Patristics and inerrancy

Posted on by Roger Pearse

For some time I have been wondering how the early Christians discuss issues like inerrancy.  The obvious thing to do is to collect statements from the first 3-4 centuries of Christian writing, and see what sort of attitude to scripture these have.  Indeed it is so obvious that surely someone has already done this?  Suggestions would be welcome!

From general reading I know that Tertullian in De praescriptione haereticorum 8 advises Christians not to argue with unbelievers using the bible.   But, living at the end of the second century as he did, he had a special reason.  At that period unbelievers routinely forged gospels and other texts, supposedly by apostles.  The canon existed, but only in a basic form.  Thus it was too easy for the malevolent to simply toss believers into a whirlpool of crooked arguments.  Tertullian recommends following something easier to argue with, the united testimony of the churches that can prove their apostolic origin.  His argument is pragmatic, and the Fathers tended to follow him.

Modern Christians have a specific issue in mind.  Do we treat the Bible as an infallible authority on matters of history and science, or consider that those elements are incidental?  (Some feel that the Old Testament and New can be treated differently on this issue). 

All Christians believe that it is an infallible authority on matters of Christian teaching.   Indeed it is mildly amusing to hear some people attack “inerrantists” for refusing to “accept that scripture is fallible on matters of science”, when we then find that they don’t actually believe that it is infallible in any other respect, and their argument is not with some small group but with every part of Christendom, from Jesus and the apostles down to myself!

But perhaps the real reason why we don’t find any specific comment in the early Christians is that this particular issue wasn’t one that they had to answer.  This happens in other areas also, and invariably means that they make comments which tend to one side or the other, without being definitive.  The question simply isn’t present to their minds, which makes them useless as a source of information on the specific question.

Maybe so.  I’d like to see the evidence before I decide on this. 

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What about “Google manuscript”?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just download manuscripts as PDF’s, rather than go through the gruesome and expensive process of obtaining whatever rubbish the libraries feel like selling us? 

Last week I wrote to Google suggesting that they do a project to make medieval manuscripts accessible.  We all know how difficult archives make it for us to access texts in this form!  Today I got a reply:

Hello Roger,

Thanks for your email and interest in Google Book Search.

I appreciate you taking the time to offer us this feedback about including ancient and medieval texts. I have passed along your email to the other members of my team. As this is still a young program, new ideas are under consideration and your feedback is very helpful. Please continue to share your suggestions with us.

Sincerely,

Tom
The Google Book Search Team

Interesting to know that Google DO reply.  If you’d like to see Google take an interest in getting text-only manuscripts online, why not tell them so?

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Syriac words in the Koran

Posted on by Roger Pearse

To what extent does the Koran contain Syriac words?  I’ve been reading a review of Christoph Luxenberg’s book about the Koran  by Martin F. J. Baasten in Aramaic Studies 2.2 (2004), pp. 268-272 (here), and finding it rather excellent.  It has been claimed — he cautiously states — that 80% of all loan-words in the Koran are from Syriac. 

Luxenberg has asked whether some passages in the Koran, which are difficult to understand, make more sense if you strip off the vowel-markings, thereby discarding the standard understanding of the text, and imagine that they contain Syriac loan words.

During the first century of the Arabic period, texts were written without all the marks above and below the line which indicate vowels, and indeed distinguish some consonants.  As Baasten rightly remarks, Arabic is a seriously defective script in this respect; worse than Syriac, where only two letters can be so affected.  Only seven Arabic letters — the rasm — are unique without some dotting.

Apparently some passages really do make much more sense if you do this.  Baasten gives a single example.

The implications of this for the transmission of the Koran are considerable.  If this can be proven, then it means that the Koran did not initially circulate orally, but passed through an early stage in written form, without vowel markings.  Only such a stage can account this symptom.

