Atkinson — On Prof. Hossi's South-Coptic Texts. 57 



next line do not mean " he ivas purified in his holy flesh ", but " they 

 (the garments) were purified by his holy flesh ". And directly after, 

 the words meusont ehtes do not mean " nor is respect paid to it" 

 (such a garment), ne si inchina ad essa. I am quite at a loss to read 

 this back into the text, for sont means "to weave", and hte-s 

 means "its tip'\ and I shall leave the explanation of that riddle 

 to the author ! 



74. And just after, we get the words [y 8] meur sa' nhets hn 

 wmntlampros translated by ne si sente compassione di essa neJlo 

 splendore. Utterly wide of the mark ; and how obtained ? It is 

 hardly credible, but Prof. Eossi must absolutely have taken the 

 word to be sanhtef, "compassionate", and so renders, " one does 

 not feel compassion for it ", for the camel's-hair garment (!). And 

 that by an inconceivable congeries of impossibilities. First, sanhtef, 

 is the adjective, whereas the verb is senhtef , of. Ps. Ixxvi. 10^ 

 xxxvi. 21, iv. 1 ; Prov. xxi., 26 ; Jerem. xiii. 14 ; Mic. vii. 19 ; but 

 this is a small matter. For how could it be = sanhets ? how 

 could it be het ? or -s ? or sa' n with the comma ? or f sa' n, with 

 the auxiliary f ? And Avhat sense is extracted from it, with all these 

 infractions of Coptic structure ? 



The words shoixld have been meursa nhets, "they do not 

 celelr ate festivities in itf in such a dress. 



75. The succeeding lines are, if possible, worse, and the conjectures 

 void of insight into the meaning or knowledge of the language. It is 

 impossible to correct everything ; I should require a book. The last 

 line of the column ends with this conjectui'e: peprophetes etwaab 

 [aaujeidos ebol je, &c. But the editor, though he makes the 

 conjecture aau, has no idea of its meaning, for he does not translate 

 it. The words should have been Daueid 6s, and mean, " the holy 

 prophet David cried out ", the quotation (which the editor knows 

 nothing of) being Ps, xxxiv. 13. 



76. The page following [72 y] is omitted in the translation, with 

 a note stating that the text is obscure, and "a literal translation of 

 it does not appear to be possible" &c. Eut the very words of his 

 note show that he had not grasped the conditions of the problem, for 

 he speaks of " the words of St. Peter, who said : arm yourselves with 

 the thought of death ", and then his note ends with this quotation : 

 hook mmotn hm pimeeue, ending with a full stop! But his 

 own text [73 a 7] had the real words, which are of course the correct 

 and literal version of 1 Pet. iv. 1, all of which he has ignored in his 

 version. 



