(CE:1836a-1840a)

OLD TESTAMENT, COPTIC TRANSLATIONS OF. The

earliest of the Coptic translations of the Old Testament, like those of
the New Testament, remain obscure. Christianity first took root in
Alexandria, a city predominantly inhabited by Greeks, who had no
need of a translation of the Greek Bible (the Old Testament in the
form of the Septuagint). It was only when the Christian mission
extended inland, and thus to the lower levels of the population,
outside the world of Greek language and education, that the need
arose for a translation of the Holy Scriptures into the native
Egyptian language. No information, and no manuscript evidence,
has survived from this period, which began at the latest at the start
of the second century. The oldest indirect witness, Athanasius' Life
of Antony, brings us to the period about 270. During the church
service, the young Antony heard readings from the Gospel of
Matthew, which caused him to give up his possessions and devote
himself to the ascetic following of Jesus. Since Antony, as the Life
frequently emphasizes, knew only Coptic and no Greek, we may
conclude that by the second half of the third century the Gospels had
been translated into Coptic. There is nothing to suggest a merely
oral translation of the passages read (after the fashion of the
Targums). It is legitimate to deduce from the Gospels the existence
of the Old Testament in Coptic or at least parts of it (the Psalter and
the Prophets), since the Coptic church from the beginning
considered both Old and New Testaments as a unity and accordingly
translated them for use in public worship. The oldest extant Coptic
Bible manuscript, from the end of the third century, is an archaic
translation of Proverbs in the dialect designated as Proto-Sahidic
(Papyrus Bodmer VI).
The fourth century saw the flowering of the Coptic Bible
translations, first in Sahidic, the classical literary language of
Coptic. The translation of the Old Testament was largely or even
entirely completed. We have to assume this process took several
decades; so enormous a task could not be accomplished at one
stroke, especially since there were no forerunners or convenient
aids. The following books of the Old Testament are attested in
fourth-century manuscripts: Genesis (fragments in the boarding of
Nag Hammadi Codex VII), Exodus (Papyrus Bodmer XVI),
Deuteronomy (Papyrus Bodmer XVIII and British Library, Or.
7594, in the last-named papyrus with Jonah and Acts), Joshua
(Papyrus Bodmer XXI), Jeremiah with Baruch (Papyrus Bodmer
XXII), Isaiah (Papyrus Bodmer XXIII). Curiously, the oldest codex
of the most-used book in the Coptic Bible, the Psalter, is no earlier
than about 400 (Berlin Psalter, ed. A. Rahlfs). The manuscript
tradition is supplemented by the Old Testament citations in the
original Coptic literature (Pachomius and his disciples), which
extend over practically the whole Old Testament.
The increase in translation activity is closely connected with the
development of the Coptic monasteries. In accordance with the rules
of Pachomius, a knowledge of reading (and presumably also of
writing) as well as the learning by heart of portions of scripture was
already obligatory for candidates and novices, and all the more for
the monks (Praecepta. 49, 130, 139, 140). Thus the monasteries
became places for the fostering of Coptic literature, including the
biblical texts, as is shown by the remains of the once extensive
monastery libraries (e.g., the White Monastery at Suhaj in Upper
Egypt, the Hamuli monastery in the Fayyum, the monastery of
Jeremias at Saqqara, and the monastery of Macarius in the Nitrian
Desert).
The Coptic translation of the Bible is no more uniform than
Coptic itself; it is characterized by a variety of dialects, the
examples of which vary in their age, and in origin in terms of both
the place and the textual basis of the translation. Among the literary
dialects of Coptic—Akhmimic, Lycopolitan (also called
Subakhmimic), Middle Egyptian, Fayyumic, Sahidic, and Bohairic
(we may here disregard the further specification that is gaining
ground in the study of the Coptic dialects)—only the Lycopolitan
dialect has (so far) yielded no Old Testament translations. Only the
Sahidic (or, simplified, the Upper Egyptian) and the Bohairic
(simplified, the Lower Egyptian) attained more than regional
diffusion. In the regional or local dialects only individual books are
attested (often only fragmentarily), but it is not known how much of
the stock that once existed has been lost. There was a complete Old
Testament translation only in Sahidic, but it has not survived in its
entirety. The tradition varies from book to book, and ranges from
multiple attestation of the same document to mere fragments. There
is no standard edition comparable with Horner's New Testament.
