 GMT
To: relfenb…
Subject: Wiley’s theological journals

Dear Ms Elfenbein

This is being addressed to you by representatives of four associations which together represent a large number of libraries in the UK, continental Europe, India, SE Asia and Australasia specialising in theology. We have taken the opportunity to confer together and send this joint communication while we have all been attending a convention of the Forum of Asian Theological Libraries, which took place last week in Singapore.

Our specific reason for contacting you personally is to make it known at the highest possible level within your company our intense anger at the pricing of a number of major theological journals whose publication you have recently taken over. In many cases the new subscriptions our members are being charged has increased by over 100% – indeed in some cases by considerably more. We have to tell you as emphatically as we can that these price rises are completely unacceptable, and in very many cases will now put these key journals beyond the reach of many of our members, (who of course collectively constitute the natural and most obvious market for them).

Given Wiley’s historical association and track record with science and technology publishing, it appears to us that you have simply applied the same basic business model to theology journals as you have done with scientific journals, assuming that similar business dynamics will apply. This however shows a complete lack of research and an utter failure to appreciate the nature of the market for theological journals. In the majority of cases these are bought not by well-funded university libraries and the scientific research establishments bankrolled by big business that your company is more accustomed to dealing with, and which are well able to afford these kind of prices. Rather, they are typically bought by small, private theological seminary libraries, largely funded by small endowments and private donations, and whose total library budget is probably a good deal less than your annual salary; indeed many of them are in the majority 2/3 world, and their typical annual budget is probably a good deal less than your PA’s annual salary. These journals are, as you must be aware, highly important and strategic resources for our member libraries; by putting them out of reach of the great majority by these huge price increases you will risk not only losing a great many customers, but you will also be putting the future of the journals themselves in jeopardy, as there will now be a very real danger that you will end up with too few subscribers to make the journals viable.

It was also disappointing to note that you have also followed the tired old ploy of trying to give a semblance of justification for these price rises by bundling in an electronic subscription. An electronic subscription to the International Bulletin of Missionary Research is of little use to the small seminary library in Myanmar which only has an electricity supply at night; or to another in Indonesia which has only very unreliable dial-up internet access. You seem to assume that all the libraries which take theological journals are of the high-tech variety, whereas the opposite is more typical, demonstrating again your crass failure to research the market properly. Moreover, electronic subscriptions also attract sales taxes in many countries, thus driving the price up even more. It is particularly distressing that two of the journals which have suffered the highest rise in subscription price are those formerly published by the World Council of Churches, which historically has always had a bias to supporting the mission of the Christian church in majority-world contexts by making their journals affordable there, something which is now being completely undermined by your brutal business policies, which appear to us to be nothing more than rank profiteering.

We therefore call upon you as a matter of urgency to rethink your subscription rates for these theological journals, and in doing so also carry out proper market research in order to identify subscription levels your clients can realistically sustain;  We also call upon you to reinstate a print-only subscription option for the many (and often disadvantaged) libraries that for one reason or another are unable to make use of an electronic one, so that they do not have to pay for anything more than they actually need.

In order to demonstrate the worldwide depth of feeling which exists on this issue, we are also asking all the individual libraries of our associations that have been affected by these inordinate subscription increases to contact you as well, so that you can learn in more detail their exact circumstances and the effect your misguided policies are having on them. We are confident you will soon realise that we have not been exaggerating.

We shall also be distributing press releases, with copies of this communication, to appropriate publishing and librarianship journals.

Yours sincerely

Alan M Linfield
Chair, Association of British Theological and Philosophical Libraries
(ABTAPL)

Rosemary Watts
Western Australian Chapter Chair of Australian and New Zealand Theological Library Association (ANZTLA)

Elizabeth Pulanco
Chair, Forum of Asian Theological Libraries (ForATL)

Odile Dupont
President, Biblioteques Theologiques Europeen (BETH)

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Patristics and inerrancy

Posted on by Roger Pearse

For some time I have been wondering how the early Christians discuss issues like inerrancy.  The obvious thing to do is to collect statements from the first 3-4 centuries of Christian writing, and see what sort of attitude to scripture these have.  Indeed it is so obvious that surely someone has already done this?  Suggestions would be welcome!

From general reading I know that Tertullian in De praescriptione haereticorum 8 advises Christians not to argue with unbelievers using the bible.   But, living at the end of the second century as he did, he had a special reason.  At that period unbelievers routinely forged gospels and other texts, supposedly by apostles.  The canon existed, but only in a basic form.  Thus it was too easy for the malevolent to simply toss believers into a whirlpool of crooked arguments.  Tertullian recommends following something easier to argue with, the united testimony of the churches that can prove their apostolic origin.  His argument is pragmatic, and the Fathers tended to follow him.

Modern Christians have a specific issue in mind.  Do we treat the Bible as an infallible authority on matters of history and science, or consider that those elements are incidental?  (Some feel that the Old Testament and New can be treated differently on this issue). 

All Christians believe that it is an infallible authority on matters of Christian teaching.   Indeed it is mildly amusing to hear some people attack “inerrantists” for refusing to “accept that scripture is fallible on matters of science”, when we then find that they don’t actually believe that it is infallible in any other respect, and their argument is not with some small group but with every part of Christendom, from Jesus and the apostles down to myself!

