From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve now trudged all the way through the remainder of the Life of Abba Garima, taking each paragraph and getting Gemini AI to translate it into English.  Why Gemini?  Well it was there on my list of AI sites, and I used it at random.  For the immense chapter 7, I broke this down into smaller paragraphs, and this worked.

I tend to believe that what I am getting out of Gemini is indeed what the Ethiopic text says, more or less, although I have no way to be certain.  At one point the name of a monarch came up, and I asked for a transcription into Roman letters of the passage.  The result verified the presence of the proper name.  That’s encouraging.

Gemini was often reluctant to translate the text, claiming “I’m just a poor LLM, I only know a subset of languages.”  I responded, “Try again” and invariably it then decided that it did know Ge`ez after all.  What this means, stripped of the fake “AI” stuff, is that the search simply failed first time, and worked the second time.

This seems to be what AI is.  It’s just a search engine.  Nothing more.  The talky bit on the front is just a chat engine, such as banks use on websites to demoralise customers who need help and make them give up.  The LLM is a big flat file containing the database that it is searching.  That database is composed of a vast amount of data, including a large quantity of pirated books.  The whole “AI” stuff is just nonsense, to camouflage that it’s engaged in massive copyright violation.  The search brings back stuff from pirated grammars etc, and assembles them into an English narrative.  As with every search engine, sometimes it guesses wrong, or gets unreliable data.  But “AI” has to choose something in order to pretend to be human.  So you get bogus stuff sometimes.  It would be interesting to know how well AI works in other languages, like French, German, etc, where there may be much less pirated data in the database.

Back to Abba Garima.  I realise that Rossini appended notes to his edition, explaining various points in the text.  The philological notes are of no use to me.  But I have now decided to OCR his Italian and see what else he says about the text.  I think it may be of interest.  We’ll see.

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Experiments with Amharic and technology (part 4)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I now have a corrected electronic text of the homily of Yohanan, bishop of Axum, in honour of St Garima.  I’ve numbered the paragraphs as an aid to myself, since I cannot even read the Ethiopian alphabet.  It probably needs work.  But here it is:

Today I started plugging paragraphs into DeepSeek.  I also tried asking it to interleave the sentences, Ethiopic, then English.  This did work, although curiously DeepSeek had trouble with the Ethiopic alphabet.

The first six chapters went fairly well.  Here they are:

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God. I have placed my trust in Him and believed in Him forever and ever. Amen.

1. The Homily delivered by Saint John, Bishop and Archbishop of Aksum, concerning the greatness and glory of Saint Isaac. And he said: Listen and understand, O my beloved brothers, what I will tell you. I saw a woman being mocked by a crowd, and as they were laughing at her and at our Lady Mary, they were saying concerning her Son, Christ: “He was not born of a woman; His birth is impossible.” These people did not believe in Christ. And as I stood there, I grew angry and stomped my foot upon the ground where that woman was standing while she spoke. And behold, at that very moment, the King of Heaven and Earth came forth. And when she spoke thus, the Holy Spirit descended upon me.

2. I tell you, I saw a man and a woman who came to me with wealth that my Lord had given me for the nourishment of your souls, the greatness and struggle of this righteous man. There was a man whose name was Mesfiyanos, king of Rome, and his wife’s name was Kefngya. For she was barren and childless, having nothing. And the two of them lived grieving for twelve years. These were righteous people who gave alms to the poor and needy and to churches. One day she went to offer sacrifice and entered the church where there were images of Peter and Paul and our Lady Mary. She stood between the three images and prayed before Mary, saying: “Give me a son who will glorify you and glorify your Son, and if he does not glorify your Son, let my womb be cursed.” And that image responded as if saying “Oh!” She offered her sacrifice and returned home. From that time she conceived and bore a son and gave thanks to God. They named him Isaac; Isaac, the joy of his mother, the splendor of his father. When he was forty days old, they took him to the church and baptized him according to Christian tradition. All the people gathered in the church of Peter and Paul. The chief bishop stood before the Ark of the Covenant and blessed him, saying: “May the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who blessed our holy forefathers bless you.” When the chief bishop blessed the child, a great light shone upon him, bright as the sun, moon, and stars. All who saw this marveled and glorified God, then offered sacrifices in their churches. The queen returned home with her child, and they celebrated a feast with great joy. When he turned twelve years old, they brought him to a teacher who instructed him in the Law, the Prophets, the Apostolic books, and their commentaries. They ordained him as a deacon. He further learned church canons, admonitions, plants, and animals. His parents consulted one another, saying: “Let us arrange a marriage for our son while we still live, that we may rejoice in his offspring.” As they were making these plans, an angel of God appeared to Mesfiyanos in a dream saying: “Many souls perish—will you not save them? A great church shall be built through him.” The king awoke and went to his wife, saying: “Last night an angel of God came to me and told me that through him miracles and wonders shall be performed.” The angel said to the queen: “I have come to command you to build and establish a church, that you may rejoice in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

