Travel posters for Ruritania! Hurrah!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The Ruritanian novel is a genre that is extinct, because it relies on a world-view likewise extinct today.  Both The Prisoner of Zenda and its unsatisfactory sequel, Rupert of Henzau, belong to the pre-WW1 era.  Winston S. Churchill attempted one, Savrola.  But the genre was already dying in the 1920s when Dorothy L. Sayers described them in Have His Carcase:

When she ought to have been writing, Harriet would sit comfortably in an armchair, reading a volume taken from Paul Alexis’ bookshelf, with the idea of freeing the subconscious for its job. In this way, her conscious imbibed a remarkable amount of miscellaneous information about the Russian Imperial Court and a still more remarkable amount of romantic narrative about love and war in Ruritanian states. Paul Alexis had evidently had a well-defined taste in fiction. He liked stories about young men of lithe and alluring beauty who, blossoming into perfect gentlemen amid the most unpromising surroundings, turned out to be the heirs to monarchies and, in the last chapter, successfully headed the revolts of devoted loyalists, overthrew the machinations of sinister presidents, and appeared on balconies, dressed in blue-and-silver uniforms, to receive the plaudits of their rejoicing and emancipated subjects. Sometimes they were assisted by brave and beautiful English or American heiresses, who placed their wealth at the disposal of the loyalist party; sometimes they remained faithful despite temptation to brides of their own nationality, and rescued them at the last moment from marriages of inconvenience with the sinister presidents or their still more sinister advisers; now and again they were assisted by young Englishmen, Irishmen or Americans with clear-cut profiles and a superabundance of energy, and in every case they went through a series of hair-raising escapes and adventures by land, sea and air. Nobody but the sinister presidents ever thought of anything so sordid as raising money by the usual financial channels or indulging in political intrigue, nor did the greater European powers or the League of Nations ever have anything to say in the matter. The rise and fall of governments appeared to be a private arrangement, comfortably thrashed out among a selection of small Balkan States, vaguely situated and acknowledging no relationships outside the domestic circle.

So it was with some surprise that I found some examples of travel posters, exhorting us to travel by railway to Strelsau in 1938!

Let us hope that the Elphberg monarchy had survived the war, and was prospering in those dark days.  Eastern Europe was a far more interesting place when the hills held the castles of Archdukes.

The poster comes from Deviant Art here., and is carried out by “mbhdesign”.  Other Ruritanian travel posters appear at the site.

How marvellous!  I wish I could give a list of Ruritanian novels.  For who of us would not wish to buy a railway ticket and journey to Strelsau once more?

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Debunking idiotic myths about Easter. No, it isn’t pagan. No the Easter bunny doesn’t signify anything

Posted on by Roger Pearse

At Easter every year the web witnesses an upsurge of smug howling of idiotic anti-Christian nonsense, about Easter, Ishtar, the Easter Bunny and heaven knows what.  Most of us ignore it for the rubbish it is.

A couple of months ago I came across some extremely capable responses to this from a certain Adrian Bott, who blogs at cavalorn.livejournal.com and tweets as @cavalorn.  Paradoxically his thoughts are captured far better in the series of tweets than in his blog posts, or his article at the Guardian.  I believe that he posts something on this every year; so let’s help a bit, by adding this to the Google search results.

His first Twitter thread concerned how we know that Easter was not a hijacked pagan festival. (Twitter link).

“Let’s start with the basics. How do we know Easter was not a hijacked pagan festival? Paradoxically, we can do this by trying to prove that it *was.*”

Now, we know there was no one people known as ‘the pagans’. There was, rather, an abundance of non-Christian polytheistic belief systems, differing from region to region. The Anglo-Saxon pagans, for example, would not have worshipped the same Gods as the ancient Irish pagans.

So the first question is, if Easter is a stolen pagan festival, then which specific pagans was it stolen from? Going by the name – Easter, allegedly derived from the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre – the only possible candidate is the Anglo-Saxons.

Logically, then, the earliest possible date on which Easter can have been stolen from the pagans is 596, since that was the date on which the first Christian missionaries began to convert the Anglo-Saxons. See Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 791 CE.

