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duced into Egypt even in Apostolic times, but it would have come in tiie first instance to tlie Jews of Alexandria and the Greek-speaking population generally. Even when it penetrated farther, and addressed the native population in its own tongue, its message would at first have been oral, and the earliest Coptic versions of the NT may well have been merely oral paraphrases, such as were the earliest Anglo-Saxon versions in our own country. The first mention of Coptic Scriptures occurs in the Life of St. Antony, who is said to have heard the Gospel read in church as a boy about a.d. 270; and since be was not acquainted with Greek, this must have been a Coptic version, whether oral or written. Early in the 4th cent, the monks of the order established by Paehomius were required by their rule to study the Scriptures; and this, at any rate, implies the existence of a written Coptic version. In the 3rd cent., therefore, at latest, and possibly by the end of the 2nd (since the Coptic versions unquestionably have some very early characteristics), a Coptic translation of the NT (except the Apocalypse) was in circulation.

26. The Egyptian language was not uniform throughout the country, but possessed various local dialects. Two of these are well marked, and possess a respectable quantity of literature, almost wholly theological. These are the Bohairic, or dialect of Lower Egypt, and the Sahidic, or dialect of Upper Egypt. The former derives its title (first conferred on it by Athanasius, bishop of Cos in Upper Egypt in the 11th cent.) from the Arabic name of a district near Alexandria, the latter from the Arabic name for Upper Egypt. Between the two lie several dialects collectively known as Middle Egyptian, with local varieties in the Fayyum, at Akhmim, and elsewhere, which certainly possessed a translation (or translations) of the Bible, but of which very little is known at present, for lack of materials.

27. The Sahidic Version (Sab., formerly Thebaic). — It was formerly held that the Bohairic version (Boh.) was the first in point of age, since it was the version of Lower Egypt, which would have been the first to receive Christianity; but Coptic scholars are now generally agreed that the order of precedence must be inverted. Lower Egypt was very largely Greek-speaking, and the language in which the Septuagint was already familiar would have been sufiicient for a considerable time. In Upper Egypt, though there were considerable Greek communities there also, and In the principal towns Greek must have been generally understood, the population as a whole must have been more Egyptian, and an Egyptian version of the NT would have been required there sooner than in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. The characteristics of the Sahidic version also suit this hypothesis of an earlier date. It is rougher and less literary in style than the Bohairic, and its text is of a very early type, akin in many details (though not as a whole) to the OL and OS; in the OT its text is in some books pre-Origenian. Unfortimately it is known to us only in fragments. It was ultimately superseded by Boh. and dropped out of use; and, with the exception of some small but complete volumes recently acquired by the British Museum, all that we now have of it are isolated leaves of vellum or papyrus which have been rescued from the buried towns and monasteries of Egypt. The Apocalypse is the only book of the NT that exists complete in a single MS, though some books approach completeness. But the number of extant fragments is large and increasing, and from these it will be possible soon to put together an almost continuous Sahidic NT. The earliest MSS appear to go back to the 5th cent., but none is of sufiicient size and import-ance to merit individual description. Some are bilingual, containing Greek and Sahidic texts in parallel columns; the most important of these has been described above (5 7) under the heading T.

28. The Bohairic Version. — This, which ultimately became the accepted Bible of the Coptic Church, is

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much better known than Sah., and Is preserved in a considerable number of MSS. The date of its origin, however, is quite uncertain. In favour of an early date is the fact that the Apocalypse was apparently not originally contained in it; this book seems to have been generally accepted after the end of the 3rd cent., but was regarded with some doubt before. In the OT, Boh. contains the insertions made by Origen, which implies a date not earlier than the latter part of the 3rd century. In general, the text represented by it is of the same character as that found in BJ<; and this again points to a date not substantially later than the first half of the 4th century. The cent, from A.D. 250 to 350 seems, therefore, the most probable period for its origin; though some writers (notably Guidi) think that Coptic Christianity (as distinct from Greek) did not develop in Lower Egypt until the middle of the 6th cent., and consequently that all Bohairic literature is subsequent to this date.

The Bohairic version follows the Greek very closely, being more faithful and less free than Sah.; hence it is trustworthy evidence of the readings of the Greek MSS from which it was made. These MSS, as indicated above, were of the same general character as B^, and especially B. Divergent readings of the type represented by OL and OS, which are found not infrequently in Sah.. are practically absent from Boh. The earliest Boh. MS of the Gospels is the Curzon Catena (an inter-mixture of text and commentary) in the Parham Library, which is dated a.d. 889; the oldest and best continuous MS of the Gospels is Huntington MS 17, in the Bodleian, dated 1174. Several others are of the 12th and 13th cents.; but none goes back to anything like the age of the fragments of Sah. Many of them have Arabic versions in the margins. An excellent edition of Boh. has recently been completed by the Rev. G. Horner (Oxford, 1898 and 1905), who is now engaged on Sah.

29. The Middle Egyptian Versions. — Of these very little is yet known, though 'enough to establish their existence. Our knowledge rests upon a few fragments of vellum and papyrus which have come to light of late years, notably in the Fayyum, in the neighbourhood of Akhmim, and in that of Memphis. These differ in dialect from both Boh. and Sah., and also to some extent among themselves; but they are more akin to Sah. than to Boh. Also the NT text found in them differs from both Boh. and Sah.; and evidence has been found of the existence of more than one Middle Egyptian version. The largest NT fragment as yet extant is a 6th cent, palimpsest in the British Museum (Or. MS. 5707), containing parts of Jn 3 and 4 in Greek and Middle Egyptian, with a good text.

30. Other versions exist^Georgian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Persian, Gothic; but on these it is not necessary to dwell. The first two have been too little studied to be practically available, and the others are too late in origin, and too secondary, or even tertiary, in their character, to be of much use. The versions that are of first-rate importance are those that have been de-scribed above, — the Syriac, Latin, and Coptic versions. Of these the Old Latin and Old Syriac take the first place, both on account of their age, and because they are the chief extant representatives of a very early and important type of text, as will be seen below. Next in textual importance are Sah. and Boh., which give us the evidence of Egypt, the country which has perhaps played the largest part in the history of the Greek Bible. Then follow the Latin Vulgate and the Syriac Peshitta, each just too late and too composite in character to be of first-rate importance as evidence of the primitive Greek text, but each the authorized Bible of a great Church. Finally, evidence of some value is to be obtained from the later Syriac and the Armenian versions.

See articles by Forbes Robinson in Hastings' DB, and Burkitt in Encyc. Bibl. (s.u. 'Text and Versions'); [G.

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