Tag: From my diary

Dreaming of Chrysostom and his works

Posted on by Roger Pearse

quastenI often take a volume of Quasten’s Patrology to bed with me.  In times past I tended to turn down leaves where English translations that were not online were marked.  These days I find myself looking at texts and wondering whether a translation of them would be worth commissioning.  Short, obscure, interesting texts are the sort of things I look at.

So I looked, and I browsed.  There are several works by Chrysostom that seem interesting.  I’ve mentioned the missing portion of his Adversus Judaeos — but that was just housekeeping.  It costs $20 to get a translation of a column of Migne’s Patrologia Graeca Greek text, and at that rate there are a number of possible texts of historical interest.

On p. 453 Quasten mentions a discourse In kalendas (PG 48, 953-962, i.e. 9 columns, or 4.5 columns of Greek, i.e. $90) — On the kalends [of January] — in which he discusses and condemns the pagan celebration of the New Year.  That ought to contain quite a bit of historical material.

Also mentioned is his Contra circenses ludos et theatra (PG 56, 263-270, i.e. 7 columns or $70) — Against the circus games and theatre — which he preached on July 3, 399, on finding the church half-empty because everyone had gone off to see the show.  He mentions chariot racing on Good Friday, for instance.  Again, this must give insights into the popular entertainments at the end of the 4th century.

The temptations of the theatre are addressed in Homiliae 3 de diabolo (PG 49, 241-276, i.e. $350, so quite a bit more) — Three sermons on the devil — which must, therefore, describe these events.  At that price, tho, I can probably resist.  The nine homilies on penitence (one in fact by Severian of Gabala) are 80-odd columns, and a bit long for my purse.

Equally interesting are some of the sermons delivered for church festivals.  His In diem natalem Dominus Noster Jesu Christi, (PG 49, 351-362, i.e. $110) was given on Christmas Day 386 and calls Christ Sol Iustitiae, the Sun of Justice.  It is important for the history of Christmas.  A partner sermon (PG 56, 385-396, i.e. $110) is probably spurious, but also interesting historically for what it tells us about the rivalry in that period between the pagan solar cults and the Christians.  None of the other festal homilies grab my eye.

The first sermon that Chrysostom ever delivered (PG 48, 693-700, i.e. $70) ought to be in English, if only as a curiosity.

Two sermons, before and after his first exile (PG 52, 427-430, i.e. $30; and PG 52, 443-8, i.e. $50) are probably just waffle, but it would be good to have them.

One very interesting work is De S. Babyla contra Julianum et Gentiles (PG 50, 533-572, i.e. $390) — On St. Babylas against Julian and the pagans.  When the emperor Julian the Apostate attempted to restore the oracle at Daphne in Antioch in 362 AD, the priests told him that the Christian shrine of St. Babylas — interred at the sacred grove — was interfering with the voice of the god.  Julian ordered the remains removed; but soon after the temple burned down, and then Julian himself was killed in battle.  Chrysostom treats both events as evidence of the power of the saint, and responds to the lament of Libanius on the temple of Apollo by describing it as drivelling nonsense.  I could wish the work was shorter.

Another text of interest is Contra Judaeos et Gentiles quod Christus sit Deus (PG 48, 813-838, i.e. $200) — Against Jews and Gentiles that Christ is God.  I had originally seen this as a natural complement to the Eight Homilies Against the Jews, but it is only so to a limited extent.  Apparently it does mention the attempted rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem under Julian, when the Jewish workers were driven back by subterranean gas explosions.  Again, this seems interesting.

I could carry on.  But what is noteworthy is how little it would cost to translate some of these, and that almost none have ever been translated.  I might commission translations of some of these, just to make them available.

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A.L.Williams, “Adversus Judaeos” (1935)

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I was browsing through Quasten vol. 3 and noticed several short anti-Jewish pieces.  I am rather tempted to commission translations of these while I’m dealing with Chrysostom’s anti-Jewish work as well.  Quasten says that Williams’ book is a guide to all these works.  It is rather curious tho — it isn’t online, and no copies are available for sale!  It shows how much I miss having PDF’s of things!

But I can manage without, anyhow.  I also notice several short works by Chrysostom which it would be useful to have online, such as two Christmas sermons, and his In Kalendas, on New Year, and one on the circus games being held on Good Friday (which emptied his church).

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Curious QuarkXpress

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I have been experimenting with the trial download of desktop publishing package QuarkXpress.  What a curious thing it is!  I have been quite unable, for instance, to import a Word .doc file with footnotes and get footnotes.  This — surely elementary — ambition has cost me an hour or so of my life.

Off to try Adobe InDesign.  Just getting the download is rather horrible — I hope the program is better!

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Thinking ahead to Syria

Posted on by Roger Pearse

A street scene in Palmyra

I’m starting to prepare for my upcoming holiday.  I’m off to Syria and Lebanon on a package tour for 8 nights.  It starts in Damascus, tours around places like Palmyra (left) and Aleppo, and then darts across into Lebanon to Beirut, the Bekaa valley, and Baalbek.