From the other literary dialects the following Old Testament
books have survived: Akhmimic—Genesis (frag.), Exodus (frag.),
Proverbs (complete), Minor Prophets (almost complete), Sirach
(frag.), Daniel (frag.), 2 Maccabees (frag.), Psalms (a fragment is
extant that presents problems with regard to dialectal classification,
representing perhaps a preliminary stage of Lycopolitan); Middle
Egyptian—Genesis (frag.), Psalter (unpublished manuscript in the
Coptic Museum in Old Cairo), Job (frag.), Ecclesiastes (fragmentary
codex Papyrus Michigan 3520, unpublished), indirectly Hosea and
Amos through a Greco-Coptic glossary (ed. Thompson and Bell,
Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 11 [1925]:241-46); Fayyumic—
Exodus, Numbers, Psalms, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel with Susanna
(all in fragments); Song of Solomon, Lamentations, and Ecclesiastes
in the bilingual Papyrus Hamburg I (Greek and Old Fayyumic). It
should be noted that in the older literature the designations for the
Fayyumic and Middle Egyptian dialects (and Bible translations)
were used indiscriminately; these are, however, clearly distinct
dialects.
Although from the eleventh century on, Bohairic replaced
Sahidic as the literary language and the official language of the
church throughout Egypt, the Old Testament was not completely
translated into this dialect. The following books were completely
translated into Bohairic: the Pentateuch, Psalms, Job, the Minor
Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah (including Lamentations, Baruch, and
Epistle of Jeremiah), Ezekiel, and Daniel. Proverbs was partly
translated. The following are extant only in the form of liturgical
pericopes: Joshua, Judges, 1-4 Kingdoms, 1-2 Chronicles, Wisdom
of Solomon, and Sirach. Not attested are Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah,
Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther, Judith, Tobit, and 1-2
Maccabees.
The utilization of the Coptic versions for the textual history and
textual criticism of the Old Testament presents two major problems:
(1) the relation to the Greek original; and (2) the relationships within
the Coptic. Evaluation is considerably hindered by the fact that there
is no critical edition and no concordance for any dialect.
There is agreement on three points. First, the Coptic Bible
translation is not based on the Hebrew Old Testament (like the
Peshitta or the Vulgate) but on Greek models that largely represent
the Septuagint text (though not throughout). The range of the Coptic
Old Testament follows the Alexandrian canon, not the Masoretic
Hebrew. Second, the Sahidic and Bohairic versions are separate
translations from the Greek, independent of one another. Third, the
Akhmimic translation is a daughter or interlinear version of the
Sahidic. Inasmuch as it is based on a Coptic original, it has only
indirect testimony value for the Greek text to be presupposed.
The Middle Egyptian and Fayyumic Old Testament fragments
have not yet been investigated from the standpoint of text history.
The Sahidic texts, notwithstanding all the variants, show a
remarkable stability from the fourth to the twelfth century. They
were revised over time but never achieved a normative standard
version. The two main types are represented by the texts of the
White Monastery (DAYR ANBA SHINUDAH) in Upper Egypt and
the Hamuli monastery in the Fayyum. So far as there is agreement
between these two main types, we can speak of a Sahidic consensus.