3. When his father died, the nobles and dignitaries of Rome gathered and mourned for Isaac as he wept bitter tears. They enthroned him in the royal seat, and he reigned for seven years. During his days there was joy and peace. Afterwards, Saint Pantaleon came to him and said: “O my beloved Isaac, your earthly kingdom is temporary, but the kingdom of heaven is everlasting. The earthly kingdom will perish and pass away, but the heavenly kingdom will not pass away. Have you not heard what our Lord said in the Gospel: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away’? Or what Paul said about this world: ‘It is passing away, and those who weep should live as though they were not weeping, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who use the world as though they were not using it, for the form of this world is passing away’? My son Isaac, do not neglect the love of God.”

When the message arrived, Isaac saw it and wept bitterly. He rose at night and prayed, saying: “O my Lord Jesus Christ, I beg and implore You to hear my prayer and grant the request of Your servant Isaac. Show me the straight path that I should walk.” He rose at night from his chamber and went to a secret place outside the palace, departing by night. The angel Gabriel appeared to him, prepared a chariot and canopy for him with shining wings, and brought him from Rome to Aksum in ninety days, traveling by night on the back of an eagle, arriving at the third hour.

4. When the messengers of Father Pantaleon arrived after ten months and four days, they told the man of God, who marveled and trembled, saying: “O my son Isaac, have you not heard what David the prophet said: ‘Your works and my soul will be satisfied when I awake with Your likeness’? What I have done secretly, do not hide from me under the earth. What I have seen with your eyes, write it all in your book. Listen, my son, to the greatness of God who has called us from all things, just as He called you under the wing of the eagle.” As they spoke of God’s greatness, they remained until daybreak.

5. Saint Isaac said to Father Pantaleon: “Father, clothe me in the monastic garb.” Father Pantaleon replied: “Do you know, my son, what the monastic garb means?” Saint Isaac answered: “Yes, I know, father. Have you not heard what our Lord said in the Gospel: ‘What is exalted among men is an abomination before God’? As Paul said: ‘What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, or sword? Neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.’ I desire to be bound to Christ and to be bound tightly.”

When Father Pantaleon heard these words from Saint Isaac’s mouth, he prostrated himself and blessed God, saying to Isaac: “May God strengthen you in keeping His commandments.” Then he took the monastic garb and clothed him, blessing him with these words: “May our Lord Jesus Christ, who blessed Anthony and placed upon his head the crown of monasticism, sanctify your garb. May God who blessed Father Macarius and Father Synoda bless your garb. May He who gave Elijah’s mantle to Elisha when he ascended to heaven and brought down the cloak for him—and with that cloak Elisha struck the waters and crossed over, raised the dead, and cleansed lepers—likewise sanctify your garb. May God who sanctified the priesthood of Melchizedek sanctify your priesthood.” They remained together for one year.

6. When the other saints heard that Saint Isaac had renounced the kingdom and embraced monastic life, they came to him. Among them were Abba Likanos from Qusṭinṭinya (Constantinople), Abba Yima’ata from Qosya, Abba Ṣəḥma from Antioch, Abba Guba from Cilicia, Abba Afṣe from Isya, Abba Maṭa‘ from Rome, and Abba ‘Oṣe from Caesarea. When the saints gathered, they met with Abba Pantaleon and Saint Isaac, and they were united in spiritual love. They lived together in one house, devoted to prayer. Among them, there was no one who sought personal gain, nor anyone who desired material possessions or the pleasures of the world. They remained for a period of one year.

The first 5 chapters are from DeepSeek.  I then asked it to do chapter 6, and the monstrously long chapter 7.  The results were weird, and then DeepSeek crashed.  I then tried ChatGPT on chapter 6, which is what you have above.  The DeepSeek version was about the same.

The ChatGPT version of chapter 7 was quite different in every way from that produced by DeepSeek.  Here’s DeepSeek, the opening bits:

7.  While they lived in this way, a governor of Aksum came to them and said: “There is a great beast, a king of the land of Ethiopia, to whom all the nobles bow down and offer gifts. They bring him a beautiful maiden of good appearance, and they perform sacrifices and offerings. When she is brought before this beast, he defiles her and then devours her. This beast has reigned in this manner for fifteen years.”

This beast was 170 cubits long and 4 cubits wide, with one cubit for its tail. Its eyes were like fiery coals, and the pupils of its eyes were like black pots. Its entire body was like a serpent and a dragon. When it ate, it would consume 17 oxen, and they would bring before it 10 sheep, 10 goats, 1000 chickens, 100 lambs, and countless birds. Upon its head were horns measuring three cubits. When it moved, its voice could be heard from a distance of eighty days’ journey.

