64 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



has gone wrong in many passages in this small text, in spite of 

 having the Greek text to guide him ! Not only so ; but though 

 Lightfoot's text has the Biblical quotations in a different type of 

 Greek, so as to show that they are quotations, Prof. Hossi has ignored 

 that also, and made the wildest attempts at translation. 



96. What could be plainer than the Coptic [53 y 7] : ko nsok 

 nteignome , "forsake this yvw/xT;", which he has rendered, " oJey 

 my order^\ in spite of the Coptic text and the Greek text /Aera- 



Tl^€/A€VOS T^S yVWyHT/S TaVTT^S ? 



97. And just below, he translates thus : " it is not fitting in order 

 to oMain favours^ to hm't the soul", though his text is [53 y 17]: 

 Swpetesse an pe eti henkharis eunablaptei nwpsykhe, 

 i.e., "it is not fitting to give favours which will hurt the soul", 

 ^corresponding fairly with the Greek, ■xapira's Set Trapi-^eiv ras* ix-rj 

 ySAaTTTOvo-as i/^u^tjv. 



98. Even in the omissions, where one might have felt inclined to 

 overlook a few slips as the result of mere inadvertence, he contrives 

 to deprive himself of all "benefit of clergy", by some unlucky note 

 or comment in his text, e. gr. [54 a 5] : 



Zeus paij questo Giove, 



etksaje erof di cui tu parli, 



ntisown an je io non conosco 



WW (sic) mmine pe — 



Here, if it had not been for that dreadful (sic), one might have 

 forgiven the omission ; but the {sic) shows that he had no idea of the 

 text, which is absolutely correct, for the first w is the indef. art., 

 and the second w is the interrogative adj., so that w.m-mine 

 means " of what kind", i.e., w w.m-mine, " (I do not know) that 

 he is a person of what kind", "this Jove, I know not what manner 

 of being he is" : a quite normal and familiar construction. 

 99. The translation continues thus : 



" ed il regno del mondo non desidero ; imperoccM qiml 

 utile avrei ? Se io cercassi V utile in questo mondo, 

 perderei la mia aninia", " If I sought the useful in this 

 world, I should lose my soul". 



I need not point out that such is not the thought expressed in the 

 Bible ; but neither is it possible to extract it from the Coptic, which 

 has simply, "if I should gain the whole world", eisantiheu 

 mpkosmoB terf [54 a 16j. 