The main body of the Bohairic Old Testament manuscripts
begins in the ninth century, but there are also some earlier
fragments. The origin of the Bohairic version is closely bound up
with the dominant role of the Nitrian monasteries from the middle of
the sixth century, especially that of the monastery of Macarius as the
seat of the Coptic patriarch. Papyrus Bodmer III (fourth century),
which in addition to the Gospel of John contains the opening
chapters of Genesis (1:1-4:2), is a special case in terms both of the
history of the text and of dialectal history. At a series of places that
deviate from the Bohairic standard, this text reflects Sahidic
readings deriving from the Sahidic translation model. Papyrus
Bodmer III therefore cannot (at least for the Old Testament) be
assessed as a witness to the original Bohairic text of the Bible
(contra M. K. Peters, 1984).
The Upper Egyptian version (Sahidic and Akhmimic) of the
Minor Prophets is more closely related to the Hebrew than to the
Septuagint text. This "hebraizing" tendency is not, as earlier
assumed, to be traced back to a revision according to the Hebrew
text but goes back to a special Greek version, possibly the fifth
column (Quinta) of Origen's Hexapla; the oldest witness of this
textual tradition is the leather scroll with the Greek Minor Prophets
from the Wadi Murabba‘at (50 B.C.-A.D. 50).
The discoveries of texts in recent decades offer no support to
confirm the theory of Paul Kahle (1954, Vol. 1) that in pre-Christian
times the Sahidic dialect had already spread throughout Egypt as an
"official language," and that its point of departure was Alexandria.
In the beginning there were various dialects and a plurality of Bible
translations, which from about the seventh century were supplanted
or absorbed by the two main dialects, Sahidic and Bohairic.
The texts were transmitted in Bible manuscripts, lectionaries or
horologies, excerpts, and quotations. The Bible manuscripts contain,
according to their size, one or more books of the Old Testament,
occasionally only parts of a book (e.g., Papyrus Bodmer XVI,
XVIII), or even Old and New Testament writings in one and the
same codex (e.g., Papyrus Bodmer III; British Library, Or. 7594).
There is no evidence for the whole Old Testament in a single codex
(and likewise no "complete Bible"). Among the lectionaries, mixed
books (with pericopes from the Old Testament and the New
Testament) predominate over those with only the Old Testament.
The Coptic pericope system has not been investigated, nor has the
textual history of the lectionary pericopes. For excerpts, clay or
limestone shards were used, in addition to leaves of papyrus or
parchment (later also of paper). These served for the most varied
purposes, from writing exercises to amulets. The quotations, which
are found in all kinds of Coptic literature, form an important
supplement to the manuscript and lectionary tradition, but here
variants conditioned by the context must be carefully distinguished
from genuine textual variants. In Bible quotations in the Coptic
translation literature, we have to consider whether the form of text in
the original has influenced the citation in question or whether the
Coptic biblical text already in existence was inserted. This relates
both to translations from Greek into Coptic and to translations
within Coptic (Bohairic transpositions of Sahidic originals).
 A special form of textual tradition is represented by the
bilinguals, which appear in all forms of the transmission except for
quotations. In the first millennium this relates particularly to Greco-
Sahidic bilinguals, and after about 1000 to Bohairic-Arabic texts.
In general the editing and explication of the Coptic Old
Testament (in all the dialects) lags behind in comparison with the
New Testament. The main tasks and problems for investigation are
(1) collection, arrangement, and classification of the textual
witnesses; (2) critical editions of the texts and concordances based
upon them; (3) the relations of the Coptic versions to the Septuagint;
(4) textual relationships within Coptic; (5) collection and
examination of the citations in the Coptic original and translation
literature. Investigations into comparative philology in Greek and
Coptic, and into the objective evaluation of the textual variants, are
still in their beginnings; such questions can be brought nearer to a
solution only within the context of the Greco-Coptic translation
literature as a whole, including the New Testament.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The editions of the text are distributed over more than 100 separate
publications, many of them journals. The most complete list of these
publications is A. Vaschalde, "Ce qui a été publié des versions
coptes de la Bible," Revue biblique, new series 16, 28 (1919):220-
43, 513-31; 29 (1920):91-106, 241-58; 30 (1921):237-46; 31
(1922):81-8, 234-58 (Sahidic); Le Muséon 43 (1930):409-31
(Bohairic), 46 (1933):299-306 (Fayyumic and Middle Egyptian),
and 46 (1933):306-313 (Akhmimic/Subakhmimic). Vaschalde's list
is updated in W. C. Till, "Coptic Biblical Texts After Vaschalde's
Lists," Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 42 (1959-1960):220-40;
and in P. Nagel, "Editionen koptischer Bibeltexte seit Till 1960,"
Archiv für Papyrusforschung 35 (1990).
