DOI Artikel:
Crum, Walter E.: Progress of Egyptology, [13]: Coptic Studies
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10056#0061
Coptic Studies.
49
undoubtedly be of service in identifying and classifying others in tlie
future.
One of the most interesting publications of the year is also one of the
least voluminous. A short paper, read to the Berlin Academy by Dr. Carl
Schmidt,6 announces the discovery, among the inexhaustible treasures
from Akhmim, of some sixteen leaves from a papyrus book the contents
of which Dr. Schmidt seems to have good grounds for assigning to an
orthodox and not a gnostic writer, although one's first impression would
probably be in favour of the latter ascription. The work apparently relates
conversations held by our Lord with His disciples, who afterwards com-
mitted them to writing for the benefit of the faithful. They are not
without resemblance to the Petrine apocrypha (likewise discovered at
Akhmim), and may be dated, according to Dr. Schmidt, in the first half
of the second century. All will be anxious to see this valuable text
speedily published, the more so since it is written in the rare and
ancient dialect of Akhmim.
2. Patristic. The large volume which is M. Amelineau's latest addition
to the publications of the French "Mission,"7 is dated 1893, yet it saw
the light only last year. The valuable texts here made accessible are a
further result of the discovery of the debris of the library of the White
Monastery, which may be said to have supplied us with practically all the
Sa'idic literature now in Europe. They form a continuation of the same inde-
fatigable editor's former collection (the life of Shenoute), and comprise
a variety of fragments from Lives and Acts of various Coptic Saints,
ranging from the 4th to the 7th centuries. There are many points of
interest to which attention might be called ; the most interesting perhaps
is the statement in the introduction, and already made elsewhere by the
author, that one of the fragments transcribed can be dated to the years
immediately after the Persian invasion of the 7th century. But an
examination of the MS. in question makes it very doubtful whether that
conclusion can be drawn from the obscure and faded, colophon on which
this weighty statement is based. The script, too, of the text itself is far
more closely allied to that of the dated MSS. of the 10th and 11th
centuries than to anything we have reason to assign to an earlier period.
While grateful to M. Amelineau for all the documents he has here and
elsewhere brought within our reach, we shall be still more in his debt
when he fulfils the promise he incidentally makes in this volume, to edit
all that remain of the writings of the most remarkable of Egyptian
saints—Shenoute.
Dr. von Lemm continues his successful endeavours to identify the
h
49
undoubtedly be of service in identifying and classifying others in tlie
future.
One of the most interesting publications of the year is also one of the
least voluminous. A short paper, read to the Berlin Academy by Dr. Carl
Schmidt,6 announces the discovery, among the inexhaustible treasures
from Akhmim, of some sixteen leaves from a papyrus book the contents
of which Dr. Schmidt seems to have good grounds for assigning to an
orthodox and not a gnostic writer, although one's first impression would
probably be in favour of the latter ascription. The work apparently relates
conversations held by our Lord with His disciples, who afterwards com-
mitted them to writing for the benefit of the faithful. They are not
without resemblance to the Petrine apocrypha (likewise discovered at
Akhmim), and may be dated, according to Dr. Schmidt, in the first half
of the second century. All will be anxious to see this valuable text
speedily published, the more so since it is written in the rare and
ancient dialect of Akhmim.
2. Patristic. The large volume which is M. Amelineau's latest addition
to the publications of the French "Mission,"7 is dated 1893, yet it saw
the light only last year. The valuable texts here made accessible are a
further result of the discovery of the debris of the library of the White
Monastery, which may be said to have supplied us with practically all the
Sa'idic literature now in Europe. They form a continuation of the same inde-
fatigable editor's former collection (the life of Shenoute), and comprise
a variety of fragments from Lives and Acts of various Coptic Saints,
ranging from the 4th to the 7th centuries. There are many points of
interest to which attention might be called ; the most interesting perhaps
is the statement in the introduction, and already made elsewhere by the
author, that one of the fragments transcribed can be dated to the years
immediately after the Persian invasion of the 7th century. But an
examination of the MS. in question makes it very doubtful whether that
conclusion can be drawn from the obscure and faded, colophon on which
this weighty statement is based. The script, too, of the text itself is far
more closely allied to that of the dated MSS. of the 10th and 11th
centuries than to anything we have reason to assign to an earlier period.
While grateful to M. Amelineau for all the documents he has here and
elsewhere brought within our reach, we shall be still more in his debt
when he fulfils the promise he incidentally makes in this volume, to edit
all that remain of the writings of the most remarkable of Egyptian
saints—Shenoute.
Dr. von Lemm continues his successful endeavours to identify the
h