Tag: From my diary

People who write books or place materials online must expect to receive emails of enquiry, and these are normally welcome.  They consist of enquiries about topics already of interest, or can spur further research.

But the generous must be aware that their generosity can be abused.  There are people out there who consider good men as so many easy chairs on which to take their pleasure.

This evening I was reminded of one such episode, some years ago.  I was translating Photius Bibliotheca at the time, and posting chunks of it online.  Someone posted in a public forum a request that I consider translating one particular codex or chapter.  It was a little out of my way, but I did so and a few days later completed the work, and posted it online.  I then replied to the forum post saying that I had done so.

A day or so went by, and I saw other posts by that man, but no reply.  I’d done this work, at his request, and he didn’t even acknowledge it.  This was not very nice; after all, it had taken some hours of my life to do this work.

I eventually emailed him, supposing that somehow he had missed my post.  I got no reply for several days, until finally a sheepish email arrived, saying that he wasn’t sure about various copyright issues and regretted ever asking me to do it.  Thanks there was, in a very muted and unsatisfactory way. 

I felt abused.  In fact I had been abused.  All we have in this life is our time.  We sell it for money, so we can live.  This man had taken some of my life.  He asked me to give him some of my life, and I did so, without thought of any reward save thanks, and this was not forthcoming.  But he got what he wanted, and, hey, that was all he cared about.

There used to be a time when students or schoolchildren would post queries online, which amounted to “will someone do my homework for me”.  This too is selfishness, and any who do so find themselves repaid with silent ingratitude.

Such behaviour can make us smaller, if we let it.  The generous need to consider how they spend their time, and to make sure that they don’t fritter away the only wealth any of us have at the bequest of those who will leave us in the cold once they have no further use for us.  We must do what we do for ourselves.  The abused need to make sure they do not become embittered, for such makes us less.

The happy contributor to the web is one who does only what he feels like doing.  I must admit I’ve been happy in this way for ages!

I’m not sure whether such things do much good, but Dioscorus Boles has started one in defence of Coptic Christians in middle Egypt currently under Moslem attack.  You can sign the petition here.

It seems to be taken for granted that Copts in Egypt should live in subjection to the Arab majority.  The people who acquiesce in this at the same time get excited about Irish Catholics in Northern Ireland.  The Copts are one group who are denied self-determination and self-identity, and are forced to live under legal disadvantages and discrimination.  This is not good; direct violence against them even less so. 

I have in my hands the complete Greek of Eusebius.  The Syriac should be with me by next Monday.  But I can’t do anything with either, from pressure of domestic urgencies.  I don’t think I’ve had a single day without some kind of panic or disaster for a fortnight!  I hope to get back to real life soon!

Last night I sat down and spent several hours working on the Mithras article on Wikipedia.  The effort is probably futile, but the article has been one of the worst on Wikipedia, and a constant source of misinformation online.

My principle was to ensure that there was either a reference to a primary source, or to a modern Mithras specialist; or to remove the material.  The curse of information on Mithras online is the tendency to attribute without reference every event of the life of Jesus to Mithras, usually for reasons of religious hate.

This was all sparked by an email from another editor, “Fullstop”, who was trying to heal the article.  He supplied me with a very useful review by Roger Beck of a book on Mithras by Reinhold Merkelbach, which incidentally reviewed most of the scholarship.

He also supplied me with an article by Vermaseren [1] discussing the idea that Mithras (meaning Persian Mitra) was born from a woman, or was a son of Ahura-Mazda: 

The scarce literary evidence as well as the abundant archaeological material give us different versions of the way in which Mithras came into the world and it is hardly possible to reconcile the two.

In the Yasht 10, the hymn of the recent Avesta, in which Mithras is specially invoked, the Persian god of light appears resplendent in a golden colour on the top of the mountain Hara berezaiti, the present Elburz in Persia, from where he looks over the whole earth of the Aryan people.

