Atkinson — On Prof. RossVs South-Coptic Texts. 55 



His version on p. 105 is very unsatisfactory, but I cannot go 

 through the whole. He seems to have no "feeling" for the 

 exigencies of the sense, and often divides the sentences quite at 

 random. Thus he gives : 



""We did not yesterday pass in silence the honour of the greatest 

 prophet and martyr John the Baptist. But the birthday of a perse- 

 cutor or rather of an executioner, know ye my dear brethren, that a 

 little bitter damages a perfect honey. But this bitter &c." "What 

 could have induced him to construct that second sentence? "We 

 were not silent about the honouring of John, but about the birthday 

 of Herod. Ye know that a little bitter &c.,'but this bitter &c.". 

 Then, in the next clause, he runs two sentences into one (after 

 KaropOoifia, per gli atti suoi di virtu net modo col quale &c.), which are 

 not thus closely connected in the text. 



The whole of the text in 66 y 13-26 is passed over without any 

 attempt at version or explanation ; and even where the translation is 

 resumed, the reader could not guess from it the drift of the text. 

 Thus he gives : Questi partecipa del ?iuovo, e parfecipa delV antico, 

 where the Coptic has [67 a 16] aftahe tkaine, aftahe tpalaia, 

 where the point is the conjunction of the Old and New Testaments, 

 Kaivr] and TraXata, in the prophecy concerning John the Baptist, 

 Malachi iii. 1 and Matth. xi. 10 Ihov eyw dTroo-TeAAo) tov ayyckov 



fXOV &c. 



70. Then compare text and translation here [64 a z] : 



ere wnoc nklauthmos sard un grande 



efos soop abondante pianto, 



mpe won sope ntefhe ne cesserd 



jintau sor ebol finclie non sia divelto 



nnsnte ntoiliwinene dalle fondamenta il mondo. 



One wonders at the ingenuity of the perversion : sinners indulging 

 in a vast weeping, " which loill not cease till the world has been torn 

 from the foundations" ! Was it to cease then ? 



The Coptic writer was not so instructed, and his text says nothing 

 of the sort: mpe is iioi future, but past; jintau does not mean 

 ^'' tilV\ but ^'' since'''' ; and won ntefhe has a very definite meaning, 

 " anything of the kind ", so that what the writer said was : "a vast 

 "weeping, the like of which was never from the time that the 

 foundations of the earth were laid." The verb sor ebol means to 

 ^^ stretch out^^ ; cf. Num. ii. 34 neusor ebol pe nteihe , "they 

 encamped in this way", ovtco Trapeve/SaXov ; Job xxxviii. 5 nim 



