Volume 2 in the TSKB (Texts and Sudies on the Coptic Bible) series has just been published with Harrassowitz. Peter Nagel, a nestor in Coptic Studies and one of the best specialists in the research on the Coptic Bible, presents a new edition of the text of Deuteronomy in the early papyrus (4th century) British Library Or. 7594 (sa 17) with a miscellany of Biblical (Deut, Jonah, Acts) and apocryphal texts (Apocalypse of Elijah). The Deuteronomy text is one of the earliest witnesses of the Sahidic Old Testament and its grammar and syntax patterns yield very important examples of an early classical Sahidic. The first edition of the Deutoronomy text in Or. 7594 by Ernest A.W. Budge in 1912 (Coptic Biblical Texts in the Dialect of Upper Egypt) rendered this important document only very inadequately. Finally, Peter Nagel offers an exemplary and reliable edition critically checked, and supplied where the text of the London papyrus is missing, with textual variants of another fourth century papyrus P. Bodmer XVIII (sa 2001) and the complete medieval (9th–10th century) parchment manuscript M 566 (sa 2006). The edition is introduced by a codicological description and a short evaluation of its text character as version of the Septuagint. The text edition is accompanied by a complete translation and explanatory notes. The comprehensive indices explore the Coptic conjugation patterns, the Coptic vocabulary, the Greek loanwords, and the proper names in the text.

While Deuteronomium sahidisch is the first reliable edition of the Deuteronomy text of the London Papyrus, and, at the same time, the first complete edtion of the Sahidic version of this book, it is neither a complete editon of Or. 7594 (sa 17) nor a critical edition of the Sahidic Deuteronomy yet. This will soon be realised by our project in a digital edition in the VMR. Nevertheless, Deuteronomium sahidisch is a very important intermediary step on the way there. 

Since the publication of my last post, I have gained some new insight into the Coptic Psalter Codex sa 2033, which I am sharing below. 

1. Following a valuable hint given to me by Professor Rainer Stichel,[1] I consulted the series of Psalm titles written by Eusebius of Caesarea around 330 AD [2] and reproduced by Jacques-Paul Migne [3] under the heading Υποθεσεις του αυτου ευσεβιου εισ τουσ ψαλμουσ. As noted by Martin Wallraff, it is “a shortlist by Eusebius of the subject matter of each of the 150 Psalms”.[4] This shortlist precedes the Psalms in the famous fifth century manuscript Royal MS 1 D VII known as Codex Alexandrinus preserved in the British Library in London.[5] 
It turns out that the headings appearing in the Coptic Psalter sa 2033 are a quite literal translation of the Eusebian Psalm titles. Let me illustrate this with the titles preceding Psalms 64 and 65; the table below is followed by a detail of the manuscript showing the beginning of Psalm 64. 

Detail of Berlin, SBB, Ms. or. Fol. 1605, f. 3r. http://resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0001C5A400000017 (Licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 DE)

I checked each of the Psalm titles extant in sa 2033 and was able to ascertain that the Sahidic titles correspond to the Eusebian ones except for the titles of Psalms 146 and 148 (coincidentally being those reproduced in my previous post). I have now found out that these two titles appear in Latin in several manuscripts and belong to what Pierre Salmon calls the first series or “Série de Saint Colomba”. The Christian titles of this series are widely attested in Europe as early as the sixth century “quelles que soient ses origines plus lointaines”.[6] The fact that they appear in our Sahidic manuscript suggests that their origin must certainly be Greek. In a longer article I am currently working on I will give the complete comparison between the Eusebian tituli Psalmorum and those appearing in sa 2033.

2. Searching through the Göttingen VMR for other Coptic witnesses of the Eusebian tituli Psalmorum, I discovered that two London fragments classified by Karlheinz Schüssler as a codex of their own with the siglum sa 185 [7] actually belong to sa 2033 (BC sa 101). The London fragments in question are 

• London, BL, Or. 6954 (96), a fragment complementing Cairo, CM, Inv. no. 3854 bearing Ps 24:7–15; 25:1–9, and
• London, BL, Or. 6954 (98), a fragment bearing Ps 67: 21–26; 68: 1–5 to be placed between Berlin, SBB, Ms. or. fol. 1605, f. 3 and Paris, BnF, Copte 133(2), f. 26b. 

The new fragments also contain the Eusebian tituli Psalmorum, and this brings the identified parts of sa 2033 to 26 fragmentary folios dispersed among 7 libraries. All 26 leaves are now freely available in the Göttingen VMR in the correct order with the indication of their content.

