38 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



tlie certainty, and says that such and sucli a letter must be ; now cf . 

 [68 /8 26] : 



nai ce teriir neueire queste cose tv.tte fecero 



mpow naf pe in questo giorno a lui. 



But how could the imperfect tense neueire be rendered by his 

 preterite /ecero, how could mpo w, " to-day" be used with a preterite, 

 and how could the absolute xerh eire appear without its object and the 

 connexive particle ? These are three stumbling-blocks, which should 

 have forced him to see that he should have had mmow, "them"> 

 and not mpow, in questo giorno. If his papyrus has the latter, it 

 is simply wrong and impossible, and should have been emended. 



34. And just in the same way, it is obvious that his text is not a 

 faithful representation of the papyrus, where he gives [73 a 18], 

 euneukleros erow, which he has rendered " (si dividono) alia 

 sorte", although it is utterly impossible to Coptic structure! The 

 text should have had eunejkleros and not euneukleros, for the 

 passage runs as follows : eupos nnefhoite ejow eunejkleros erow, 

 "they part his garments among them, casti^ig lots for them", the 

 root being plainly nej, "to cast". 



His version of [77 a 8] " si dividono colla sorte le sue vesti", shows 

 that this text, where there is a lacuna, eune...kleros erow, was 

 misujiderstood in exactly the same way. 



35. The Gi-eek words with which the Coptic text is interlarded, 

 are often a difficulty to the editor ; cf. [74 a 8] : 



afbul ebol nnepsykhowe sciolse le aninie 



etopt entamio n'nkake chiuse nelle tenelre. 



Here attention is drawn by his n, which shows that he felt some 

 awkwardness, a sort of indefinable malaise he could not remedy ; but 

 his rendering, '■'■nelle tenebre", proves that he had no inkling of 

 the true state of affairs, viz., "the souls shut up into the chamlers of 

 darkness, ntamieion nkake" ! 



36. The confusion of his mind with reference to verbal forms can 

 scarcely be set forth more clearly than in his edition of the following 

 passage [74 a 14]. His translation runs thus : 



Imperocche questo e 

 quello che promise a noi colla sua bocca di vei'ita, 

 questa, da cui nessuna menzogna esce in 

 etc mo. 



Se esaltano me sulla terra, io li trarro tutli 

 a me. 



