64 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



informatioii from tiiem. as to the position of Christ's tomb ; but 

 Prof. Eossi could not guess even the drift of her speech, because of 

 the lacuna in h . . . e : it was hooke, " to shave, scrape". Then 

 ape meant simply " head", not " guidance ". And now the omitted 

 line assumes an intelligible appearance : "it would have been fitting 

 for me to scrape your skins, to bring them [the hairs] out of your 

 head, because ye are shameless" ; cf. Xo. 114. 



Prof. Rossi says that the papyrus is here " so damaged that he 

 cannot guarantee the faithfulness of the transcription"; but it is 

 still clear enough even in his text to exhibit with tolerable certainty 

 the drift of Eudoxia's address, which obviously is not expressed in 

 the words : '■'■ it was necessary for me to tahe them away from your 

 guidance''^ (! !) 



In the third Text the vagueness or absence of translation is just as 

 frequently felt. Here e. gr. in a single page of translation are five 

 objections which cannot be set aside lightly : — 



69. He speaks of John the Baptist as appearing at the Second 

 Coming of Christ, " as a forerunner [un foriere'] sanctifying thy way"; 

 now as the text has [63 a 27] : 



Stbe nwmitator eftbbo ntehie^ 



one would have expected a note showing whence he obtained foriere 

 as a rendering for mitator ? It seems much more likely to be the 

 Latin metator, Tertullian's ^^ metator initii et finis". 



But passing this, which is of minor consequence, what are we 

 to say of a translation like the following: "He will be clad in 

 vestments and stoles which the angels loill adorn with great joy" ? 

 There is not a word about the angels adorning the stoles in the Coptic 

 text [63/3 23]: fcoole tenw nndyma mn nestole mn naggelos 

 efstolize hn wnoc nrase, "he is clad now with the kvhvjxaTa 

 and the o-roXat of the angels, while he is adorning himself with great 

 joy". His text has no meaning as it stands, for the mn before 

 naggelos is impossible : delete the m and prefix the n, nnaggelos, 

 ''of the angels"; and then efstolize has its due force, "he is 

 dressing", not " they will adorn". 



Or, what is gained by rendering, " the souls of sinners made 

 reluctant by the pains inflicted to reassume their bodies", [63 y 9] 

 where the text says : euanaspa mmow hn nkolasis etaau ehwn 

 eneusoma, " which are dragged [dvao-Traw] with tortures [KoAao-ts] 

 to put them into their bodies". 



