My translator has produced the first couple of sentences of Cyril of Alexandria’s Apologeticus ad imperatorem. The prose is unbelievably florid! More when more arrives.
Author: Roger Pearse
Link to Ezra Levant
This is not a political blog and will not become one. But I have chosen to link this weblog to what is definitely a political blog, that of Ezra Levant, in order to indicate my support for him and his campaign.
For those who have not heard of him, he is being persecuted by the Canadian Human Rights Commission for daring to express some thoughts that that government organisation thought were unacceptable. He published the Danish cartoons on Mohammed in Canada, in fact.
Canada has no legal right of free speech. In fact it has so-called “anti-hate” laws — the government deciding what views it calls ‘hate’! — designed to stifle free expression. In Canada, the HRC is the organ of enforcement, and it has got very greedy with its powers.
This weblog is focused on antiquity, not political or religious controversy. There must be few weblogs likely to attract the ire of the professionally offended than this one.
But on the other hand, when a state creates a body designed to ‘chill’ discussion, to enforce a programme of Right Thinking, I fear that we are all at risk. This is why I have decided to indicate my support for Ezra, and I hope that you will all do likewise. whatever your politics or religion. His blog makes chilling reading.
I won’t repeat it all here. Ezra expresses the problem with wit and charm, and I can safely leave you in his hands.
The rise of the internet has meant a general increase in personal freedom for ordinary people. As might be expected, there is no lack of greedy businessmen or politicians or pressure groups who would love to take it over. To do so, they will claim to ‘protect us’ against something; even if they have to manufacture that threat. The Canadian HRC’s were brought into existence after Neo-Nazi’s appeared in Canada in the 70’s. Yet it turns out that these Neo-Nazi’s were trained and organised by an agent of the Canadian Jewish Congress, precisely to stir up enough anger that “hate laws” to stifle free speech might be enacted. This was unwise; and now it is Islamic extremists making use of the same precedents to stifle Jews who criticise Islam. The list of “things that may not be thought” grows longer every year, of course, as every pressure group naturally rushes to try to get itself added to the list of privileged groups who may not be criticised.
All this is a nasty, Nazi business. I do not want to write this blog in fear that I will be treated as Ezra has been. If I publish a translation of Michael Paleologus, Dialogue with a learned Moslem — as quoted by Pope Benedict XV — I don’t want some civil servant hauling me in for “a discussion.”
Do we want that sort of censorship? Let’s support the man, and express our contempt for any government that can abolish free speech in response to a dishonest campaign by a self-interested pressure group.
Eusebius, Quaestiones 1: Summer recess update
Earlier this year I commissioned two translators to produce an English translation of a previously untranslated work. The work is the Quaestiones of Eusebius of Caesarea. It’s an FAQ on differences between the gospels.
The work itself is lost, but a long epitome of 16 questions was discovered by Angelo Mai in a Vatican manuscript. In addition bits of the full text exist in medieval Greek commentaries made up of chains of quotations (catenas). The commentary on Luke by Nicetas has quite a number. So far I have 40 Greek fragments. In addition the work was translated into Syriac, and fragments from Syriac catenas also exist.
At the moment the Greek translator is on Summer recess. The Syriac grinds slowly forward; of the 12 fragments, 1-5 and 12 are done. But I have discovered that quotations also exist in Coptic gospel catenas. I have a copy of one, published by de Lagarde, and this definitely contains quotations from Eusebius.
I’ve advertised for someone with knowledge of Coptic to translate these passages also.
I’ve also begun to think about the physical manufacture of the book, design, layout etc. I wish I knew more about these things.
Pinakes – Database of Greek Manuscripts online
The IRHT have placed their database of manuscripts of Greek texts online. Named ‘Pinakes’, it can be accessed at:
The interface is a bit unusual. You go to ‘Recherche’, where you are invited to enter the name of the author. You do this in upper case, Latin-type names, with ‘u’ as ‘V’. So EVSEBIVS, not Eusebios. If you give it a chance, as you type you’ll get a list of suggestions appear. You also have to choose from a drop-down list of works.
The database contains 200,000 entries. It’s very minimal; just the library, shelfmark, and maybe folios for each work. But it’s tremendous to have this online!
The IRHT invite comments indicating where it needs to be supplemented. I’ve already seen the Eusebian entries are very incomplete. I might just send in a few!
Manuscript catalogues online at Archive.org
Do a search in Archive.org for “manuscrits” and you will find very quickly catalogues of all the French public libraries, in very many volumes. Repeat the search as “manuscripts” and you will find catalogues of holdings at Cambridge colleges, the Bodleian, Cambridge University Library, and many western and oriental collections. Truly this is a precious resource!
Off-topic: Telling it like it is…
I’m sitting here this morning in an empty office because all the permanent staff have been taken up to the fourth floor — the management floor — for a ‘briefing’. It seems that the company has been taken over. Everyone is terrified for their jobs, and rightly so.
I understand that the management have decided to give them all a glass of champagne; to “celebrate” the takeover, you understand. Funny how people don’t imagine how others might be feeling.
