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70

Peogeess of Egyptology.

In examining those of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt's Amherst Papyri
dating from Christian times, Professor Harnack has pointed out25 that
no. iii, the letter from Eome, which the editors had placed between
the years 250 and 285, contains a reference to the Alexandrine patriarch
Maximus (264—282) and most probably to Theonas, his successor, and he
incidentally discusses the use of the term •narras by which Maximus is
designated. In the hymn on p. 44 of the same publication Professor
Harnack shows that the saints named must be Phocas of Sinope and
Longinus.

Dr. C. Schmidt has printed a Sa'idic fragment of a work of Peter of
Alexandria.20 He holds it to be perhaps a Festal Letter and would assign
it, on internal evidence, to the year 312, shortly before the archbishop's
martyrdom. The text has many features of historical interest which throw
light upon the conditions of episcopal election, the circumstances of the
Christian community at Oxyrhynchus and the Church's endeavours to
enforce the observance of Sunday in the fourth century. The editor
discusses these and several other questions, e.g. the value and object of
Peter's "canons," the circumstances of his flight, the numbers and fate of
the Diocletian martyrs, in a learned dissertation, to which is appended a
note on the notorious prefects, Culcian and Hierocles, the former of whom
has recently reappeared in a Greek papyrus from Oxyrhynchus. Dr.
Schmidt promises an edition of other similar fragments relating to Peter.
The Bollandists have however shown27 that Dr. Schmidt's conclusions are
open to question. Could Peter speak thus of himself ? What have these
relatively late regulations as to Sunday to do with this period ? The critic
(? Delehaye) sees in the text an apocryphon, related to that of the Letter
Fallen from Heaven.

Many Greek MSS. in Paris and the Italian and oriental libraries contain
Lives and Acts of Egyptian saints and martyrs, the publication of which
would without doubt bring valuable additions to our knowledge of the
Christian period, and students must therefore be grateful for all editions of
such texts, even when, as in that of Prof. Pomialovski,28 the editor merely
prints the Greek without contributing the slightest introduction or dis-
cussion. The texts in question (from a Moskow MS.) are a life of " Paisios
the Great," by John Kolobos, and the " Miracles of S. Mena." One seeks
elsewhere in vain for any satisfactory information as to the former saint,
and the editor gives us no help. But a perusal of the text shows that we
have here merely another version, widely different in most details, of the
history of Marcarins's contemporary, Pshoi, Besoi or Bishai, as he is
respectively called in Coptic, Syriac (Bejan III. 572), and Arabic. The
 
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