And that’s where our theory falls apart; because Easter was already being celebrated long before 596, under its original name of Pesach. In fact, Easter had been celebrated since the 2nd Century. (See Melito of Sardis, Homily on the Pascha.)

In fact, Pascha was already so well established by the time the missionaries arrived in pagan England that the chief missionary, Augustine, had a major spat with the neighbouring ‘Celtic’ Church about the proper date to celebrate it on. (Also Bede.)

Okay, so why do we call it Easter? That was the name of a Goddess, right? Surely that’s evidence that the Church nicked the name of an existing festival in order to make conversion easier?

Granted, we have documentary evidence that Gregory the Great (who sent the missionaries to England) did indeed recommend a policy of acculturation – but he did *not* recommend the adoption of pagan festivals, and as we’ve seen, Pesach was already long established.

Gregory recommends that well-built pagan temples should be repurposed for Christian use, & converts should be allowed to keep on slaughtering and eating animals on sacred occasions, just not as a sacrifice. But both these things were governed by the existing Christian calendar.

Furthermore, mere missionaries simply did not have the authority to add new festivals to the Church calendar. Regardless of how helpful they might have found it to hijack the feast day of Garthog the Colossally Endowed and rebrand it as Twinklemas, they were not allowed to.

And the Pope did not add a new festival to the Church calendar without adding it for the ENTIRE Church. So why should Christians in, say, Rome have a new festival added for the sake of the new converts in Kent?

Here’s the reason why we English call Pascha ‘Easter’. According to Bede, the Anglo-Saxons DID have a festival called Eostur in honour of the Goddess Eostre. It happened in the fourth lunar month of the year.

Bede doesn’t explicitly say so, but it’s highly likely that the full moon of that lunar month marked the opening of the six months of summer; we know that the full moon of the month Winterfilleth opened winter, and the Eostur-month is six months away.

So the Anglo-Saxons are accustomed to getting together on the full moon of the fourth lunar month for a major festival that they call Eostur. It’s a feast over multiple days; a very big deal to them.

Now, the Christian celebration of Pascha is also linked to the full moon, according to a system of calculation that comes down via an entirely different route, and has its roots in Passover. (The old Hebrew calendar used lunar months, too.)

So the English converts call Pascha ‘Eostur’ through sheer force of habit. It’s ‘the big get-together on the fourth full moon of the year, when we do some religion then eat lots of roast ox.’ (The English are still eating roast meat on Easter to this day; quite pagan of us.)

But why would the English people call a Christian festival by a different name to that which their priests called it? Well, the official language of the Church was Latin, and we spoke Old English. So it makes sense that we’d go on using our old familiar name.

Not everyone in Britain did call Pascha ‘Easter’, of course. In some places it was called ‘Pace’, a much more obvious derivation of Pascha. Hence ‘pace-egging’. So no, Easter wasn’t ‘hijacked’. We English are just creatures of habit. End of thread. Thankyouverymudge.

This, I think we can all agree, expresses concisely exactly what most people need to hear.

His next thread deals with the supposed symbolism of the Easter Bunny. (Twitter link)

It’s funny how nobody ever says ‘the money the Tooth Fairy brings symbolises the rich wisdom of adulthood’, or ‘the Tooth Fairy symbolises the benevolent Goddess’. It’s as if people instinctively know that all these assertions of symbolic meaning are inherently bollocks.

The Easter Bunny does not symbolise a damn thing. None of the egg-bringing animals of legend are in any way ‘symbolic’ any more than the Tooth Fairy is. Not symbolic of ‘fertility’ nor of anything else.

But there is a reason why people are now conditioned to read ‘symbolism’ into things like the Easter Bunny, and it’s worth saying a few words about that reason, because there is an asston of class privilege and erasure involved.

Back in the last century, there was a mania for writing oh-so-learned interpretations of folk customs. It was a superb racket to be in, because the basic premise was that the original meaning of the customs had long been forgotten.

So you, the scholarly researcher, could make up – sorry, cleverly deduce – whatever ‘symbolism’ you liked, and there were no ancient pagans around to tell you you were wrong. Of course, if the silly commoners who actually PRACTICED the customs told you you were wrong…

… then you could condescendingly put them in their place. This actually happened. See Hutton’s ‘Triumph of the Moon’.

