In July of this year, I was able to travel to Geneva to work with the Bodmer Collection in Cologny.  The object of the trip was a collaboration with Ira Rabin from the BAM (Bundesanstalt für Materialforschung und -prüfung) to do ink analysis on manuscripts from the Bodmer Collection.  I have previously traveled to the archive to work on a project that is in progress, and I was particularly interested in the ink analysis of Papyrus Bodmer 44, a Bohairic translation of the Book of Daniel.  

Research was carried out using an XRF (X-ray fluorescence) spectrometer to analyze the chemical composition of Bodmer manuscripts’ inks.  Specifically, the radiation is sent through the material to be analyzed and the various elements in the ink, e.g. copper, iron, nickel, etc., produce various X-rays, which can then be recorded by the XRF spectrometer. 

Analysis could only be carried out on areas with ink on one side.  Thus, careful preparation was required to identify potential areas that also measured at least Ø 1 mm and had ink in relatively good condition.  Images of the desired areas were also taken using Dino-Lite to produce NL (normal light), UV (ultra-violet), and IR (infrared) photographs of the areas being analyzed.  This provides additional information, and can show when carbon or plant-based inks were being used.

In addition to PB44, we were able to analyze the ink from many different Bodmer manuscripts.  This will be useful not only in understanding the relationship of a text in a singular manuscript, but to also get a better understanding of the Bodmer Papyri as a whole.

The complete analysis of our findings is still in progress, however, I look forward to the results and implementing them in further study on the Bodmer Collection.

 

The Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic Old Testament at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony is dedicated to digitally describe, edit and analyse the transmission of the Coptic Old Testament with a focus on the Sahidic tradition. The long-term project has an opening for a one-year paid trainee program, to be filled from January 1, 2026. This trainee program will give the successful applicant the opportunity to expand their knowledge about the Biblical tradition in Coptic and to receive further hands-on training in editorial methods, manuscript studies and digital humanities, as applied to the Coptic Bible and Coptic literature.

The trainee will commit to working 30 hrs per week in a variety of tasks, which will depend on their experience and interests and the current Old Testament project focus. If pursuing a research project within the wider field of the Coptic Bible the trainee will be able to dedicate up to 50% of this time to their own research.

Prerequisites are a degree in Coptic Studies or a project-related field (Egyptology, Biblical Studies, History of Christianity, Digital Humanities or similar) and a working knowledge of Coptic. Other language skills (in particular in Ancient Greek or Arabic) are welcomed.

Please direct enquiries and applications (short CV, digital copies of diplomas or transcripts and letter of motivation – as a single PDF file) by October 15, 2025 to adw.bewerb@adwgoe.de.

For further information contact Prof. Heike Behlmer (heike.behlmer@uni-goettingen.de) or Dr Frank Feder (frank.feder@adwgoe.de). Information about the project is available on its website: https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com.

The Academy aims to increase the proportion of women in areas where they are underrepresented and therefore explicitly invites qualified women to apply. It also sees itself as family-friendly and supports the compatibility of work and caring commitments.

Disabled persons or those of equal status will be given special consideration if their qualifications make them suitable candidates.

We would like to point out that submitting an application constitutes consent under current data protection law for us to process your application data. You can find more details on the legal basis of this and the use of your data at: https://adw-goe.de/ueber-uns/datenschutzerklaerung/.

Travel and application expenses cannot be reimbursed.

When undertaking textual criticism of the Coptic translation of the Septuagint, one encounters all kinds of errors that are inherent to the manuscripts, yet these have a bearing on the textual history. I recently encountered such an error while preparing the critical edition of the Sahidic translation of Deuteronomy, specifically at the beginning of Deuteronomy 33:16.

As the editor of Deuteronomy, I had to make a decision regarding this part of the verse, and decided to emend it, as it did not make sense and was not consistent with any Greek Vorlage. The CoptOT project team at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony has decided to adopt the siglum “Sa” from the Göttingen edition of the Septuagint for cases where we do not have a direct Greek text witness, but have to correct an obvious mistake that occurs in all manuscripts.

Deuteronomy 33:16a is part of the blessing that Moses gave to Joseph, which is found in verses 13–16. For better clarity regarding the context of the passage in question, I am quoting these verses according to the New English Translation of the Septuagint (NETS), edited by A. Pietersma & B.G. Wright, New York 2007:

Deut 33:13           “And to Ioseph he said:

                            His land is from the Lord’s blessing,

                            from the seasons of the sky and of dew

                            and from unfathomable springs below

Deut 33:14          and in a season of produce of the sun’s changes

                           and from conjunctions of months

Deut 33:15          and from the top of mountains of yore

                           and from the top of the everlasting hills

 Deut 33:16         and in a season of earth’s fullness.”

 

In what follows, I am comparing the Greek text of the Göttingen Septuagint with the Coptic manuscripts from the fourth, ninth/tenth or eleventh centuries for Deuteronomy 33:16a, offering my reconstruction of the original Sahidic text, as well as, for comparison, the Bohairic version:

Deuteronomy 33:16a

Gö LXX:                       καὶ καθ’ ὥραν γῆς πληρώσεως

 

sa 17 (IV c.)                 ⲁ[ⲩ]ⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲡϫⲱⲕ’ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ

sa 2006 (IX/X c.)          ⲁⲩⲱ ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙⲛ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙⲡⲕⲁϩ

sa 2164 (XI c.)             ⲁⲩⲱ ⲛ̄ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ

 

Sa                               ⲁⲩⲱ ⲙ̄ⲡⲧⲉ ⲙ̄ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ

Bo                               ⲛⲉⲙ ⲕⲁⲧⲁ ⲡⲥⲏⲟⲩ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲛⲧⲉ ⲡⲓⲕⲁϩⲓ

Why would three Sahidic manuscripts from such different periods translate the phrase by (ⲛ̄)ⲧⲡⲉ ⲙ︤ⲛ︥ ⲡϫⲱⲕ ⲙ̄ⲡⲕⲁϩ “(in) the heaven and the fullness of the earth”? The key phrase is καθ’ ὥραν “in a/its season”, which occurs eight times in the Septuagint. For our purposes, only the occurrences in Deuteronomy 11:14 and Hosea 2:11 will be of relevance. In both cases, the Greek phrase καθ’ ὥραν is translated as ⲙ̄ⲡⲉϥⲧⲉ, with ὥρα being rendered by the Coptic noun ⲧⲉ, while in the other instances the Sahidic translation uses a different word.

According to Crum’s Coptic Dictionary, the masculine noun ⲧⲏ, meaning “time, season” (Crum 391b), “oftenest” occurs as its variant ⲧⲉ and can be used in adverbial phrases such as ⲙⲡⲉϥⲧⲉ, meaning “at his/its time, right time” or ⲉⲡⲧⲉ, meaning “at, in time”. If we were to translate καὶ καθ’ ὥραν γῆς πληρώσεως in Deuteronomy 33:16a into Sahidic using the noun ⲧⲉ, we should not expect the possessive article ⲡⲉϥ-, however, but rather the article ⲡ-, since the Greek uses a genitive construction involving two nouns, resulting in the Coptic expression ⲙ̄ⲡⲧⲉ ⲛ̄-/ⲙ̄- “in the season of ...”.

