Chaldean Oracles - State of The Text

State of The Text

The original poem has not come down to us in any connected form, and is known through quotations in the works of the Neoplatonists.

W. Kroll published an edition arranging all known fragments in order of subject, and this is the basis of most later scholarly work. It does not purport to be a reconstruction of the original poem.

Summaries of the poem (and of the related "Assyrian Oracles", not known from elsewhere) were composed by Psellus, and attempts have been made to arrange the surviving fragments in accordance with these summaries: Westcott's translation (above) is an example of such an attempt. These reconstructions are not generally regarded as having scholarly value, but sometimes surface in theosophical or occult use.

Read more about this topic:  Chaldean Oracles

Famous quotes containing the words state of, state and/or text:

    For centuries the death penalty, often accompanied by barbarous refinements, has been trying to hold crime in check; yet crime persists. Why? Because the instincts that are warring in man are not, as the law claims, constant forces in a state of equilibrium.
    Albert Camus (1913–1960)

    Such is the state of life, that none are happy but by the anticipation of change: the change itself is nothing; when we have made it, the next wish is to change again. The world is not yet exhausted; let me see something tomorrow which I never saw before.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    There’s a great text in Galatians,
    Once you trip on it, entails
    Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
    One sure, if another fails:
    Robert Browning (1812–1889)