Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

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Peter Kirby
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Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by Peter Kirby »

David C. Hindley has scanned the Latin text of Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses, which needs to be proofread. On his behalf, I am looking for volunteers to do the proofreading. If you'd like to help, let me know by reply here or by e-mail (peterkirby@gmail.com). Thank you.
"... almost every critical biblical position was earlier advanced by skeptics." - Raymond Brown
Toto
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by Toto »

That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.

I could do a little.
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by Peter Kirby »

Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.

I could do a little.
I sent you an email to the listed email address; if you did not get it, please PM me.
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DCHindley
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by DCHindley »

Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.

I could do a little.
I appreciate the interest Toto!

This is my third attempt to add something to this thread, each previous attempt dissipating somewhere in the haze (in other wise, "situation norble").

Basically, I am interested in anyone who is good at catching little errors. I scanned the Latin text of both volumes of W. Wigan Harvey's SANCTI IRENAEI EPISCOPI LUGDUNENSIS Libros quinque adversus Haereses (1857) using ABBYY version 11.

While it is supposed to be able to automatically read Latin and has built-in dictionary support, it did not like the old fashioned typeface (confuses "a" "e" and "s" a lot), does not read ligatures correctly at all. It is even worse with Greek (at best it can scan the kind of modern literary Greek that you might read in newspapers), which can recognize only two accents and no breathing marks at all.

We can ignore the scattered Greek fragments from Hippolytus, Epiphanius and others because these have already been scanned by overly zealous eastern orthodox (who care everything about Greek authors but nothing about the Latin translation of a "Greek" author).

Thank god we are only dealing with the Latin, which most all English readers can at least sound off. Unfortunately, Catholic zealots have apparently not deemed the surviving Latin translation (the only one preserving the vast bulk of the work) worthy of digitizing - It had not been translated into the type of Latin that Tertullian, Jerome or Augustine would have written.

I like to think that intelligent beings can find something of use even in barbarous Latin. This project will, I hope, fill a lack.

To give an idea of what I am talking about, go to the following webpage http://archive.org/stream/sanctiirenaei ... 8/mode/2up
for the original text, and compare it to the scanned text below:

[8]1. DICUNT esse quendam in invisibilibus, et inenarrabilibus alitudinibue perfectum Aeonem, qui ante fuit. Hunc autem et Proarchen, et Propatora, et Bython vocant: esse autem illum invisibilem, et quem nulla res capere possit. Cum autem a nullo caperetur, et esset invisibilis, sempiternus, et ingenitus, in silentio et in quiete multa fuisse, in immensis aeonibus. Cum
[9]
ipso autem fuisse et Ennoean, quam etiam Charm, et Sigen vocant: et aliquando voluisse a semetipso emittere hunc Bythum initium omnium, et velut semen prolationem hanc praemitti voluit, et eam deposuisse quasi in vulva ejus, que cum eo erat, Sige. Hanc autem suscepisse semen hoc, et praegnantem factam generasse Nun, similem et aequalem ei, qui emiserat, et solum capientem magnitudinem Patris. Nun autem hunc, et Unigenitum vocant, et Patrem, et Initium omnium. Una autem cum eo emissam Veritatem, et hanc esse primam et primogenitam Pythagoricam quatemationem, quam et radicem omnium dicunt. Est enim Bythus et Sige, deinde Nus et ...

If I understood Latin grammar better maybe I might attempt it, but as it is all I see is word salad. I need outside help to do this right.

Volume one contains a lengthy introduction to ancient Heresies, which is ignored, and the first two of the five books. There are 125 pages of Latin text in 57,942 words. Volume two, containing books three to five, contains 248 pages of Latin text and 93,816 words.
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by Tommsky »

Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.
Is it true there are no direct equivalents to "yes" and "no" in latin? I heard you have to use cumbersome structures like "indeed that is correct, Lucretius" or some such.
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by DCHindley »

Looks like Latin (as well as Greek) does have specific words for "Yes" or "No." However, classical quality authors weren't known for their dull prose. They developed many ways to "artfully" imply "Yes" or "No" by other means.

LATIN (CASSELL'S NEW LATIN DICTIONARY, 1959)

YES: ITA, ITA EST, SIC, CERTE, VERO, ETIAM, SANE (OF COURSE, TO BE SURE), IMMO (INDEED), BUT MORE OFTEN THE "YES" IS IMPLIED BY REPITION OF SOME SUITABLY INFLECTED WORD IN THE QUESTION)

NO: NULLUS, NON ULLUS, NEMO, NIHIL

GREEK (FOLLETT'S CLASSIC GREEK DICTIONARY, 1954)

YES: ναι (NAI), μαλιστα [MALISTA]

NO: ου (OU), before a vowell ουκ (OUK)

DCH
Tommsky wrote:
Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.
Is it true there are no direct equivalents to "yes" and "no" in latin? I heard you have to use cumbersome structures like "indeed that is correct, Lucretius" or some such.
avi
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by avi »

Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.
Yes, me too. However, unlike you, I remember nothing but the first half dozen words of J.Caesar concerning Gaul. Dementia is a terrible thing.
David Hindley wrote: I scanned the Latin text of both volumes of W. Wigan Harvey's SANCTI IRENAEI EPISCOPI LUGDUNENSIS Libros quinque adversus Haereses
...
...We can ignore the scattered Greek fragments from Hippolytus, Epiphanius and others because these have already been scanned by overly zealous eastern orthodox (who care everything about Greek authors but nothing about the Latin translation of a "Greek" author).

