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 the, state of, state and/or text:
“But is it not the fact that religion emanates from the nature, from the moral state of the individual? Is it not therefore true that unless the nature be completely exercised, the moral state harmonised, the religion cannot be healthy?”
—Harriet Martineau (18021876)
“Feminism, like Boston, is a state of mind. It is the state of mind of women who realize that their whole position in the social order is antiquated, as a woman cooking over an open fire with heavy iron pots would know that her entire housekeeping was out of date.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (18661948)
“President Lowell of Harvard appealed to students to prepare themselves for such services as the Governor may call upon them to render. Dean Greenough organized an emergency committee, and Coach Fisher was reported by the press as having declared, To hell with football if men are needed.”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“Theres a great text in Galatians,
Once you trip on it, entails
Twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure, if another fails:”
—Robert Browning (18121889)