“Classical literature has been reinterpreted for millennia. Different generations have made these works their own by translating the original Greek or Latin into their vernacular, and every translation brings fresh perspectives. While the earliest appearances of these texts are unattainable, the history of printing is peppered with remarkable Classical firsts from a wide array of translators.”
“But the four men who rode atop the wave of the Gilded Age were Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and J. P. Morgan. Their business activities during the final four decades of the nineteenth century drove America’s ascension into the most powerful industrial nation on the planet. And they shaped the rules that governed the US economy for decades to come.”
God’s Ghostwriters by Candida Moss review – did enslaved scribes write the New Testament?
“And if the Roman family that purchased them as a scribe had subsequently converted to Christianity, either openly or secretly as many did in the first and second centuries CE, they may well then have been drafted in to write down the words of the great Christian missionary preachers who criss-crossed the empire and came to its capital, including of course Paul.”
‘He had a sarcastic turn of phrase’: discovery of 1509 book sheds new light on ‘father of utilitarianism’
“Last month, UCL academics unveiled the most significant rediscovered books left to the university in Bentham’s will, including the translation of Brandt’s Ship of Fools and a maths textbook explaining Euclid’s propositions. Their contents, together with the philosopher’s own notes, indicate how some of his radical theories were first sparked.”
“…what bothers me about this educational approach—the “problem” approach, the “STEAM” (STEM + arts) approach—is what it leaves out. It leaves out the humanities. It leaves out books. It leaves out literature and philosophy, history and art history and the history of religion. It leaves out any mode of inquiry—reflection, speculation, conversation with the past—that cannot be turned to immediate practical ends.”
Minds in the Margins: Annotators Bringing Books to Life
“We recently had a remarkable copy of Apianus’s Cosmographicus liber (1533), a treatise on geography and astronomy. Its value lies in the extensive annotations, especially in the one on leaf XXXIV, shown below. The note corrects the text by adding the name of Columbus as one of America’s discoverers alongside Vespucci, and reports a learned tradition that America was known to Augustan Rome by quoting two lines from the Aeneid.”
53% of UK Parents Don’t Buy Books for Their Children
“The survey found that 28% of parents cited affordability as a barrier to purchasing books for their children. For many families, budgeting for essential needs takes precedence over buying books, which might be seen as a non-essential expense.”
“The fakes created during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tell us another story, one of the rediscovery of the ancient Near East within the Orientalism movement. This fascination about the Orient and the past led certain individuals to create some fantastic stories and theories, such as those published by the writer Zecharia Stichin (1920–2010) who took the mythological battles of gods related in the authentic Babylonian Epic of Creation to be real astronomic phenomena.”
Michel, C. 2020. Cuneiform Fakes: A Long History from Antiquity to the Present Day. In: Michel, C. and Friedrich, M. ed. Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 25-60. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110714333-002
“The fakes created during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century tell us another story, one of the rediscovery of the ancient Near East within the Orientalism movement. This fascination about the Orient and the past led certain individuals to create some fantastic stories and theories, such as those published by the writer Zecharia Stichin (1920–2010) who took the mythological battles of gods related in the authentic Babylonian Epic of Creation to be real astronomic phenomena.”
Michel, C. 2020. Cuneiform Fakes: A Long History from Antiquity to the Present Day. In: Michel, C. and Friedrich, M. ed. Fakes and Forgeries of Written Artefacts from Ancient Mesopotamia to Modern China. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter, pp. 25-60. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110714333-002
From the manuscript to you: How Old Norse manuscripts are read and edited
"A case-study in how a page from an Old Norse manuscript (in this case the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda) is edited for publication in a modern-day book. Manuscript images from the Árni Magnússon Institute at the University of Iceland (handrit.is)."
#Video length: Thirty minutes and fifteen seconds.
2024 has been a busy year, with the "completion" of The Nod/Wells Timelines, the release of my first two audiobooks, and the announcement of "8" and its associated "story singles" but there's even more to come! Give me a follow so you don't miss anything!