Atkinson — On a South-Coptic Text of M. Bouriani. 229 



(c) And the third clause is wrong ; for quite apart from the 

 absurdity of a pagan king talking of ' Our Lord', and quoting Hebr. 

 xiii, 8, (which obviously must have come from the young martyr, 

 in a portion of the colloquy omitted from this text), what could be 

 more illogical than for him to say : " therefore don't tell me any more 

 that a man cannot have several gods &c." ? And what has become of 

 the grammar ? 



mpfjo eroi an je ne me dis plus, que &c. 



It is an impossible text, to which there are three fatal objections : 

 how could mpr have an after it? or how could jo be without its 

 object, or how could it govern the directive, eroi? And the transla- 

 tion following, qu'un homme ne peut avoir plusieurs dieux, is absolutely 

 out of place, for the words form a 'nominativus pendens', {as to the 

 case of a man) xvho has many gods &c. But, as it stands, the discus- 

 sion is unintelligible, because the rejoinder of the martyr has been 

 omitted. 



4. And even when he has the original Greek before him, he is 

 not able to resist the temptation to go astray, by shutting his eyes to 

 the LXX after the first cursory glance ! How else can we com- 

 prehend a version like the following : — 



J'ai passS [altered in the Corrig. vaio je passe'] sur la terre comme 

 tons mes peres. A moi qui suis jeune, il dit : je me suis reposi avant 

 d'' avoir marcM^ et n^ai point acheve man passage. 



The interjected clause which he renders, " a moi qui suis jeune, il 

 dit", is [176, 6] fos nai nwkwi, which he has thus translated : 



nai d moi 



nwk'vri qui suis jeune 



f-os. il dit. 



Absolutely so ! ! 



He knows the quotation, that it is from Ps. xxxviii. 14, and he 

 therefore was not sufficiently skilled in the Coptic vocabulary to 

 realize that the words were simply 



fos nai nwkwi^ " spare me a little ", 



with the not uncommon change of /and 3, cf. bos. Job vii. 19. 



5. And the two clauses following are both wrong : — 



(a) je eiemton mmoi hathe inpatibok, a literal rendering 



of iva ava\f/v^(D Trpo tov fjie aTreXdetv. 

 (i) tatmsaat esope, 'that I may cease to be', 



Kol OVkItI fXT] virdp^d). 