We can now reconstruct how the Coptic scribes may have arrived at their incorrect reading of Deuteronomy 33:16a. At an early stage in the history of the Coptic Deuteronomy text, the letters Tau (ⲧ) and Pi (ⲡ) were erroneously transposed. This is evident in our earliest surviving manuscript sa 17, which most likely dates to the fourth century. From a linguistic perspective, this could be termed a metathesis. Subsequent copyists did not suspect an error, as the noun ⲡⲉ with the correct feminine article ⲧ- exists in Coptic and means “heaven, sky” (Crum 259a). This word occurs abundantly in the Old Testament and is frequently used in conjunction with the word ⲕⲁϩ, meaning “earth” (Crum 131a). Once ⲡⲧⲉ became ⲧⲡⲉ, a further change suggested itself, namely to replace My (ⲙ) with Ny (ⲛ), as ⲛ̄- is the correct form of the preposition ⲛ̄-/ⲙ̄- before a word starting with the letter Tau (ⲧ).

Subsequently, in order to make sense of the phrase, the scribes changed another letter: The preposition ⲛ̄-, which can have several meanings, and assimilates to ⲙ̄- when placed in front of the letter ⲡ, was replaced by the preposition ⲙ︤ⲛ︥-, meaning “and, with” (Crum 169b–170a). It is evident that the scribes found it more comprehensible to unite “heaven” and “earth” by using “and”.

We have therefore an example of what the Germans would term a “Verschlimmbesserung”, meaning “disimprovement”, whereby a subsequent correction of an original mistake only makes things worse.

It is my great pleasure to announce the guest blog on the British Library website by our colleague, Lina Elhage-Mensching, on the Bohairic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary Add MS 5997 dated 1273 CE. This showcase is one of the results of a collaboration between the British Library and the Coptic Old Testament Project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony. Lina analyses this lectionary in the framework of the DFG project Digital Edition of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary (n° 491266891).

From 2 to 7 June, I visited the British Library in London to examine biblical and liturgical Coptic manuscripts held there. These manuscripts belong to three different projects ongoing at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony. 

• CoptOT

As a member of the Göttingen CoptOT team, I was responsible for performing autopsy on pages containing texts from the books of the Pentateuch, including Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, as well as Old Testament lectionaries. Nowadays, autopsies are not performed on every page, given that the quality of coloured photographs has improved immensely since the start of my academic career in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, autopsy remains an important method when working with ancient manuscripts. Consequently, the statistics of the Göttingen Virtual Manuscript Room now include the number of pages autopsied by a team member.

 

At the British Library, I consulted Coptic manuscripts in the ‘Asian & African Studies Reading Room’ section on the third floor. There, throughout my research stay, I had the full support of Michael Erdman, the Head of the Middle Eastern and Central Asian Section. He gave me permission to take photos and to use the library’s UV light device. Furthermore, since the British Library does not yet have a special box that can be used as a ‘dark room’ for reading manuscripts under UV light, he also allowed me to build a temporary one using a few book cradles. This practical ‘invention’ served me very well.

 

 

In particular, it helped me read the parchment large leaf, bearing the shelfmark Or. 4717, folio 1 verso, which is the single leaf left from a once extensive manuscript listed in CoptOT as sa 2187 containing biblical Odes 2–4: Deut 32; 1Sam 2; Hab 3. The leaf measuring 290 mm x 235 mm has strong darkened areas and therefore using UV light renders the ink visible beneath the dirt and makes a significant difference. Whereas in cases where the ink has faded, but traces remain from the pressure of the calamus while writing, the result would be less satisfactory.  

 

• DFG project n° 491266891

As the supervisor of the DFG project ‘Digital Edition of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary’ I needed to photograph two Bohairic lectionaries with the curator’s permission. After studying my photographs, Lina Elhage-Mensching established that one of them, BL Or. 5453.1, folios 1–13, was not a Holy Week lectionary, but rather an Easter Week lectionary. The second lectionary, BL Or. 1242.6, folios 1–3, had not yet been studied in the framework of our project as the photos were lacking. This trilingual Bohairic–Greek–Arabic Holy Week lectionary has the siglum bo 3001L in our project. Its folios are dispersed over various library collections such as Oxford (BL, Copt.c.3, folios 1­­­–4), Hamburg (SUB, Lect. 1, folios 1–40) and Vienna (ÖNB, K 11346, folios 1–3).

• DFG project n° 287993677

Last but not least, as part of the third project, ‘The Hymns in the Coptic Liturgy of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt,’ I had to take care of typikon leaves from the codices MONB.WC, MONB.WK, and MONB.WP. I measured the new typikon leaves and compared my transcriptions with the manuscript. While this work was mostly routine, I was able to identify a few difficult words that were not found in the other typika from different library collections.

It is always a pleasure to visit the British Library and I look forward to my next research stay, as there is still much work to be done in the area of Coptic biblical and liturgical manuscripts.

A standard orthography simply refers to a uniform way of spelling, which in modern times is relatively easy to enforce–for example, through reforms by authoritative institutions. A notable example is the German orthography reform of 1996, initiated through an international agreement signed in Vienna by representatives of Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein. Today, any deviation from such a standard is typically regarded as a typo. However, before the advent of printing, things were quite different: books were copied by hand, and spelling conventions often varied by region. Individual scribes were often inconsistent even in their own writing, resulting in diverse orthographic practices that lacked standardization.

Bible translations and language standardization

Bible translations played a pivotal role in the standardization of languages and their spelling. Luther’s Bible translation, for instance, had a profound influence on the standardization of the written German in the sixteenth century (Visser 2018: 350). Likewise, the Swedish Bible translation commissioned by Gustav Vasa, based on Luther’s version, marked a milestone in the development of a more uniform Swedish written language (Thelander 2005: 1900). Despite some irregularities, its orthography is quite consistent for its time, demonstrating a clear effort to maintain uniform spelling throughout the text (Pettersson 2005: 160).

The Sahidic Bible may not be an exception. In this brief article, I will demonstrate how Sahidic biblical manuscripts can help trace a similar process of orthographic standardization in Sahidic texts.

Method

The corpus comprises 52 texts (mostly biblical) preserved in 26 manuscripts, dating from the fourth century up to the tenth century. The goal is to computationally measure orthographic similarity–that is, the consistency of word spellings–across these texts.

The first step was to select variables (features) to capture orthographic behavior in the texts. These include: ϫⲉⲕⲁⲥ vs. ϫⲉⲕⲁⲁⲥ ‘so that’; assimilation of ⲛ before ⲃ, ⲗ, and ⲣ; the use of ⲏⲟⲩ vs. ⲏⲩ; and ⲡⲉⲉⲓ/ⲧⲉⲉⲓ/ⲛⲉⲉⲓ vs. ⲡⲉⲓ/ⲧⲉⲓ/ⲛⲉⲓ, among others (12 pairs of features in total).

Next, occurrences of each feature were counted in each text. Because texts vary in length, the values were normalized into ratios. For example, in Luke (sa 1), the cluster ⲏⲟⲩ appears 92 times, and ⲏⲩ 78 times. The normalized ratios are calculated as follows:

Ratio of ⲏⲟⲩ = total no. of ⲏⲟⲩ / (total no. of ⲏⲟⲩ + total no. of ⲏⲩ) = 92 / (92 + 78) = 0.541

Ratio of ⲏⲩ = total no. of ⲏⲩ / (total no. of ⲏⲟⲩ + total no. of ⲏⲩ) = 78 / (92 + 78) = 0.459

Ratios for all variables were calculated, and the resulting matrix was analyzed using Principal Components Analysis (PCA)–a statistical method that reduces dimensionality while preserving as much variability (i.e. statistical information) as possible (Redmont et al. 2023: 119). PCA is particularly helpful for identifying patterns in large datasets. The results were then visualized in a two-dimensional Euclidean space to assess the (in)consistency of orthography across texts.