The Coptic Old Testament texts of the Bodmer Papyri were
published completely by R. Kasser:
Papyrus Bodmer III, évangile de Jean et Genèse I-IV,2. CSCO 177-
178. Proto-Bohairic, Dialect B4.
Papyrus Bodmer VI, livre des Proverbes. CSCO 194-195. Proto-
Sahidic, Dialect P.
Papyrus Bodmer XVI, Exode 1,1-XV,21 en sahidique. Cologne and
Geneva, 1961.
Papyrus Bodmer XVIII, Deutéronome 1,1-X,7 en sahidique. Cologne
and Geneva, 1962.
Papyrus Bodmer XXI, Josué VI,16-25, VII,6-XI,23, XII,1-2, 19,
XXIII,7.15-XXIV,23 en sahidique. Cologne and Geneva, 1963.
Also in Kasser's L'évangile selon saint Jean et les versions
coptes de la Bible, pp. 90-167 (Neuchâtel, 1966), together with
the Chester Beatty manuscript inv. no. 1389, belonging to the
same codex.
Papyrus Bodmer XXII et Mississippi Coptic Codex II, Jérémie XL,3-
LII,34, Lamentations, épître de Jérémie, Baruch I,1-V,5 en
sahidique. Cologne and Geneva, 1964.
Papyrus Bodmer XXIII, Esaie chap. 47,9-66,24 en sahidique.
Cologne and Geneva, 1965.
Editions of other Old Testament texts in Coptic include J.
Drescher's handling of Codex M567 from the Pierpont Morgan
Library in New York in The Coptic (Sahidic) Versions of Kingdoms
I, II (Samuel I, II), CSCO 313-314; P. Nagel, "Aufgaben und
Probleme einer kritischen Edition der koptisch-sahidischen Version
der Septuaginta," in Acts of the Second International Congress for
Coptic Studies, pp. 215-24 (Rome 1985); M. K. H. Peters, A Critical
Edition of the Coptic (Bohairic) Pentateuch, Vol. 5, Deuteronomy
(Chico, Calif., 1983), Vol. 1, Genesis (Atlanta, Ga., 1985), Vol. 2,
Exodus (Atlanta, Ga., 1986); Septuagint and Cognate Studies 15, 19,
and 22; and P. Nagel, "Griechisch-koptische Bilinguen des Alten
Testaments," in Graeco-Coptica, pp. 231-57 (Halle, 1984).
The following works deal with Coptic Bible versions (within the
framework of Coptic literature):
Hallock, R. N. "The Coptic Old Testament." American Journal of
Semitic Languages and Literatures 49 (1932):325-35.
Kahle, P. E. The Cairo Geniza, 2nd ed. Oxford, 1959. German ed.,
Die Kairoer Genisa. Berlin, 1962.
Kahle, P. E., Jr. Bala’izah, 2 vols., esp. Vol. 1, pp. 263ff. London,
1954.
Kasser, R. "Les dialectes coptes et les versions coptes bibliques."
Biblica 46 (1965):287-310.
______. "Petites rectifications a propos de l'histoire des versions
coptes de la Bible." Biblica 61 (1980):557-60.
Lefort, L. T. "Littérature bohairique." Le Muséon 44 (1931):115-
135.
Steindorff, G. "Bemerkungen über die Anfänge der koptischen
Sprache und Literatur." In Coptic Studies in Honor of W. E.
Crum. Boston, 1950.