When the brothers heard this, they marveled and were astonished. They trembled and said to the governor: “Do you truly speak the truth?” He replied: “Yes, truly. If you do not believe me, let one of you come and see.” Father Pantaleon said to Saint Isaac: “My son, what shall we do?” Saint Isaac replied: “Let my brother Oz go and observe this beast. If it is as he says, then you too must rise and pray.” …

Here’s ChatGPT:

7.  And when they came and reached him, a certain nobleman from Aksum spoke to them and said: “Hail, great king, the ruler of the nation of Ethiopia!” And they all bowed before him, the nobles, and presented to him the honorable and righteous virgin of the Lord. And they performed hymns and praises, and she came before him, the king, and prostrated herself. And she continued to remain pure. And the king was astonished.

And they stayed there for fifteen years. And the king stood in honor of her for one hundred and eighty days. And he prepared four feasts in her honor. And one of these feasts was the greatest. And his eyes shone like flames of fire, and his pupils were as bright as polished metal. His appearance was as dazzling as the sun and lightning. And when he spoke, seventeen scribes recorded his words. And they made a proclamation across the land.

There were ten thousand warriors, and one hundred thousand men armed with shields and spears. And they gathered before him in great numbers. And his voice was heard from afar, resounding like thunder. And the land trembled at his voice. And his presence was mighty, and all the nobles fell before him.

The DeepSeek text is at least plausible.  The ChatGPT is not.

What I will try doing is getting each to translate it, sentence by sentence, interleaved with the Ethiopic.  I’ll see what that does.

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Admin

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There are weird PHP errors affecting the blog tonight.  One visible is

Warning: Undefined variable $silent in /usr/home/rpearse/public_html/weblog/wp-content/plugins/footnotes-for-wordpress/wp-footnotes.php on line 156

I would guess my hosting company has broken something.  I will investigate tomorrow.  My apologies.

Update:  The hosting company, the excellent Pair.com, advised me that they upgraded PHP 7.4 to PHP 8.2, as 7.4 is end of life.  This caused the break.  They fixed it by adding two lines to the top of the .htaccess file in the root /weblog directory:

AddType application/x-httpd-phpx .php
Action application/x-httpd-phpx /fcgi-bin/php7_wrapper.sh

It looks as if WordPress have not updated their code to the latest version of PHP.  I hope that this will be fixed soon.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m working away on this Ethiopian homily of John, bishop of Axum, on St. Garima.  It was printed in 1898 by C. Conti Rossini,[1] but without translation.

Well, I don’t know any Ethiopian at all, and I don’t even know the alphabet.  There are 31 consonants, each of which has seven variants, I gather.

But I knew that it was possible to get Google to turn images into electronic text, and a couple of experiments with ChatGPT and DeepSeek quickly showed that the resulting output file could be understood by AI and produce English text.

So I need to get a decent electronic text.

My first step was to take the PDF, extract the pages with the Ethiopian text on them, and pull them into Finereader.  Finereader does NOT support Amharic, but it has useful image editing tools.  I trimmed the 24 pages down to the bare text – no footnotes, no headings, and exported them as images to a directory.

I then bundled these images up into a PDF using my incredibly elderly Adobe Acrobat Pro 9.0.  I then went into Google Drive and uploaded the PDF.  Then I right-clicked on it in Google Drive, and opened it in Google Docs.  This caused Google to OCR it, thereby creating an electronic text.  I then downloaded this in Word format.

I’ve checked the results into a local Git repository – so that I can always go back if I screw up the file.

And now, page by page, I am going through what Google has given me, removing obvious crud and irrelevant line breaks.  It seems to insert a small amount of garbage between pages.

Wish me luck!

There are other free Amharic OCR websites online, and these seem to do a reasonable job too.  But I’ve stuck so far with the Google Docs output.

Incidentally DeepSeek offered the opinion that the text is not in Amharic, as I had expected, but in Ge`ez, Classical Ethiopian.  Luckily it doesn’t care.

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  1. [1]C. Conti Rossini, “L’omilia di Yohannes vescovo di Aksum in onore di Garima,” Actes du Congrès International des Orientalistes, Section Sémitique (Paris, 1898).Online via here.↩

Michel van Rijn (1950-2024)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

So … Michel van Rijn is dead. Art dealer, forger, smuggler, conman, criminal, informant and inkslinger: whose long-vanished eccentric website exposed many a dirty deed in the art world.

Apparently he died last year, aged 73, on 25 July 2024, in Italy.  There was a notice in Het Parool, which published material from him in the past, and another Dutch site here.

The art world is not my area of expertise.  Men have always bought and sold precious things, and always will.  Other men have sometimes tried to stop them, for various reasons.  Some of those involved are villains.  Some are rich men rescuing what would otherwise be destroyed.  Consequently the world of art dealing is one of secrecy and rumour, and no small amount of slander and dishonesty.  In addition the world of Coptology has long been dominated by people whose self-interest exceeds their devotion to scholarship, as James M. Robinson makes clear in his many articles on the Nag Hammadi codices.