But perhaps the real reason why we don’t find any specific comment in the early Christians is that this particular issue wasn’t one that they had to answer.  This happens in other areas also, and invariably means that they make comments which tend to one side or the other, without being definitive.  The question simply isn’t present to their minds, which makes them useless as a source of information on the specific question.

Maybe so.  I’d like to see the evidence before I decide on this. 

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What about “Google manuscript”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just download manuscripts as PDF’s, rather than go through the gruesome and expensive process of obtaining whatever rubbish the libraries feel like selling us? 

Last week I wrote to Google suggesting that they do a project to make medieval manuscripts accessible.  We all know how difficult archives make it for us to access texts in this form!  Today I got a reply:

Hello Roger,

Thanks for your email and interest in Google Book Search.

I appreciate you taking the time to offer us this feedback about including ancient and medieval texts. I have passed along your email to the other members of my team. As this is still a young program, new ideas are under consideration and your feedback is very helpful. Please continue to share your suggestions with us.

Sincerely,

Tom
The Google Book Search Team

Interesting to know that Google DO reply.  If you’d like to see Google take an interest in getting text-only manuscripts online, why not tell them so?

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Syriac words in the Koran

Posted on by Roger Pearse

To what extent does the Koran contain Syriac words?  I’ve been reading a review of Christoph Luxenberg’s book about the Koran  by Martin F. J. Baasten in Aramaic Studies 2.2 (2004), pp. 268-272 (here), and finding it rather excellent.  It has been claimed — he cautiously states — that 80% of all loan-words in the Koran are from Syriac. 

Luxenberg has asked whether some passages in the Koran, which are difficult to understand, make more sense if you strip off the vowel-markings, thereby discarding the standard understanding of the text, and imagine that they contain Syriac loan words.

During the first century of the Arabic period, texts were written without all the marks above and below the line which indicate vowels, and indeed distinguish some consonants.  As Baasten rightly remarks, Arabic is a seriously defective script in this respect; worse than Syriac, where only two letters can be so affected.  Only seven Arabic letters — the rasm — are unique without some dotting.

Apparently some passages really do make much more sense if you do this.  Baasten gives a single example.

The implications of this for the transmission of the Koran are considerable.  If this can be proven, then it means that the Koran did not initially circulate orally, but passed through an early stage in written form, without vowel markings.  Only such a stage can account this symptom.

This would not be unreasonable.  There is no real reason to suppose that early followers of Mohammed memorised the new document, which was dribbling out chapter by chapter anyway.  It is likely that writing was used.  Thus we have the situation where early Korans differed, and a recension had to be created by the early Caliph Othman.  This situation also indicates that a good many people did NOT know the Koran orally, and relied on a written form of the text.

It seems that Luxenberg has overstated his thesis, however, and derived far more than this from Syriac sources, and much more tendentiously.  This is unfortunate, as it tends to undermine the credibility of his work.  But thus far, it would seem likely that he has indeed discovered something solid. 

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Christian literature in Middle Persian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Now here’s a thought:

The century again witnessed several periods of open warfare between the two empires, but by this time the Sasanian authorities no longer felt any serious need to doubt the loyalty of their Christian subjects. It is significant that the synod of 576 instructed that prayers for Khosroes I always be included in the liturgy. Worth mentioning too in this context is the fact that the sixth century also saw the growth of a Christian literature in Middle Persian (whose existence is only known indirectly today). — Sebastian Brock, The church of the East in the Sasanian Empire up to the sixth century, in Fire from Heaven (1988)p.77)

I don’t know a sausage about Middle Persian literature.  Indeed my only knowledge of it is of a introductory treatise on Aristotle by Paul the Persian, which Severus Sebokht translated into Syriac. 

I wonder if any of this literature exists today?  Sadly Brock gave no footnote.

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Two snippets

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The $400 PDF-microfilm of the unpublished 13th century Arabic Christian historian al-Makin was rubbish and unreadable.  I complained and was ignored.  I complained again two days ago, and threatened to involve VISA.  Today I got a note asking me to return the CD for checking, which makes no mention of the first note.  Clearly persistence is necessary in dealing with the BNF.   I always feel rather helpless, confronted by a massive bureaucracy.  I’ll let you know how I get on.

On a different note, I wonder just how many unknown medieval manuscripts of the bible there are?  I came across a press release by Norfolk Record Office (NRO), about an exhibition of manuscripts belonging to a now deceased collector, one Denys Spittle:

The oldest book in the exhibition is a copy of the four Gospels, probably from Constantinople that dates from the 10th century.

 This sounds like a job for CSNTM!  So I wrote to the NRO, asking if the ms. has an Aland number, etc.  No-one seems to know, and NRO won’t give me the contact details of the owners.  The Denys Spittle Trust isn’t in the Charities Commission database, nor at Companies House.  Still, if they’re willing to lend the manuscript for an exhibition like this, they ought to be willing to allow the experts at CSNTM to catalogue it properly and record it.  I’ve forwarded the details I have to them.

But of course this naturally leads you to wonder just what else exists in private hands?

I’ve been feeling rather unwell for the last few days, after an unsuccessful dental root treatment, so don’t expect much substantive from me this week.

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