1,000 Arabic Christian Manuscripts destroyed in WW2? Nonsense!
In the preface to volume 2 of the catalogue of the Mingana manuscripts in Birmingham, Alphonse Mingana states (p. v) that the main collections of Arabic Christian manuscripts in the East are the library of Mt. Sinai; the library of the Catholic University of Saint-Joseph in Beirut; the Coptic Patriarchal museum and library in Cairo; and the library of Paul Sbath in Aleppo.
Searching for information on the last, often referenced in Graf’s history of Arabic literature, I found this link to the Schoyen collection. On it, there was this statement: “Paul Sbath had one of the most important collections of Arabic MSS ever formed, ca. 3000 MSS. 2000 MSS are in the Vatican Library, 1000 MSS were destroyed during the war, 2 MSS including the present one came to England.” Yet I find that the HMML expect to photograph some of the Sbath mss in Aleppo.
Fortunately this turns out to be nonsense. An enquiry on the Hugoye list brings the following information:
Sbath’s catalogue of his manuscripts (P. Sbath, Bibliotheque de manuscrits Paul Sbath, pretre syrien d’Alep: catalogue, 3 vols. Cairo, 1928-34) lists 1349 manuscripts.
Of these, nos. 1-338, 340-776 are in the Vatican (I don’t know what happened to no. 339, and I can’t remember now why I know it’s missing).
Most of nos. 777-1349 are in Aleppo, in the possession of Fondation Georges et Mathilde Salem. The manuscripts are (or were in 2001) in their office in Aziziyeh. Some of the manuscripts have gone missing; there are also a number of additional manuscripts not listed in Sbath’s catalogue. I gather from the Internet that a new catalogue of this collection is about to be published: Francisco del Rio Sanchez, Catalogue des manuscrits de la Fondation Georges et Mathilde Salem (Alep, Syrie) (Sprachen und Kulturen des christlichen Orients), Stuttgart: Reichert, 2008. — Hidemi Takahashi.
That’s more likely. I wonder how the mss ended up in the Vatican, tho. Another email from John C. Lamoreaux tells us:
Sbath himself collected around 1300 MSS — though he claimed to have more, perhaps as many as 1500. About half of these ended up in the Vatican Library (fonds Sbath). These are well preserved, and copies are easily had. Apparently, there were legal troubles getting the remaining mss out of Syria. Most of the rest of the mss, but not all, passed to his brother, and are now in the Foundation Sbath, near the Jesuit Residence in Aleppo. Hill is now said to be digitizing the mss remaining in Aleppo. For a list of the mss still in Aleppo, see the entry on the foundation in Takahashi’s bibliography on Barhebraeus (2005).
Sbath also published in the 1930s a three-volume catalogue of mss in private holdings, mostly in Aleppo. It lists about 3000 mss, most otherwise unknown. To my knowledge, none of these mss has yet to be found. I am about finished with an article arguing that Sbath was being less than honest, that he never actually saw many of these mss.
This all makes sense and gives us a little more.
Unreliable English translation of “History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church”?
The massive Arabic Christian history begun by Severus ibn Mukaffa in the 9th century and running down to our own times is a gem. But I was looking at Google books today, and found a statement here in vol. 1 p. 211 of the Cambridge History of Egypt that the English translation published in Cairo in the 1950’s is unreliable. The first four chunks were published by B. Evetts in the Patrologia Orientalis, are presumably sound, and are here. 5 chunks of the Cairo publication are at this site, and 3 more exist. It’s a very hard book to get hold of, as I can testify!
This is the sort of thing that makes me wish that I was a rich man. I’d just hire someone and fix the translation.
Cyril of Alexandria, Apologeticus ad imperatorem; about to roll?
After the Council of Ephesus in 433, Cyril of Alexandria had to politick fairly hard for his side of the arguments over whether it was OK to call Mary “mother of God” or not. One of the texts that he wrote at this time was a vindication of himself and his actions, directed to the emperor Theodosius II. Actually the emperor was a figurehead, so presumably the real addressee was the imperial court, courtiers, and above all the eunuch Chrysaphius, who was the real ruler of the empire.
The text has never been translated into any modern language. Some time back a scholar agreed to translate it for me.
I’ve just heard that the first sample chunk should be available this weekend. I can’t wait!
Fragments of earlier authors in John Damascene
There is an interesting article by Andrew Criddle on Hypotyposeis here. He addresses the question of whether the ‘fragments’ of Clement of Alexandria found in the Sacra Parallela of John Damascene are authentic. This is a patristic anthology, written ca. 700 AD, of which no English translation exists, sadly.
John also quotes portions of the lost books 11-20 of Cyril of Alexandria, and indeed bits of many other earlier authors, so the value of his work is a question of some importance. I recall that Denis Searby in his edition and translation of the ‘wit and wisdom’ collection in the Corpus Parisinum also linked some of the material to the Sacra Parallela. We really need a route-map through this sea of Byzantine anthologies, catenas, gnomologies, etc.