DOI Artikel:
Crum, Walter E.: Progress of Egyptology: coptic studies
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11503#0076
64
Proghess of Egyptology.
most important biblical document in tho dialect as yet known. The
text itself shows a relationship first to the one, then to the other of the
better preserved versions, the proximity being on the whole closer, as
one would expect, to the Sa'idic.
Under this heading may be mentioned, since its most important
contents are biblical, the much needed reissue of Lagarde's Aegyptiaca,
first printed in 1883. From the photograph published in the meanwhile
by Eossi (/ Papiri Oopti I.), one can see that the Turin MS. whence
Lagarde's biblical texts were taken is among the finest caligrnphic as
well as philological monuments.
2. Patristic. M. Basset has included' in his series of Etbiopic
Apocrypha a translation of the Rule of S. Pachomius.s He is the first
translator for whom M. Amelineau's Coptic Life of the saint has been
available and to it he makes constant reference. Pachornius, whose
dates (following Griitzmacher) he gives as 285—345, was probably at
most but the author of the shortest, i.e. the Palladian, version of the
Rule; the third version, or rather paraphrase, M. Basset believes
to be of late, Ethiopic origin. It was indeed in Ethiopia that the
Pachomian Rule was most popular. It is remarkable that from Egypt,
its original home, no version is preserved. This may of course be due
merely to a chance, such as that which has given us so many fragments
of the Sinuthian Rule from Achmim, and left us on the other hand
ignorant as to the primitive observance in the Nitrian communities.
The present writer las printed what was legible of a palimpsest,
containing parts of a narrative of the disturbances resulting from
Justinian's interference in the Alexandrine patriarchal appointments.4
3. Gnostic and Magical. Two translations of the Pistix Sophia are
this year to be noticed ; the earlier, by M. Amelineau,5 could only be
mentioned in last year's Report. On inspection it proves to be at any
rate a readable book, and yet does not give renderings too far removed
from the intentions of the Coptic text. In a popular introduction of
some thirty pages, the translator deals with the authorship of the work,
which he ascribes, as before, to Valentinus himself. He goes at length
into the attractive but easily misleading analogies between Gnostic and
ancient Egyptian eschatology, finding in the latter several doctrines
which appear to resemble features in the system of the Pistis. On
p. ix. are certain arguments for dating the MS of the work in the 9th
or 10th century, instead of in the 5th or 6th. It is true that the greater
part of the volume is written in a peculiar and undoubtedly puzzling
hand ; but other parts of it certainly show a script which, unless our
Proghess of Egyptology.
most important biblical document in tho dialect as yet known. The
text itself shows a relationship first to the one, then to the other of the
better preserved versions, the proximity being on the whole closer, as
one would expect, to the Sa'idic.
Under this heading may be mentioned, since its most important
contents are biblical, the much needed reissue of Lagarde's Aegyptiaca,
first printed in 1883. From the photograph published in the meanwhile
by Eossi (/ Papiri Oopti I.), one can see that the Turin MS. whence
Lagarde's biblical texts were taken is among the finest caligrnphic as
well as philological monuments.
2. Patristic. M. Basset has included' in his series of Etbiopic
Apocrypha a translation of the Rule of S. Pachomius.s He is the first
translator for whom M. Amelineau's Coptic Life of the saint has been
available and to it he makes constant reference. Pachornius, whose
dates (following Griitzmacher) he gives as 285—345, was probably at
most but the author of the shortest, i.e. the Palladian, version of the
Rule; the third version, or rather paraphrase, M. Basset believes
to be of late, Ethiopic origin. It was indeed in Ethiopia that the
Pachomian Rule was most popular. It is remarkable that from Egypt,
its original home, no version is preserved. This may of course be due
merely to a chance, such as that which has given us so many fragments
of the Sinuthian Rule from Achmim, and left us on the other hand
ignorant as to the primitive observance in the Nitrian communities.
The present writer las printed what was legible of a palimpsest,
containing parts of a narrative of the disturbances resulting from
Justinian's interference in the Alexandrine patriarchal appointments.4
3. Gnostic and Magical. Two translations of the Pistix Sophia are
this year to be noticed ; the earlier, by M. Amelineau,5 could only be
mentioned in last year's Report. On inspection it proves to be at any
rate a readable book, and yet does not give renderings too far removed
from the intentions of the Coptic text. In a popular introduction of
some thirty pages, the translator deals with the authorship of the work,
which he ascribes, as before, to Valentinus himself. He goes at length
into the attractive but easily misleading analogies between Gnostic and
ancient Egyptian eschatology, finding in the latter several doctrines
which appear to resemble features in the system of the Pistis. On
p. ix. are certain arguments for dating the MS of the work in the 9th
or 10th century, instead of in the 5th or 6th. It is true that the greater
part of the volume is written in a peculiar and undoubtedly puzzling
hand ; but other parts of it certainly show a script which, unless our