Atkinson— (9« Prof. Rossi's South- Cop lie Texts. 35 



28. Now we have the case of a plain unmistakable reading made 

 to yield an unheard-of word, for he gives, xxix. 22 : 



save wrome de nhak thms epnobe 



The LXX has avrjp 8e opytXos iiwpv^ev dfxapTtav, and this text Prof- 

 Eossi has rendered I'uomo pronto [all' ira] scava il peccato, giving? 

 the following note : 



''The verb thms, which I have taken in the sense of the Greek 

 iiopvcra-oi " scavare", is not found in Peyron's Lexicon, where we have 

 only the form thmso, with the meaning sedere facere, constituere" . 



It is not found in Peyron's Lexicon : I should think not, for it 

 does not exist at all in the Coptic language, of any dialect or period ! 

 He has divided the words wrongly : it should be the proclitic form, 

 thmse pnobe, "a hasty man establishes sin", corresponding with 

 the previous clause, iyelpei i/et/cos, " stirs up strife." 



29. The last specimen that I shall quote is perhaps also the worst. 

 It is at xxxi. 26, which he gives thus : 



[ii]a[sr]h[m]uie de mn mnintna hi yeslas, 



whicli lie renders : "si governo con benignity nella lingua sua", a 

 translation and text so perversely wrong, that it almost requires to 

 be seen before one can believe it to have been possible that a Coptic 

 editor should have made such a ventm-e. 



Let us dissect it: fhmme, does mean "to govern", but what 

 is the prefix nas ? His translation, si governo, " she governed 

 herself", shows that he conceived it possible that there could be 

 such a prefix as nas- in South-Coptic ! 



Then, we have three conundrums which solicit attention : what 

 did he conceive was the function of m before mntna ? what does he 

 take to be the precise use of mn ? and how does he imagine the 

 preposition lii can be twisted into meaning " we//« lingiia" ? 



The who]e is a mass of absurdities : for, here mn couples two 

 nouns, of which the latter mmntna is in the plural, " mercies", and 

 so the former was probably also a noun in the plural. Hence the 

 problem was simply to determine, what was the noun hidden under 

 the following fragments ? 



Now, there is only one noun in the Coptic language that would 

 suitably fill up that gap, and that is ansmme , 6^(xjxol; and the clause 

 meant ^^ statutes and mercies are on her tongue." The LXX text 



D 2 



