92 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



181. And assuredly, the flowery rhetoric of the origiual is not to be 

 handled with so little appreciation as is shown in the version of the 

 passage describing the physical beauty of the youthful Joseph, 

 [21/5 21]: " the hairs of his beard begin to grow on his cheeks like 

 budding roses, shadowing his rosy cou7ttenance^\ There is nothing about 

 "Ais rosy count enajice'''' in the Coptic, because the word rendered "rosy" 

 agrees with the word " hairs", iJ.op4>ri is not merely " countenance", 

 and the last words have been omitted altogether. The words are : 



euhobs ntefmorphe covering his ixopcp-i) 



eutresros and being ruddy 



nsa pisa mn pai on this side and on that 



182. And if ever an editor erred in spite o/ light, it surely was on 

 the occasion, when he invented the following misconception, [22 a 19]: 

 "he who shall not have been made free by his own sentiments, not 

 with a multitude of papers or writings shall he be able to effect, that 

 he who is hlach should he white''\ There is no force of logic in that; 

 nor is there the slightest resemblance to the original, tovtov \x.vp'ioi 

 ^aprai /cat \xi\ava. ypafj-fJiaTa iXevdepwcrai ov Bvvavrai. ; and it is utterly 

 impossible to derive it from the Coptic : 



mn henase iikhartes ?iot multitudes of x^P'^'V^ 



e iishai ef kem or of black tvriting 



nastref wbas will avail to make him become white. 



The point to the Copt was that " hlach letters would not give a man 

 the whiteness (of freedom)". 



183. Often enough, the version is so turned that the general sense, 

 which the context made certain, is given correctly enough, but where 

 the text is so edited that a competent scliolar at once sees that there 

 is a "hiatus valde deflendus " in the editor's knowledge. Here is a 

 case, [23/3 21], rendered : 



" See the nobility of this athlete. What a struggle was hisV But, 

 the text is edited as follows : 



je n[e w'] iiwer mise umuiaf, 



from which it is clear that he took «^ to be = " what", and that he 

 read tv nwer = qualis. There is no escape from that, for he has put 

 his accent over the word (ov) in his emendation ; and even so, he 

 could not construe the words, for wer could not be followed by mise 

 without the connexive. The Coptic text was really ne wn wer 

 mise nmmaf, i.e. ^^ how many fought with him^^ . 



