I just received the updated edition of Hippolytus’ Chronicle. It is in a much nicer format and the end notes have been turned into foot notes. The previous edition appeared to have been a facsimile of a handwritten copy; this one is printed. I will spend the next week or so preparing the text for translation, at first glance there does not appear to be many differences between the greek text in the older edition and this one, which hopefully will mean that I do not have to revise my translation much. I have not made any progress in the translation since I last posted because I was waiting for this new edition to arrive.

As an amateur, mistakes like this will probably happen frequently. I only hope that they become less and less as I become more experienced. Although I’ve heard stories of professional scholars who spend years on projects only to find out that someone else has already done it! In my case I would be very happy if I found out that somebody had already translated Hippolytus’ Chronicle, as the whole goal here is to get ancient works translated, whether I or someone else does it is irrelevant.

From looking at this and other Greek works that were printed in German editions it is becoming increasingly clear that I need to work on my German in order to make proper a translation because  the valuable footnotes are in German. I plan right now is to finish translating Hippolytus’ Chronicle and then once I get a handle on the German language (which could easily be several years from now) go back and revise the translation to ensure its accuracy and faithfulness. I figure that having one inadequate English translation is better than having none at all. Thoughts?

    I am about 9% done with the translation.  I found out that GCS (Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller) has published an updated version of this.  I had looked into this but was not able to find any complete list of the series and I was not able to find any library catalog that correctly sorted books by series. If I knew german I’m sure I would have been able to find a list quite easily.  I am going to interlibrary loan the newer edition to see how different it is from the older Bonwetsch version I was using.  I hope that my current translation does not have to be significantly altered! 

     For those interested, you can find a complete list of the GCS texts here or here for an english translation via google.