Tuesday, October 23, 2012

More Vanity Googling . . .

Volume 5 Shown

I did some vanity Googling again and discovered my name . . . or sort of my name . . . acknowledged in Volume 2 in the series of which Volume 5 is depicted above: "Jeffrey H. Hodges":
Thanks also to Jeffrey H. Hodges at the University of Tübingen, for providing an additional collation of the text of the synopsis against the facsimile edition and the photographs of BG 8502, and for his many suggestions for improvements in the translation.
This was written by Michael Waldstein, with whom I worked for several months on the Gnostic text The Apocryphon of John, deciphering facsimiles of the Coptic original, a task exceedingly obscure! Michael had asked my assistance because I had not only mastered Coptic, I had constructed my own synopsis of the four copies of The Apocryphon of John, employing a scissors-and-paste method, the "collation" that he refers to, if I recall.

Despite getting my name wrong -- an error shared with so many other illustrious individuals -- Michael was quite helpful and supportive in our time at Tübingen, once leaning over in a seminar to whisper, "It's an interesting point," when I drew a link between a Gnostic text and a New Testament passage that our German colleagues tended to dismiss. Michael was Austrian. I don't know that his nationality made a difference, but I appreciated his support . . . though I no longer recall the point that I was making.

Maybe that poor recall accounts for the radically different direction that my career has taken . . . not quite good enough for religious studies.

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4 Comments:

At 10:55 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Jeffrey, Jeffery, Jefrey, Sarah, Sarrah, Sara, Marc, Mark, Ashley, Ashlie, Ashlee... Why are there so many alternate spellings for common names in English? Does it have something to do with the overall messy and complicated English orthography?

Jacek

 
At 11:58 AM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

I think the reason is mainly to be different, but also because the US is an immigrant land.

In my case, I'm named after both grandfathers: Horace Hodges and Henry Jefferson Perryman. Hence, Horace Jeffery Hodges . . . but I go by "Jeff."

Jeffery Hodges

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At 8:38 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Huh! I did not know your mother's side of the family is Perryman! We may be very loosely connected. My first wife's grandparents were also Perryman, Jake Perryman from Viola. I know Grandpa Jake had a lot of relatives in the area.

Jay

 
At 9:37 PM, Blogger Horace Jeffery Hodges said...

Yes, the Perrymans there were the same -- Granpa was from Bexar, and he had a cousin in Calico Rock.

Jeffery Hodges

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