From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This is a busy time of year, when the government requires that we do unpaid labour as clerks, filling in tax returns.  It’s worse if you are self-employed, for your business also must be accounted for to the tax collectors.  That time is now upon me.  Still there is progress.

The Eusebius project is now awaiting a transcription of the Syriac fragments.  This will be done by the end of May, I have been told.  That date is now my target date for completion of the editing of the volume.  I’m also awaiting some tweaks to the Coptic translation, but these can be omitted if need be.

The Origen project has passed a milestone.  The final version of the text and translation of all the Greek fragments of Origen’s Homilies on Ezechiel and other works on the same book has now been done.  The introduction to that section needs a few changes, but the body is done.  The translation of the Latin needs some revision, but only five sermons remain to do.

The translation of John Chrysostom’s In Kalendas, on the pagan festival of New Year, is proceeding apace and another chunk arrived today.  This will be given away online.

My own translation of Chrysostom’s first sermon is about half done.  It’s not a great sermon — nor a great translation! — but it will get done as and when I can get time from chores.

A sample of Severian of Gabala’s sermon De pace is now with the reviewer.  The latter will also soon finish up his translation of Eusebius’ De solemnitate paschalis, which will also go online.

So … much going on.

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Manuscripts for sale

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Got a spare 20,000-50,000 euros?  Why not buy a manuscript?  Listed in that price range are a renaissance copy of Vegetius, The art of war.  Or you might fancy a handwritten copy of some works by St. Cyprian. 

And what, after all, in these days of devaluation, is 50,000 euros?  Not a lot, really; not when you consider that computer programmers working in the City of London can earn 700 euros a day, or around 168,000 euros in a year of 48 weeks.  One of our Merchant Banking princes would probably consider it pocket change.

Well!  I wish I earned anything like that.  I’d find many uses for the money that would  benefit us all.  So beneficial, indeed, would I be that I wonder why a grateful government has not simply stepped forward and volunteered me the money.  It seems inexplicable, really.  But that’s one of life’s little mysteries.

Returning to seriousness, tho, it is really very interesting to see what a couple of common 15th century mss are worth on the market.  It is far less, in truth, than I had thought.  Of course it is quite beyond my means.  I suspect that is a good thing.  After all, while it is easy to buy such items, how easy is it to get them off the shelf when you are done with them?  Never buy a book without knowing how you will get rid of it.  Trust me on this.

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The commentaries of Theophlyact and their reference to Papias

Posted on by Roger Pearse

People online asking about fragments of Papias, who knew the apostles, lead you to obscure authors.  I had heard the name of Theophylact before, but never knew much about him until today.

The biblical commentaries of Theophylact — who was Byzantine Archbishop of Bulgaria — fill four volumes of Migne, 123-6.  Somewhere in one of them is a quotation from Papias, discussing the fate of Judas.  It seems reasonable that this is in the commentary on Acts, in vol. 125, and so indeed it is, on cols. 521C-523D.  The “commentary” seems mainly to be a catena, in fact, as might be expected.  Chrysostom Press has produced an English translation of his commentary on the gospels; I don’t know of an English translation of the commentary on Acts.

Here are the relevant portions of Migne:

theophylact_papias1

theophylact_papias2

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A passage of Papias in Cramer’s catena

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a fragment of Papias, quoted by Apollinaris, in Cramer’s catena on Acts.  It’s on page 12, against Acts 1:17 (p. 33 of the Google books PDF).  It is translated by Lightfoot and Harmer:

Fragment 3 (Preserved in Cramer’s Catena ad Acta SS. Apost. [1838])

1  From Apollinarius of Laodicea. `Judas did not die by hanging, but lived on, having been cut down before he was suffocated. And the Acts of the Apostles show this, that _falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out._ This fact is related more clearly by Papias, the disciple of John, in the fourth (book) of the Exposition of the Oracles of the Lord as follows: —

2  “Judas walked about in this world a terrible example of impiety; his flesh swollen to such an extent that, where a waggon can pass with ease, he was not able to pass, no, not even the mass of his head merely. They say that his eyelids swelled to such an extent that he could not see the light at all, while as for his eyes they were not visible even by a physician looking through an instrument, so far had they sunk from the surface.  His genital was larger and presented a more repugnant sight than has ever been seen; and through it there seeped from every part of the body a procession of pus and worms to his shame, even as he relieved himself.”‘

3 After suffering an agony of pain and punishment, he finally went, as they say it, to his own place; and because of the horrible smell the area has been deserted and no one has lived there up until now; in fact, even to the present no one can go by that place without holding his nose.  This was because the discharge from his body was so great and spread so far over the ground.”‘

The Greek is thus:

cramer_papias1

cramer_papias2

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been asked how it is that I have moved from Tertullian to Chrysostom.

