mountainman

Carry on with Roger on this, since it is a great project.

My argument is possibly relevant only to the transmission of Euclid via the writings of Porphyry, another neopythagorean in the early fourth century (c.305 CE, possibly Rome). Apparently Porphyry made commentaries of Euclid. I have not read them. Fortunately, others also preserved Euclid.

So you have to gather up all the sources for Euclid. Carry on! BTW, are you approaching this from the persective of a history the preservation of mathematical thought - specifically about Euclid? Sorry for any perceived split here. You could check for Porphyry on Euclid, but Roger's leads in this arena are far better for your purposes than are mine.

Best wishes,


Pete Brown

Casper

Thanks Pete,

I'm just winging it as I go along, looking for the interesting.

I was intrigued by the discussion in the original thread regarding evolution of text. This work struck me as something that didn't have a lot of the baggage of a theological work, so it seemed it would be a good milestone for seeing how a text evolved through scribal errors and genuine format editing alone.

Euclid's Elements can be seen sharing history alongside the Bible from Gutenberg's time forward. It just seemed obvious that tracing it from Gutenberg back we should see something that outshines the bible as far as remaining "true to form".

I'm beginning to think that might be an assumption I took for granted, but it will still work. It is a good exercise, it has given me a whole new respect for those who spend a large part of their lives on a small part of a manuscript.

Roger Pearse

Thomas Taylor's translation is 18th century, and is of a good standard, I believe. He made a great number of translations of philosophical texts, all now out of copyright but mostly not online.

You might find Marinus "Life of Proclus" interesting. This was translated by Kenneth S. Guthrie, whose work was attacked in his own day. But his translations of many of these neo-platonists are the only ones that have ever been done.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Casper

It does become like a hydra, doesn't it? Each lead brings several others.

Thanks Roger.

Roger Pearse

The hydra has me too, it seems. I've just discovered that Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie translated all the works of Proclus, and that one of his copies was available for sale from an online bookseller (albeit at a rather stiff price). I cannot imagine that anyone else will do it, so I've bought it and will scan and place the works online.

Johnny Skeptic

It is worth noting that not even 1/100th of 1% of the people in the world would be interested in your project even if they were aware of it, nor should they be. No sensible person would believe that a God would choose to use copies of copies of ancient texts as a primary means of communicating with humans. So, by all means, please continue to waste years of your life debating issues that the vast majority of the people in the world consider to be useless trivia. You are a good friend of skepticism. Please do not change your current approach to promoting Christianity. I wish that all Christians promoted Christianity like you do. If they did, surely the growth of the Christian church would diminish substantially as a result.

No rational God would inspire a book that was even remotely close to the Bible.

Under many different circumstances, you would not be a Christian today, and you would be just as certain of your worldview as you are now. This means that your definition of the most probably valid worldview is whatever worldview you happen to hold at a given time. Isn't that right?

I do not find a God to be appealing who allows what people believe to be determined by chance and circumstance. You would most certainly never raise children like that.

andrewcriddle

Hi Roger

This is really fascinating.
I've got some of the works of Proclus in translation, eg the Commentary on the Parmenides, but there are things by him I would have liked to read but haven't been able to.

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

It will be interesting to see what the book actually contains! After I posted that I found a list of all the works by Proclus, which looks long and full and suggests that perhaps this book only contains *minor* works.

Is Proclus interesting? What sort of stuff does he contain?

I scanned the life of him by Marinus as it contained a reference to the Parthenon being converted to a church; and anyway it was an interesting text, I thought. The way that the pagans tried to usher their guest out on the eve of a festival that they intended to celebrate, since they didn't know whether he would denounce them, and the manner in which he then worshipped the moon in the street. It is a picture of the dying days of a very erudite and cultured paganism.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

Proclus is interesting partly as a source for various interesting but obscure bits of information from the ancient world, (eg astronomical/astrological ideas), and partly as one of the major late Neo-Platonists, putting forward a blend of what we would call philosophy mixed with pagan religion mixed with occultism/magic.

The Elements of Theology by Proclus is the nearest thing to a textbook of late Neo-Platonism.

One particular point of interest is that the philosophical ideas underlying the works of (Pseudo-) Dionysius the Areopagite (which have a major influence on later Christianity) seem to be basically those of Proclus.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

It may be worth noting that there are other interesting Greek Philosophy translations by Guthrie at http://www.archive.org/search.php?qu...iatype%3Atexts

Andrew Criddle