This is not a description of a real birth, but this manifestation of the deity as the giver of light, pouring forth his largess every morning anew and, besides, the feminine name of the mountain were apt to lead to the conception of the birth of the god from a Mother-Goddess. Yet, the idea of Mithras as a son of Ahura-Mazda, the Knowing Lord, or as born naturally from a woman, though attested by some late Armenian writers, did not become traditional 3). Mithras’ birth remained an obscure affair:…

3) In general Cumont, Mon. Myst. Mithra I 160 f ; G. Messina, “Magi a Betlemme e una predizione di Zoroastro”, Roma 1933; Christensen, “L’Iran sous les Sassanides”, Copenhague 19442, 155.

The sloppiness of references in earlier writers on Mithras means that we are left to wonder just who said what.  Does anyone know who are referred to here?

UPDATE: An email tells me that Cumont, Textes et Monumentes II, pp.3-5 (online here), contains some Armenian sources.  And so it does.  First is a fragment of Eznik of Kolb, De Deo; then one from the Agathangelos.  Neither is to our purpose.

Next up is “Elisee Vartabed” (which may be French  but doesn’t sound Armenian) and his “History of Vartan”.  Apparently this is a 5th century author.  Cumont quotes two different French translations, which I have run into English:

[From the apology for Christianity addressed by the Armenian bishops to Mihr-Nerseh, the minister of the king of Persia, Yezdegerd II:]

You have said that God was born from a woman; you shouldn’t probe this, or express horror at the idea.  In fact Ormizd and Ahriman were born from a father, and not of a mother; if you think about it, you can’t accept that.  A thing still more singular: the god Mihr was born of a woman, as if one could have commerce with one’s own mother.

[Apparently a better translation of the last sentence:]

Your god Miher is not only born of a woman, but what is still more ridiculous, he is born from an incestuous commerce with his own mother!

[A little later:]

One of your most ancient sages has said that the god Mihr was born from a mother, who was of the human race; he is no less a king, son of God, and the valiant ally of the seven gods.

This is followed by a quotation from Moses of Chorene — also not relevant for us — and that’s the lot.

So Vermaseren’s “some late Armenian writers” reduces to one, the 5th century historian “Elisee Vartabed”, in a speech given by the Armenian bishops to the persecuting Sassanid Persian governor.   I wonder if there are any more?

So, what can be found out about this author?  Well, first, there is at least one English translation, from 1830, here, where he is called Elisaeus.  A more modern English version exists by Robert Thomson, Eliseus Vardapet: History of Vardan and the Armenian War, Harvard (1982).  The text does not seem to be online, however.  I might fix that by OCR’ing the 1830 version.

[1] M. J. Vermaseren, “The Miraculous Birth of Mithras“, Mnemosyne, Fourth Series, Vol. 4, Fasc. 3/4 (1951), pp. 285-301

I happened to see these words by Jona Lendering, and although there is something in this, I feel that I need to disagree profoundly.  It seems that some people in the US consider that Obama is the anti-Christ, rather than merely yet another dodgy politician mouthing lies while emptying our pockets.  Biblioblogger Jim West posts a chunk of Greek on who the anti-Christ is, and deliberately doesn’t translate.  “No need for speculation”, he says.

I long ago learned that people who post untranslated Greek intend to intimidate rather than educate, and like most people I despise such point-scoring.  But Jona remarks:

… his joke to keep the relevant lines untranslated, goes straight to the heart of an important matter, which is not just a problem to theology.  Ancient history suffers from it as well: too many people think they can understand ancient texts without having the proper qualifications. Such as learning a dead language.

This is an odd idea. I would not like to go to an amateur dentist. No politician would pay for the experiments by amateur particle physicists. But if ancient texts are involved, expertise is suddenly unnecessary. Books by “self-educated historians” or theological code-breakers are printed by publishing houses that are, essentially, selling out scholarship to make a few quick bucks.

