90 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



Such, rendering conveys no meaning ; it is of course pure nonsense. 

 And it is bad gxammar, "besides; for tlie text henkowe eutmmw, 

 can by no possibility be twisted into his version, ^^ some do 7iot die". 

 The negative tin is never so used ; it is the negative of the infinitive ; 

 it may be used after the conditional ei-, or the subjunctive nte , but 

 most certainly not "with the present indicative ! ]S"or could mw 

 be so used. If the text is really so in the papyrus, it must mean, 

 eu- tlnmo •■ w , " some feed themselves, Kve luxuriously, and so God 

 "withdi-avrs himself from them." 



173. And what sense is to be found in the words at the end of the 

 clause, " if my spirit dwells in . . ." There can be little doubt that 

 the Coptic writer was using a quotation from Gen. vi. 4, ov fxrj Kora- 

 //.etV?; TO Trvev/xa iv rots dvOpwiroL? rovroL? ets tov alwva, so that either 

 his ene must be read nne, " shall not (remain)", or else the use is 

 that of Gen. xiv. 23, je ene tmaji wlaau ebolhn nete nwk ne, which. 

 is practically a strong negative : '• I swear to God, if I •will take," " I 

 will not take." 



174. The connexion with this verse is established by the next few 

 lines which he renders : " their days are a hundred and twenty years", 

 which is quite wrong, for the words are : ere neuhow sope, "may 

 their days iecome^'. There is not in the whole of Coptic literatui'e a 

 single instance of sope used, as he has taken it, as a simple present 

 te7ise: it is impossible. The pkrase is optative, as frequently, and 

 represents the earovrai of Gen. vi. 4. 



175. And he gives at [76 a 2] : 



wii boiue alcuni 



eujok inn neusere si voiano (?) coi loro figli 



hS mniow etkons alle acqtte imcidiali{?) 



I do not know what meaning he intended to be conveyed by his 

 suggested si votano (?), but it is quite immaterial, for his text is 

 wrong : it should be divided differently, not 



eujok iiin, but eujokm n, 



for what the writer said was: "they bathe them, their sons", and 

 most assuredly not "they em2:)ty themselves with their sons", or 

 anything of the kind. 



176. The paragraph finishes with another misunderstanding, for 

 h.e translates euwocp nneskeuos nblje by: distruggono . . . di 

 fango; but the words evidently mean "the vessels of potsherd", 



"the earthen vessels", with reference to crvvrpL/S-qa-eTai and the 

 CTKevos oarpaKivov of Levit. vi. 28 ; xi. 23 &c. 