Results and discussion

We generally expect orthographic consistency within a single manuscript, as texts of a manuscript were typically copied in the same location, sometimes by the same scribe. However, the texts of sa 31 (green ellipses) show considerable variation. Similarly, the sa 1 texts (red ellipse, lower right) are not closely aligned: the Luke text is clearly separated from both John and Mark (overwritten by “sa 32, Revelation”). PCA indicates that John and Mark are closer to each other than to Luke, supporting Quecke’s (1984: 18–19) paleographic observation that they were without doubt written by the same hand.

There are also discrepancies between witnesses of the same biblical book–for instance, the John texts in sa 1 and in sa 4 (grey arrows). The dispersed distribution of the texts suggests that these texts had not adopted standardized orthography. In fact, these divergent texts were copied in the fourth and fifth centuries.

In contrast, many other texts fall into two major clusters: (1) A small cluster comprising sa 4 texts, showing intra-manuscript consistency; and (2) a dense group of texts in the upper-right quadrant, nearly all of which were copied in the sixth century onwards.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that Sahidic orthography had become largely standardized no later than the sixth century. What motivated this standardization, whether institutional, ecclesiastical, or social forces, remains a question for further inquiry, requiring integration of both linguistic data and historical context. One possible explanation is provided by Funk (2013: 540; cf. also Feder 2023: 7–8) who suggests that large-scale production and distribution of Sahidic translations “was not begun until those translations had been subjected to careful revision and editing, presumably under the control of some church-based authority (whose identity and location is unknown to us).”

 

References

Feder, Frank. 2023. “Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update,” in: Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia. https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2188/

Funk, Wolf-Peter. 2013. “The Translation of the Bible into Coptic,” in: James Carleton Paget and Joachim Schaper (eds.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 536–546. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139033671.029

Pettersson, Gertrud. 2005. Svenska språket under sjuhundra år: en historia om svenskan och dess utforskande. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Quecke, Hans. 1984. Das Johannesevangelium Saïdisch: Text der Handschrift PPalau Rib. Inv.-Nr. 183 mit den Varianten der Handschriften 813 und 814 der Chester Beatty Library und der Handschrift M569. Papyrologica Castroctaviana 11. Rome and Barcelona.

Redmond, L., D. Foucambert, and L. Libersan. 2023. “Language Corpora and Principal Components Analysis,” in: D.G. Woolford, D. Kotsopoulos, B. Samuels (eds.), Applied Data Science. Studies in Big Data, vol. 125. Springer: Cham, 117–132. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-29937-7_9

Thelander, Mats. 2005. “Sociolinguistic structures chronologically II: Swedish,” in: Oskar Bandle, Kurt Braunmüller, Ernst Hakon Jahr, Allan Karker, Hans-Peter Naumann, Ulf Teleman, Lennart Elmevik and Gun Widmark (eds.), The Nordic Languages, An International Handbook of the History of the North Germanic Languages, Volume 2. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter Mouton, 1896–1907. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197068-087

Visser, Arnoud. 2018. “The Luther Bible,” in: David M. Whitford (ed.), Martin Luther in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 350–57. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316596715.041

From March 25^th to 27^th, the University of Malta hosted the conference ‘The Book of Psalms and its Plurality: Textual Transmission, Exegetical Methodology, and Theological Hermeneutics.’ The conference was organized by Prof. Daniela Scialabba (Pontificio Istituto Biblico), Rev. Prof. Dr Marco Pavan (Pontificia Università S. Tommaso D'Aquino), and Rev. Prof. Dr Stefan M. Attard (L-Università ta’ Malta). Its aim was to stimulate discussion on the formation and interpretation of the Psalms in the light of manuscript evidence. Participants came from Italy, Germany, Malta, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, the Netherlands, South Africa, and the United States. They primarily explored Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac manuscripts. Some of the key questions that were addressed were: What is the impact of the study of the manuscript tradition on the methodological discussion about the reconstruction of the Redaktionsgeschichte of the Psalter? Does textual evidence still support the idea of the Psalter as a book? What is the relationship between the Hebrew, Greek, and Syriac manuscript traditions of the Psalter? 

I was the only participant who presented on the Coptic manuscripts of the Psalter. The title of my presentation was ‘The Psalms in the Coptic Tradition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages,’ and my analysis was three-fold: Firstly, I described the surviving Coptic manuscripts of the Psalms. Secondly, I emphasised the relationship of the Coptic Psalms with the Greek tradition and how the Greek Psalms in P. Bodmer XXIV have helped us highlight the numerous times that the Coptic classical text of the Psalms reflects a much earlier Greek tradition than the one solidified in the Septuagint. Finally, I presented our published, digital edition of Psalm 90. 

All in all, the conference was meticulously organized; all papers were insightful and thought-provoking; and the University of Malta was a most cordial host. During the Easter holidays, though, the saddest news was shared with us by Brent Strawn and Drew Longacre, the directors of the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter Project. They announced that the federally-funded grant through the National Endowment for the Humanities to produce the Critical Edition of the Hebrew Psalter was summarily terminated without warning by the US federal government. They added that ‘we are forever grateful and we remain committed to bringing this work to completion as opportunity allows. We are convinced it is of great importance for biblical studies, Bible translation, and larger communities of faith, and we also wish to honor the work our volunteers and supporters have done. Indeed, one of the things that makes us most upset about this termination is that it is not just a cancellation of two researchers at a university somewhere. It is a cancellation of the work of some 200 volunteers drawn from across the world—indeed from every continent on the planet except Antarctica. Thankfully, none of that transcription work will be lost, but for the foreseeable future we will be considerably limited in our ability to manage new transcription work and construct the edition itself.’

Our AHRC/DFG project partner Hugh Houghton from the Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing (ITSEE) of the University of Birmingham convened scholars from all over the world for an international conference on The Pauline Epistles and the Ancient Versions. The conference was not only the final meeting of the (AHRC/DFG funded) GALaCSy project team, but also the 14th Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. From our team Julien Delhez (now Louvain) and Frank Feder, as members of the GALaCSy Göttingen team, took part with papers on the Coptic transmission of the Pauline Epistles. In the three years of the GALaCSy project, Göttingen and Münster were responsible for the edition of all extant Coptic manuscripts of Galatians and Ephesians, with a special focus on the earliest witnesses. Although we were able to fulfil this task within the (only) three years of funding, mainly thanks to the well-preserved Sahidic manuscripts, such as sa 4, it has quickly become quite obvious that we have only discovered the tip of the iceberg. The Coptic versions of the Pauline Epistles are extant in many, but mostly fragmentary manuscripts that already existed in all known literary dialects of Coptic: Bohairic, Fayyumic, Mesokemic, Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, and Sahidic as early as the 4th century. Along with the psalms and the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles are the best-preserved books of the Coptic Bible. Much remains to be discovered that could shed new light on the textual history of the Greek New Testament.

The GALaCSy Team

Between April 14 and 16, 2025, my colleague Frank Feder and I undertook a research trip to the Cambridge University Library (CUL) as part of our ongoing work for the Coptic Old Testament Project in Göttingen. Our aim was to study and photograph Coptic manuscripts held in the collections of the library. In this post, I will report on these collections and highlight some of their most important pieces.

