Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
Adam McCollum has kindly translated for us hymns 23 and 24 from the collection of Hymns against heresies by Ephraim Syrus, and I have placed them in the public domain. Do whatever you like with them, personal, educational or commercial.
I’ve uploaded the PDF and RTF files to Archive.org:
http://archive.org/details/EphremSyrusHymnsAgainstHeresies23And24
I will do an HTML version when I get to it.
I learn from Paleojudaica that epigraphist Christopher Rollston has resigned from his post at Emmanuel Christian Seminary. In this he has acted quite properly; the views he espoused cannot be compatible with the post he held.
Instead he has accepted a post at George Washington University. When I opened the website for this institution, I was confronted with a large picture of a demonstration (poster: “four more years” and an Obama campaign logo) and the text, “At GW, politics is not a spectator sport”. I fear that it must be very politically correct, and pretty intolerant of any deviation from orthodoxy. But of course everyone must earn a living, and GWU has done rightly to offer him a post.
Let us wish Dr Rollston all the best at what must be a more congenial, if less tolerant, location. In particular he states:
During my time at George Washington University, I will also be completing my monograph (tentatively) entitled “Forging History: A History of Epigraphic Forgeries from Antiquity to the Modern Period,” …
Such a work should be of wide interest!
I’ve continued to add a few photographs of Mithraic monuments, with their entry in the CIMRM, to the new Mithras site, The Roman cult of Mithras. It’s become increasingly clear that the approach that I have been following with these is not quite right. What I have at the moment is one web-page per monument.
You have to attempt some things before you really understand what you’re trying to do. It’s become clear to me, for instance, that much of what I do when I add a photograph is repetitive, and the process of generating the page for the CIMRM entry is one that could be automated, and therefore should be. I need to write a wizard to do the uploads, much like that in Wikimedia Commons, but targeted at my special process. That will help.
But one page per monument doesn’t work. The value of having this material is the ability to skim over it easily, to get an overview, to understand common features between dozens of images. With a click per image, and a couple of thousand entries, this isn’t going to work.
Obviously I need some kind of image gallery, like that in Wikimedia Commons, or Google Images. I was thinking of generating a thumbnail (using ImageMagick) as part of the upload wizard, and then using the wizard, not only to create the web page, but also to add an entry to the gallery. That still seems like a good idea.
But it occurred to me just now … image gallery scripts must already exist. Can’t I adapt one somehow? It’s worth looking into. A task for tomorrow, perhaps.
The material must be accessible. We see so many academic sites where it is quite clear that the designer never stopped for a moment, imagined what a user might want to do on the site, and then reflected on how to make that easiest to do. I don’t want to do this myself.
One other thing that I need to fix on the site. I’ve got to make it easier to add Greek text!
A correspondent writes that the BBC Radio 4 has devoted 45 minutes to a discussion of the cult of Mithras. You can find the programme here. It was broadcast on Thursday 27 December 2012, as part of the series In our time, presented by Melvyn Bragg.
The Cult of Mithras
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the cult of Mithras, a mystery religion that existed in the Roman Empire from the 1st to the 4th centuries AD. Also known as the Mysteries of Mithras, its origins are uncertain. Academics have suggested a link with the ancient Vedic god Mitra and the Iranian Zoroastrian deity Mithra, but the extent and nature of the connection is a matter of controversy.
Followers of Mithras are thought to have taken part in various rituals, most notably communal meals and a complex seven-stage initiation system. Typical depictions of Mithras show him being born from a rock, enjoying food with the sun god Sol and stabbing a bull. Mithraic places of worship have been found throughout the Roman world, including an impressive example in London. However, Mithraism went into decline in the 4th century AD with the rise of Christianity and eventually completely disappeared. In recent decades, many aspects of the cult have provoked debate, especially as there are no written accounts by its members. As a result, archaeology has been of great importance in the study of Mithraism and has provided new insights into the religion and its adherents.
With:
Greg Woolf, Professor of Ancient History at the University of St Andrews
Almut Hintze, Zartoshty Professor of Zoroastrianism at SOAS, University of London
John North, Acting Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London.
Producer: Victoria Brignell.
