The Dagda

Are you trying to intimate that Muslim scholars cannot translate from latin to greek or vise a versa? Because it would seem so. And what I am talking about anyway is that they can trade latin and greek books from the Byzantines by way of Rome and other countries. Then all religious texts were written in latin, many peoples spoke latin, and so it would not have been hard to either translate from greek to Latin or Latin to greek and or vise a versa. I think you are missing the great cultural explosion of the Arabs in the Late first millenia, they probably copied and read all sorts of works in the vulgate or Greek or other. Why do you think they translated the Egyptian language into Arabic partially?

I'm surprised you haven't acknowledged the effect of knowledge dissemination by trade either. Do you think great works were not copied into other languages then? or that Muslim scholars were not adept linguists?

andrewcriddle

This does seem to be referring to the Venerable Bede Seven Wonders of the World by Bede One problem is that the work may well be by pseudo-Bede rather than Bede himself see the seven wonders

Andrew Criddle

ETA pseudo-Bede appears to have a specific meaning (a writer some centuries after Bede) which is not relevant here. I should have said that the work may be apocryphal and not really by Bede.

Roger Pearse

Thank you so much for this, Andrew. An interesting book: "The life of Bede -- The book of the life and miracles of St. Cuthbert, bishop of Lindisfarne -- Lives of the holy abbots of Weremouth and Jarrow -- Life of the holy confessor Saint Felix -- Life of Saint Vedast, bishop of Arras -- Letters of the Venerable Bede -- Of the seven wonders of the world -- The book of holy places -- Appendix: A narrative of the translation of the body of St. Cuthbert from Lindisfarne to Durham -- A chronicle of the six ages of the world." Latin text here.

The list given by Agapius is similar to, but not the same as that in (ps.) Bede; but Agapius doesn't say that the whole list is by (ps.) Bede.

Roger Pearse

I've posted a query in Hugoye, where I know some Arabists will see it.