Thank god we are only dealing with the Latin, which most all English readers can at least sound off. Unfortunately, Catholic zealots have apparently not deemed the surviving Latin translation (the only one preserving the vast bulk of the work) worthy of digitizing - It had not been translated into the type of Latin that Tertullian, Jerome or Augustine would have written.

I like to think that intelligent beings can find something of use even in barbarous Latin. This project will, I hope, fill a lack.
I am unclear about the nature of this project. Can you, if you are feeling up to it, explain a tad more, for those of us with a limited, and progressively diminishing skillset, how it will be helpful to examine a corrupt Latin text?

Do you imagine that the act of scanning will expose some heretofore misunderstood message? What is the source document for the original translation into Latin? How do you ascertain "...the type of Latin that Tertullian, Jerome, or Augustine would have written." Why would one choose to ignore the Greek extracts of Epiphanius (4th century), and especially, Hippolytus, the third century CE contemporary of Irenaeus, who coincidentally (?) wrote his own book on the same subject, and same title, as Irenaeus?
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by DCHindley »

Avicenna,

As one who also possesses a limited and progressively diminishing skill set, I can sympathize.

The Greek fragments of Irenaeus' original work are already digitized and available on websites maintained by Eastern Orthodox and Catholics, so why reinvent the wheel?

All that is needed is to digitize the Latin translation of Irenaeus' Against Heresies, which until this moment has never been digitized.

I am not sure why the Catholic site did not do this, but suspect that it is because the Latin translation in circulation (which is the only substantially complete translation) is "barbarous" (that's a disparaging term for slavishly literal, almost a word for word crib translation of Irenaeus' Greek) and not a beautiful example of the Latin language as we find in Tertullian.

In other words, it was "unworthy" of digitization ... a value judgment.

DCH

PS: Give my regards to ‘Ala’ al-Dawla.
avi wrote:
Toto wrote:That sounds like fun. I had Latin in high school, a long long time ago.
Yes, me too. However, unlike you, I remember nothing but the first half dozen words of J.Caesar concerning Gaul. Dementia is a terrible thing.
David Hindley wrote: I scanned the Latin text of both volumes of W. Wigan Harvey's SANCTI IRENAEI EPISCOPI LUGDUNENSIS Libros quinque adversus Haereses
...
...We can ignore the scattered Greek fragments from Hippolytus, Epiphanius and others because these have already been scanned by overly zealous eastern orthodox (who care everything about Greek authors but nothing about the Latin translation of a "Greek" author).

Thank god we are only dealing with the Latin, which most all English readers can at least sound off. Unfortunately, Catholic zealots have apparently not deemed the surviving Latin translation (the only one preserving the vast bulk of the work) worthy of digitizing - It had not been translated into the type of Latin that Tertullian, Jerome or Augustine would have written.

I like to think that intelligent beings can find something of use even in barbarous Latin. This project will, I hope, fill a lack.
I am unclear about the nature of this project. Can you, if you are feeling up to it, explain a tad more, for those of us with a limited, and progressively diminishing skillset, how it will be helpful to examine a corrupt Latin text?

Do you imagine that the act of scanning will expose some heretofore misunderstood message? What is the source document for the original translation into Latin? How do you ascertain "...the type of Latin that Tertullian, Jerome, or Augustine would have written." Why would one choose to ignore the Greek extracts of Epiphanius (4th century), and especially, Hippolytus, the third century CE contemporary of Irenaeus, who coincidentally (?) wrote his own book on the same subject, and same title, as Irenaeus?
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by vendredi3 »

DCHindley,

I minored in Latin at university, and I would be happy to help with your project. Are you essentially looking for typos in the scan? For example, the scan reads "alitudinibue" in the first line, when it should be "alitudinibus." Is that the task?
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Re: Volunteer needed for proofreading the Latin of Irenaeus

Post by DCHindley »

vendredi3 wrote:DCHindley,

I minored in Latin at university, and I would be happy to help with your project. Are you essentially looking for typos in the scan? For example, the scan reads "alitudinibue" in the first line, when it should be "alitudinibus." Is that the task?
Hi Vendredi3,

Yes, that is exactly what I had in mind.

It's just a tedious task for those of us who must squint at unfamiliar grammatical constructions. For someone who would recognize an incorrect grammatical form or perhaps a spelling error, this would be much faster and easier.

As this writer's original Greek has not been preserved, but a rather wooden (literal word for word) Latin translation has, the need for a more or less reliable Latin text for Irenaeus' Against Heresies is great. Many an assertion about what Irenaeus "says" is based on a translation, not what the Latin text or the Greek fragments actually say. If I can swing it, I would like to make a BibleWorks version database with the Latin translation, the Greek fragment(s), and the English translation.

I am seriously at a loss as to why no one has done this yet.

Dave
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