So what, you may ask, was the chief obsession of the folklorists? What themes did they persistently read into the folk customs, regardless of what the working class celebrants actually told them?

If you answered ‘pagan survivals’ and ‘fertility’ then congratulations. Have a bun.

So there you go. The reason we are currently drowning in this ‘omg it’s all symbolic of pagan fertility’ stuff is that a bunch of arrogant, well-intentioned, scholarly, superior bods not only believed they knew better than the regular people, but said so again and again.

If you want a good way of deconstructing this stuff and showing just how daft it all is, try reading ‘symbolic meanings’ into any everyday phenomenon. It’s easy to do and yields convincing results.

Here’s Ron Hutton again, from ‘Triumph of the Moon’, which anyone interested in this stuff ought to read.

In 1937, the very learned S L Hooke delivered a presidential address to the Folk-Lore Society in which he proposed that football matches on Shrove Tuesday were actually descended from a ritual combat between the forces of light and darkness.

That is the background to all these ‘Easter was pagan because symbolism!!’ assertions. It’s like a farce. But people eagerly swallowed it and we are collectively still feeling the effects to this day.

(Heckler) So why is there an Easter bunny?

Because parents didn’t want children to know who was really responsible for leaving the decorated eggs for them to find.

Why a bunny? Well, it was originally a hare, probably because hares leave nest-like forms in fields.  https://www.dailygrail.com/2016/03/hares-eggs-for-easter/

Deeply interesting.

Finally Adrian address the question: “why do we care?” (Twitter link)

Here are several reasons why I think it’s important to counter the ‘Easter was pagan’ rubbish with properly sourced & attributed facts. 1. Bogus history obscures real history, and the real history is not just rich and interesting, it tells us who we are and how we got here.

2. The ‘pagan Easter’ tropes diminish, deny or outright ignore the influence of Passover on Easter, and that’s been held up as anti-Semitic.

3. Much of the misunderstanding of Easter’s actual lore and history comes from assuming the English name for the festival – Easter – defines the whole event. That’s an absurd degree of Anglocentrism.

4. The bogus Ishtar/Easter connection was originally made in the context of an anti-Catholic rant (The Two Babylons). So there’s anti-Catholicism baked into the whole ‘Easter was pagan’ argument too.

5. Claiming Easter is all about indigenous Anglo-Saxon (thus Germanic) deities is characteristic of certain strains of hard right-wing thought.

6. The myth of pagan Easter is used in some fundamentalist Christian circles to discourage believers from celebrating it.

7. The insistence that ‘the Church hijacked pagan festivals to make it easier to convert and oppress the population’ paints a ludicrously unbalanced and ill-informed picture of how the early Church worked.

8. Facts good. Bullshit bad.

The ‘Easter was pagan’ myth manages to be anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic, anti-Christian and anti-pagan (because it peddles a false version of pagan belief) which is quite an achievement, really.

Which speaks for itself.

Thank you Adrian for trying to stem the flow of crud every Easter.

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Giuliano da Sangallo’s “book of designs”, and the Septizonium

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was looking through the Vatican manuscript Barberini lat. 4424, the “book of designs” by Giulano da Sangallo (d.1516), and I found what seems like an old favourite – a drawing of the Septizonium, the now vanished facade that once stood at the end of the Via Appia to hide the Palatine.  The drawing is on folio 30r of the manuscript (looking at the numbering top right) but inscrutably this is given as f.32r by the online viewer.

I’ve downloaded it, and here it is.  (How one curses the obtrusive watermark, on so faint an item!)

But then I found something even better.

The destruction of the Septizonium (or Septizodium) took place in 1588-9.  The building was unsafe, and Pope Sixtus V wanted the materials for building.  A contemporary account of all this exists in the Vatican.

What I found was an article discussing all this, and giving even more contemporary drawings than I had known.  There is, for instance, a set of plans for all three levels of the remaining fragment, with measurements!

