Re: Illiteracy in the Chronicon

On Sep 26, 1:27 am, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In the course of our recent discussion with A*a**e**o* on literacy and
other matters, I noticed that, in support of his credentials as a
translator, he claimed to have been co-translator of the _Chronicon_
of St.Jerome. Seeking confirmation of this, today I finally had a
chance to get to the library and look at the English translation by
Malcolm Drew Donalson (Mellen University Press, 1996).

Surely you mean Edwin Mellen Press, a vanity press in Lewiston, NY?
(They publish some worthwhile things, such as the proceedings of the
1990 Toronto International Congress of Asian and North African Studies
[formerly International Congress of Orientalists], but they have no
editorial control or restrictions.)

I was unable to
find any mention of our friend A. in this. Perhaps it was some other
translation he had a hand in.

Would someone typically put his Usenet handle on a (supposedly)
scholarly work?

However, opening the text at random, I could not help noticing the
following passage:

AD 372 (246e) Didymus of Alexandria, utilizing secretaries, wrote
numerous commentaries on many things concerning our doctrine. He was
deprived of his eyesight in the fifth year after his birth and
therefore he was wholly illiterate. [Didymus Alexandrinus multa de
nostro dogmate per notarios commentatur. Qui post quintum nativitatis
suae annum luminibus orbatus elementorum quoque ignarus fuit.]

You'll recall that we discussed exactly this case, of a blind person
with others reading and writing for them, and A. assured us that such
a person was literate in the true meaning of the word. Unless the
above is a serious mistranslation, it would appear that the errors
against which A. railed in this recent discussion were already about
in the 4th century!

Is "illiterate" the best rendering of _elementorum ignarus_? OLD has
'ignorant, unaware', etc, of the letters.

.

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