Boylan hits a new low

[Tapir Rodeo]

Migne's Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca (167 vols.) and Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina (221 vols.) are nearing completion on Logos.

Expensive? Yes, but for those who study the patristic texts (and/or are nerds when it comes to original language texts), might be something to invest in (I have both preordered) (*)

(*) For those who like my work and want to support my research, yes, I do take Logos vouchers (esp. if you want to help offset the cost of the Migne series )--the email to use for Logos vouchers is IrishLDS87ATgmailDOTcom

Begging for money again.

And Bobby, reading is not “research.”

Ole Bobby really outdid himself on this one. He once again seems to think that after years of being a douche on the internet he has managed to garner only one vocal critic, almost like a reverse Spartacus situation. All his critics must be this Travis fellow!

The bragging about the 2.1 million hits is also goofy. A "hit" is just a request for a file on a web page. So each time someone visits his blog each individual image, gif, and the article text counts as a hit. So a single page view can generate dozens of hits. Blogspot is also known for counting hits from the page owner visiting their own page. So assuming Boylan only visits his page to post (unlikely given his narcissism) and each time he posts it includes the page logo, date image, like button, tweet button, text, and a screenshot or gif that would generate 6 hits. If we use the number 6 multiplied by 9300 we can see that it's possible for Boylan to have generated over 50,000 hits on his own page. It's certain that his page views are drastically lower and unique views even lower than that. But trying to twist the truth to seem more impressive is Boylan's M.O.

[drumdude]

A majority of web traffic is bots. Boylan is lucky to get one upvote/like on the half dozen copy and paste “posts” he spews out every day.

It’s cute to see him brag about something he doesn’t understand.

[MsJack]

Migne's Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca (167 vols.) and Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina (221 vols.) are nearing completion on Logos.

Well, he's right about one thing: the near completion of these on Logos is amazing and long overdue.

[MsJack]

Digging up someone's information on Intelius and other people-stalking sites is just pathetic. Boylan must not have much confidence in the caliber of his own arguments if he feels the need to dig into people's personal lives like that.

[Tapir Rodeo]

It’s cute to see him brag about something he doesn’t understand.

That sums up his nine years as a blogger.

[Tapir Rodeo]

Digging up someone's information on Intelius and other people-stalking sites is just pathetic. Boylan must not have much confidence in the caliber of his own arguments if he feels the need to dig into people's personal lives like that.

It's difficult to find any actual arguments he has made based on his own thoughts and ideas. The few "original" pieces he has written are usually just warmed over Roman Catholic pop apologetics (sometimes Protestant pop apologetics depending on the subject). Of course these topics and arguments will have overlap but Boylan's "work" reeks of plagiarism and heavy paraphrasing. I get the feeling that he knows many LDS distinctives are indefensible. So he keeps his attempts to defend Mormonism rather vague while his criticism of Christianity is quite specific. It's a dishonest tactic but it makes me wonder if he doesn't realize, at least one some level, that Mormonism is especially absurd. Perhaps he finds himself in a "sunk-cost" situation. I'm speculating, but my speculation is not completely without evidence.

[Chap]

Migne's Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca (167 vols.) and Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina (221 vols.) are nearing completion on Logos.

Well, he's right about one thing: the near completion of these on Logos is amazing and long overdue.

Excuse my asking - but does Boylan claim to be able to read the Greek and Latin texts in this collection?

If so, he deserves some respect for his learning. But if not, why is he asking for funds to purchase these series?

[Tapir Rodeo]

Well, he's right about one thing: the near completion of these on Logos is amazing and long overdue.

Excuse my asking - but does Boylan claim to be able to read the Greek and Latin texts in this collection?

If so, he deserves some respect for his learning. But if not, why is he asking for funds to purchase these series?

He says he has, "extensive postgraduate work in biblical Hebrew and Greek." This is vague but I would assume he knows something about biblical languages. I don't know how much he knows though. When he does interact with biblical languages he never seems to be doing original work, he always copy and pastes from others. That's all I can really say about it.

[MsJack]

Excuse my asking - but does Boylan claim to be able to read the Greek and Latin texts in this collection?

If so, he deserves some respect for his learning. But if not, why is he asking for funds to purchase these series?

I have no idea what Boylan's knowledge of Greek and Latin is, but being perfectly honest, a good working knowledge of classical languages isn't quite as important as it used to be. There are several free online translators that will at least give you the basics of what a text says. Patrologia Graeca / Patrologia Latina have been public domain for a while, but some scans are not high-quality, and deciphering the text so that you can plug it into a translator can be a pain. Translating large blocks of texts takes time, and there are a lot of works in the PG / PL that lack an English translation (or a German / French / Italian translation, for that matter...).

What Logos is doing, digitizing and indexing the entirety of PG / PL, will make the entire text searchable and copy-and-paste-able. It's already searchable, to some extent, through Thesaurus Linguae Latinae and Thesaurus Linguae Gracae, but these are subscription-based services that can be a pain for non-students / non-affiliated scholars to access. TLL, for example, costs $119 / year, and my seminary only gives me access to TLG, not TLL. Even the local Catholic seminary doesn't offer its students access to TLL (!), so I'm stuck paying for TLL out of pocket if I want it, and scholars not affiliated with a research library can be stuck paying for one or both.

It will also mean that you own these PG / PL databases having paid for them once rather than having to pay a monthly subscription fee.

With the Logos edition of PG / PL, anyone (Boylan or otherwise) could look up a word or phrase in Greek or Latin (for example, οἱ βαπτιζόμενοι ὑπὲρ τῶν νεκρῶν), plug sections of texts into translators, then find out which church fathers said what about that verse. And at least some of the material that will come up has probably never been discussed in modern academia.

[drumdude]

Excuse my asking - but does Boylan claim to be able to read the Greek and Latin texts in this collection?

If so, he deserves some respect for his learning. But if not, why is he asking for funds to purchase these series?

He says he has, "extensive postgraduate work in biblical Hebrew and Greek." This is vague but I would assume he knows something about biblical languages. I don't know how much he knows though. When he does interact with biblical languages he never seems to be doing original work, he always copy and pastes from others. That's all I can really say about it.

If he can read Greek and Latin, then his skills are completely wasted on his disorganized blog. He would be better served developing some thesis based on his "research" and presenting it. Instead of just curating a random collection of thousands of disjoint paragraphs.