The article is Christine Pappelau, “The Dismantling of the Septizonium – a Rational, Utilitarian and Economic Process?”, in:  S. Altekamp &c (eds), Perspektiven der Spolienforschung 2. Zentren und Konjunkturen der Spoliierung, 2017, 357-379.  It can be downloaded from here.

It is a wonderful article, and shows the difference between the professional scholar and the intermittent searches of amateurs like myself!

But I shall still collect pictures of the Septizonium anyway!

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Basil the Great’s condemnation of sodomy? Or Peter Damian? Or Fructuosus?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

In a tweet by Matthew Schmitz on Twitter I came across a striking quotation, attributed to Basil of Ancyra / Basil the Great.  Enquiry quickly showed that in fact it came from a work by medieval writer Peter Damian, complete with attribution to Basil.

The publication I found was Peter Damian, Book of Gomorrah: An eleventh-century treatise against clerical homosexual practices, tr. Peter J. Payer, Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1982, p.60-61.  This reads:

However, since we have taken care to use two testimonies from one sacred council, let us also insert what Basil the Great thinks of the vice under discussion so that “on the testimony of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.” He says:

“A cleric or monk who seduces youths or young boys or is found kissing or in any other impure situations is to be publicly flogged and lose his tonsure. When his hair has been shorn, his face is to be foully besmeared with spit and he is to be bound in iron chains. For six months he will languish in prison-like confinement and on three days of each week shall fast on barley bread in the evening. After this he will spend another six months under the custodial care of a spiritual elder, remaining in a segregated cell, giving himself to manual work and prayer, subject to vigils and prayers. He may go for walks but always under the custodial care of two spiritual brethren, and he shall never again associate with youths in private conversation nor in counselling them.” [67]

67.  The text is from Regula Fructuosi, ch. 16 (PL 87, 1107A). English translation, C. W. Barlow, “Rule for the Monastery of Compludo”, in The Fathers of the Church, 63 (Washington, DC, 1969), 169.

The Fathers of the Church volume is in fact entitled Iberian fathers: volume 2 : Braulio of Saragossa, Fructuosus of Braga / translated by Claude W. Barlow, 1969.  From this I learn that Fructuosus produced two monastic rules, a Regula monachorum Complutensis, the Rule of the monks of Compludo, and another more general rule.  The former appears in the PL 87, 1099-1132, and Dr Barlow comments ruefully (p.148), “This edition is far from satisfactory, often corrupt, but no more recent study of the text has been made from the manuscripts known to exist in Spain and Portugal.”  Chapter 16 is translated on p.168-9 and reads in full:

16.  Monks who lie, steal, strike, or swear falsely in a manner not fitting a servant of Christ must first be verbally chided by their elders to withdraw from their vice. Then, if one has not yet reformed, he shall be brought three times before the brothers and warned to desist completely. If he still does not change, he shall be severely flogged and shall be secluded in a cell under the rigors of penance, having been sentenced to excommunication for three months; he is to be fed six ounces of barley bread each evening and allowed a small measure of water. Anyone found drunk in the monastery shall also be subject to the aforementioned sentence; likewise, any who write letters or receive them from others without the permission of the abbot or prior. A monk who is too attentive to boys or young men or has been caught kissing or indulging in other indiscreet acts, after the case has been openly proved by truthful accusers and witnesses, shall be publicly thrashed; he shall lose the crown which he wears and with head shaven shall be exposed to shame and disgrace; all shall spit in his face and heap their accusations upon him; he shall be bound in iron chains and held in narrow confinement for six months; and shall be given a small amount of barley bread in the evening on three days of each week. After this time is past, for the next six months he shall live in a separate cell under the watchfulness of a spiritual elder and shall be content with manual labor and continual prayer; he shall seek pardon by vigils and tears and abject humility and penitential laments. He shall walk in the monastery under the constant care and watch of two spiritual brothers, and shall never thereafter join the young in private conversation or companionship.

That’s pretty conclusive.

So the passage attributed to St Basil in fact comes from chapter 16 of a monastic rule attributed to Fructuosus of Braga (d.665 AD).  It has nothing to do with Basil; not even the monastic rule attributed to him.