But it is well for those interested in antiquity to be aware of this world.  More than twenty years ago, I became aware that four Coptic manuscripts had been discovered somewhere, around 1983, and had found their way into the hands of the Cairo dealers, and then onwards internationally.  This is entirely normal.  Most such discoveries are made by fellaheen, tilling the soil, and the dealers keep agents in the villages for precisely this reason. Indeed if they did not do so, it is likely that papyrus finds would simply be destroyed by the finders.

Among these manuscripts was a previously unknown gnostic “Gospel of Judas.”  This was published in 2006.  The whole story is told by Herbert Krosny in his The lost gospel : the quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (2006), which I used to have but seems to have vanished in a recent house move.

My own interest led me to the website of Dutch art dealer Michael van Rijn.  This was a huge farrago of art-world gossip, obviously unreliable – and probably by design – hurling accusations of dodgy dealings at all sorts of people.  It was strangely formatted, and yet deeply entertaining.  How widely read it was I cannot say.

Van Rijn had become aware of the find, and he had also acquired photographs of some of it, and a rough translation.  I corresponded with him, and found him by email to be a charming yet clearly very unreliable person.  He published what he had on his website, and I mirrored some of it on my own.  The trail of what I could find out is still online here.  He was even interviewed by the BBC, who seemingly did not realise the importance of what he had, and chose to run end-credits over footage of him reading unpublished material from the work.

A 2006 photograph of Michel van Rijn.

In the end his website was shut down, in 2006.  This shut-down took place well before the orchestrated censorship of the last few years, in days when such things were still unthinkable.  So I can only infer that he had annoyed some very important people indeed.  What happened afterwards I know not.  There is a 2012 interview with him by Jake Hanrahan here, although, as ever, I do not know how much of it you can believe. He cultivated his image as a rogue.  He appeared in a 2016 film.  The last I heard of him, he was living in Italy.

And now… he is gone.  Whether he made the world a better place, or a worse one, I cannot say.  But there is no doubt that he made it a more entertaining one.

Farewell, old inkslinger.  May you find mercy at the hands of One to whom all answers are known, and from Whom even fewer secrets are hidden.

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Experiments with Amharic and technology (part 3)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Back in August 2023, I found that it was possible to scan in some of an Ethiopian text, part of the Life of Saint Garima.  Unfortunately the results from machine translation were disappointing.  ChatGPT was no better.

This evening I was writing my last post, and remembered these efforts.  So I pasted those chunks of text into ChatGPT.  Here’s the first:

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God above all, I have renounced everything and believed in Him until the end of the world. Amen.

The sermon delivered by Saint John, the Bishop of Aksum, concerning the greatness and honor of Saint Isaac:

He said, “Listen and understand, my beloved ones, what I will tell you. I saw a woman who was suffering greatly, trembling and in distress. And she called upon Our Lady Mary, saying: ‘For the sake of the Son, Christ, this woman is not yet born.’ They said to her, ‘Whoever does not believe in Christ and remains doubtful, they shall be humbled and brought low under her feet.’

Then, at that moment, the King of Heaven and Earth came forth. And she said, ‘The one who is greater than Moses shall come.’

Plausible.  Here’s the second chunk:

And it happened on one night that a book was opened, read, and written down. And he arose for prayer in the church. And the angels wrote for him the Gospel at the fourth hour and interpreted it for him. And the angels of God descended and stood before him, and our Lord Christ comforted him. And his message was heard throughout all the land. His prayer and blessing remained with us.

Also plausible.

Perhaps I should have another go at this!

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This morning I spent driving around, picking up some medicine for my girlfriend’s cat, and then taking her out to lunch.  After lunch, in my last post I uploaded the Life of Isidore of Pelusium (BHG 2209).  This afternoon I scanned in the Greek for a miracle story of St George, the miracle of the demon (BHG 687k); and ran it through ChatGPT.  It’s in the comment to this old post here.

I’d still like to do a translation of the 8 letters of Isidore of Pelusium to Cyril of Alexandria.  I have the Greek for this, thanks to the TLG.  Although tomorrow morning a cheese scone beckons, so it may have to wait a bit.

This evening while sitting in the bath I began to think about what else we could do with this interesting combination of imperfect OCR, plus the ability to get AI to correct the scan errors, and some other languages than Greek and Latin.

A little while ago I used Google Docs to scan in some Ge`ez – which worked -, and then I tried to get AI to translate it.  The last bit failed completely.  I think, given time, that Ethiopian languages will become possible.

I wonder how long ago that attempt was?  I think it was two years ago, after I encountered a legend about Abba Garima copying the bible in a single night.  (Indeed it was!  Amharic, rather than Ge`ez tho. See here and here.)

