-58 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



77. The construction of adjectives is just as little understood, for 

 he gives [73 y8 1] : 



nag'g^elos mpnwte gli angeli di Bio, 



henatmw ne[t]e nier che non sono mortali, si legano 



uhenmojli nattako con cingoli incorruttibili. 



The emendation shows that his construction of the clause is quite 

 faulty: henatmw is the predicative form before the copula ne, 

 which is assuredly not to be emended into nete , but the final e is 

 for semer, " they are bound". To edit nete mer is to make the 

 sentence incapable of being analysed. 



78. It is quite a misapprehension to speak of the locusts eaten by 

 John the Baptist in these terms, "nor are they more tender than flesh", 

 for the words are [74 a 23] nwtrypheron an pe nte tsarx, 

 i.e., "nor are they a rpvcficpov of the flesh" : eating locusts is not a 

 gratification of bodily lust of eating. But indeed the whole passage, 

 with its "application" of the meaning of the wild honey &c., is a 

 failure, which will have to be re-edited and properly translated. The 

 concluding paragraph, p. 108, 16, i mari tutti si commossero, le lingue 

 tutte parlarono contro &c., is unsatisfactory, and the last section, 

 "they bowed down their heads, like the beasts, because fhej feared 

 Serod''\ is yet worse, for that is not the construction of fhote, 

 " to fear", and " King Herod" belongs to the next clause ! 



79. The following passage he has omitted with as being 



too difficult [79 y 17]: 



taas epg^azdphylakion iiiiheke je ere wna tahok 

 inn wrpnieeiie iiwoeis nim iiipuito ebol iiipnwte % tipw (P) 

 un»ioinnt niparis[. . .]n iiipekhwinise iinetrcroh [. . . .]ere 

 wtaeio sope nak. 



The (?) after tipw is the usual confession of ignorance of Coptic 

 structure, and has brought about the omission of any translation of 

 the whole passage. Yet it ought not to have been such an unsur- 

 mountable object to an Egyptologist, for it is simply the Coptic form 

 of the fraction to express " the one-third''^ ! 



p-wn nsomnt, '■'■ the third". 



[The fact is that the abs. won is rarely used in the Bible, where 

 it is generally found in the construct form wn, though wne is used 

 too; cf. Lev. xiv. 21 wne met = "one-tenth"; Lev. xxvii. 15 

 pwen(!) tiw, "one-fiftli"; Lev. xxvii. 19 p-wen ntiw; Ezek. 



