Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/411

 EGYPT

357

EGYPT

(Arab. Essa'id, "the high"); the Akhmimic, origi- nally in use in the province of Akhmim, afterwards su- perseded by Sahidic; the Fayumic, or dialect of the Fayiim ; the Middle Egyptian ; and the Bohairic (for- merly Memphitic), i. e. the dialect of Bohaireh or the Region of the Lake (JIariut?), a name now ap- plied to the north-western province of the Delta, of which Daraanhur is the seat of government. From the literary point of view the Sahidic and the Bohairic are by far the most important, although, as we shall see, the most ancient, and in some respects most valu- able, Coptic manuscripts are in the Akhmimic dialect. The question of priority between these dialects — if understood of the greater or lesser similarity which they bear to the respective dialects of the ancient Egyptian from which they are derived, or of the time when the}' first came into use as Christian dialects — cannot, in the opinion of the present writer, be safely decided. All we can say is that we have no Bohairic manuscript or literary monument as old as some Sahidic manuscripts or literary monuments. The Coptic alphabet, some letters of which are peculiar to the one or the other of the dialects, is the Greek alpha- bet increased by six or seven signs borrowed from the Demotic to express sounds or combinations of sounds unknown to the Greeks. On the other hand, some of the Greek letters, like S and *, never occm- except in Greek words. In all Coptic dialects Greek words are of frequent occurrence. Some of these undoubtedly had crept into the popular language even before the introduction of Christianity, but a good many must have been introduced by the translators to express ideas not familiar to the ancient Egj'ptians, or, as in the case of the particles, to give more suppleness or roundness to the sentence. Almost any Greek verb of common occurrence could be used in Coptic by prefix- ing to its infinitive auxiliaries, which alone were in- flected. Thus, also, abstract substantives could be obtained by joining a Greek adjective to certain Coptic abstract prefixes, as, met-agathos, goodness, kindness. Frequently a Greek word is used along with its Coptic equivalent. Greek words which had, .so to speak, ac- quired a right of citizenship, were often used to trans- late other Greek words such as ^u5Xis for ^7is, irvXri for Svpa. The relation of Coptic to Greek, from that point of view, is about the same as that of French or English to Latin, although in lesser proportion.

Scripture and Apocrypha. — Greek being the original language of the Church of Egypt, the first Coptic lit- erary productions were naturally translations from the Greek. Undoubtedly the most important of such translations was that of the Bible into the several dia- lects spoken by the various native Egyptian commu- nities. For these see Versions of the Bible. The Apocrypha were also translated and widely diffused, judging from the many fragments of manuscripts, es- pecially in Sahiilic, which have reached us. Such translations, however, vmlike the versions of the Bible, are far from being faithful. The native imagination of the translators invariably leads them to amplify and embellish the Greek original. Among the Apocrypha of the Old Testament we must mention, first, the "Testament of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob", in Bo- hairic, published by Prof. I. Guidi in the "Rendiconti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei", 18 March, 1900: "II testo copto del Testamento di Abramo"; and 22 Apr., 1900: " II Testamento d'lsaaco e il Testamento di Giacobbe (testo Copto)"; then three Apocalyp.ses of late Jewi-sh origin: one anonymous (in Akhmimic) and the other two attributed to Elias (Aklimimic and Sahidic) and Sophonias (Sahidic). They have been published by G. Steindorff in Gebhardt and Harnack's "Texte u. Untersuchimgon zur Geschichte der alt- christlichen Literatur ", N. S., II; "Die Apokalypse des Elias: Eine unbokannte Apokalypse und Bruch- stiicke der Sophonias-Apokalypse" (text and transla- tion, Leipzig, 1899). Part of the same texts had

already been published and translated by Bouriant, "Les PapjTus d'Akhmim" in "M^moires publics par les membres de la Mission ArchSologique Franc^aise au Caire", I (1881-4), pp. 261 sqq. and by Stern, "Die koptische Apokalypse des Sophonias" in "Zeit- schrift fur agyptische Sprache", etc., XXIV (1886), pp. 115 sqq. There is also a Sahidic fragment of an Apocalypse of Moses- Adam published by G. Schmidt and Harnack ("Sitzungsberichte d. Kgl. Preuss. Akad.d.Wi-ss.", 1891, p. 1045) and one in Sahidic, too, of the Fourth Book of Esdras, published by Leipoldt and Violet ("Ein sahidisches Bruchstiick d. vierten E.srabuches" in "Texte u. L^ntersuchungen", N. S. XI, I b.).

The New Testament class is of course much more largely represented. Several apocryphal writings of the Gospel class have been published by F. Robinson, "Coptic Apocryphal Gospels, Translations together with the texts of some of them" etc., Cambridge, 1896 (Texts and Studies, IV, 2). The chief docu- ments reproduced in this work are the " Life of the Virgin" (Sahidic), the " Falling Asleep of Mary" (Bo- hairic and Sahidic), and the "Death of St. Joseph" (Bohairic and Sahidic). The "Life of the Virgin" is somewhat similar to the " Protevangelium Jacobi". The "Falling Asleep of Mary" exists also in Greek, Latin, Syriac, and Arabic, and the Coptic texts may serve to throw light on the relations of these various recensions and on the origin of the tradition. The only other known text of the "Death of St. Joseph" is an Arabic one, more closely related to the Bohairic than to the Sahidic text. There is also among the papyri preserved at Turin a Sahidic version of the "Acta Pilati" published by Fr. Rossi, "I PapiriCopti del Museo Egizio di Torino" (2 vols., Turin, 1887-92), I, fasc. 1, "II Vangelo di Nicodemo". Some Sahidic fragments published by Jacoby (" Ein neues Evangel- ium fragment ", Strasburg, 1900), and assigned by him to the Gospel of the Egyptians, are thought by Zahn to belong to the Gospel of the Twelve [Neue kirchliche Zeitschrift, XI (1900), pp. 361-70]. To the Gospel of the Twelve Revillout assigns not only the Strasburg fragments and several of those published both by him- self ("Apocryphes copies du Nouveau Testament, Textes", Paris, 1876) and Guidi (see below), but also a good many more Paris fragments which he publishes and translates. Other Paris fragments Revillout thinks belong to the Gospel of St. Bartholomew (Les Apocryphes coptes; I, Les Evangiles des douze Apo- tres et de S. Barth^lemy" in Graffin-Nau, "Patro- logia Orientalis", II, 1, Paris, 1907). However, be- fore the publication of Revillout appeared, the Paris texts had been published by Lacau, who found them to belong to five different codices corresponding to as many different writings all referring to the ministry or Passion and Resurrection of Christ. One would be the Gospel of Bartholomew and another the Apoca- lypse of the same Apostle ("Fragments d'Apocryphes de la Bibliothcque Nationale" in "Memoires de la Mission franc^aise d'archfologie orientale", Cairo, 1904). According to Leipoldt we have the first evi- dence of a Coptic recension of the "Protevangelium Jacobi" in a Sahidic folio published by him [Zeit^ schrift fur Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, VI (1905), pp. 106, 107].

The apocryphal legends of the Apostles are still more numerous in the Coptic literature, where they con.stitute a group quite distinct and proper to Egypt, which seems to be their original home, although in vast majority translated from Greek originals into the Sahi- dic dialect. They were always popular, and long before Coptic ceased to be universally understood, some time between the eleventh and fourteenth cen- tury, they were translated into .4rabic and then from Arabic into Ethiopic. Among the principal are the Preachings of St. James, son of Zebedee, St. Andrew, St. Philip, Sts. Andrew and Paul, and Sts. Andrew and