[1] Rainer Stichel is the author of the book Beiträge zur frühen Geschichte des Psalters und zur Wirkungsgeschichte der Psalmen. Paderborn et al.: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 2007. Also see his article Zur Herkunft der Psalmenüberschriften in der Septuaginta, in: Erich Zenger (ed.), Der Septuaginta Psalter. Sprachliche und theologische Aspekte. Freiburg et al.: Herder, 2001, 149–161.
[2] On the possible date Eusebius of Caesarea (also called Eusebius Pamphili) wrote his hypotheseis, cf. William Smith and Henry Wace, A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Literature, Sects and Doctrines. London: Little, Brown and Company, 1880, 308–355 at p. 336–337.
[3] Migne, PG 23: 68–72.
[4] Martin Wallraff, The Canon Tables of the Psalms, An Unknown Work of Eusebius of Caesarea, in: Dumbarton Oaks Papers 67 (2013), 1–14, 9. As for the number of 150, note that all witnesses of Eusebian Psalm titles refer to 150 Psalms following the Masoretic tradition (unlike the LXX, which has 151 Psalms). The Latin translation of the Eusebian Psalm titles constitutes the Série IV in Pierre Salmon, Les “Tituli Psalmorum” des manuscrits latins, Collectanea Biblica Latina XII. Rome: Abbaye Saint-Jérôme and Libreria Vaticana, 1959, 117–131.
[5] See fols. 531v–532v in The Codex Alexandrinus in reduced photographic facsimile, The Old Testament, part IV, published by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1957. It also features in other Greek Psalm manuscripts and Catenae. Some examples are Oxford, BL, MS. Auct. D. 4.1, f. 26r–28v (10th century), and Rome, BAV, Reg. Gr. 1, f. 488v–490r (10th century). More examples and a discussion can be found in Cordula Bandt, Eusebius Periochae, in: Cordula Bandt, Franz Xaver Risch and Barbara Villani (eds), Die Prologtexte zu den Psalmen von Origenes und Eusebius, Texte und Untersuchungen zur altchristlichen Literatur 183. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2019, 122–141.
[6] Salmon, Tituli, 47.
[7] Karlheinz Schüssler, Das sahidische Alte und Neue Testament, Biblia Coptica 2.2. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2015, 17–18, sa 185.

The most actual volume of Brill's Handbook series Textual History of the Bible just appeared as book and online version. Vol. 2, edited by Matthias Henze and Frank Feder is dedicated to the Deuterocanonical Scriptures, and consists of three volumes. Vol. 2B and 2C already appeared in 2019. They contain articles on the manuscript transmission, the textual history, and the texcritical value of the individual books which are not included in the Hebrew Bible but in the Septuagint. For the Coptic transmission of these books the contributions offer the most up to date state of research.

Vol. 2A presents overview articles on the canonical and textual history of the different versions. The essays on the Coptic Canon and the Textual History of the Coptic Texts give, for the first time, a consistent and comprehensive overview over these histories for the Coptic version of the Old Testament.

Fore information see Brill's website. 

Manuscript sa 299L, a fragmentary Holy Week lectionary, is one of the primary sources of my ongoing PhD project on the Sahidic Holy Week lectionaries. Its fragments were first put together and described by Franz-Jürgen Schmitz and Gerd Mink in their catalog in 1991.[1] In their suggested reconstitution, the scholars included one mutilated leaf preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (BnF) under call number Copte 129.19, f. 85. Although that leaf contained only Psalm chapters, and, what is more, Psalm chapters never resorted to in Holy Week lectionaries, it seems that the two scholars were misled in two respects. Firstly, they mistook the several framed headings for headings of liturgical rubrics (‘Lesungseinleitungen’, I, 2.2, p. 852) whereas they are short titles summarizing the content of the chapters at issue. This mistake can be explained by the fact that such headings do not correspond to the traditional superscriptions in the psalter (see below). Secondly, they were misled by the similarity of this folio with sa 299L in terms of number of lines per page (around 36) and paleography. In 2004, in her article on the Sahidic Holy Week lectionaries, Diliana Atanassova already expressed her doubts as to the belonging of folio 85 to the Holy Week lectionary sa 299L.[2] In her comprehensive overview of the new findings related to the Sahidic Holy Week lectionaries in 2018, on pages 26-27, Atanassova published a new reconstitution of the extant folios belonging to sa 299L, definitely discarding folio 85.[3] However, she did not suggest a new codex to which the folio could belong.

Building on the characteristics of the leaf at issue and on the concluding words by Atanassova in her blog article on Codex sa 2033 (BC sa 101) dated August 22, 2019,[4] I consulted the photo archive of the Göttingen Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament project. Together with a project internal database developed by Malte Rosenau, it helped me find out to which codex this leaf could belong.

Some relevant properties of folio 85 can be summarized as follows:  it contains Sahidic versions of Ps 145, 8-10 and Ps 146, 1-11 on its recto, and of Ps 147, 1-9 and Ps 148, 1-6 on its verso. The heading and the beginning of the first verse of Ps 146 and Ps 148 are in italics and framed by horizontal strokes and dots retraced in red. The end of each verse is marked by a black dot over a bigger red one. There is one colored animal drawing on the bottom margin of each side of the leaf. Interestingly, all these features are characteristic of sa 2033.[5]

This allows us to assume that folio 85 actually belongs to sa 2033, the extant constituents of which present the same paleography, the same decoration of chapter headings, the same type of miniatures in the margins. Going through all the pages that can be seen on the Virtual Manuscript Room (VMR) (sa 2033) of the Göttingen project, another surprise comes up: this newly discovered addition finds its exact position immediately after the Vienna fragmentary folio K 9857, pp. ⲣ︦ⲝ︦ⲍ︦/ⲣ︦ⲝ︦ⲏ︦ (167/168), F/H of codex sa 2033, which contains parts of Ps 143 and 144. This enables us to reconstruct the pagination of folio 85 as [ⲣ︦ⲝ︦ⲑ︦]/[ⲣ︦ⲟ︦] (= [169]/[170]). Moreover, the recto of the Paris folio is the hair side and the verso is the flesh side of the parchment. Thus, Gregory’s rule[6] confirms once more the correct position of the new folio within the structure of sa 2033.

