Author: Roger Pearse

Eusebius project progress

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Regular readers will know that a year ago I commissioned David Miller to translate all that now exists of Eusebius of Caesarea’s Quaestiones Evangelicae ad Stephanum et Marinum.  This consists of an epitome of the work, plus a large number of fragments from catenae and the like. 

The subject of the work is differences between the gospels, at the start and at the end, and how they should be resolved:  Why are the genealogies in Matthew and Luke different?  Why is there more than one ending in Mark?  As may be imagined, this makes it an interesting book indeed!

I’ve not been posting updates, because every week there has been a new chunk translated.  But we’ve now reached the end of the text.  The last few fragments of Greek and Latin reached me today in English translation.   The quality has been improving all the time, and the notes are extremely interesting.

The next stage will be to revise the whole and make sure that formatting is consistent, etc.  This will probably take place in a month or two, to allow the translator a bit of distance from the process of actual sentence-by-sentence translation and to see the text as a whole.

The Syriac and Coptic have made only limited progress, and I fear that I will have to go with what has been done and ignore the rest.  This is unfortunate, of course.

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The curse of too much reading

Posted on by Roger Pearse

JPS points us to a post by Kevin Edgcomb:

I curse my studies. Sometimes, anyway. What good is it to be following a Bible reading plan for the faithful when half of what is going on during my reading is (Lord, have mercy!) a critique of the translation, a mental retroversion to the Hebrew and/or Greek involved, mental notes on historical illumination and literary parallels, and all manner of distractions. The wonder is often gone. I hate that.

The same experience can afflict the classicist, who can no longer sail with Telemachus in a black ship across the wine-dark sea to see fair-haired Menelaus, for all the scholarly footnotes that howl in his head. 

Is there much practical difference between this and being unable any longer to read the book in question?  Is a textual scholar — let us say one with perfect command of Homeric Greek, who has memorised the scholia and knows every volume of important scholarship published in the last millennium — perhaps the least able, of all men, to read the Odyssey any more?

Kevin rightly observes the problems in bible reading for those with too much head knowledge.  It has been many years since the ordinary off-the-shelf bible-reading guides have been of much service to me.  They are aimed at some common average, of sympathies and intellect and attitude; and perhaps few of those inclined to study, even as amateurs, will fall into that group.

I say this with regret, not pride.  I am the loser, not the gainer thereby.  I have not gained in knowledge of God; I have merely become unable to learn from some who know more than me on every important point, except in matters of manuscript studies.

How easy it is for the less perceptive to suppose that they have “risen above” this sort of guide, when in truth they have merely become  unable to read it and profit from it, for all intents and purposes.

What shall it profit a man, if he knows every footnote in Nestle-Aland, and loses his soul?  In my time of dying, which may be very much sooner than I suppose, how much of that to which I have devoted my life will seem other than dry and dusty shreds of paper?

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No Zenobius in English?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I never cease to be astonished at the quantity of ancient Greek literature that does not exist in English.  A few days ago I was looking into the testimonia for the tomb of Alexander.  Andrew Chugg has the following on his site:

“Ptolemy Philopator built [in 215 BC] in the middle of the city of Alexandria a memorial building, which is now called the Sema, and he laid there all his forefathers together with his mother, and also Alexander the Macedonian.”
Zenobius, 2nd century AD (Zenobius Proverbia III.94)

A scanty Wikipedia article tells me that Zenobius was a 2nd century collector of proverbs.  Yet I can find no trace of a translation. 

 

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Project to translate all of Galen into English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I learn from this job advert in CLASSICS-L that things are afoot in the world of Galen studies.  The Wellcome Trust – after the big pharmaceutical company, Glaxo-Wellcome (now GSK) has funded some posts to edit and translate Galen.  The idea is to translate all of Galen into English! The project is under Philip van der Eijk (personal page) at Newcastle University, and John Wilkins of Exeter is also involved.

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Hunain ibn Ishaq, on the works of Galen

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was musing a little while ago about a small work by Hunain ibn Ishaq, the most important of the translators of the classics into Arabic in the 10th century.  The work was published by G. Bergstrasser with a German translation.  It lists the works of the ancient Medical writer Galen known to him, together with details of where he found manuscripts and how he went about translation. 

