Thoughts on Antiquity

I hope that I may be forgiven for a small announcement.  Nestorius wrote in exile in his own defence.  Since his books were ordered to  be burned, and his name used in much the same way as moderns use accusations of ‘racist’ — to shut down discussion — he was obliged to circulate it under the name […]

Well!  It looks as if the Karlsruhe state library may really have to hand over 2,500 manuscripts (including some papyri) to the Counts of Baden.  There is much scaremongering going on online (e.g. in the PAPY-L list) about what happens, how many books are involved, books being sold, “broken up”, etc.  None of the mss seem to […]

An article in the Times today tells us that a reader who used a razor-blade to remove 98  rare maps from books in the British Library and other libraries has been jailed for three years and fined one million pounds (around $2m).  The maps, we are told, were then sold to dealers and collectors.  He was found […]

Well, I tried to keep this post brief, but to no avail. I have therefore decided to divide this third installment into two sections. This will be part 3a (not counting the introduction) in my series on ancient Christian canonical lists. Part 1 was on the Marcionite canon. Part 2 was on the Muratorian canon.
I […]

The Baden state library (Badische Landesbibliothek) in Karlsruhe has a problem.  Some of its manuscripts actually belong to the House of Baden, not the state.  The family is now short of cash — all those redistributive taxes beloved of the political Left, no doubt — and is proposing to sell them off at auction.  An article […]

A little while ago, I scanned the 1882 English translation made by William Wright of the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite.  The text is of great interest, recording the war between the Romans and the Sassanid Persians in the reign of Anastasius I ca 507 AD, and written from the perspective of a resident of […]

This is part 2 (not counting the introduction) in a series on ancient Christian canonical lists. Part 1 was on the Marcionite canon. My humble thanks to Stephen Carlson for including that post in Biblical Studies Carnival IX, hosted on his weblog.
The Muratorian canon has been online both in Latin and in English for some […]

Catullus if first up in Latin Elegy, Lyric, and Epigram this year.
Latin
Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus,
rumoresque senum severiorum1
omnes unius aestimemus assis2.
soles occidere et redire possunt:
nobis, cum semel3 occidit brevis lux,
nox est perpetua una dormienda.
da mi basia mille, deinde centum,
dein4 mille altera, dein secunda centum,
deinde usque altera mille, deinde centum,
dein, cum milia multa fecerimus,
conturbabimus illa, ne […]

Stephen Carlson has an excellent edition of the BS Carnival up on his site. This one is very comprehensive - I heartily recommend checking out all the different blogs he linked to. Thank a many, Stephen!

There are few Syriac texts online in electronic form, so I thought that I would highlight that Fr. Mathew Koshy Modisseril has kindly typed in the text of Eusebius of Caesarea “On the star” from the text printed in the “Journal of Sacred Literature”.  It’s available here, and the English text from here.  Users of Windows XP […]