The Coptic and Copto-Arabic fragments at CUL originate from several sources. A substantial portion was acquired from the famous German scholar Constantin von Tischendorf (1815–1874), who brought them from Egypt during his travels. These fragments, inventoried as Add. 1875–1876 and 1885–1887, include some of the most valuable Coptic holdings of the library. Among them are parchment and paper fragments in the Bohairic dialect, which Tischendorf had brought from Wadi Natrun. These were later published by Hugh Evelyn-White (1884–1924) in the first volume of his The Monasteries of Wadi ’N Natrûn (1926). Particularly notable is Add. 1886.17, which contains Abba Isaiah’s Precepts to the Novices. Although the language of this manuscript is Arabic, it is written in Coptic characters.

Another major source of the CUL’s Coptic collection is the group of fragments that belonged to Sir Herbert Thompson (1859–1944), professor of Egyptology at the University of Cambridge. These are inventoried as Or. 1699. During our research, we also examined Thompson’s correspondence and notes, which revealed that he purchased these fragments in 1914 from Henry Hyvernat (1858–1941), professor at the Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

 

The Thompson fragments are particularly significant because they originate exclusively from White Monastery codices. Since fragments of these codices are now scattered across more than forty collections worldwide, the Thompson material is invaluable for reconstructing the original White Monastery manuscripts.

An unexpected find came from a box inventoried as Or. 1700 (Box 1), which contains numerous smaller fragments, apparently acquired by Thompson together with those now kept as Or. 1699. Surprisingly, these fragments had remained largely overlooked until now. Among them, we identified previously unattested biblical and liturgical pieces, as well as fragments of the works of Shenoute, hagiographic texts such as the Martyrdom of Cyprianus and Justina, and apocryphal writings like the Acts of Andrew and the Acts of John attributed to Pseudo-Prochorus.

Another important part of the CUL’s Coptic holdings comes from the collection of George Michaelides, which was acquired by the library in 1977. Although much of the Michaelides collection is formed of documentary papyri, it also includes a significant number of biblical and literary fragments. Among the highlights we identified is a parchment fragment containing Sirach 50:19–20, 24–27 in the Fayyumic dialect (Cambridge, UL, Mich.Pap.Q.118). This is the first known attestation of the book of Sirach in Fayyumic. Furthermore, the paleographical features of the fragment suggest an early date, likely the 5th century CE.

We also identified two Sahidic fragments (Cambridge, UL, Mich.Pap.Q.119–120) forming a leaf from a miniature codex, which preserve a portion of the Life of Paul of Tamma attributed to his disciple Ezekiel. This hagiographic work survives fully in Arabic, but only fragmentarily in Coptic. The section preserved in the Michaelides fragments had previously been unattested in Coptic, making this a particularly exciting find.

In addition to the manuscripts associated with Tischendorf, Thompson, and Michaelides, the CUL also holds two smaller collections of Coptic fragments that formerly belonged to Jack Plumley (1910–1999), professor of Egyptology at Cambridge, and Frederick William Green (1869–1949), Honorary Keeper of Antiquities at the Fitzwilliam Museum. These collections consist of biblical and literary texts in Sahidic and Greek, mostly written on papyrus.

We also had the opportunity to examine the famous Qau Codex (Bible Society MS 137), a fourth-century papyrus manuscript of the Gospel of John in the Lycopolitan dialect—one of the most significant early witnesses to the translation of the Bible in Coptic.

Finally, the Genizah Collection at Cambridge, brought by Solomon Schechter from the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, contains a few Coptic fragments as well. Among these, there is an intriguing Bohairic Litany of the Cross (T.-S. K24.39), based on the sermon In Venerabilem Crucem attributed to John Chrysostom, which was widely circulated in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages among both Eastern and Western Christians.

All in all, the trip proved to be fruitful. Nevertheless, much work remains to be done to fully identify the fragments and place them within their original codices. We look forward to sharing further updates as we continue to work through the materials we photographed during this trip.

In June of last year, our colleague, Alin Suciu brought a source of new Coptic papyrus fragments to the attention of our team.  These fragments, under the shelfmark Biblioteca Manoscritti 305 are housed in the Archivio di Stato di Lucca in Italy.

Of particular interest to me was a fairly large fragment from the book of Daniel, and it was with that main intent that I arranged a visit to the archive.

I visited the archive at the end of January and was able to consult the Daniel fragment.  An autopsy of the fragment enabled me to confirm Alin Suciu's identification of the fragment as coming from Daniel chapter 1.  This fragment forms an almost complete page from a codex.  This was a single column papyrus codex which would have measured not much more than 18 x 14.1 cm.  The margin is visible on one side of the page.  Specifically, the recto contains Dan 1:5b-8a and the verso 1:8b-10.

This attestation is of great help, as the only other witnesses of these verses in Sahidic are in sa 2050 and an ostracon (Var 18), which I am currently working on.  This is especially helpful with verse 7, which is entirely in a lacuna in sa 2050 except for the first word ⲁϥϯ.  Sa 2050 is housed in the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris and is only the bottom portion of a page.  At some point, it is likely there was more to the fragment, as Maspero has a great deal more text recorded for Daniel 1:7 in his Fragments de Manuscrits Coptes-Thébains[1]. With the addition of the text from Lucca, one can almost completely reconstruct this verse.  In addition, a second attestation to these verses serves to establish a complete reading for these verses - something that is exceedingly difficult with the biblical Daniel corpus in Sahidic, which is so fragmentary that many sections are not attested at all, or are attested only by a singular manuscript.

There were many other fragments that I was able to examine. I was able to confirm that despite being under one accession number, these fragments were written by multiple hands and come from multiple different manuscripts.  Some fragments are unimodular, while others are bimodular.   In addition, the size of the letters varied significantly between some fragments, and some were written with a finer pen than others.  The most likely explanation for the variation among these fragments is that they come from multiple manuscripts.

There were many other fragments that I wished to more closely analyze, but was unable to due to time constraints.  Time was short, but I hope in the future another trip can be made to complete the initial work on these fragments.

I look forward to continuing to work with this archive in the future and hope that a closer analysis of the many fragments will yield more Old Testament attestations.

 

[1] Maspero, G., “Fragments de manuscrits coptes-thébains provenant de la bibliothèque du Deir Amba- Shenoudah,” Mémoires publiés par les membres de la Mission Archéologique Française au Caire 6 (1892) 268.

The research visit Diliana Atanassova and myself made to the BnF last week proved fruitful both in terms of autopsying original manuscripts and in terms of using different settings to decipher heavily damaged portions of texts. Diliana examined Sahidic liturgical fragments (ca. 10-11^th c.) and Sahidic Old Testament leaves (from the 7^th, 7^th–8^th and 11^th c.). For my part, I examined Sahidic liturgical fragments and leaves (from the 10^th to the 14^th c.), an Arabic Holy Week lectionary (1312 AD) and the Latin Codex Colbertinus (12^th c.).

   

In this brief blog post, I shall restrict my account to our experience with the UV light.

In recent times, the use of colour photography with enhanced resolution has often rendered the autopsy of the original material superfluous. However, this was not the case with the BnF images of the leaves and fragments under consideration, where parts of the texts were illegible. Our experience at the BnF last week showed that there are at least four different methods that can be employed in such cases.

The first is to work with the source material in the BnF's large dedicated reading room, which is lit by natural and artificial light. This can prove effective in enabling the deciphering of letters that have not undergone significant deterioration.

The second method is to examine the original in the above-mentioned reading room, while using UV light. One hand is used to cast a shadow on the text, while the other hand points the UV light at the text. This method proved effective in rendering some of the more challenging letters legible; however, there were places in which the ink was washed out and nothing could be seen while we were in the reading room.

