On account of the small number of these manuscripts the quotations of the Latin Fathers are valuable, especially those of Cyprian of Carthage,^[99] and after them the recently discovered citations in Priscillian, who was the first to suffer death as a heretic in the year 385. In the Apocalypse we have the quotations of Primasius, Bishop of Hadrumet (ca. 550), who used in his commentary on the Apocalypse not only his own Old Latin Bible but also a revised version the same as that used by the African Donatist Tyconius. In attempting to classify these witnesses it was found that the text of certain manuscripts coincided with that of the Bible used by Cyprian—viz., in the Gospels k especially, in Acts h, and in the Apocalypse Primasius and h. This family has accordingly been designated the African.

Tertullian, a still earlier African Father, undoubtedly refers to the existence of a Latin Version in his time, but the quotations found in his Latin works cannot be taken into account, for this reason, that in citing the New Testament he seems to have made an independent translation from the Greek for his immediate purpose.^[100]

As for the quotations in Augustine, they are found to resemble the text of f and q in the Gospels, particularly the former, and that of q, r, and r₃ in the Epistles. To this group, therefore, the name Italian has been given. It has, however, been deemed necessary to regard this Italian family as being itself a revised and smoother form of a still earlier version styled the European, which is thought to be represented by g, g₂, and s in the Acts, by ff in the Epistles, and by g in the Apocalypse.

As illustrating the way in which the various forms deviate from each other, take the text of Luke xxiv., verses 4, 5, 11, and 13 as exhibited by a b c d e f and the Vulgate (vg).

v. 4.—All the seven agree in the opening words, Et factum est dum; but after that there follows:—

(1) stuperent a c, mente consternatae essent b, vg; mente consternatae sunt e, aporiarentur d, haesitarent f.

(2) de hoc a c f, de facto b, de eo d, de isto e, vg.

(3) ecce a c d f, vg; et ecce b e.

(4) viri duo a f, duo viri b c d e, vg.

(5) adstiterunt a f, astiterunt c, adsisterunt d, steterunt b e, vg.

(6) iuxta illas a f, secus illas b c e, vg; eis d.

(7) in veste fulgenti a f, vg; in veste fulgente b c e, in amictu scoruscanti d.

(8) v. 5: timore autem adprehensae inclinantes faciem ad terram a; cum timerent autem et declinarent vultum in terram b e f, vg; conterritae autem inclinaverunt faciem in terram c; in timore autem factae inclinaverunt vultus suos in terra d.

(9) v. 11: et visa sunt a b c (visae) e f, vg; et paruerunt d.

(10) illis a, ante illos b, vg; apud illos c e, in conspectu eorum d, coram illos f.

(11) tanquam a, sicut b e, vg; quasi c d f.

(12) delira a, deliramentum b e f, vg; (b spells -lirr-, and f -ler-), deliramenta c, derissus d.

(13) v. 13: municipium a, castellum b c d e f, vg.

(14) stadios habentem LX ab hierusalem a, quod aberat stadia sexaginta ab hierusalem b, quod abest ab ierosolymis stadia sexag. c, iter habentis stadios sexag. ab hierus. d, quod est ab hierosolymis stadia septem e, quod aberat spatio stadiorum LX ab hierus. f, quod erat in spatio stadiorum sexaginta ab hierusalem vg.

(15) cui nomen a, nomine b c d e f, vg.

(16) ammaus a, cleopas et ammaus b, emmaus c f, vg; alammaus d, ammaus et cleopas e.

Is not this almost exactly as Jerome said: tot exemplaria, quot codices? And when we take into account that all this variety in the Latin manuscripts is not simply due to a difference in translation, but that a similar diversity exists in the Greek,^[101] we can easily understand what a task it is to extricate the original text from out these conflicting witnesses. At the same time, we have evidence of the singular position in which D stands to all the others; while the last example also affords an illustration of the way in which mistakes might arise. The reading ᾗ ὄνομα in verse 13 would preclude any possibility of misunderstanding. But suppose the reader or the translator had before him a manuscript like D, in which the reading was ὀνόματι. What happened, we shall suppose, was this. The phrase, “Emmaus by name,” was taken as referring, not to the village, but to the subject of the sentence; the other name, Cleopas, was then inserted from verse 18, and in time placed even before Emmaus by a later copyist. And accordingly we find, even in Ambrose of Milan, that the two travellers are regularly called Ammaon et Cleopas. It was just as Jerome said: a vitiosis interpretibus male edita, a praesumptoribus imperitis emendata perversius, a librariis dormitantibus aut addita aut mutata.

(2.) The Latin Version of Jerome.

