282 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



include the object, and therefore that the object is the 2 sg. fern. : " I 

 will cut thee with this ra%or.''^ The implement was expressed in hm 

 pei-tak ; tak being merely dialectic for tok , "a razor ", Ps. li. 4 ; 

 Ezek. V. 1. 



So, too, Coptic scholars might also bestow a little thought on the 

 words just below, hnse mmehtop, rendered les dents d^un peigne. 



Then also the final words [265, 4] might be deemed worthy of 

 a note: 6 nah, si mm of hm prase, which are rendered: Vie\ 

 rassasiez-le de lajoie &c. 



Undoubtedly the worst feature of this kind of editing is that one 

 loses the sense of trust in the data farnished : is the text correctly 

 given, and is the rendering legitimately attained, become very serious 

 questions when the words are not common words. How indeed can 

 one trust the ti'eatment of uncommon words, when the common words 

 are treated as follows ? 



Cf . the translation of [260, 1 2] {il) vint le visiter sur sapriere ; where 

 \& sur sa priere'i for the words are af-ei sarof ecmpefsine, "he 

 came to him to visit him ", with not a hint of sur sa priere ! How 

 did he come by it ? thus : — 



ecm = ejm = upon 



pef-sine = his prayer [! !] 



But the words mean simply e-cm, "to find, get", pef-sine, 

 "his visiting", 

 . Orel [208,13] : 



nim g^ar nro men tahe peto nhikanos &c. 



This he renders, quel homme se recontrera qui sera capxible &c., which 

 we may intuit better as follows : 



nim nro 



qitel homme 



men 



(not rendered, fxev) 



tahe 



se rencontrera. 



g is wrong : it should be 





nim iirome 



what man 



nta-he 



like me [can ^-c] 



It was the expression n-ta-he, 'of my kind,' that he failed to 

 understand; then ro, 'mouth', was paraphrased into 'man', and 

 the particle fxiv was edited — and ignored. 



The Old Testament story does not warrant anything like the 