The technology has come on quite a bit since then.  I must try again.

What other languages might we do this with?  Well, what about Armenian?  Or Coptic?

Interesting thoughts!

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A “Life” of St. Isidore of Pelusium (BHG 2209) now online in English

Posted on by Roger Pearse

This  short11th century “Life” was printed by Morton Smith without a translation.  I thought it would be interesting to translate it.  I include the Greek text.

Here it is:

The files are also available on Archive.org here.

As usual, I make this file and its contents public domain.  Do whatever you like with it, personal, educational or commercial.

Here’s the translation, for those who will never download the files!

    *    *    *    *

The Life and Conduct of Our Holy Father Isidore of Pelusium.[1]

1. This divine Isidore, who was called marvellous in both life and word, and who shone in both respects brighter than the sun, had Pelusium as his homeland; and this city was renowned among those in Egypt; and from a devout root, a more devout offshoot sprouted, for from his earliest youth, he immediately embraced virtue wholeheartedly; and he showed that he cherished this as an inalienable possession always; and [he avoided] the things in which youth delights, generally being averse to them; I mean childish games and youthful frolics; and the luxury that weakens the soul and enslaves it to the pleasures of the flesh; and simply all the other things that hinder the mind from understanding what is good; but the things that lead to perfect detachment and the highest contemplation of divine things, these he embraced wholeheartedly; I mean self-control in all things, and the finest education, which lightens the soul and lifts it to heavenly things; for having fallen in love with wisdom, and having honoured her according to the divine precepts of Solomon, being adorned and preserved by her, he was seen [to live accordingly] throughout his life; for the wise man says, “Love her, and she will guard you; honour her, that she may adorn you, that she may place on your head a crown of graces and protect you with a crown of beauty.” [Prov. 4:6, 8-9]

2. Guided by these admirable exhortations and training himself, the admirable Isidore devoted his entire mind to the pursuit of wisdom.  He diligently studied all of divine Scripture, both the New and also the Old Testaments, and mastered thoroughly the entire education of the Greeks.  For those who love elegance, this also is necessary, in order to illuminate and eloquently express the thoughts of reason to those who receive what is said with goodwill, rather than with malice.   Indeed, a truly intelligent and wise person should not avoid all the teachings of the Greeks, but rather should select from them and study them thoroughly.  For even these [studies] can benefit the devout and God-loving soul.  Just as the teachings of the Church are of no use at all to the lazy and indifferent, due to their inherent sloth and negligence, so too for the diligent and studious even external learning can be most useful.  Like a bee flitting among flowers and gathering the best from each, so too did the great Isidore engage in the noble trade of knowledge from his youth until extreme old age, becoming a living library.  But why dwell on these matters when there are far greater things to recount?

3. After this admirable man had attained sufficient knowledge, he turned towards to the monastic life, fleeing the disturbances of the world as capable of harming [the soul]. He judged that it was better to die to the world and to live for Christ, and he left the city and settled in the ‘mountain’[2] of Nitria.  There, after spending considerable time in asceticism, the wise man truly practiced the genuine philosophy.

4. Although the blessed one had chosen this solitary way of life, desiring to have God alone as the witness of his virtue, he became well-known throughout Egypt.  Indeed, he even became known to the one who adorned the archiepiscopal throne of Alexandria.  This great man was Athanasius, the champion of the orthodox faith, and a valiant opponent of disreputable heresies.   At his orders the divine Isidore was enrolled in the priesthood of the church, in Alexandria, although reluctantly and only after being persuaded by him.[3]

5. In this sacred duty, is there any need to state his devotion to virtue? What labour and sweat did he not put in?   He was above all a watchful eye, not just over his own affairs, but also for the welfare of others, and more so for their needs than for his own.  For he neglected his own interests in order that others should benefit.   This is why he wrote continuously wise letters to everyone.    To those nearby he gave instruction in person[4] urging them to do what was right.  With those far away he communicated through letters that could guide their souls, to bishops, priests, deacons, monks, and nuns, to rulers and to the ruled; and to everyone alike, high and low, he spoke with equal love.

6. Sometimes he praised those who excelled in virtue, and exalted them in his writings; at other times, he corrected those who went astray, with great wisdom and understanding. In all things he showed a caring and God-loving spirit.  But it was not possible for this blessed man, living so virtuously, to escape the schemes of the evil demon.  For how could it be otherwise, because that devil exists and from the beginning opposes all that is good.