The twitter post itself attracted some erudite comment.  This from “Matthew Cullinan Hoffman’s note on this quotation, from his translation of St. Peter Damian’s Liber Gomorrhianus”

This quotation, which Damian’s source (probably Burchard’s Libri Decretorum, lib. 17, cap. 35; PL 140, 925D) attributes to St. Basil, is in reality a slightly truncated form of a penalty prescribed for monks by St. Fructuosus of Braga (d. 665) (Regula Monachorum, cap. 16; PL 87, 1107A-B . A section of it also appears in the decrees of Ecgbert, bishop of York (d. 766) (PL 89, 387D), who correctly attributes it to Fructuosus, but in the later Collectio Canonum Quadripartia, (a manual used and referenced widely during the latter part of the early middle ages in France, England, and Italy), it contains no attribution. By the tenth century, collections of canon law such as Burchard’s were incorrectly attributing it to Basil.

Of course as a non-medievalist, I wouldn’t attempt to comment on this background; but it is very useful to tie this down.

Update: My thanks to two correspondents who supplied me with the FOC 63 volume!

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Origen, Homilies on Ezekiel – now available online

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I am delighted to announce that Origen’s Homilies on Ezekiel (Chieftain Publishing, 2014, edited by myself) are now freely available online.  This is, of course, Mischa Hooker’s excellent translation of the Latin, and his marvellous and comprehensive edition and translation of the fragments of the Greek.  It is the best version available anywhere.

You can download the PDF with the whole book, or a zip file with word versions of the English translations, from Archive.org here.  Or you can get them below:

Enjoy, copy, circulate.  If you want to use them commercially, please contact me; otherwise do whatever you like with them!

The printed versions will remain available through Amazon for at least another year.  After that, it all depends on whether sales exceed costs.  The hardback is a frankly astonishing, massive item that I am proud to have on my shelves (n.b. I didn’t typeset or do the cover).

Links: Amazon.com in hardback ($80) and paperback ($45); and Amazon.co.uk in hardback (£50) and paperback (£30).  All are in print.  Please get your university library to buy it!  It would be nice to get back what it cost to produce!

It’s been a long road to produce this volume.  I won’t do it again; but I don’t regret it, but I learned a lot of respect for the publishing industry in the process.  And … we now have worldwide access to Origen.

I hope you like his sermons.  I wonder, indeed, whether they might be preachable even today.

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From my diary

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The weather here is incredibly hot and humid, which makes sitting in front of a computer less than attractive.  Thankfully this evening I’ve been able to do so with good effect.  My backlog of stuff to do has shrunk to around 45 items, which is a relief – it was around 150 when I finished my last contract 3 weeks ago.

A number of necessary revisions to the Mithras pages have been completed, and a couple of new pages created.

I intend to release the Origen, Homilies on Ezekiel book onto the internet in the next few days, basically as soon as the weather allows me to do more work on the PC.  I always intended that this should be freely available, and, although I am still receiving sales from it, that objective really comes first.  It will remain in print for a year, however, and then we will see.

An interesting tweet in my backlog asked why the Meta Sudans was demolished.  This was a fountain next to the Colosseum, and Mussolini knocked it down in 1936.  I’d always intended to pursue this; fortunately a Google search revealed that I wrote an article on just that subject a couple of years ago!  When Mussolini ordered the demolition, an archaeologist named Colini was given two years to document the monument, and this was published in a mere 15 pages in 1937.  A copy is available on the web, for $1 a page, but I was able to restrain myself from buying it.  It will appear for free online in the next few years, I’m sure!

I’ve got a mass of notes saved on the Acta Sanctorum, which need going through and processing.  I also need to download more volumes of this.

I’ve received a couple of offers to translate, which are very welcome.  However as I currently have no income, I would be foolish to start anything.  I hope those offers will still stand in September or October.

Not included in any of the above is a mass of material about St George.  This needs to be processed into a blog post or two, giving all the information that anyone would need.  I will get to this.

Onwards!

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Gosh I shall drop everything and start at once – a reader’s letter

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I am fortunate to receive many interesting emails, which it is a privilege to read.  My spam filter defends me from many others.  But occasionally I receive an email that simply makes me rub my eyes in wonder.