This would not be unreasonable.  There is no real reason to suppose that early followers of Mohammed memorised the new document, which was dribbling out chapter by chapter anyway.  It is likely that writing was used.  Thus we have the situation where early Korans differed, and a recension had to be created by the early Caliph Othman.  This situation also indicates that a good many people did NOT know the Koran orally, and relied on a written form of the text.

It seems that Luxenberg has overstated his thesis, however, and derived far more than this from Syriac sources, and much more tendentiously.  This is unfortunate, as it tends to undermine the credibility of his work.  But thus far, it would seem likely that he has indeed discovered something solid. 

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Christian literature in Middle Persian

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Now here’s a thought:

The century again witnessed several periods of open warfare between the two empires, but by this time the Sasanian authorities no longer felt any serious need to doubt the loyalty of their Christian subjects. It is significant that the synod of 576 instructed that prayers for Khosroes I always be included in the liturgy. Worth mentioning too in this context is the fact that the sixth century also saw the growth of a Christian literature in Middle Persian (whose existence is only known indirectly today). — Sebastian Brock, The church of the East in the Sasanian Empire up to the sixth century, in Fire from Heaven (1988)p.77)

I don’t know a sausage about Middle Persian literature.  Indeed my only knowledge of it is of a introductory treatise on Aristotle by Paul the Persian, which Severus Sebokht translated into Syriac. 

I wonder if any of this literature exists today?  Sadly Brock gave no footnote.

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Two snippets

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The $400 PDF-microfilm of the unpublished 13th century Arabic Christian historian al-Makin was rubbish and unreadable.  I complained and was ignored.  I complained again two days ago, and threatened to involve VISA.  Today I got a note asking me to return the CD for checking, which makes no mention of the first note.  Clearly persistence is necessary in dealing with the BNF.   I always feel rather helpless, confronted by a massive bureaucracy.  I’ll let you know how I get on.

On a different note, I wonder just how many unknown medieval manuscripts of the bible there are?  I came across a press release by Norfolk Record Office (NRO), about an exhibition of manuscripts belonging to a now deceased collector, one Denys Spittle:

The oldest book in the exhibition is a copy of the four Gospels, probably from Constantinople that dates from the 10th century.

 This sounds like a job for CSNTM!  So I wrote to the NRO, asking if the ms. has an Aland number, etc.  No-one seems to know, and NRO won’t give me the contact details of the owners.  The Denys Spittle Trust isn’t in the Charities Commission database, nor at Companies House.  Still, if they’re willing to lend the manuscript for an exhibition like this, they ought to be willing to allow the experts at CSNTM to catalogue it properly and record it.  I’ve forwarded the details I have to them.

But of course this naturally leads you to wonder just what else exists in private hands?

I’ve been feeling rather unwell for the last few days, after an unsuccessful dental root treatment, so don’t expect much substantive from me this week.

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Two maps of ancient Antioch

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Whenever I read a fantasy novel, I love to see a map.  Likewise I love to see maps of ancient cities.  In a way, the latter are like the former, except that they once actually existed.  Imagine entering the city, and walking along the main street!

Chris Ecclestone has posted two maps of ancient Antioch here.  Somehow this makes his excellent Antioch site much clearer.  I hope that he will make  a permanent link to them from the top of his site.

I notice outside the walls the shrine of St. Babylas, which caused Julian the Apostate so much upset when he tried to restore the oracle at Daphne.

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A little-known find of Coptic books in 1910

Posted on by Roger Pearse

While perusing the Book-Think blog, I came across mention of a find of Coptic books at the Monastery of St. Michael in 1910.  This was interesting, since although I am interested in Egyptian manuscript discoveries, I had never heard of it.

I find an article in the Catholic Encyclopedia which deals with the find.

