246 Proceedbigs of the Royal Irish Academy. 



his pai je afsalioof ebol mmof, "thereby God instructed Saul 

 that He had gone away from him". 



M. Bomiant does not understand the structure of saJid ebol : saho 

 is here reflexive; turn thou ate ay from, me is sahok ebol mmoi, cf. 

 Job vii. 16; xiv. 6; Isai. lix. 9 ; a very different construction 

 appearing of course where there is no uimo following, as in Ps. 

 xliii. 10, aksahon ebol, aTrucrco •Jy/xS?, "thou hast cast us off." 



46. At [156, 6] it is told how God saw that David abandoned the 

 flace to him (Saul), saying, * I will not lay hands on God's anointed '; 

 but the phrase afka pma naf is thus rendered : V occasion lux 

 etant offerte{\). 



47. At [157, 8] he translates, ne veux-tu phis etre ion piour moi 

 qui suis ton pere 9 But the text has : me nanwk nhwo eroi, '/xtj, 

 art thou better than I', just as above, 'No. 36 ; 39. So, in the next 

 sentence: me akwos eonh nhwo eroi, " hast thou wished to live 

 longer than I", the misrepresentation is continued, ne veux-tu plus 

 vivre pour moi ? 



48. Then he puts words into the mouth of Victor, which are not 

 so in the text, [158, i], einar w nshime, ' ichat shall /<?<? with a 

 wife?' But ]\r. Bouriant edits wnshiroe, rendering j'e n^aurai de 

 femme .... que comme mo7i Seigneicr. 



49. It is curious how little insight he possesses into the Coptic 

 verbal system ! The verb to he is especially little known, so that 

 s 6 p e, 0, and w n are confounded with each other in the wildest 

 way. Here, for example, is w n treated as a copula-verb : tme 

 oleissance pernicieuse est pire que la desoMissance. The moral is 

 probably identical, but that is certainly not what the Coptic says, 

 [158, 12] wn sotm efhow para mmntatsotm, " there is an 

 obedience which is worse than disobedience". "Wrong also, at [160, 3]. 



50. At [159, 3] he edits ntwost naf, rendering {le veau) qu^liW] 

 adorererent : one wonders what he took the tense and mood of ntwost 

 to be? Or how does he construe nsto, [159, 8] ? sto ebol, or testo 

 ebol , he may have after mpe, but certainly not nsto ! 



51. At [160, z] he renders ' laisse alter man peuple, car ilme revere' , 

 but the text: je euesmse nai, means "in order that they may serve 

 me". 



52. But the grammatical blunder is much gi'eater, to edit and 

 render as he has done [161,5] ^^je pjoeis was nfnajitn ehwn 

 erof, si Dieu le veut il nous y conduira. 



Here was is the pronominal form of the verb; it cannot stand 

 without a suffix pronoun, in this case -n ; add this, and then the 