7. After the great Athanasius departed this life for his dwelling in heaven, and after his successors [did likewise], the leadership of the church of Alexandria passed to Theophilus, the nephew[5] of the blessed Cyril[6].   What can be said that is equal to the great storm that he endured?  To what severe trials was he subjected?  For the enemy, who was envious of the virtue of the God-loving patriarch[7], and trying to strip him of it, sowed hatred [in his mind] against this divine man.  At the same time he tried to hinder contentiously his God-pleasing and beneficial works.  He turned Theophilus the patriarch, who had been God-loving in all things before this time, into an enemy through his hostility toward the great Isidore.  The utterly wicked one prevailed so much that he even made Theophilus expel from the priesthood one who was truly worthy of the heavenly altar, contrary to all justice and reason.

8. This [affair], I believe, was like some kind of filthy stain rubbed onto the patriarch.  Yet the truly admirable Isidore did not argue or protest at all.  Nor did he struggle against the one who fruitlessly wronged him, and tried to harm him in every way, both by hand and foot.  Instead, one might say, in a manner worthy of himself, he returned from the Church to the mountain where he had previously dwelt alone, and ascended again, deeming it unworthy for distress to ruin the tranquillity of his own thoughts.  At the same time, he did not wish to increase the judgment against Theophilus through hatred toward himself, the disciple of the peaceful and gentle Christ.  The attack of the wicked and strife-loving devil became for him an opportunity for and voluntary contribution towards greater virtue.

9. But even while dwelling “on the mountain,” and devoted to stillness, the blessed one took thought to encourage everyone towards virtue to [the best of his] ability, even from afar. He knew that this was the chief part of salvation.  So he worked constantly, sending exhortations and instructions through letters, and he never neglected to teach and urge everyone toward virtue.  Day and night, at every hour, he made this his concern, serving as a rule[8] and a guideline[9], so to speak, placed in front of everyone, although he required rest due to old age, and rather needing assistance himself because of his multitude of years.  For his life was extended to nearly a hundred years.  Yet even in old age he flourished and showed energy in building up those near him.

10. Since it was necessary for him, as a man, to die, he fell into a brief illness, which was spent in discourses of thanksgiving and salvation. Also there were the prayers of the assembled monks and laymen to take leave of him in his final moments.  Indeed too many to count gathered together, asking for his prayers, and chanting hymns for his departure.

11. When, through the hands of God who gave him life, the blessed on entrusted his blessed soul [to God], his honourable remains were laid in earth with a large escort and and great honour.  [His tomb] gushed streams of miracles for all who approached it in faith.  The day of his departure[10] was the fourth of February.

12.  O Isidore, best of all priests and monks, wise and God-inspired, entreat Christ unceasingly to be the guardian and protector of the realm for our orthodox emperor.  Glorify him with the greatest trophy monuments[11] over enemies. Grant him strength against every adversary, and to be the mightiest hand in wars.  And at the end, grant him the imperishable kingdom of heaven, mercifully granting him forgiveness of sins (graciously releasing the chains of life’s transgressions), and the divine enjoyment of a paradise of delight, which may we also enjoy, to His praise and glory, to Whom be glory forever and ever.  Amen.

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  1. [1]The paragraphs are usually a single sentence, composed of clauses connected by semi-colons. I have broken this into shorter sentences.↩
  2. [2]A place of solitude.  ὅρος: 1. Sinai in Genesis, the Mountain of the Transfiguration; 2. a place inhabited by monks (Lampe).↩
  3. [3]Isidore was probably born in 370 AD, but Athanasius died in 373.  This mistake indicates that the text cannot be anywhere near contemporary to Isidore.↩
  4. [4]Lit. “spoke with a living voice.”↩
  5. [5]This should read “the uncle.”↩
  6. [6]St. Cyril of Alexandria.↩
  7. [7]θεόφιλος: The name “Theophilus” means “God-loving.”↩
  8. [8]κανών.↩
  9. [9]στάθμη, a carpenter’s line.↩
  10. [10]τοῦ μεγάλου τελειώσεως, lit. “his great completion”↩
  11. [11]τρόπαιον.↩

Using Deepseek on an obscure Greek “Life” of St Isidore of Pelusium (d. 435 AD) by Morton Smith

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Yesterday I started googling about Isidore of Pelusium, and I quickly came across a number of papers showing that Dr. Madaline Toca is actively working on Isidore of Pelusium, the manuscripts of his letters, the reception of his work in Latin, and so on.  This is good news!  Most of these papers are accessible on Academia here, which is even better news.  Also among her efforts is an online bibliography for Isidore, here.

This bibliography informed me that a previously unpublished Greek “Life” had been printed back in 1958 in an obscure Greek volume.  Thankfully she provided a PDF here.

The author of this publication was none other than a certain Morton Smith.  Today Morton Smith is notorious for his “Secret Mark” forgery.  But in 1957 he was just another a young scholar, travelling through Greece and the Levant, and searching for manuscripts of the letters of Isidore of Pelusium.