Such an email arrived on 24 July.  I will reproduce it for you, suppressing only the name.

hi i’m a post graduate student from Greece in social theology of Athens. The title of my thesis is: “the local council of:Cartagena(419): historical-canon view”. I need to find a critical edition of this synod in latin and a book that has “holy fathers” in its title and is, in english, a book for the theme of my thesis. I dont know the titles or authors and i cant find the person who gave me the information. Any relevant bibliography would be helpful as well. Thanks in advance!

To which most of us will only respond with “wow”.  The author is clearly very young, and has not considered at all what he is asking of a stranger.  While I hate to be curmudgeonly, I had to reply that I could not assist.

I could, of course, devote some time to locating what the best edition might be of that synod.  But why should I?  I don’t know offhand – who would? – and surely such a task is exactly what the student should be doing themselves?

As for the invitation to locate a book by content with the words “holy fathers” in the title – no doubt it was mentioned in class – words fail me.  How could anybody answer that?

Over the last year I’ve had a few emails from people in Athens, to which I have responded politely.  Possibly I have unwittingly become the person to whom the lazy student writes to save himself a trip to the library or a call upon his supervisor.  At least, I can think of no other reason why anybody should write such an email to a busy stranger on another continent.

But if so, if you are a student at Athens, may I ask you to desist?  Please think before asking weary amateurs, who have already done a full day’s work before settling in front of their computer in the evening, to do your research for you.  It’s very selfish.

UPDATE (24/07/2018) – A couple of colleagues have written in with suggestions about this “council of Cartagena”.  In case it comes up again, here is a digest of suggestions.

First, it’s not quite clear whether our enquirer meant “Cartagena” (in Spain), where there was a synod of some sort in 419 (Theologische Realenzyklopädie 32, p. 559, line 46); or the more well-known and accessible synod of Carthage, also in 419.

If Cartagena, then I would check (for a critical edition) Vives, Concilios Visigóthicos e Hispano-Romanos (Barcelona/Madrid, 1963), or maybe Martínez Díez & Rodriguez, La colleccíon canónica Hispana, 4 vols. (Madrid/Barcelona, 1966-1984).

If Carthage, then Munier, Concilia Africae A. 345-A. 525, Corpus Christianorum Scriptorum Latinorum 149 (1974).

My colleague was unable to locate any books in WorldCat with “holy fathers” in the title and something like Cartagena or Carthage as a keyword.

My other colleague was not aware of the Cartagena council, but he added that in general a Google search for ‘council of Carthage 419’ (etc) gives probably all the information you need – you just have to work through it yourself, and not expect others to do it for you.

You can download Hefele’s work (A History of the Christian Councils, from the Original Documents: A.D. 326 to A.D. 429 vol II) for free here – which lists the canons of the councils, and probably suggests further bibliography.

He also suggested that I remind the enquirer that scholars who supervise and mark theses (and he was speaking from experience here) expect to see evidence of research techniques from the student involved; and asking others to do such work for you does NOT count.

I hope that this is useful to you.
Sincerely,
Roger Pearse
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Making a selection of interesting passages to translate from Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I dislike translations of “selected passages”.  You always wonder what was in the missing bits.  On the other hand Eusebius’ Commentary on the Psalms is so immense that nobody has translated anything much of it.  Indeed Andrew Eastbourne’s translation of the portion on Ps.51/52 is pretty much all that anybody has done.

I’ve been compiling a list of passages that might usefully be translated (psalm numbers as in PG, i.e. LXX/Vulgate, rather than KJV/NIV).  Contributions are welcome, of course!