My main reason for going is to see the Roman remains.  I shan’t mind someone else taking care of the travel arrangements one bit!   Neither country is mainstream tourism material because of the slightly dodgy political situation.  I may be mistaken, but all the troubles in that region seem as quiet as they have ever been, and are ever likely to be.

I’m not much of a traveller.  My interest in the exotic departs around 5pm, and unless a hotel has room service I am pretty reluctant to stay there!  The tour company promise 5* accomodation all the way.  In the East, that tends to mean “best available” and “international chains where possible”, rather than the standards that one might expect in an American 5* hotel.  I’ve never been to either country before, but in Egypt there are really only two grades of hotel.  The first grade is labelled 5*, and means “reasonable”.  The other grade is labelled 3*, and means “not reasonable.”  In the 5* establishments, all sorts of things go wrong but the staff are apologetic.  In the 3* they look at you and shrug as if to say “what do you expect in a dump like this?”  It may be the same in Syria and Lebanon, in which case I have done my best; if it is better, that will be good.

I ordered the Lonely Planet Syria-Lebanon guide today (US version here), which Amazon promise will arrive in the next three weeks — a curiously slow delivery.  I’ve also remembered that I ought to check that my tetanus (etc) shots are up to date.  I don’t know what currency will be best to take.  Probably US dollars will do!  Also I needed to  book some parking at the airport — an area in which UK airports excelling in overcharging — and a place in the executive lounge there; essential unless waiting in deep discomfort for a flight is your idea of the best way to start a holiday.  I’ll have to take my camera as well, of course.  But I shall NOT be taking a laptop.  Let the evil machines take a rest!

Package holidays of this type tend to be booked by people in their 50’s and 60’s.  I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to be the youngest person on the tour.  (Where all the hot chicks go on holiday I don’t know, but perhaps nowhere I’d want to go!)

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Severian of Gabala

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I had an email today enquiring about editions of the works of Severian of Gabala.  This chap was a bishop from Syria who became well-known as a preacher in Constantinople at the end of the 4th century AD, despite a heavy Syrian accent.  Unfortunately he fell out with John Chrysostom, and became involved in the evil proceedings that led up to the deposition of the latter.  He belonged to the Antiochene school of biblical exegesis, and took a  very literal approach to everything, sometimes to the point of absurdity.

A bunch of his sermons are extant, mostly in Greek, but some in Armenian, Syriac and Coptic.  In addition fragments of his work appear in the catenas.  Writers who treat the text literally inevitably tend to be useful to people compiling catenas and other forms of commentary.

I have been unable to discover any edition of his works more recent than Migne in the Patrologia Graeca 66.  This itself is a reprint of an edition by the 18th century French Benedictine editor Montfaucon, the man who invented Greek paleography.  It looks as if there is an edition by a certain Savile which is also around, but again elderly and not mentioned by Quasten (although it is noted by the Clavis Patrum Graecorum — and why is that essential list of patristic texts not online?).  I’ll also ask in LT-ANTIQ whether anyone is working on an edition.

The query related to a possible interesting quotation from Mark in the homily de sigillis librorum.  A while ago someone wrote to me offering their services for translation, and I declined, being fully busy right now!  But I see that the homily is only 15 columns of Migne — 531-544 — or rather 7-8 once we ignore the parallel Latin translation.  So I have offered a commission on it to her, and we’ll see if (a) she accepts and (b) can deliver a good translation.  Why not?  I’ll give it away free online, of course. 

It will be the first translation of any of the Migne collection of sermons.  The Migne covers cols. 411-590 or around 200 columns; 100 columns of Greek, or about $2,000 at  my usual rate for such things.  How little money that is, to any institution!  But it’s more than I have kicking around at the moment!

UPDATE: An email has pointed out that ‘Savile’ must be the 17th century editor of the 8-volume complete works of Chrysostom, Henry Savile.  A meeting room at Merton College Oxford commemorates his name even now, although when I was there I certainly didn’t associate “the Savile Room” with 17th century editors!

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Who needs Stargate-SG1 when we have Meroe?

Posted on by Roger Pearse

Egyptology News gives us this link (PDF) to some gorgeous photographs of the pyramids of Meroe in Nubia.  You want to look at these, believe me you do.

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Theodore of Mopsuestia on Genesis

Posted on by Roger Pearse

My attention has been drawn (as the libel lawyers say), by this discussion, to the remains of the commentary on Genesis by Theodore of Mopsuestia.  These are not extensive, but are interesting.

Migne prints a bunch from the catena of Nicephorus in vol. 66, cols. 633-646.  These are in Latin, not Greek, so I presume are from a publication of the catena which only consisted of an early modern Latin translation.

A bunch of fragments were also found in Syriac, and printed in Sachau, Theodori Mopsuesteni Fragmenta Syriaca (1869).  Finally some more were printed in French, according to Quasten (I don’t have the details here).

The upshot is that most of what Theodore wrote on Genesis 1-3 is actually extant, if collected.  It doesn’t sound like a great volume of data.  Probably $500 would translate the lot.