The “Life” printed is basically a transcription of four manuscripts, the oldest 12th century, the rest 16th century; three from Mount Athos, and the other in the National Library in Athens.  From the incipit and explicit, it appears to be the text listed in the BHG, vol. 3 (supplements) on p.38 as BHG 2209.  The text is in 12 paragraphs, which are those in the manuscripts.  No paragraph numbering or subtitles appear.

I was curious what the text said.  Unfortunately Smith gave no translation.  It does not seem to be in the TLG.  But I knew that if I could create an electronic text, then I could work on it with ChatGPT.

What I did was to run it through Abbyy Finereader 15 Pro.  Unfortunately this only supports modern Greek, which means that the accentuation gets mangled.  But never mind that.  Who cares?  This is just idle interest.  Or so I thought.

Anyway I pulled it, did a certain amount of light correction.  Then I pasted it into ChatGPT using the free online web interface, and asked for an English translation.  The request that I gave it – the “prompt” in the AI jargon – was this:

Please correct the following text in medieval Greek: ”’  …. ”’

with the Greek between the triple quotes.  Triple quotes seem to be the standard way to indicate something in these AI interfaces.  I have no idea why.

Well, ChatGPT produced a very nice, perfectly readable translation.  Here is the opening section:

The Life and Conduct of Our Holy Father Isidore of Pelusium

This divine Isidore, who lived a wondrous life both in deed and word, shone like the sun in both respects, and even brighter. His homeland was Pelusium, a distinguished city in Egypt. He sprang from a pious lineage, yet he himself flourished as an even more devout offshoot. From his earliest years, he ardently embraced virtue and steadfastly held to it as an inseparable possession. He despised the pleasures of youth, such as childish games, frivolous laughter, indulgence that weakens the soul, and enslavement to the desires of the flesh—everything, in short, that distracts the mind from perceiving true beauty. Instead, he pursued complete detachment and the heights of divine contemplation, embracing temperance in all things and the highest form of education—one that elevates the soul and leads it toward the heavens.

My experiences with ChatGPT as a helper with the translation of the “Life” of John Damascene had demonstrated that ChatGPT does give reasonable accuracy.  But also that you do have to check!  But how to do so?

My next thought was to try out another AI product, the Chinese DeepSeek, also available for free online.  I did the same with this, with the same prompt, and it also produced a translation. Here’s the opening section:

The Life and Conduct of Our Holy Father Isidore of Pelusium

This divine Isidore, who was wondrous in both life and word, shone brighter than the sun in both respects. His homeland was Pelusium, a renowned city in Egypt. From a devout root, a more devout branch sprouted, for from his earliest youth, he wholeheartedly embraced virtue and held it as an inalienable possession, demonstrating his unwavering love for it. He shunned the pleasures that typically delight youth—childish games, youthful frivolities, and indulgences that weaken the soul and enslave it to the desires of the flesh. In short, he avoided everything that hinders the mind from attaining true understanding of what is good. Instead, he devoted himself entirely to what leads to perfect detachment and the highest contemplation of divine things: universal self-control and the best education, which lightens the soul and lifts it to heavenly things.

Various awkwardnesses in the DeepSeek output suggested to me that it was probably closer to the Greek.  But there are enough differences there that I felt that I needed to get closer to the Greek.

So I put in another prompt to DeepSeek:

For each sentence, give the Greek, then the English translation; then analyse the syntax, with meanings; then give a list (in table format) of all the words with the grammar, lemma, part of speech, case, number, gender, and meaning for each word.

Doing so produces quite a bit of output.  The “translation” gets quite a bit closer to the Greek as you do this, and of course you can read its explanation of the syntax, you can lookup individual words in Logeion or somewhere using the lemma, and generally wrestle with the sentence until you believe what you have.

But back to the AI output.

If you run this prompt in ChatGPT, it just does one sentence only, and then it asks if you want to continue.  If you say “yes”, then it does another.  However ChatGPT has no idea what a sentence is!  So it does a dozen or so words.  DeepSeek is the same, but I quickly found that the length of a “sentence” was much shorter.  Rather nervously I asked if it could “do the same but for two sentences” and I got longer outputs.  So that worked.  When I asked if it could do four “sentences”, it went a bit funny.  So I went back to two.

At one sentence a time, all this becomes very tedious.  Copying and pasting the output to a word document takes a lot of time.  Indeed I have spent the whole day doing this.  But DeepSeek did a fine job.  It was no worse than ChatGPT.

It’s generally best to do this, one paragraph at a time.  It doesn’t feel so oppressive, and you can go off for a break at the end of each paragraph. You don’t want to sicken yourself, and it takes too long to do the whole thing in one go, even for just 4 pages of Greek.

For the curious, I attach a sample file with what I got for one of the paragraphs.  How reliable the output is, well, I will find out in due course!  It’s here:

But I did get tired.  So I wondered if it was possible to do this process from the computer command line, thereby saving myself a lot of time.  You can indeed connect to the website using the “API,” which would allow you to write a program.  But… alas… they want money for that!  The restrictions on the free web interface are deliberate.