It is a comparatively easy task to restore the work of Jerome; first of all because all our present manuscripts are derived from one and only one source, secondly because the number of existing manuscripts is very great, and lastly because some of them at least go back to the sixth century. There is a Codex in Paris which formerly belonged to the Church of St. Willibrord at Echternach, written by an Irish hand of the eighth or ninth century, and containing a subscription copied from its original to the following effect: proemendavi ut potui secundum codicem in bibliotheca Eugipi praespiteri quem ferunt fuisse sci Hieronymi, indictione VI. p(ost) con(sulatum) Bassilii u. c. anno septimo decimo. That must have been in the year 558. |Codex Amiatinus.| Codex Amiatinus, now in Florence, was formerly supposed to belong to the same time, but this turns out to be a mistake, because it has been proved that it was written for Ceolfrid, Abbot of Wearmouth, who died at Langres on the 25th September 716, on his way to Rome, where he intended to present this Codex to the Pope. |Codex Fuldensis.| One of the oldest and most valuable manuscripts of the Vulgate is at Fulda, where it has been preserved, perhaps, from the time of Boniface. This Codex Fuldensis was written between 540 and 546, by order of Bishop Victor of Capua, and corrected by himself. It contains the whole of the New Testament according to Jerome’s version, only in place of the four separate Gospels it has a Harmony composed by Victor, who followed Tatian’s plan, using the Latin text of Jerome. Victor’s Harmony in turn became the basis of the so-called Old German Tatian.

The task of restoring the original text of Jerome’s version has been undertaken in England by the Bishop of Salisbury, who has been at work on all the available material for more than fifteen years. The edition bears the title, Novum Testamentum Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum editionem sancti Hieronymi ad codicum manuscriptorum fidem recensuit Johannes Wordsworth in operis societatem adsumpto Henrico Juliano White. Five parts of the first volume have already appeared, containing the four Gospels with an Epilogus ad Evangelia.^[102] In France, J. Delisle, the Director of the Paris National Library, has rendered great service by his work upon the manuscripts under his care; while Samuel Berger has constituted himself pre-eminently the historian of the Vulgate by bringing fresh testimony from the early Middle Ages and the remotest provinces of the Church to bear upon the history of the Vulgate and its text as well as on the origin and dissemination of the different forms. In his compendious Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du moyen âge (Paris, 1893), he has, e.g., indicated no fewer than 212 different ways in which the books of the Old Testament were arranged in the manuscripts that he examined, and thirty-eight varieties in the order of the New Testament books. In Germany Bengel applied himself to the reconstruction of the Latin text of the Bible in the last century, and in this he was followed by Lachmann in the present century, while Riegler, van Ess, and Kaulen have added to our knowledge of the history of the Vulgate. Dr. Peter Corssen has followed up the labours of Ziegler and Rönsch in the particular field of the pre-Jeromic Bible and its text with a methodical examination of the earlier editions, and E. v. Dobschütz has begun to publish Studies in the Textual Criticism of the Vulgate. The valuable researches of Carlo Vercellone (1860-64) were concerned almost exclusively with the Old Testament, and do not seem to have been followed up in Italy. “Utinam Papa Leo XIII.,” says Gregory, “tanta scientia tanta magnanimitate insignis curam in se suscipiat textus sacrosanctorum Bibliorum Latini edendi; cura, opus ecclesia et Papa dignum.” Meanwhile Wordsworth and White appear to have accomplished as much as is possible at present in the field of the Gospels.^[103]

The principles on which Jerome went in his revision of the text have been already referred to, but what the early Greek manuscripts were that he employed is not yet clearly made out. The relics of the material he used are as scanty as those of his own work. He must, however, have been able to make use of manuscripts that went back to Eusebius, seeing that he adopted the Eusebian Canons in his New Testament. But there are certain readings in Jerome which we have not yet been able to discover in any Greek manuscript that we know. For instance, he gives docebit vos omnem veritatem in John xvi. 13, where our present Greek editions read ὁδηγήσει ὑμᾶς ἐν τῇ ἀληθείᾳ πάσῃ, so that he would seem to have read διηγήσεται ὑμῖν τὴν ἀλήθειαν πᾶσαν. As a matter of fact, this reading does occur in two passages of Eusebius and in Cyril of Jerusalem, as well as in the Arabic version of Tatian, but it has not been discovered in any Greek manuscript.^[104] In the other parts of the New Testament, the revision of which was perhaps completed by the year 386, Jerome inserted hardly any new readings from the Greek, but contented himself with improving the grammar and diction of the Latin. His work on the Old Testament was much more comprehensive, but does not fall to be discussed here.