I was thinking that we do could with this text online.  Indeed this weekend I ordered a copy of Bergstrasser by ILL, with the thought of commissioning a translation.

Later that day I heard from Dr. John C. Lamoreaux, of the Department of Religious Studies at Southern Methodist University.  It turns out that he is in the process of producing an edition with English translation, for academic publication!  This is excellent news, and should blow the field wide open.  After all, people with knowledge of Greek rarely know Arabic.

Of course this book won’t be online because of the usual problem; that academics who want to retain their jobs must publish research, and must do so via prestigious academic publishers.  These in turn would understandably like to actually sell at least a few of the miserably short print runs — they hardly make money anyway.  But the upshot is that this research remains offline, whatever the wishes of author and publisher.

However Dr. L. has very kindly slipped me a draft copy of the book, and with his permission I hope to review it here. 

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Tebtunis temple library

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This blog reports a publication (offline – these papyrologists really don’t get it, do they?) of some narrative texts from the temple in ancient Tebtunis in Egypt.  Look at the contents!

The book presents ten narrative texts written in the demotic script and preserved in papyri from the Tebtunis temple library (1st/2nd century AD).

Eight of the texts are historical narratives which focus on the first millennium BC. Four concern prince Inaros, who rebelled against the Assyrian domination of Egypt in the 7th century, and his clan. One is about Inaros himself, while the other three take place after his death. Two other narratives mention Necho I and II of the Saite Period. The story about Necho II is particularly noteworthy, since it refers to the king as Nechepsos and for the first time provides us with the identity behind this name. Nechepsos is well attested as a sage king in Greek literary tradition, above all in relation to astrology. Of the two final historical narratives, one belongs to the cycle of stories about the Heliopolitan priesthood and the other concerns the Persian occupation of Egypt in the 5th or 4th century. The volume further includes a prophecy that forms the continuation of Nectanebo’s Dream, known from the Greek translation by Apollonios, and a new version of the mythological Contendings of Horus and Seth. Apart from a translation of the prophecy, none of the papyri have previously been published.

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How to do history

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Campus Mawrtius highlights this concise but clear passage from Thomas Corsten’s BMCR review of the Choix d’écrits of Louis Robert (2007):

In sum, this book–like each individual publication by Robert–shows clearly the method every epigraphist or, rather, every historian should follow, i.e., to start from the evidence (not from theories), that is from all available sorts of evidence, in this case inscriptions, coins and literature, and from there to move to drawing conclusions. … Robert’s Choix d’écrits as well as everything he has written should be compulsory reading for every student and scholar of antiquity–and especially for the many in our times who are busy destroying the foundation on which all serious research is based: the study of ancient documents.

 It is extraordinary to me that any other method could even be contemplated.

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The tomb of Alexander the Great

Posted on by Roger Pearse

You know how it is.  You’re slumped in front of the TV, and you turn it on and there’s something about Egypt.  In my case it was Secrets of Egypt: Alexander’s Tomb. 

Like everyone else, I knew that Alexander’s tomb was in Alexandria, and that it disappears in the confusion in the 3rd-4th centuries AD.  John Chrysostom can ask ca. 390 who knows where the tomb is.

I watched for a while, and then turned it off in disgust.  There was some crank being presented as a novel idea; his novel idea was that Alexander was buried near Cairo.  Naturally I wondered what ancient data demanded this, and how he could ignore the unanimous testimony of antiquity.  The programme makers simply ignored both issues.  Consequently they gave almost no ancient information on the subject at all.

This led me to wonder just what the collected ancient data amounts to.  I’ve been assembling a little dossier, and looking for links.  A reasonable list is here, although not comprehensive.  I may compile a little page of data myself.  What a pity, tho, that we know so little!

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Second UK Patristics Conference

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Alan Brent has sent out invites for a UK-based patristics conference in Cambridge in the summer.  Details here.

Those not based in Cambridge may want to avoid it, tho.

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New issue of Shroro online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Shroro: the Syriac Orthodox Christian digest is an online magazine which I had not come across before, and looks very nice.  Among recent articles is one on Hunain ibn Ishaq.

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