It was evident that the only viable solution was to utilise a darkroom. We were very fortunate that Dr Vanessa Desclaux, the Curator of the manuscripts of Ancient Egypt and the Christian Near East, had reserved the Salon Rothschild for us and freed up time in her schedule to allow us to use this dimmable environment in her presence. There, we used the third method, which involved focusing on the illegible letters under UV light in total darkness. This proved an effective approach in many instances and enabled us to recognise the traces of the letters.

The fourth method was discovered by chance. A column of text had been so severely washed out that the ultraviolet light in the darkroom, shining on the missing text from above, had no effect. However, in an attempt to resolve this issue, Diliana discovered that the invisible text could be made visible by holding the ultraviolet light at a certain angle behind the page.

Our stay was evidently too short and we will definitely need to visit the BnF again. To conclude, we would like to express our sincere thanks to Dr Desclaux and to the competent and helpful staff of the Department of Manuscripts of the BnF.*

* The photos are published with the kind permission of the BnF. 

 

 

 

On 17 October 2024, I had the pleasure and privilege of delivering the opening lecture of the monthly seminar “Manuscrits et textes coptes”, held in Paris (but accessible via Zoom) and co-organized by the Institut de Recherche et d’Histoire des Textes (a research unit of the French CNRS), the Association Francophone de Coptologie, and the Institut Protestant de Théologie. Being at the end of my postdoctoral project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony, I found it fit to present an overview of the said project. My lecture was titled: “Les manuscrits coptes des épîtres pauliniennes”.

Most conferences limit the speaking time from 20 to 30 minutes per speaker, questions included (excluding plenary lectures). By contrast, the session at which I spoke could last up to 2 hours all included. Thus, I was able to delve into many issues including digital tools (including the renowned Virtual Manuscript Room), codicology, palaeography, and provenance. Additionally, I regularly asked the participants to intervene and share their insights.

The lecture comprised five parts. To begin with, I introduced the GALaCSy project, the team members, the project’s goals, and the digital tools we used — tools whose possibilities are not always known to Coptologists. Thereafter, I gave an overview of Sahidic manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles. Then, I did likewise with manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles in other dialects, more precisely, in Lycopolitan and Mesokemic. Nathalie Bosson kindly intervened to present the findings of her doctoral dissertation on the Mesokemic manuscript mae 4. After that, I addressed the Sahidic manuscript sa 491, a fragmentary but potentially very ancient witness of the Pauline epistles. Since sa 491 has no known provenance, this was an opportunity to discuss whether, more generally, scholars should study and publish manuscripts of uncertain provenance and/or archaeological provenience. In the last minutes of the allotted time, I provided a brief assessment of the project’s results.

I warmly thank Anne Boud’hors, Korshi Dosoo, Catherine Louis, Laurent Pinchard, and Anna van der Kerchove for making this event possible. The next session (on 28 November 2024) will be conducted by Loreleï Vanderheyden and will focus on the theme “Textes en copte d’Aphrodité à Heidelberg? Identification et édition de nouveaux fragments”.

It was with deep sadness and sorrow that we received the terrible news that Peter Nagel, the doyen of Coptic Septuagint Studies and most important supporter of our project, passed away last Thursday, August 1, 2024. As Professor of Christian Near Eastern Studies in Halle (Saale) and Bonn he taught and influenced several generations of scholars not only in Coptic Studies. It is difficult to list the many achievements and merits of Peter Nagel as an outstanding scholar of the 'old school'. Since this will be done in many places, we will concentrate here on his significant contributions to the study and edition of the Coptic Old Testament. It was Peter Nagel who launched and directed the first systematic attempt at a complete reconstruction and edition of the Coptic Old Testament, or the 'Coptic Septuagint', at the Seminar Christlicher Orient and Byzanz of the Martin–Luther–University Halle-Wittenberg in the late 1970s. After his move to the University of Bonn the project Koptische Septuaginta continued its work in Halle from 1994–2000 under his advice and direction. When it was already confirmed that our project would be funded at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities as apart of the long-term research funding program of the German Academies we celebrated Peter Nagel's 75th birthday and thanked him for his support and guidance with an international symposium at the Coptic Monastery in Höxter-Brenkhausen in April 2013. We were also able to honor Peter Nagel with a Festschrift celebrating his 80th birthday. This volume very fittingly was the first to appear in our new monograph series Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible. It is difficult to describe in a few lines how much our digital edition has profited from the numerous and diverse analogue materials he has made available to us. It is, therefore, only appropriate that we have dedicated a special section in our digital resources menu to Peter Nagel's contributions to the study of the Coptic Bible, including his most recent editions.

Like Coptic Studies in general, the field of Coptic Biblical Studies in particular will for ever be connected with the name of Peter Nagel: ⲡⲉϥⲣⲁⲛ ⲛⲁⲱⲛϩ ϣⲁ ϩⲉⲛϫⲱⲙ ⲛ̄ϫⲱⲙ

The Coptic Old Testament Project has an open position for a Student Assistent. See the advertisement on the website of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony here.

The time has come to provide a progress report with the highlights of the second year that the project has been in operation. 

1. New dedicated Partner Project web page 

The website of the Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament now hosts a dedicated Holy Week Lectionary (=HWL) web space under the Partner Projects tab. The new space is fully functional and features blogposts and publications along with the three dedicated sections for the Holy Week Lectionaries: Sahidic Holy Week Lectionary, Bohairic Holy Week Lectionary, and Arabic Holy Week Lectionary. A synopsis of the entire Holy Week lectionary index, prepared on the basis of all manuscripts examined in the framework of the project, can be consulted in each of the three sections.

1.1 Sahidic Holy Week Lectionary section

The five lectionaries (270 leaves) displayed in the Sahidic HWL section are by now fully indexed, liturgically tagged, and transcribed. Meanwhile, the Manuscript Speculation Tool (=MST), created by Diliana Atanassova, Troy A. Griffitts and Ulrich B. Schmid for the reconstruction of pages in fragmentary manuscripts,[1] was further developed and adapted for the reconstruction of lectionaries. Besides, Diliana Atanassova and myself used the MST extensively for the reconstruction of the codex structure of another liturgical manuscript from the White Monastery library, namely the Sahidic Euchologion MONB.VE.[2] Thanks to the development of the MST and to our experience with the reconstruction of liturgical manuscripts, we are now able to reconstruct the codex structure of the individual Sahidic lectionaries despite their fragmentary state, see for example the codex structure of sa 299L.

1.2 Bohairic Holy Week Lectionary section

The list in the Bohairic HWL Lectionary section now includes nine Holy Week lectionaries (2710 leaves) along with the four Ṭuruḥat (272 leaves) for the Holy Week codices. All nine Bohairic HWL were indexed by Peter Missael and liturgically tagged by myself. In cooperation with the British Library, the Bohairic Holy Week lectionary bo 3000L will soon be the subject of a show case. I have already liturgically tagged and transcribed the bilingual Bohairic–Arabic texts of the 313 leaves. Its codex structure is also already retrievable. As for the other eight Bohairic HWL in the list, more than 1100 leaves have already been transcribed. The transcription was achieved with the support of our student assistants Peter Missael and Sophie-Charlotte Gissat.