The answer is that I haven’t moved to Chrysostom, really.  I started work on the web with the Tertullian Project, because there was nothing much about him online and I was filling a gap.

But when I came online, I found a great deal of anti-Christian polemic consisted of supposed “quotes” from the Fathers “proving” that the Fathers advocated lying, cheating, violence etc.  The grand author of these was a book by one Joseph Wheless, Forgery in Christianity, from which the material was plagiarised and improved. 

In some cases it was easy to show that the “quotes” were fake by going to the online English translation.  But others quoted from works not online.  So I began to place online translations of patristic works where there was an existing out-of-copyright translation which was not online.  This collection grew into the Additional Fathers, where I made these texts available as public domain.

From this it has been a natural step to start adding translations, by doing them myself, or commissioning them.  Naturally I tend to look for shorter works.

My current emphasis on Chrysostom arises from my discovery that the Homilies against the Jews were online, in a version whose copyright status is unclear, but that a portion remained untranslated.  This I commissioned and distributed.  But while looking at the entries for Chrysostom in Quasten’s Patrology vol. 3, I am struck by the number of short works which remain untranslated into English.  Some are of great historical interest, such as the one on the celebration of New Year in Roman times, or those on Christmas.  All these get quoted in anti-Christian polemic, probably in a distorted way.

My interest in Severian of Gabala came from someone writing to ask me about a passage in one of his sermons De sigillis librorum.  Until then I knew little about Severian.  A little research revealed an interesting author, whose works were unavailable in English.  Reading Bareille’s French translation revealed an author whose style is very distinctive and would translate well. 

So at the moment I am concentrating on ways to get works by these authors online.  I think I can make a difference.  In a few months, doubtless, my attention will be drawn by something else.  But whatever I do, I think it will benefit everyone.  So … let’s be a butterfly!

I was thinking last night about how to handle the fact that a French translation by Bareille exists of most of Chrysostom (although not the letters, I notice, nor the spuria).  I think it is probably best if I don’t commission translations of works that exist in that fashion — a translation from the French will probably do for most non-academic purposes.  If I restrict myself to commissioning only material where nothing exists in English or French, that would probably be the most effective use of my funds.

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Mysterious book – anyone know what it contains?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondant draws my attention to this book at Brepols.  But I’m blessed if I can work out what the book contains:

Homiliae Pseudo-chrysostomicae
Instrumentum studiorum I.
K.-H. Uthemann, R.F. Regtuit, J.M. Tevel (eds.) 309 p., 153 x 245 mm, 1994. ISBN: 978-2-503-50340-0. Languages: Greek. Paperback. Retail price: EUR 113,00

German is not my language, but with the aid of Google here is a translation:

The study of pseudo-Chrysostomica has made great progress since 1968 with the Codices Graeci Chrysostomici [a list of manuscripts of works] and the list of as yet unedited texts collected by M. Geerard in 1974 in the second volume of the Clavis Patrum Graecorum, for those patristic scholars who work on critical editions of homilies. But the texts themselves have not yet become available to the larger circle of interested patristic scholars; if we wait for critical editions of the same, for the history of the tradition based on all now available witnesses to be clarified, then there is little hope that in coming decades, they will become known to patristic scholars and generally philologists, who are not working directly with the relevant manuscripts themselves. The Clavis of M.Geerard alone lists 239 unedited texts, and this list is far from complete. If you are looking for a way to present all known Pseudo-Chrysostomica and in print as soon as possible and still provide a generally useful text, then it can only mean reproducing the output of one or more “good” manuscripts of the text without each apparatus, without any compromise in the direction of a critical edition.The texts, which Bernard de Montfaulcon (1655-1741) created today afford us useful service, and whoever is interested in the particular content of a text will usually make use of Migne.The scientific ideal of a critical edition is therefore not in question, certainly not from the editors of this new Instrumentum studiorum.

So … what does the book actually contain?