FURTHER READING
Jaime Alvar, ‘Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras’ (Brill, 2008)
Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, ‘Religions of Rome’ vol 2 (Cambridge University Press, 1998)
Roger Beck, ‘The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the Unconquered Sun’ (Oxford University Press, 2007)
Roger Beck, ‘Beck on Mithraism: Collected Works with New Essays’ (Ashgate, 2004)
M. Boyce and F. Grenet, ‘A History of Zoroastrianism’ vol 3 (Brill, 1991)
Manfred Clauss, ‘The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and His Mysteries’ (Edinburgh University Press, 2000)
Franz Cumont, ‘The Mysteries of Mithra’ (1st Eng.tr. 1903, Forgotten Books, 2012)
Richard Gordon, ‘Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and Religious Art’ (Variorum, 1996)
John Hinnells, ‘Persian Mythology’ (P. Bedrick Books, 1985)
J. Rupke (ed.), ‘A Companion to Roman Religion’ (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) which includes R. L. Gordon, ‘Institutionalised Religious Options: Mithraism’
Robert Turcan, ‘The Cults of the Roman Empire’ (Wiley-Blackwell, 1997)
I don’t have 45 minutes to spare in order to listen to it, but the reading list suggests that the research has been done properly.
The programme can be downloaded as an MP3, and will be available until next Christmas, apparently.
It’s remarkable how much one can achieve in a few dedicated days. I’ve managed to get my new Mithras site up and functional, although far from complete. It may be found here.
I don’t think that there is very much more to do to the PHP scripts, which is nice. The content needs to be reviewed, checked, and worked over, but that can happen in slow time.
One of the drivers for the new site was that I want to make use of all the photographs of statues of Mithras (etc) that are online. The printed literature tends to have few photographs, and all of those black and white. But there are very many colour images of statues, inscriptions, frescos, and so on, online. These convey information … if, if, we know what we are looking at, and can get an overview of more than one of them.
The first thing that might be done is to link as many as possible to their entry in Vermaseren’s Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentum Religionis Mithriacae. These descriptions are very useful, in that they explain much of what we are looking at. Without this information, the images by themselves are little more than decoration.
I’ve created a few pages in the new site for individual images, but I’m not happy with how that is going. I’m looking at the moment at how Wikimedia Commons handles images, and galleries of images. This will require some thought, some design and some special scripting. Since I don’t quite know what I am trying to achieve, I will put that to one side this evening.
Instead I shall review translations of Ephraim the Syrian’s Hymns against Heresies, nos. 23 and 24. Adam McCollum has sent these in, and I need to read over them for glitches of any sort. Once I am sure that they are complete, I will post them online and announce them.
Yesterday I showed the new Mithras pages to a correspondent. He commented that a great deal of what we know about Mithras corresponds to what we know about Free-masonry. An all-male group that got together in a closed room for secret rituals, had grades of initiation and titles, with a special handshake … well, the parallels have not escaped the lunatic fringe, as an article from 1923 shows.[1]
We hear a great deal online from the ignorant about supposed parallels with Christianity. Yet the parallels, if such they are, with Masonic practises seem much closer. Yet there is no actual link.
I suppose that it shows the weakness of any “parallels” argument, that it tends to give false positives. Human beings tend to carry out the same kinds of activities in many lands, ages and cultures. That a group of men have a strange handshake, as a mark of membership, is not enough to indicate connection, or derivation; neither it nor a great many trivial links of the same kind.
I have spent the day with the new Mithras site, to its great profit. It is by no means complete, nor is it intended to be. It is merely a starting point, based on the more reliable elements of the old Wikipedia site. Much in it needs to be reverified. Much will be worked on, ad hoc, as time and energy permit.
The most enjoyable part of the process was working with the pictures. These days we have all sorts of photographs of Mithraic monuments and inscriptions online. But these images are useless, because they are not tied to Vermaseren’s Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentum Religionis Mithriacae, which assigns a number to each monument and describes it. What I did, for several of the pictures from Wikimedia Commons, was track down the CIMRM number, and the entry, and write a page containing image and data.
Much of the imagery is inscrutable on first glance. If I do very much of this, it will get much less inscrutable. And I did rather enjoy doing it. Adding data to the web (rather than opinion) is what I do, and what I want to do.
I’ve emailed someone online, and asked them to take a look. I can see various problems with the site; but a fresh pair of eyes would be invaluable.
Via Monday Evening I find a link to an audio of Steeleye Span performing the acapella Gaudete. The uploader has added a transcription of the lyrics, with English translation. Worth a listen.
Merry Christmas! Here’s a snippet of ancient life that appealed to me this morning.
Antigonus the elder communicated to his son Demetrius his intention to put Mithridates to death, but bound him by a solemn oath “not to speak of it.” Demetrius took Mithridates a walk by the seaside, and wrote on the sand with the end of his spear, “Run.” Mithridates took the hint, and escaped to Pontus, where he afterwards became king.
— Plutarch, Apophthegms, or Sayings of Kings and Commanders: Antigonus, 18.
I find that there is a version of this complete text online here. Of a similar kind is the Sayings of the Romans here.