Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by mlinssen »

https://www.academia.edu/46974146/Compl ... n_content_

It's done. 500 pages of pure Thomas exegesis by the letter; by the time you get halfway you'll likely have a basic understanding of Coptic

This contains most if not all of my Thomas research, and it will be the last for a long time to come - I'm back to work starting next month after a very expensive sabbatical which was all worth it

Enjoy
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Interactive gospel of Thomas translation v1.9

Post by mlinssen »

The Translation has been published as well, it's in line with the Commentary part II

I finally found the right margins / spacing for all the tables and every page now neatly contains exactly 5 "rows", each which consists of the three usual ones: MS Coptic, Dictionary Coptic, and English Translation. The document appears to be 30-odd pages larger but that's caused by the much more tranquile layout

In the English Translation the first 56 logia now have the (far more legible) version from the Commentary's Interpretation section

ResearchGate:

https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... lation_v19

Academia.edu:

https://www.academia.edu/42110001/Inter ... tion_v1_9_
Charles Wilson
Posts: 2098
Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:13 am

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by Charles Wilson »

Absolutely first rate work.

CW
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by Irish1975 »

This looks like great work, mlinnsen.

Will it be available in print form at some point?
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by mlinssen »

Irish1975 wrote: Mon Feb 07, 2022 7:07 am This looks like great work, mlinnsen.

Will it be available in print form at some point?
Thank you very much Irish! Just keep looking ;) - it's a story in itself that evolves, and I'm curious to hear what you make of the sum total.

Your question is a very important one. I have considered taking this to print, either with the usual suspects or with Amazon.
With the former is need to either sell my soul (copyright) or negotiate my way out of that (by handing over a considerable sum of money).
Amazon (and others) would give me total freedom but "less prestige" although I couldn't care less about pedigree - I value merit alone.
The field and wider area that I'm publishing on has an audience that sits in between 40 and 80 I think, and paper is their trusted way of reading. The downside of it all is that the Commentary contains 7,500 hyperlinks and those would become dead once printed - and they are pivotal to my work in general, that supports a vision that everything in it should be verifiable by all, at once, for free, in full

I could convert the bibliographical hyperlinks to footnotes and that would only cost me an hour, but it wouldn't work for the majority of links that serve to look up the Coptic and Greek words themselves or show a selection of a dictionary

Having said that, it would take an afternoon to publish this on Amazon in paperback and that would actually solve my biggest problem with them, which is the most hideous underlining in orange of all hyperlinks: check

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B085DJ5QZ5

The preview doesn't show them but the Kindle does:
Screenshot_20220209-120520_Kindle_1.jpg
Screenshot_20220209-120520_Kindle_1.jpg (171.91 KiB) Viewed 1788 times
There is no way I can disable those and that's the reason why I haven't advanced beyond this stage - the Translation contains double the amount of hyperlinks and in order to preserve the complex layout of all the tables and cells, Print Replica is the only option to publish

So a couple of hammers and anvils there. Tell me please: what do you consider the benefits to yourself to be, and what size (Letter, B3, A5, etc) would you prefer a paper book to be? Have you printed the PDF, for example?
I'm just interested in feedback on this point so I can weigh the variables

Thanks!
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by mlinssen »

Charles Wilson wrote: Sun Feb 06, 2022 1:00 pm Absolutely first rate work.

CW
Oh Charles, now that is very high praise!
Thank you very much, Iam glad you appreciate it - especially given the fact that it doesn't do much to advance your case and points of view, I think
User avatar
Irish1975
Posts: 1057
Joined: Fri Dec 15, 2017 8:01 am

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by Irish1975 »

mlinssen wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 3:10 am So a couple of hammers and anvils there. Tell me please: what do you consider the benefits to yourself to be, and what size (Letter, B3, A5, etc) would you prefer a paper book to be? Have you printed the PDF, for example?
I'm just interested in feedback on this point so I can weigh the variables
Thanks!
There is such a lack of solid bilingual material in this field (given its cultural importance). We really need an annotated Latin-English edition of Adversus Marcionem, for example.

In general I prefer physical books of whatever size, especially on this topic. If I print a PDF it will get lost in my study.

But with your particular book I can see why an e-book is imperative.

Is it just me, or does e-book technology feel like it’s stuck in 2005? You would think at this point that there would be a superior platform (not Kindle!) for visually sophisticated, hyperlinked material, especially of an academic nature. Maybe there is and I just don’t know about it.