The most important of these discoveries was undoubtedly that of the library of the Monastery of St. Michael in the Fayûm (Spring, 1910). Most of the fifty-eight volumes of which it consisted found their way to Paris, where they were purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan (Dec., 1911), in whose library (at New York) they are now preserved. 5000 volumes remained in Egypt, and, with a few fragments of the same origin, are kept [in Cairo]… Mr. Morgan’s collection is no less remarkable as a group of dated manuscripts of absolutely certain provenance. … the Morgan collection contains eighteen dates ranging from A.D. 832 to 914… Many of the manuscripts are still in their original bindings…

Why do we have so many fragmentary books?

One of the most important features of the Morgan collection is that it consists of complete volumes, while other collections, yet reputed so valuable, those of Rome, Paris, and London (see below under British Museum Collection), to name the principal ones, consist mostly of fragments. It is an inveterate habit with the Arabs of Egypt to tear the manuscripts they discover or steal, so as to give each member of the tribe his share of the spoils, and also in the hope of securing higher prices by selling the manuscripts piecemeal, a process fatal to literature, for while some leaves so treated will be scattered throughout the public or private collections of Europe and America, a good many more will either meet destruction or remain hidden indefinitely by the individual owners. Most of the manuscripts of the Monastery of St. Michael had already been divided into small lots of leaves and distributed among a number of Arabs when they were rescued at the cost of untold toil and expense.

The same happened to the Gospel of Judas, the Exodus, the Greek Mathematical Treatise and the Letters of Paul manuscripts, half a century later.

The Catholic Encyclopedia article lists the books (bless them!).  There are biblical texts, liturgical stuff, and masses of Saints’ lives.  There are also some homilies by Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Athanasius, Shenuda, among others.

Interestingly, at the end of the page in the CE, are details of other purchases by the British Museum of Coptic mss.  Among the texts found is a “discourse of Eusebius of Cæsarea on the Chanaanite woman” [Ms. Or., 5001, item 10].   Has this ever been published, or translated?  The article gives as sources:

On Or. 5000 and Or. 5001 cf. CRUM, Catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts of the Brit. Museum (London, 1905), Nos. 940, 171; WALLIS BUDGE, The earliest known Coptic Psalter in the Dialect of Upper Egypt from the unique Papyrus oriental 5000 in the Brit. Museum (London. 1908); IDEM, Coptic Homilies in the dialect of Upper Egypt (from Or. 5001 text and English tr., London 1910).

The last item is at Archive.org, which is a blessing, believe me.  For I saw a bound copy of this book, thick, small, fat and with a tight binding impossible to photocopy, and my heart failed me and I passed by on the other side and did not try to scan it.  Thankfully someone else has.   From this I find that the homily is of Eusebius of Caesarea in Cappadocia!

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Donate to get more NT mss online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve just discovered the link for donations to the Centre for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts.  They’re going around photographing manuscripts, and accustoming their holders to the idea of digital photography, and of putting manuscripts online.  This makes them trail-blazers for us all, even if — like me — NT manuscripts are peripheral to your interests.  They’re breaking down the barriers.

They take Paypal, credit cards, etc.  Why not give them a quick $20?

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Koln archive wins the Darwin award, puts selves in hole

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’ve been blogging on the disaster at Koln, where the municipal archive fell into in a large hole in the ground when the building collapsed.  I speculated that the archive probably saw requests for photographs as a chance to make money, rather than an opportunity to record and preserve.  The local university has put out an appeal for anyone who did manage to get any photos to contact them, so I asked whether my suspicions were true.

And they were!  It seems that the Koln archive really did prevent readers photographing!  They really did charge the few people interested in their documents absurd prices for copies.  They had the chance to get much of their archive recorded, and they put a tax on those who wanted to do so!!!   And they’ve been caught out.

What we need to do now is fire the ass of the people who made that particular decision.  Accidents happen; but the loss of much of the material is not accidental; it followed directly from the decision to charge for photographs.

Anyone know who the politicians are, with responsibility for this archive?

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List of CSEL volumes with links to Google books

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A Spanish Romanian language blog has a list and set of links here.  Most useful!

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