1.3 Arabic Holy Week Lectionary section

As already mentioned in the project’s first year report, the list in the Arabic HWL section includes all bilingual Sahidic–Arabic (3 manuscripts, 238 leaves) and Bohairic–Arabic HWL (5 manuscripts, 1300 leaves) already included in the other two dedicated sections as well as the monolingual Holy Week lectionary ar 1L (185 leaves). All Arabic texts of the Sahidic–Arabic HWL, more than 280 leaves of the Arabic texts of the Bohairic–Arabic HWL, and 50 leaves of the monolingual ar 1L have already been transcribed by myself.

2. 14-day visit of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana in Rome

Diliana Atanassova and myself visited the BAV in Rome from June 5 to June 16, 2023 to carry out an autopsy of the manuscripts preserved in Rome and included in the project’s main sources. Besides, Diliana Atanassova consulted all Sahidic liturgical typika kept in the BAV and pertaining to her research in the framework of her DFG project AT 193/1-1 “The Hymns in the Coptic Liturgy of the White Monastery in Upper Egypt”. A detailed account of the Sahidic and Bohairic HWL autopsy results can be found in two dedicated blogposts (part I and part II).

3. Blogposts in the second year

- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, The Digital Edition and Critical Evaluation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary: 2022 progress report. In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 21 March 2023.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, A Visit to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 5-16 June 2023: Autopsying Coptic Holy Week Lectionaries (Part I). In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 5 July 2023.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, A Visit to the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 5-16 June 2023: Autopsying Coptic Holy Week Lectionaries (Part II). In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 4 August 2023.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina, Remarks on the translation of John 2:15 into Coptic and Arabic. In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 20 February 2024.
- Missael, Peter, Sahidic influences in two Bohairic Holy Week Lectionaries. In: Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, 29 November 2023.

4. Publications in the second year

- Atanassova, Diliana / Elhage-Mensching, Lina (2023). Die sahidischen Euchologia des Weißen Klosters – eine kodikologische Bilanz. In: Diliana Atanassova, Frank Feder, Heike Sternberg el-Hotabi (eds), Pharaonen, Mönche und Gelehrte. Auf dem Pilgerweg durch 5000 Jahre ägyptische Geschichte über drei Kontinente. Heike Behlmer zum 65. Geburtstag, Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel / Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible 4, 61–78.
- Atanassova, Diliana / Griffitts, Troy A. / Schmid, Ulrich B. (2023). Manuscript Speculation Tool 2.0: Digital Support for the Reconstruction of Biblical and Liturgical Coptic Manuscripts. In: Diliana Atanassova, Frank Feder, Heike Sternberg el-Hotabi (eds), Pharaonen, Mönche und Gelehrte. Auf dem Pilgerweg durch 5000 Jahre ägyptische Geschichte über drei Kontinente. Heike Behlmer zum 65. Geburtstag, Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel / Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible, 79–94.
- Feder, Frank (2023). Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update. In: Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia (CCE), https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2188/.

5. Forthcoming publications

- Atanassova, Diliana / Feder, Frank (forthcoming). Die Bedeutung der biblischen Lesungen und der sahidischen Lektionare für die Edition der sahidischen Bibelübersetzung – Eine Zwischenbilanz. In: Felix Albrecht, Frank Feder, Martin Karrer (eds), Liturgische Traditionen: Ihr Nutzen und Stellenwert für die biblische Editionswissenschaft / Liturgical Traditions: Their Use and Value for Critical Editions of the Bible, Antike Schriftauslegung / Ancient Scriptural Interpretation.
- Atanassova, Diliana / Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). The Digital Edition and Critical Evaluation of the Coptic Holy Week Lectionary. Outline of a New Project in Coptic Studies. In: Chrysostom Nassis, Arsenius Mikhail, Daniel Galadza (eds), ΛΟΓΙΚΗ ΛΑΤΡΕΙΑ. Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of the Society of Oriental Liturgy, Thessaloniki, 13–18 June 2022, Studies in Eastern Christian Liturgies.
- Atanassova, Diliana / Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). The Anaphora of Saint James in a Sahidic Euchologion of the late 10th century. In: Proceedings of The Liturgy of St James Conference, Regensburg, 6–10 June 2022.
- Atanassova, Diliana (forthcoming). New Research on Coptic Liturgy 2012–2022. In: Proceedings of the 12th International Congress for Coptic Studies, Brussels, 11–16 July 2022.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). The Owner Family of a Sahidic–Arabic Holy Week lectionary: Arabic and Bohairic marginalia in the 14th century codex sa 16L. Ιn: Proceedings of the 12th International Congress for Coptic Studies, Brussels, 11–16 July 2022.
- Elhage-Mensching, Lina (forthcoming). Eusebian Tituli Psalmorum in the Coptic Psalter Codex sa 2033. In: Felix Albrecht, Reinhard Kratz (eds), Editing the Greek Psalter, De Septuaginta Investigationes, 511–521.

 

It is with pleasure that I have joined Diliana Atanassova and Lina Elhage-Mensching in the Sahidic Euchologia project in the Göttingen VMR. Looking through the transcriptions on MONB.VE, on one of the newly assigned leaves of the codex, Paris, BnF, Copte 132.3 fol. 221 recto, I have been able to identify six fragmentary lines from the prooimion of the fraction of the liturgy of St Gregory. Here is the transcribed page. The text was known so far in a Greek[1] and in a Bohairic[2] recension, which differ from each other in the address of Christ. It cannot be known which recension (if any) the Sahidic text agreed with, as the legible text only begins with the clauses that describe Jesus’ action at the Lord’s Supper and ask for their actualization in the present rite. These clauses probably go back to very ancient formulas accompanying fraction, as they are already attested in a fourth-century papyrus (the ‘Milan euchologion’, see the Trismegistos Database TM 64589). The Sahidic recension of the prooimion contains one additional clause compared to the Greek and the Bohairic, “who once signed (ⲥⲫⲣⲁⲅⲓⲍⲉ), sign also now,” see lines 29-30 of the recto.
Since the other side of the fragment cannot contain the end of the anaphora of St Gregory, it has to follow the prooimion and is thus the verso. The preserved words indeed agree with a fraction prayer or an inclination before communion prayer, though it cannot be identified yet. As my colleagues Lina Elhage-Mensching and Diliana Atanassova pointed out, the recto proves to be the flesh side, and the content positions the fragment after page 30 of the euchologion, which preserves the institution narrative of the anaphora of St Gregory, and before page 39, which preserves the anaphora of St Cyril. Between page 30 (last leaf of the second quire) and page 39 (the fifth leaf of the third quire) only two leaves can have the order hair/flesh, i.e. the second and the forth leaves in the third quire). As we know[3], codex MONB.VE began with a flyleaf, so the second leaf of the third quire corresponds to the pages 33/34 and the fourth leaf to the pages 37/38. However, since page 39 contains a continuation of the anaphora of St Cyril from page 38, this allowed Atanassova and Elhage-Mensching to position the Paris fragment as the second leaf of the third quire.
Thus, our combined efforts have made it possible to reconstruct the page numbers of the Paris fragment as [33]/[34]. The new placement of the Paris fragment in the codex structure of MONB.VE can be seen here.

 

[1] E. Renaudot, Liturgiarum orientalium collectio, Frankfurt, 1847 vol. 1:114.

[2] E. Hammerschmidt, Die koptische Gregoriosanaphora, Berlin, 1957, 64.