A few years ago I performed a much smaller labor of love, translating the fragments of Heraclitus. This taught me a lot about how impossible it is to translate ancient writing. I just put it up on a personal website, and probably 8 or 9 people looked at it before I took it down. I can see your project being very fruitful as website, similar to Ben Smith’s or the one on Tertullian.

Maybe provide a free digital version, and a print version for sale?
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by mlinssen »

Irish1975 wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 6:54 am There is such a lack of solid bilingual material in this field (given its cultural importance). We really need an annotated Latin-English edition of Adversus Marcionem, for example.

In general I prefer physical books of whatever size, especially on this topic. If I print a PDF it will get lost in my study.

But with your particular book I can see why an e-book is imperative.

Is it just me, or does e-book technology feel like it’s stuck in 2005? You would think at this point that there would be a superior platform (not Kindle!) for visually sophisticated, hyperlinked material, especially of an academic nature. Maybe there is and I just don’t know about it.

A few years ago I performed a much smaller labor of love, translating the fragments of Heraclitus. This taught me a lot about how impossible it is to translate ancient writing. I just put it up on a personal website, and probably 8 or 9 people looked at it before I took it down. I can see your project being very fruitful as website, similar to Ben Smith’s or the one on Tertullian.

Maybe provide a free digital version, and a print version for sale?
Yes we most certainly do - and not of the usual kind where they just throw Latin at you followed by English that has little relation to it. Take DeConick and plisch for instance on the Greek of Thomas: Grenfell & Hunt, like Gathercole, "emend" the aorist (sometimes even 3rd person singular) to and indicative or future, preferable 2nd person plural "so it fits". The two first ones do none of that yet give the same translation, so while you'd have every right to think that you're getting a "faithful" translation, there is none of that

To be honest I haven't done much research into ebooks that support hyperlinks in a pretty way - I don't need to make money out of this and it would be awkward to have it sit on academia.edu and ResearchGate for free while I sell the exact same elsewhere. It basically is just a hobby yet (un)fortunately I tend to take everything I do very seriously, and one thing is for sure: this one has seriously gotten out of hand LOL

I agree to that, and found it difficult to translate Latin and Greek at Grammar school. In a class of 30 no one would have the exact same translation of even half a page of text, and people tend to have preference for their own vocabulary - and that was another reason to go for a fully normalised translation just so I'd severely limit my choices. If you have to translate one single word that occurs a few dozen times throuhgout the text, it is the text itself that drives the translation, and not the translator. Truth be told, my very first translation of Thomas is my Interpretation in the Commentary, and I purposely let that deviate awfully little from the literal one

I've created gospelofthomas.eu and link that through to academia.edu but the main reason for its launch was the need for solid papyrus scans in IIIF

https://www.editage.com/info/book-editi ... thors.html has a nice list of eBook publishers, I may have a look but it seems like Lulu is the only option for me. We'll see how it goes, but I like the idea of selling in pairs: buy the print and you'll get the eBook for free, something like that
Charles Wilson
Posts: 2098
Joined: Thu Apr 03, 2014 8:13 am

Re: Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by Charles Wilson »

mlinssen wrote: Wed Feb 09, 2022 3:12 amI am glad you appreciate it - especially given the fact that it doesn't do much to advance your case and points of view
You are welcome! As to whether it "advances" my case or not is of lesser importance than discovering the True State of Affairs that led to the creation of the NT. There need not have been a "Gospel History of Jesus, the Son of God", yet, there it is. It's not simply a matter of "Who wrote it?" but also a matter of "Who Copied it?"

...and so on.

I appreciate the Heavy Lifting involved in producing what you have written.

CW
User avatar
mlinssen
Posts: 3431
Joined: Tue Aug 06, 2019 11:01 am
Location: The Netherlands
Contact:

Discussion on Complete Thomas Commentary Part II (Logion 0-55)

Post by mlinssen »

https://www.academia.edu/s/9e09a3d9c0

The Discussion on Academia.edu has started, and I welcome everyone who wants to participate - but lurkers can come too.
As usual I will collect the content of the Discussion afterwards and publish it as secondary paper

Naysayers like e.g. Neil Godfrey whose maximum potential exists in merely denying my research without refuting any of its arguments are reminded that the goal of a Discussion is to evolve the research underlying it: bring arguments, discuss those that have been brought in, and then basically anything goes
Post Reply