You can also download for free a DeepSeek “model” (jargon word) and run it on your PC.  But unless you have an awful lot of memory fitted, you will find yourself working with “distilled” versions which are not nearly as good.  The process is fairly technical, and although I got it to work, I’d need to spend a lot more time on this.  Whether my fairly powerful PC would handle a full-size model is something that I don’t yet know.  So I went back to the free web interface.

One place where DeepSeek is definitely superior to ChatGPT is that it recognises when it reaches the end of the passage.  ChatGPT does not.  It will quite happily continue beyond the end, “translating” random Greek garbage.  So every so often you have to take the last word translated, and check that it is still in the text!

Doing this led to an interesting discovery.  I always ask for the Greek, the English, and then the syntax analysis.  I found that DeepSeek was silently fixing up the garbage Greek text that I had got from the OCR.  It was adding the missing accentuation.

So I tried asking it explicitly to do so.

Please correct the following text in medieval Greek: ”’…”’

And it did, and then translated it.  A quick look at the original PDF suggests that it is doing a good job.  Well, well.

Update 27 March 2025.  I did find a couple of places in the “corrected” Greek text where it had mysteriously introduced a full-stop.  It also capitalised proper names without my asking it to!  But still interesting.

One thing that is really important – divide your text, however short, into chunks of no more than half-a-dozen sentences, and work on each chunk in turn in separate documents.  If you think, as I did, that the document is too short to bother, you will quickly get into a morass.  It’s psychologically necessary to have some positive reward every few sentences, or you get depressed and give up. In this case I ended up simply numbering the paragraphs and taking each as a “chapter.”

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A quote from the Marcionite “gospel” in Isidore of Pelusium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The 5th century monk Isidore of Pelusium was a contemporary of Cyril of Alexandria, to whom he directed at least 8 letters.  I always wanted to get these translated, ever since I learned of them in Quasten’s Patrology, vol. 3, p.184.  Today I went to my PDF of the Patrologia Graeca 78, and added bookmarks to them.  One of these is letter 370.  But my eye drifted to letter 371, to Pansophius, which turned out to be about the Marcionites!

Here’s the text and a quick translation:

(371) ΤΟΑʹ. ΠΑΝΣΟΦΙῼ.

Εἰ προΐσχεται ὁ τῆς Μαρκίωνος συνήγορος βλασφημίας, τὸ παρ’ ἐκείνοις ὀνομαζόμενον Εὐαγγέλιον, λαβὼν ἀνάγνωθι, καὶ εὑρήσεις εὐθὺς ἐν προοιμίοις τὴν ἀτοπίαν. Αὐτὴν γὰρ τὴν κατάγουσαν ἐπὶ Χριστὸν ἁπὸ Δαβὶδ καὶ Ἀβραὰμ γενεαλογίαν ἀπέτεμον• καὶ μικρὸν ὕστερον προϊὼν ἄλλην ὄψει κακόνοιαν. Ἀμείψαντες γὰρ τὴν τοῦ Κυρίου φωνήν, «Οὐκ ἦλθον, λέγοντος, καταλῦσαι τὸν νόμον ἢ τοὺς προφήτας,» ἐποίησαν• Δοκεῖτε, ὅτι ἦλθον πληρῶσαι τὸν νόμον ἢ τοὺς προφήτας; Ἦλθον καταλῦσαι, ἀλλ’ οὐ πληρῶσαι. Ἐκ τούτων δὲ εἴσῃ, ὅπως ἔχθραν ταῖς δυσὶ Διαθήκαις κατασκευάζουσι, ξένον εἶναι τοῦ νόμου τὸν Χριστὸν σχεδιάσαντες.

If the advocate of Marcion promotes blasphemy, take up and read their so-called Gospel, and you will immediately find its absurdity in the opening passages. For they have cut out the actual genealogy that leads down to Christ from David and Abraham.

And proceeding a little further, you will see another instance of their malice.  For they have altered the Lord’s words: “I did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets”, and changed it to: “Do you think that I have come to fulfil the Law or the Prophets? I have come to abolish, and not to fulfil.”

From this, you will understand how they fabricate enmity between the two Testaments, having contrived to make Christ a stranger to the Law.

We don’t really think of Marcionites hanging around in the 430s AD.  But as we know from the Life of Severus of Antioch by Zacharias Rhetor, even in the early 500s there was a fully operational pagan temple of Isis at Menouthis, less than 20 miles away from the seat of government at Alexandria, and now submerged under Abukir bay.  Ancient societies were not like the tightly controlled societies of our own day, after all.

Not merely does Isidore know of followers of Marcion’s teachings, but he knows of someone promoting it.  He also takes for granted that Marcion’s “Gospel” can be readily obtained at that late a date.

Fascinating!

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