56

Progress of Egyptology.

(some account of which appeared in Biblia, October, 1897, 196), will
probably be ready by the time this Eeport is issued. It will be the first
complete and homogeneous text of this version either published or known
in MS.

Professor Peters of Paderborn promises a commentary on Ecclesi-
asticus, and, as a preliminary, publishes a minute examination of the
Sa'idic text in Lagarde's Aegyptiaea? He seems competent to avail
■ himself of all the eastern and western versions with the exception of the
Armenian (p. 63); but the results of his study do not, he confesses,
make any great impression upon the form of the text. The Sa'idic
shows few important variants; for the most part they merely serve to
support the other versions. In some cases, however, conjectural emenda-
tions of the Greek are shown to be confirmed by it (p. 61), while there
is evidence that the translation is based upon a Greek text earlier than
B or for it lacks certain glosses adopted into those texts. Statistics
of variants show that the form of text lies nearer to the Hebrew aud
other old versions than do any Greek MSS. Prof. Peters is at great
pains to account for and to distinguish degrees of importance among the
variants, and he recognizes the difficulty of ascertaining which of them
are real, which apparent and nothing more than differences unavoidable
in translation from one idiom into another. Some of the cases noted
(e.g. on pp. 7 ff.) are but the obvious, sometimes the only, ways by
which the Copt would attempt to render the Greek phrases. In § 12.
are some suggested emendations of Lagarde's text, and in § 13 some
acute observations on points of Coptic grammar.

Mention had for some time past been made of the edition in prepara-
tion by the Clarendon Press of the Eohairic New Testament, and though
the editor's name was not then withheld, the first part of the work has
now appeared anonymously.3 The Rev. G. Horner—known already for
the information supplied to the last edition of Scrivener, as well as to the
Tischendorf Prolegomena—has, after much untiring work, produced what
will no doubt remain the final edition of the Boh. Gospels. The mere
statistics of the material used, when contrasted with that regarded (1846)
as adequate by Schwartze, Mr. Horner's predecessor, sufficiently mark
the relative values of the editions. Schwartze used one MS., a copy
of anothei', and consulted three published Greek texts; Mr. Horner has
collated the whole or test-passages from forty-six MSS. in every European
library and many Egyptian monasteries and churches, while disposing for
the Greek of Tischendorf's full apparatus. The system of publication
adopted is the printing, practically untouched, of the text of one MS.