  • Introduction – PG23.68-72 – a short list by Eusebius of the subject matter of each of the 150 Psalms, entitled Hupotheseis (“Themes”).  This is already done.
  • Ps. 51 – PG 23.445d-448a, the conclusion to his preface to Ps 51, in which he presents a detailed review of the jumbled chronology of the psalms attributed to David in the first two portions of the Psalter.  This is already done as part of the Ps.51 translation.
  • Ps. 60, v.6 – PG 23.580c – Recognizing that the psalms originated in the prayers of Israel, he says “. . . the things that were uttered were rightly no longer regarded as ordinary prayers but as prophetic words, and the ones who had received the charisma of the discernment of spirits inserted them into the divine books”.  TODO. There is a chunk of stuff about inspiration of the bible here, perhaps half a column to a column.
  • Ps 62, 2-3 – PG 23.601a–604b – Prof. Hollerich in his article (below) says that he has a translation of this in the Eusebius chapter in the forthcoming New Cambridge History of the Bible, presumably vol. 1.  I don’t have access to this though.  It contains material on how the psalter was assembled.  TODO.  The commentary on v.2-3 actually starts on col. 599-605; but the interesting material is 599-603B, two and a half columns.
  • Ps 86, 2-4 – PG 23.1040b – 1041d.  This has more material on how the psalter was assembled.  “There too, he says, the order of events and of prophecies is sometimes reversed, with prophecies from later times being found in earlier parts of the books. In both cases, the “probable” (eikos) explanation is that the unhistorical sequencing of the books is due to the fact that those who preserved the prophecies added them to the book as they incidentally came to their attention, following disruptions like the Babylonian Exile. The same explanation applies to the Psalter—unless, he adds, someone wishes to propose a deeper meaning (bathuteros nous) that has escaped him (PG 23.1041d).  He flatly denies that the psalm numbers themselves could carry inherent significance, as if “. . . the fiftieth in number contains the understanding of the forgiveness of sins because of the fifty year period referred to in the Law, the period which the children of the Hebrews call a ‘jubilee’ . .”  TODO:  Two columns, from 1040 to the top of 1043.
  • Ps 86:5-7 – PG 23, 1048C – 1049C – In this psalm the LXX differs notably from the other Greek versions (and Eusebius usually presumed that that meant the LXX differed from the Hebrew as well).  So ought to be interesting.  TODO:  A column at most.
  •  Ps.87:11 – PG 23, 1064A – This mentions the mnêma (tomb) and martyrion of the Savior in Jerusalem, where, he says, miracles were being performed among the faithful, thereby indicating that this is a late work.  TODO: Just a few lines before and after the sentence.
  • Ps 91 (92), PG 23. 1169/1170B, the psalm is entitled, A psalm or song for the sabbath-day. Eusebius begins his commentary by stating that the patriarchs had not the legal Jewish sabbath; but still ‘given to the contemplation of divine things, and meditating day and night upon the divine word, they spent holy sabbaths which were acceptable to God.’  Then a long quote which I have here.  Then Ps 92 – PG 23. 1172A: καὶ πάντα δὴ ὅσα ἄλλα ἐχρῆν ἐν Σαββάτῳ τελεῖν, ταῦτα ἡμεῖς ἐν τῇ Κυριακῇ μετατεθείκαμεν (and so all the other things that one must observe on the Sabbath, these things we have transposed to the Lord’s Day’, as discussed here; and here).  TODO: The psalm starts at 1163D.  Our interest fades at 1173B.  About four columns.  The whole psalm would be nine columns.

   *   *   *   *

That’s not an impossible quantity of material, perhaps ten columns in all.  I might enquire whether Fr Alban Justinus might like to translate it for us.

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The very words in which Constantine ordered the bible to be assembled? The strange, odd Oahspe hoax.

Posted on by Roger Pearse

On Twitter today I came across some really rather unusual claims about Christian history.  These were advanced with the usual utter certainty that every crank seems to possess.  The author of these pronounced:

This is what emperor Constantine said during the council of nicaea…

“28/48.31.  Search these books, and whatever is good in them, retain: but whatever is evil, cast away.  What is good in one book, unite with that which is good in another book.  And whatever is thus brought together shall be called, THE BOOK OF BOOKS.1181  And it shall be the doctrine of my people, which I will recommend to all nations, so that there shall be no more war for religion’s sake.”

The tweeter employed the dubious practice of “quoting” but not referencing, so of course we don’t know from where he got this.  An enquiry was met with impudence.  As is so often the case with really wild claims, the tweeter appeared to have some personal integrity issues.

Of course Constantine said nothing of the kind, as I hope we all know.  This is purely fiction.  But … where from?