[3] D. Atanassova and L. Elhage-Mensching, “Die sahidischen Euchologia des Weißen Klosters – eine kodikologische Bilanz”, in: D. Atanassova, F. Feder, H. Sternberg-el Hotabi (eds.), Pharaonen, Mönche und Gelehrte. Auf dem Pilgerweg durch 5000 Jahre ägyptische Geschichte über drei Kontinente. Heike Behlmer zum 65. Geburtstag, unter Mitarbeit von Theresa Kohl (Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel 4), Wiesbaden 2023, 61–78.

 

In 2013 Hans-Gebhard Bethge published an article in Early Christianity entitled "Ein neu bekannt gewordener Papyrus-Codex mit Texten aus Paulus-Briefen. Ein Werkstattbericht." An English version of this article is also available. Brent Nongbri blogged about this manuscript in 2019. In the SMR database in Münster, the manuscript has received the number sa 491.

Along with other information, Bethge mentions the dimensions of the pages (24.5x15.5 cm), the average amount of lines (30-35) to a page, and the average number of letters per line (25). In addition, the page numbers for the final two pages of Hebrews can be read as 139 (ⲣⲗⲑ) and 140 (ⲣⲙ), following which, the numbers 141 (ⲣⲙⲁ), 142 (ⲣⲙⲃ), and 144 (ⲣⲙⲇ) are visible on the first pages of Galatians. Hence, Gal must have followed Heb, and Heb 13 was preceded by text on about 138 pages!  Bethge is worth quoting in full (p. 6):  

"If Heb is somewhere around page 130 and – as one may assume – 1 and 2 Cor as well as Rom, or at least Rom, had preceded them, then space would remain for something additional. It is unclear, though, what texts or writings these could have been, and it can therefore only be speculated upon. Surprisingly enough, one page in this codex, at a rough estimate, is nearly equivalent to one page in Nestle-Aland’s Novum Testamentum Graece. Taking into account the aforementioned long epistles, the pages occurring at the beginning may therefore have been preceded by approximately 100 pages of Pauline texts. It still remains a mystery as to what else could have been there. Earlier on, Gregor Wurst and I had considered a theory that had supposed the Acts to be the codex’s opening script. However, this can hardly be the case as it is far too long. Careful thought could now be given to an idea that the so called Catholic epistles may have been positioned right at the beginning. The space available would probably have been sufficient. Given the state of current knowledge, however, this exciting question still awaits an answer."

This is a perfect challenge for our Manuscript Speculation Tool. This tool allows us to enter manuscript parameters into an input form for the computer to create a manuscript based on these parameters and the text that we think it must have contained. I have started with Bethge's suggestion that 1 and 2 Cor and Rom could have preceded Heb in a manuscript that has 25 letters per line and 32.5 lines to the page. (It is a nice thing that we can enter decimals; in this case, 32.5 is the midpoint between 30 and 35). In addition, I have added three extra lines for a header (superscription) above Rom and two lines in front of every new writing to allow for subscription and/or superscriptions. The string of books and "headers" that will do all that is LB1;Rom;LB2;1Cor;LB2;2Cor;LB2;Heb;LB2;Gal. Finally, I told the computer to start with page 1 (α) and create 140 pages. This is the result: Heb ends on page 137!

Allowing for the possibility that the first leaf (pages 1-2*) could have been part of the manuscript cover and was thus not numbered, this is a perfect match! In fact, the match is so good that I have not even looked for an alternative scenario. As a result, we can safely put aside any speculation as to what other books let alone from outside of the Corpus Paulinum might have been included before Heb. Instead, this very old papyrus codex (4th c.?) seems to have followed the "normal" arrangement of the Pauline Epistles in the Coptic (Sahidic) tradition: Rom 1-2 Cor Heb Gal sq. 

When I was transcribing the bilingual version of John 2:15, which is read during the sixth Hour of the Day on Holy Monday,[2] I came upon the Arabic word فرقله (frqlh), which I was not familiar with, and which seemed to me as an imperfect transliteration of the word ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ used in the Bohairic text. The word in Greek means ‘whip’ or ‘scourge’[3]  and refers to a kind of whip made of ropes that Jesus used to drive away cattle dealers, money changers, and animals from the temple, a description that is unique to the Johannine account.[4] A quick look at John 2:15 in the Nestle-Aland 28th edition shows that by using ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ, the Coptic translator literally follows the Greek version. Also note that the Latin translation uses the similarly sounding word flagellum:

καὶ ποιήσας φραγέλλιον ἐκ σχοινίων πάντας ἐξέβαλεν ἐκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ, τά τε πρόβατα καὶ τοὺς βόας, καὶ τῶν κολλυβιστῶν ἐξέχεεν τὸ κέρμα καὶ τὰς τραπέζας ἀνέτρεψεν.

et cum fecisset quasi flagellum de funiculis, omnes eiecit de templo, oves quoque, et boves, et nummulariorum effudit aes, et mensas subvertit.

Next, I went through other Arabic, Bohairic, and Sahidic versions of John 2:15 and here is a summary of what I found:

Table 1[5] Table of languages and witnesses

As one can see, while Bohairic always uses the word ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ in two orthographic variants, Sahidic translates the Greek word φραγέλλιον by ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ, as already briefly discussed by Christian Askeland,[6] and, in Arabic, the manuscripts I have considered feature four different translations.[7] In fact, only one of those manuscripts has the Greek word rendered as فرقله, and that is the specific bilingual Bohairic-Arabic HWL bo 3000L described above. As we will see later, the Arabic word, which appears without vowel signs in the manuscript, is read فَرْقِلَّه farqillah. 

But how are the similar Latin flagellum, Greek φραγέλλιον, Bohairic ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ, and Arabic فَرْقِلَّه farqillah connected? And who borrowed from whom?[8]

The Latin word flagellum is the diminutive of the word flagrum. Although φραγέλλον is usually considered to be a Greek adaptation of Latin flagellum via the dissimilation of the l…l into r…l, I actually think that it can have been borrowed directly from the Vulgar Latin variant fragellum that was already dissimilated.[9] According to all consulted dictionaries, the Greek word φραγέλλον or φραγέλλιον is the source of both the Arabic فَرْقِلَّه  farqillah[10] and the word appearing in the Bohairic translations, as you can see in this tentative sketch:

Figure 1 Sketch of loanwords originating from Latin flagellum

We have already seen that all Bohairic text witnesses consistently use the Greek word as is, and what is more, we encounter ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ already in an early Bohairic manuscript, namely in papyrus Bodmer III dated to the 4th c. AD.[11]

Let us now look in more detail at each of the words in Table 1, beginning with the words related to Greek φραγέλλιον.

Bohairic ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ/ ⲫⲣⲁⲕⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ

The word is missing from the traditional Coptic dictionaries[12] even as a loanword. It is however mentioned in Cherix’s Lexique grec-copte,[13] and in his Lexique copte (dialecte sahidique!) as a Greek loanword with the French meaning ‘fouet’, which is ‘whip’. The original Greek word is documented, e.g. in Trapp’s Lexikon[14] and in LSJ online,[15] where it is interpreted as a loanword from Latin. In the whole Bible, the Greek word only appears in John 2:15, and hence this is also the only occurrence of the loanword in the Bohairic Bible. The variant with ⲕ might be an adaptation of the Greek loanword to the early Late Bohairic pronunciation in which ⲕ could also stand for /g/.[16] I will return to some more details of ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ in the section on ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ below.