For studies of the various manuscripts, see A. Hebbelynck, "Les
manuscrits coptes-sahidiques du Monastère Blanc: Recherches sur
les fragments complémentaires de la Collection Borgia," Le Muséon
n.s. 12 (1911):91-153, and n.s. 13 (1912):275-362; and P. Nagel,
"Studien zur Textüberlieferung des sahidischen Alten Testaments.
Teil 1: Der Stand der Wiederherstellung der alttestamentlichen
Kodizen der Sammlung Borgia," Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache
110 (1983):51-74, and "Teil 1B," 111 (1984):137-64.
The following works discuss the history of the text and/or
textual criticism (of individual books of the Old Testament):
Barthélemy, D. Les devanciers d'Aquila. Leiden, 1963. Important
for the preliminary stages of the Akhmimic version of the Minor
Prophets.
Böhlig, A. Untersuchungen uber die koptischen Proverbientexte.
Berlin, 1936.
Diebner, B. J. "Die biblischen Texte des Hamburger Papyrus
Bilinguis 1 (Cant., Lam., Co., Eccl. Gr. et Co.) in ihrem
Verhältnis zum Text der Septuaginta, besonders des Kodex B
(Vat. Gr. 1209)." In Acts of the Second International Congress of
Coptic Studies. Rome, 1985.
Dieu, L. "Les Mss. grecs des livres de Samuel, essai de
classification." Le Muséon 34 (1921):17-60. Discusses the
relation of MS M567 to the Greek textual tradition.
______. "Le texte copte-sahidique des livres de Samuel." Le Muséon
59 (1946):445-452.
Grossouw, W. The Coptic Versions of the Minor Prophets.
Monumenta Biblica et Ecclesiastica 3. Rome, 1938.
Nagel, P. "Payprus Bodmer XVI und die achmimische Version des
Buches Exodus." Ägypten und Altes Testament 14 (1988):94-
152.
Payne, J. B. "The Sahidic Coptic Text of I Samuel." Journal of
Biblical Literature 72 (1953):51-62.
Peters, M. K. H. An Analysis of the Textual Character of the
Bohairic of Deuteronomy. SBL Septuagint and Cognate Studies
9. Missoula, Mont., 1979.
______. "The Textual Affiliations of Genesis 1:1-4:2 According to
Papyrus Bodmer III." In De Septuaginta. Studies in Honour of J.
W. Wevers. Mississauga, Ont., 1984.
Rahlfs, A. Septuaginta-Studien Heft 2: Der Text des Septuaginta-
Psalters. Gottingen, 1907.
Seidel, B. "Textgestalt und Textüberlieferung des koptisch-
sahidischen Deuteronomiums." Dissertation, University of Halle,
1986.
Till, W. "Die koptischen Versionen der Sapientia Salomonis."
Biblica 36 (1955):51-70.
Wevers, J. W. "The Textual Affinities of the Arabic Genesis of Bib.
Nat. Arab 9." In Studies on the Ancient Palestinian World.
Toronto Semitic Texts and Studies 2. Toronto, 1971. Includes
the Bohairic version.
Ziegler, J. "Beiträge zur koptischen Dodekaprophetonübersetzung."
Biblica 25 (1944):105-142.
On comparative philology and translation equivalents, see H. J.
Polotsky, "Modes grecs en copte?" in Coptic Studies in Honor of W.
E. Crum (Boston 1950), also in his Collected Papers (Jerusalem,
1971); G. Mink, "Die koptischen Versionen des Neuen Testaments.
Die sprachlichen Probleme bei ihrer Bewertung für die griechische
Textgeschichte," in Die alten Übersetzungen des Neuen Testaments,
die Kirchenväterzitate und Lektionare, ed. K. Aland, Arbeiten zur
Neutestamentlichen Textforschung 5 (Berlin and New York, 1972);
and W.-P. Funk, "Bemerkungen zum Sprachvergleich Griechisch-
Koptisch," in Graeco-Coptic (Halle, 1984).

PETER NAGEL