I quickly discovered a possible source: In His Name vol. 4, Trafford Publishing, 2014, by E. Christopher Reyes, whose interminable litany of factual errors, combined with no little spite, included this on p.273.  The reference given was “God’s book of Eskra” (?) op. cit., chapter 48, paragraph 31.

But according to this website all this material was to be found in an article by the renegade church minister Tony Bushby in Nexus magazine in 2007.  This indicated that “God’s book of Eskra” was “God’s Book of Eskra, Prof. S. L. MacGuire’s translation, Salisbury, 1922”.  Bushby went on to produce a book, The Bible Fraud, and you can’t argue with the title. He seems to have faded from view since.

A little investigation revealed that this “Book of Eskra” is a 19th century modern apocryphon called Oahspe: a new bible.  In fact I have written about Bushby and this very work here, with a link to chapter 48 of this fake text here.

Clearly the tweeter was quoting some version or other of the Oahspe fake, although indirectly.

It’s permissible to wonder what kind of person fills his head with nonsense of this kind in these days, when the raw data is ever so accessible.  Poor souls.

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A false quotation of Augustine against the Jews

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A correspondent wrote to me some time back, asking:

I’m currently translating John Gray’s booklet ‘Seven types of atheism’ into Dutch. On p. 17 Gray cites this line from Augustine’s ‘Pamflet against the Jews’: ‘The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jews can never understand scripture, and forever bear the guilt of the death of Christ.’ I cannot find this line in your translation. What could be the matter here?

The gentleman is not the only one to wonder.  Anti-Christian quotations of the fathers are nearly always misquotations or frauds, as I discovered long ago when I reviewed a book of them.

Arie W. Zweip, Christ, the Spirit and the Community of God: Essays on the Acts of the Apostles,  Mohr Siebeck, 2010, wanders off his theme and into a discussion of anti-semitism.  But on page 90, he is obliged to add a note:

5. An Intermezzo: Fake Quotes

At this point I must make a brief but significant detour. Not infrequently Jerome’s and Augustine’s names are mentioned on the internet as outspoken propagators of Christian anti-Semitism. On a number of websites Jerome is quoted as having said that the Jews are “Judaic serpents of whom Judas was the model”, and also: “They (the Jews) are serpents, haters of all men. Their image is Judas. Their psalms and prayers are but the braying of donkeys”.

However, when I checked the quotations against the original, I could not trace their provenance. Virtually all authors quote these words without mentioning the exact source. There is a passage in Jerome’s commentary on Amos that comes close to it (“iudaeorum quoque oratio et psalmi, quos in synagogis canunt, et haereticorum composita laudatio tumultus est domino, et ut ita dicam, grunnitus suis et clamor asinorum, quorum magis cantibus israelis opera comparantur”),54 but the very references to serpents and to Judas are conspicuously absent. In his Verus Israel, Marcel Simon does quote the words of Jerome with a source reference, but he refers to Migne’s Patrologia Latina 26:1224, which is clearly wrong. It seems that we have here a clear example of a “fake quotation” that is running a life of its own.

I suspect the same is true of two anti-Semitic quotations not seldom attributed to Augustine that I was unable to trace: “The true image of the Hebrew is Judas Iscariot, who sells the Lord for silver. The Jew can never understand the scriptures and forever will bear the guilt for the death of Jesus’, and “Judaism, since Christ, is a corruption; indeed Judas is the image of the Jewish people: their understanding of Scripture is carnal; they bear the guilt for the death of the Savior, for through their fathers they have killed Christ. The Jews held Him; the Jews insulted Him; the Jews bound Him; they crowned Him with thorns; they scourged Him; they hanged Him upon a tree”. All this is not to say that Jerome and Augustine did not articulate anti-Semitic sentiments (they clearly did) nor to deny that they may have said things to that effect, but such allegations need to be corroborated by meticulous research and sound evidence, especially so in cases with such wide-ranging implications.

54. Jerome, Commentariorum in Amos; CCSL 76:2, LLT 589.

My own search revealed no source.  No doubt there is one, at some remote remove.  It may perhaps turn out to be someone’s summary of what they felt Augustine intended.

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