One of the reasons is, of course, that ancient texts are accessible and delightful to read. You easily get the impression that you can make sense of them. There is little to do against this – fortunately, because there is nothing against enjoying a good book. Yet, I would appreciate it if publishers stopped presenting Plato as if he were a normal writer whose books deserve in the bookstores a place between Sylvia Plath and Chaim Potok. He deserves a book with explanations and a lot of footnotes, nothing else.

No, no, and a thousand times NO!

History is not and should never be the special preserve of some specially trained cadre of priests, who alone understand how to interpret the sacred texts, and to whom we all must humbly apply to be permitted an opinion.  In a society where education is general, history belongs to everyone.  History is not some place far-away.  It is our own past. 

The doings of Cicero and Caesar do not belong to Dr Herbert Nose-in-the-air, recently graduated from the university of Osoimportant, on the basis that — according to the other priests — he alone knows the sources well enough to be permitted to speak.  No, no and a thousand times NO!  Petrarch would have burned his books, if he knew that his efforts to rediscover the ancient world would be stranged by such elitism. 

Education is for everyone.  It is true that not everyone will do it equally well.  In the sciences, we perforce allow only trained specialists to enjoy special esteem.  Yet even here, the gifted amateur may make a contribution; and no scientist would make the kind of claims to exclude the public that we see above.  It is merely impractical for most to do so.

But in the humanities, we do not respect the scholar nearly as much, and nor should we.  As we all know, the consensus of scholars on matters of controversy is often shaped by profoundly non-scholarly considerations, such as those who make appointments and their prejudices.  The humanities are the property of the educated world, and will always be so. 

Let us remember who pays for all this book-sniffing.  The poverty-stricken pensioner widow, eking out her miserable existence on a few score dollars a week and wondering whether this week to heat or eat — for a greedy government makes doing both at the same time difficult — pays of her limited funds to keep a group of people in education as teachers and researchers.  It is, in truth, barely moral that this should happen.  But governments exact from all, careless of the cost.  This exclusive priesthood that some would like to create, is funded by the many.  And why?  So that their work should be valuable to all, because all can benefit.  It does not exist by divine right.  The humanities is a government utility for the supply of education and culture, nothing more.   Nor has it ever been different, except that private patrons replaced the government.  Before we praise our new priesthood to the skies, let us reflect on what we really mean; a bunch of hirelings.

If history can only be known by pronouncements by some self-appointed Pope, then history is bunk, and there is no reason for our wretched widow to pay for it.  Better that the scholars be hanged, than that the poor lady starve.

But the truth is otherwise.  A man who knows no Latin can master the thought of Cicero.  So it is, so it should always be.  The expert should have an advantage, the original language must always be superior; yet in truth I find that knowledge of these languages is often more prated of than possessed, and too often is merely a cloak for a man who uses a translation as a crib.  Where precisely are these scholars, who read Migne for fun?  Few, few indeed.  Let us praise those who can.  Let us listen to what they say.  And let us stick their heads down the toilet when they profess, on such slender grounds, to instruct us in how to read the bible, and how to vote.  Down with such elitism.  As a Tory of the highest and driest kind by temperament, let me raise the red flag.

I don’t want to pillory Jona, for I know that he has something specific in mind, and that something annoys me also.  He wants to raise the standard of popular understanding.  He’s tired of the quantity of crude myths in circulation, and the confidence with which some of them are uttered.  He’s right in this.  There is too much dross out there. 

But the answer is not the creation of a Royal Priesthood, or perhaps, a State Priesthood, to mediate the holy mysteries of what Disraeli had for breakfast to us!  It is better education all round, better access to data, better access to scholarly books — all currently paid for by the public, and all sedulously protected by copyrights to keep them from the public. 

Few, indeed, have done more to aid this process than Jona himself.  This makes it ironic that he calls for a system under which his own website would be shut down as being produced by someone not in the magic circle, by one “not in holy orders”, by an educated enthusiast!