36 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



varies considerably, and the Coptic version is certainly not a literal 

 rendering of any text, but the text itself should have been clear. 

 And it is given in Ciasca. 



II. 



It will be seen that the above collection of errors, in fragments 

 of a few chapters of an already published work, is of ominous 

 suggestiveness as to the probabilities of error, where text and trans- 

 lation are to be edited independently. 



I propose now to take up the consideration of these texts in the 

 order of their publication. The first Fasciculus (1883), contained: 

 1, the Gospel of Mcodemus, of which a Latin translation from the 

 masterly hand of Peyron was published by Tischendorf in his JEvangelia 

 Apocrypha (1876), to which I do not intend to refer; and, 2, an 

 Exegesis of Theophilus, translated by Prof. Eossi himself, " as literally 

 as possible." But, to secure this, another qualification besides the 

 grammatical was desirable, for in writings of this kind, where the 

 writer's mind is filled with reminiscences of Scripture, and where his 

 habitual speech is in fact a mosaic of Biblical texts, it is obvious that 

 the second essential for a good edition is, that the editor should have 

 great familiarity with the words of the Bible. Unfortunately, Prof. 

 Rossi does not possess this qualification either. 



I cannot of course set down everything to be found fault with : 

 I shall confine myself to the mistakes of a significant and character- 

 istic sort. At the very outset, the editor has failed to see, or at least 

 does not set forth, the obvious intention of the preacher to make a 

 sixfold comparison : 



1. the sun has arisen, and the darkness is dispersed; 



2. the king has assumed the crown, his foes are suhdued ; 



3. the odour is shed forth, the stench is destroyed ; 



4. the lion has issued forth, the heasts have fled ; 



6. the physician has come, the sick may be healed ; 



6. the delight of creation is manifested, mourners may rejoice. 



30. But the very next paragraph contains an extraordinary mis- 

 translation, which his note only intensifies : [65 /? 5] — 



wpolis> ere wrro' njaje nakute eros^ nforbes eh^rn^ 

 tote sare uetnhets terw sope bu wuoc utliuiko. 



Nothing can be plainer or more certain than the meaning of this 

 clause : " (as when) a hostile king is surrounding a city and besieging 