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The price of being disorganized

Posted on by Roger Pearse

I’m so cross with myself.  Some years ago I ordered a paper copy of PhD thesis containing a translation of John Chrysostom’s Eight Homilies Against the Jews.  It cost real money.  For years I have tripped over it.  Now I need it, and it is nowhere to be found.  Drat the thing, where can it be hiding?  I was going to convert it to PDF.

I was also looking for the Fathers of the Church volumes which are freely available on Archive.org.  I know I downloaded them.  But are they are on my hard disk?  They are not!

However do I avoid this happening?

I’m hoping to get the lost (and rediscovered) portion of Chrysostom’s Second Sermon translated and up on the web.  Time for another go at that particular hobby horse!  This one I will give away.

UPDATE:  Hmm.  Well I’ve just found the Chrysostom.  You see, when you have photocopies of complete books, they do make very large piles.  In the days when I was scanning a lot, I acquired a few of these doorstops.  My solution was to get the boxes that photocopier paper comes in (with lids), and place the books in those, writing on the lid which books were present within. 

Unfortunately I have acquired few such in recent years, and the pile of seven boxes next to my desk has come to serve as a make-shift extension on which papers get put.  Fortunately I thought to look under the papers.  In the second box down was the Chrysostom.  Thank heavens for that!  And I bet modern scanning will take a fraction of the time it did the last time I attacked that one.  I ordered it on 27th March 2007.  Was it that long ago?  Wow…

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Lemma-out of here!

Posted on by Roger Pearse

The word lemma is widely used in the humanities.  Indeed it leaves confusion wherever it is employed.

Because no-one knows what it means.  When was the last time you went down to get your car serviced, and told the mechanic to look at the lemma?  When did you hear a TV announcement talk about the lemmas in the latest failed government IT project?  It doesn’t mean anything, chaps.

What brought this on, I hear you ask?  The answer is a deeply confusing exchange discussing the fragments of Origen’s comments on Ezekiel with the translator.  The said gentleman used the word, in an email discussion of how we are going to present the catena fragments, and communication promptly took a nose-dive.

You may think you know what it means.  You are wrong.  All you know is one use of the word.  There are many.

I first came across the term in connection with the MorphGNT file, containing a Greek New Testament, one word per line, with grammatical information for each word.  The help file — I use the term ‘help’ loosely — used the word to describe one item on the line.  As a normal person, or at least, not one of the in-crowd, I had no idea what it meant.  So I emailed James Tauber, who maintained the file and asked.  Answer came there none!  In the end I figured out that in MorphGNT lemma here meant “base form of a word, uninflected, in the form found in a dictionary”.  It is a little difficult to think of an English alternative, although “dictionary form” or “base form” would do.  Doubtless this difficulty led to the use of lemma.

What other uses are there?  Well, we just saw Devreesse use it in his description of catenas.  In this case he meant “name or abbreviation stuck in the margin of the book to indicate that this extract was by this author.”  Again, a short term is not immediately apparent; but lemma does not help.

The translator was using it in yet another sense.  Often in a catena, the discussion is preceded by a short quotation of the scripture under discussion.  You guessed it — he called that a lemma as well!  Nor was he to blame, when others have led the way.

In short, it is an omnipresent jargon word.  And I think it should be banned.  It is an example of language as a means of intimidation, rather than a means of communication.

Some might say that we could achieve this end by holding a convention, adopting better terminology, setting new standards.  But I think the answer is simply to find those using the word and chop their goolies off.  If we refer to it as mandatory de-lemmatisation, they won’t know until our posse rolls up and I shout the secret code phrase, “Grab him, boys!”

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Intellect and its opposite

Posted on by Roger Pearse

There is a atheist forum online which used to have a useful historical forum.  Unfortunately it has been invaded by the “Jesus never existed” crowd, and is rapidly becoming useless. 

Most of the posters are atheists.  Most of these atheists seem to live and talk as if convenience was their guiding principle.   They tend not to be very sceptical of things that they would like to believe, in common with most people.   Naturally self-knowledge tends not to result.  Few of them are very educated.

If we imagine making the claim “Jesus never existed – prove otherwise”, it looks very easy to make, requiring no special learning.  It also seems very convenient polemically to those who find Christianity inconvenient.  What effort is required to make it, other than to find excuses to ignore whatever reply is given?  It seems, from my reading, that too many atheists have no real defence against an argument which is that convenient.  Which of them can resist?  So they tend to adopt it.  Of course this makes them ridiculous. 

Sometimes you can see the judgement of God at work.  Atheists talk much about reason.  This, I suspect, is the judgement on God on their pride and folly; to make them into what they condemn.

Not all atheists have too little education to realise that the idea must be rubbish.  Some I see with enough self-command — but for how long? — to resist the fact that it would be convenient. 

A debate was taking place between some of these holdouts, and some of those who had been assimilated.  It reminded me uncomfortably of a saying in Lucian’s Life of Demonax, a second century AD philosopher.

The philosopher came across two illiterate men, each calling themselves a philosopher, arguing with each other using crooked words and tricky arguments.  He commented that  one of them was milking a billy-goat, and the other was holding a sieve underneath.

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