We can therefore conclude by saying that — including the folio discovered by Atanassova in 2019 and the folio discussed here — the identified parts of sa 2033 now sum up to 25 (fragmentary) folios, dispersed among 6 libraries.

My work on this folio also uncovered an important feature of sa 2033 not registered until now in the descriptions of this codex. In fact, headings such as those mentioned in the beginning of this blog article, which were mistaken for liturgical rubrics by Schmitz and Mink, can be found at the beginning of each Psalm in codex sa 2033.

As is well known, some of the Psalms of the Hebrew Bible contain superscriptions (titles or instructions). In the Septuagint these superscriptions were partially altered and increased in number.[7] However, the headings found in sa 2033 are of another nature which rather reminds us of the Psalm titles which have been added by some Bible translators and editors in modern times.  E.g. the beginnings of Ps 146 and 148 found on folio 85 are:

Ps 146:        [ⲉⲧⲉⲥ]ⲙⲏ ⲙ̄ⲡⲉⲭ︦ⲥ︦ ⲛⲁϩⲣⲙ̄ ⲡⲗⲁⲟⲥ                     ‘On the voice of Christ before the people’

                1  [ⲁⲗ]ⲗⲏⲗⲟⲩⲓⲁ [ⲥⲙⲟⲩ ⲉⲡ]ϫⲟⲉⲓⲥ …                      Hallelujah. Praise the Lord…                      

Ps 148:        ⲉⲧⲉⲥⲙⲏ ⲛⲧⲉⲕⲕⲗⲏⲥⲓⲁ ⲛⲁϩⲣⲙ̄ ⲡⲗⲁⲟⲥ               ‘On the voice of the Church before the people’

                1  [ⲁ]ⲗⲗⲏⲗⲟⲩ[ⲓⲁ] ⲡⲁ[ⲅⲅⲁⲓⲟⲥ ⲙⲛ ⲍⲁⲭⲁ]ⲣⲓⲁⲥ            Hallelujah, of Haggai and Zechariah…

While the underlined part of Ps 148,1 clearly belongs to the Septuagint tradition, the titles in bold are specific to this Sahidic manuscript and the wording shows that they are late interpolations, probably made by a Christian scribe to link the Old Testament to the New Testament. A similar procedure can be observed all over sa 2033. The origin of these headings is a subject for future research.[8] All that can be said for now is that, to my knowledge, no other Sahidic Psalter shows this particularity, and there seems to be no trace of it either in the Septuagint or in other ancient OT translations.

[1] Schmitz, Franz-Jürgen/Mink, Gerd (1991). Liste der Koptischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, I, Die sahidischen Handschriften der Evangelien. Teil 2,2 (Arbeiten zur neutestamentlichen Text­forschung 15). Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.

[2] Atanassova, Diliana (2004). Zu den sahidischen Pascha-Lektionaren, in: Mat Immerzeel and Jacques van der Vliet (eds), Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millenium I. Pro­ceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Coptic Studies Leiden, 27 August – 2 September 2000 (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 133). Leuven: Peeters, 607–620.

[3] Atanassova, Diliana (2018). Neue Erkenntnisse bei der Erforschung der sahidischen Quellen für die Paschawoche, in: Heike Behlmer, Ute Pietruschka and Frank Feder (eds), Ägypten und der Christliche Orient. Peter Nagel zum 80. Geburtstag (Texte und Stu­dien zur Koptischen Bibel 1). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1–37.

[4] Atanassova, Diliana (2019). Neues Blatt aus der Bodleian Library für den Psalterkodex sa 2033 (BC sa 101).

[5] For the characteristics of sa 2033, see Atanassova, Neues Blatt.

[6] I.e., a hair side is always followed by a hair side and a flesh side by a flesh side forming the quire folding pattern F/H-H/F. See C. R. Gregory, Les cahiers des manuscrits grecs, in: CRAI 13 (1886), 261–268, in particular p. 265.

[7] Stichel, Rainer (2007). Beiträge zur frühen Geschichte des Psalters und zur Wirkungsgeschichte der Psalmen. Paderborn et al.: Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh, 37–105.

[8] I would like to thank Professor Rainer Stichel for giving me some valuable hints for further investigation of this particularity.

Alberto Camplani's recent lecture The Patriarchal Institution in Egypt and its Ideology between Demetrius and Isaac: Old and New Documents is now available on our YouTube channel. We like to thank Alberto, who was the first speaker in our Online Lecture Series Material and Written Culture of Christian Egypt, for giving us permission to record his presentation.