Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

If your grandson's name is "Nikolai", then it is justifiable to Oy!
"Nickolai".

Remember, I'm a Brit.  It's simply characteristic British
understatement.

Fascinating, thanks! The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica vouches for the
existence of the guy, Ephraem Syrus (Ephraim the Syrian), in this
article:

 http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Ephraem_Syrus

I take it that "scriptor" is merely the untranslated "writer". EB says
Ephraem refused any office higher than deacon and became a hermit.
Prolific poet and commentator.

I wonder how much time passed between the supposed decision and
Ephraem's recording of it. Could be ages. But since I don't know enough
Latin to work with, or any Greek, I'm not going to be able to go any
farther with this.

(I used to think it odd that all university-bound Dutch students still
have to study Latin and Greek, but now I'm glad that there will be at
least a few scholars trained to cope with old books and manuscripts.
Somebody's got to be able to read this stuff.)

It would be most interesting to know what source Hutton gives.  This
mangled account has been posted over usenet, including Wikipedia, and I
would very much like to know the real source.

May I add a few notes on this?

Whoever originated it read a bit of text by T. Mommsen in Latin in CIL
1, in which he discusses the feast of the 25th December listed in the
Chronography of 354 (which I have been putting online, so I happened to
see that text).  In that text, Mommsen quotes "scriptor Syrus" -- which
just means "the Syrian writer".  The chap who read it evidently had bad
Latin and mistook it for a proper name.

The quotation is more or less correct: except that this is not a 4th
century text!  The author is the scholiast on Dionysius bar Salibi, the
Syriac writer of the 13th century.  The comment, then, is hearsay by
someone living in the late middle ages in Moslem Syria!  No ancient
text says this, so it is not at all clear that this is anything but an
opinion from someone living too late and too far away to know.

That there was a pagan feast on 25 Dec. in 354 is witnessed by the
Chronography:

http://www.tertullian.org//fathers/chronography_of_354_06_calendar.htm

But that is actually the first evidence of it -- some years after
Christmas had come to be celebrated on that date.  No feast of that
kind existed in the 1st century, as a look at the Roman calendars
extant shows.  (The number of games to be celebrated also shows that it
is a late invention -- the ancient feasts all have a standard number,
later ones larger numbers).  It is actually possible from the data that
the Natalis Invicti was invented as a counter-blast, on the way to the
pagan renaissance under Julian!  (Although I myself tend to think it
was probably invented some time after the Sol Invictus cult was
invented in 274 -- we have no calendars of the 2nd-3rd centuries so
can't check).

The feast was celebrated from then on; Julian the Apostate refers to
it; Thomas of Edessa in the 6th century does so also.

Gregory the Great, writing to Augustine of Canterbury, orders him to
build churches on the sites of temples, so that the habit of going to
that place would take the newly converted or semi-converted to church.
(Bede, History of the English Church and People).

So it isn't impossible.  What there isn't, though, is actual hard
evidence of it.

I hope that's useful!

All the best,

Roger Pearse