UPDATE: A correspondant points me here, to the online Chrysostom bibliography, which gives a list of contents:

Uthemann, K.-H., R. Regtuit & J. Tevel, Homiliæ Pseudo-Chrysostomicæ, Instrumentum studiorum. Volumen I, Turnhout: Brepols, 1994. [rev. Voicu JbAC 38 (1995) 198-199; contains updated texts of 42 homilies: De sacrificiis Caini (CPG 4208), In Noe et filios eius, de cherubim (CPG 4232), Hom. de Noe et de arca (CPG 4271), De paenitentia sermo 1 (CPG 4615), Quod grave sit dei clementiam contemnere (CPG 4697), Oratio in martyres omnes (CPG 4841), In ver et in resurrectionem (CPG 4858), In illud: Vigilate et orate (CPG 4870), De nativitate 1 (CPG 4871), In Adam et de paenitentia (CPG 4888), In orationem Pater noster (CPG 4896), In tentationem domini nostri Iesu Christi (CPG 4906), De creatione mundi, revera Ad Stagirium (CPG 4911), De fide et contra haereticos (CPG 4917), In caecum natum (CPG 4918), Oratio in exaltationem crucis (CPG 4927), De salute nostra et oratione perpetua (CPG 4938), Encomium in sanctos martyres (CPG 4950), Sermo de quadragesima (CPG 4955), In sanctum Stephanum (CPG 4958), Sermo de agricolis in vinea laborantibus (CPG 4966), De ieiunio (vel In postremum iudicium) (CPG 4968), De vigilantia (CPG 4972), In pharisaeum et meretricem (CPG 4984), In illud: Iesus autem fatigatus ex itinere (CPG 5003), In sanctam theophaniam (CPG 5004), In Paulum apostolum CPG 5013), In illud: Si enim dimiseritis hominibus (CPG 5019), De nativitate Iohannis Baptistae (CPG 5023), In Adam et in Sodomitas (CPG 5045), Quod deus superbis resistat (CPG 5047), In illud: Nemo potest duobus dominis (CPG 5059), De nativitate II (5064), De nativitate III (CPG 5068), Quod debet episcopus docere (CPG 5073), Hom. in Ps. 71 (CPG 5074), Contra Iudaeos et Graecos et haereticos, De exitu animae, In illud: Attendite vobis ipsis, In illud: Noli aemulari in malignantibus, De paenitentia sermo II, Sermo in Adam; the last 6 are not listed in CPG]

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Chrysostom’s first sermon

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The first sermon preached by John Chrysostom as a priest in 386 AD is extant (PG 48, 693-700).  A German translation exists in the old Bibliothek der Kirchenvaters 3 (1879), p.401-414.  It is also one of the texts translated by Bareille’s 11 volume French translation, and appears in volume 1. 

As far as I know, no English translation exists.  I don’t know that the contents are particularly noteworthy.  But I fancy translating something, so I may run Bareille’s French across into English.  It won’t be publishable, but — who knows — it may make the text more widely known.

 

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The pyramids of Meroe again

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Last night a TV program showed a trip up the Nile as far as Khartoum.  They stopped off at the pyramids at Meroe, which looked spectacular as always.

Hunting around the web for some images, I stumbled across this page.  It’s full of photos from a trip to Sudan, all excellent and evocative, and I really recommend a click.  Here’s the image of the pyramids:

Sudan_Meroe

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Thinking about fonts to use for book

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Professional publishers do not print using Microsoft’s “Times Roman” font.  Instead commercial fonts are used.  I don’t know much about these, but I’ve been looking around the web.

A font called “Bembo” seems widely used.  Unfortunately the character map does not include polytonic Greek.  I don’t expect these fonts to include Syriac, but that much is a minimum.

Another font is Adobe’s MinionPro, which does seem to include polytonic Greek.  This is my current candidate.  Apparently it comes free with Adobe InDesign CS3, or can be purchased separately.

I’ve also been looking at the text itself.  It needs to be kerned, which it seems can be done in Microsoft Word.  It also needs hyphenation, because justified text usually gets areas of whitespace in the middle of the line unless you do this.

What else?  Well, lots, probably.  I just wish I could find a useful guide to this, rather than working it all out by trial and error.

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Origen project update

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The translation of the Homilies on Ezechiel by Origen is almost done.  There’s merely revision to do. 

But a project can get very bogged down at that stage.  The very lack of structure can give a feeling of sinking in a morass!

I always hate it when I’m handed something like that at work.  It’s slow, dull, work, with little feeling of achievement.

The way I handle it at work is to work with my boss, and break it down into defined chunks, each no larger than 1 day of work.  Then at least I get a feeling of progress as I tick each one off.

I’ve proposed to the translator that we do something similar here.  It will also allow me to see progress, and to pay for it as I go. 

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