Arabic فَرْقِلَّه  farqillah

Documented in several dictionaries, the word is always classified as an Arabic word used in Egypt, from Greek φραγέλλιον according to Dozy.[17] Another non-liturgical textual witness is no less than an Arabic manuscript of the “Thousand and One Nights” of the 14th c. preserved in Paris at the BnF under shelf mark Arabe 3609 and commented upon by the orientalist Fleischer,[18] who refers to the occurrence of farqillah, on f. 7r. This would be the second textual witness in Arabic of a word that seems to have been fairly common in Egypt at the time. It is therefore not surprising that the translator or scribe of our Bohairic–Arabic HWL chose a word he was familiar with.

But how do we reach farqillah from φραγέλλιον? In Arabic, consonant clusters never occur syllable initially. Therefore, in loanwords beginning with such clusters, a vowel is inserted in between the consonants. Also, words that contain inflectional markings that are foreign to Arabic show greater adaptation. This means that in most words of Greek origin, the endings -is, -os, -on, and -ion, are dropped in order to integrate them into the Arabic morphology. The word was furthermore partially adapted to the Arabic feminine pattern for tools or instruments by adding the feminine ending -ah.[19] Examples for this pattern are مطرقه miṭraqah ‘hammer’, مكنسه miknasah ‘broom’, and more interestingly, the two Arabic synonyms مخصره miḫṣarah and مقرعه miqraʿah, used to translate φραγέλλιον in the other Bohairic-Arabic HWL manuscripts (see Table 1). Finally, loanwords undergo different alterations from one Arabic dialect to another. Some varieties alter the /g/ into an Arabic /q/ such as in our example.

Figure 2 Adaptation of Greek φραγέλλ(ι)ον to Arabic

Let us now discuss the remaining translation solutions from Table 1, which use words that are not related to Greek φραγέλλιον.

Sahidic ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ

As can be seen in Table 1, all considered Sahidic textual witnesses use ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ[20] to translate φραγέλλιον in John 2:15. When we look at the entries of μάστιξ in the dictionaries of Greek,[21] we encounter ‘whip’ or ‘scourge’ as the first meaning. In the entry of Latin Flagrum/Flagellum in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities,[22] one can see μάστιξ in brackets (and not φραγέλλιον!), as well as a reference to John 2:15. The translators or scribes of the Sahidic version of the Bible were well acquainted with the word μάστιξ and its derivatives and usually used it to render in Sahidic the corresponding occurrences in the Septuagint (such as Job 21:9) or in the Greek New Testament (such as Acts 22:24). By contrast, the noun φραγέλλιον appears nowhere in the Sahidic Bible. However, even if they used ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ to translate φραγέλλιον in John 2:15, the verb derived from φραγέλλιον was known to the Sahidic translators or scribes (Cf. Sahidic version of Matthew 27:26 and Mark 15:15). These are however the only occurrences of this word family in the Sahidic Bible.

To comfort the above observations and introduce the next Arabic word used to render φραγέλλιον, let us look at another textual witness, i.e. the Coptic–Arabic manuscript Copte 44, preserved in Paris and known as Scala 44.[23] The word scala is Latin for sullām ‘ladder’, which is the Arabic term for a Coptic–Arabic glossary[24] because the words are arranged to the left (Coptic) and right (Arabic) in a way that resembles a ladder.[25] Among the various Coptic scalae, this is the most complete and best preserved. The 190 folios of the codex are divided into seven parts. Two parts that are relevant here are a Sahidic–Arabic “ecclesiastical vocabulary”, and a Bohairic-Arabic “ecclesiastical vocabulary”. They follow the order of the biblical and liturgical books and use the terms in the order in which they appear in the texts.[26] In the Sahidic–Arabic part of the vocabularies based on John, we see the loanword ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ translated in Arabic as farqillah and miqra3a. In contrast, in the Bohairic–Arabic part, ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ is also translated as miqra3a and farqillah, confirming what I found in our bilingual HWL bo 3000L.

Arabic مقرعه miqraʿah and مخصره miḫṣarah

The first of these two words, miqraʿah, another Arabic word for ‘whip’[27] is mentioned in the Scala 44 beside farqillah, as we have just seen, and used in two of our bilingual Bohairic-Arabic HWL. The second Arabic rendering of ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ is miḫṣarah. The entry in Lane’s Lexicon includes ‘whip’ but also anything one can hold in their hands to beat somebody.[28] This word does not appear in the Scala and is used in another two bilingual Bohairic–Arabic HWL as well as in our main monolingual Arabic HWL.

Both words are instrument nouns that follow the Arabic tools and instruments pattern mifʿalah[29] from the root qrʿ, which means to strike, and ḫṣr which has several meanings including waist and a verb meaning to hit on the waist.

Conclusions

After the scrutiny of the material that I have presented above, I will now try to answer some questions that are important for the research in the framework of our project:

1. Is the Coptic word ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ in John 2:15 a transcription of the Greek word φραγέλλιον? It seems so. In any case, it is scarcely documented elsewhere so the early Bohairic text in the 4th century Bodmer papyrus is possibly the origin of the use of this loanword in John 2:15 in the Bohairic linguistic space without becoming a well-established Coptic word.
2. Is the Arabic word farqillah an adaptation of the Coptic word made by the Arabic translator of our HWL? Certainly not, for several reasons: a.- a transcription would have given the word as is with its ending, b.- the shape of the Arabic word indicates that it was already integrated in Egyptian Arabic before the 13th century and appears in non-biblical manuscripts, such as in the “Thousand and One Nights” and is well-known as an Egyptian Arabic word in the dictionaries.
3. Can there be an explanation of the fact that the Sahidic text translates this word as ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ? ⲙⲁⲥⲧⲓⲅⲝ was an established loanword in Sahidic and appears across the Old Testament. The Sahidic translator, who, unlike the Bohairic translator, wrote for a readership with lesser knowledge of Greek,[30] may have preferred to use a well-known word with a well-known meaning. The Bohairic translator seems to have “possessed a thorough knowledge of the Greek language”,[31] and translated the Greek word literally.
4. Why do all other bilingual or Arabic manuscripts use other words to render ⲫⲣⲁⲅⲉⲗⲗⲓⲟⲛ in Arabic? This question is difficult to answer and would need more research. What we can say for now is that the three translation solutions present three degrees of literality. The word farqillah may be considered the most literal translation as the word is derived from the Greek word in the source text, although one might object that its semantics has changed: most dictionaries state that it is a whip used only for animals. The word miqraʿah is a quite literal translation using a genuinely Arabic word whereas miḫṣarah is also a genuinely Arabic word but with a broad sense, which includes whips but also anything one can hold in their hands to beat somebody and hence also the instrument that Jesus made from ropes and used. What is most interesting is the fact that only the first, literal translation uses a word that is specifically Egyptian Arabic!

We're happy to announce the fourth issue of our project's official newsletter.

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It is with special joy and affection that we announce the publication of a new volume in our project's book series Texte und Studien zur Koptischen Bibel (TSKB). TSKB 4 is a Festschrift dedicated to Heike Behlmer's 65th birthday. 57 authors from all over the world contributed 52 articles to an outstanding volume of 1076 pages. The topics of the volume cover – in an anthological variety – Egyptology, Coptic Studies, History of Scholarship, Gender Studies, and much more.

Heike Behlmer, Professor of Egyptology and Coptic Studies at the University of Göttingen, was responsible for the successful inauguration and installation of the Coptic Old Testament project at the Göttingen Academy and she supervises the project work as chair of the steering board for the project. The CoptOT team members are especially grateful to Heike for her commitment and devotion to the project.

May this book find many readers and enlighten them. The book (or e-book), or any other book of the series can be ordered with the publisher Harrassowitz. Here you can see an overview of the content of Festschrift Behlmer.