It was only by degrees that Jerome’s recension gained ground. In Rome, Gregory the Great (d. 604) for one preferred it to the old, though at the same time he says expressly: sedes apostolica, cui auctore Deo praesideo, utraque utitur. |Alcuin.| Owing to the use of both forms the diversity of copies grew to such an extent that in 797 Charles the Great ordered Alcuin to make a uniformly revised text from the best Latin manuscripts for use in the Churches of his Empire. For this purpose Alcuin sent to his native Northumbria for manuscripts, by which he corrected the text of the Bible, and he was able to present the first copy to the Emperor at Christmas 801. A good many of the superb Carolingian manuscripts, as they are called, which are found in our libraries, contain Alcuin’s Revision, as for instance the Bible of Grandval near Basel, which was probably written for Charles the Bald, and which is now in the British Museum (see Plate VII.); the Bible presented to the same monarch by Vivian, Abbot of St. Martin of Tours, which was sent by the Chapter of Metz from the Cathedral treasury there to Colbert in 1675, and is now in Paris (B. N., Lat. 1); another written in the same monastery of St. Martin, and now at Bamberg; and that in the Vallicellian Library of the Church of Sta. Maria in Rome, which is perhaps the best specimen of the Alcuinian Bible.

Another revision was introduced into France by Alcuin’s contemporary Theodulf, Bishop of Orleans (787-821). He was a Visigoth, born in the neighbourhood of Narbonne, and the type of text he introduced was taken essentially from Spanish manuscripts. We have his revision in the so-called Theodulfian Bible, which formerly belonged to the Cathedral Church of Orleans, and is now in Paris (Lat. 9380); in its companion volume, formerly in the Cathedral of Puy, and now in the British Museum (24142); and in the Bible of St. Hubert, which came from the monastery of that name in the Ardennes.

A further revision was made by Stephen Harding, third Abbot of Citeaux. About the year 1109 he prepared a standard Bible for his congregation, in which the Latin text of the New Testament was corrected by the Greek. At the same time the Old Testament was revised from the Hebrew with the help of some Jewish scholars. Harding’s copy of the standard Bible, in four volumes, is still preserved in the Public Library at Dijon. A similar work was done for his monastery by William, Abbot of Hirsau.

Attempts were also made to settle the text by means of the so-called Correctoria Bibliorum, in which those readings which were supposed to be correct were carefully collected and arranged. The University of Paris in particular did a great deal in this way, and such was its influence, that by the middle of the fifteenth century the Parisian text was the one most commonly followed in manuscripts, and the invention of printing gave it a complete ascendancy over the others.

The first fruits of the printing press are understood to be the undated “forty-two line Bible,” usually called the Mazarin Bible, seeing that it was the copy in the library of Cardinal Mazarin that first attracted the attention of bibliographers. The first dated Bible is of the year 1462. Copinger estimates that 124 editions were printed before the close of the fifteenth century, and over 400 during the sixteenth. The first edition in octavo, “for the poor man,” was issued at Basel in 1491 from the Press of Froben, the same printer who prompted Erasmus to prepare the first Greek New Testament. The first edition in Latin with various readings was printed in 1504. In the following year Erasmus published the Annotationes which Laurentius Valla had prepared for the Latin Bible as early as 1444. The year 1528 saw the first really critical edition. It was brought out by Stephen, who used in its preparation three good Paris manuscripts—the Bible of Charles the Bald already referred to, that of St. Denis, and another of the ninth century, the New Testament portion of which has now disappeared. He afterwards published in 1538-40 another edition, for which he employed seventeen manuscripts, and which became the foundation of the present authorised Vulgate. |Henten.| About the same time John Henten published a very valuable edition [1547] on the basis of thirty-one manuscripts, in the preparation of which he was assisted by the theologians of Louvain. This was followed in 1573 and 1580 by two further editions containing important annotations by Lucas of Brügge. |Authorised Vulgate.| In the year previous to that in which Henten’s edition appeared, the Council of Trent, in its fourth sitting of the 8th April 1546, decided “ut haec vetus et vulgata editio in publicis lectionibus, disputationibus, praedicationibus et expositionibus pro authentica habeatur,” and at the same time ordained “posthac sacra scriptura, potissimum vero haec ipsa vetus et vulgata editio quam emendatissime imprimatur.”

The latter part of this decree was carried into effect in the papacy of Sixtus V. His predecessor, Pius V., began the work of revising the text of the Bible, and a “Congregatio pro emendatione Bibliorum” gave twenty-six sittings to it in the year 1569. His successor seems to have allowed the work to lapse, but Sixtus V. appointed a new commission for the purpose under the Presidency of Cardinal Caraffa. The Pope himself revised the result of their labours, which was printed at the Vatican Press that he had founded. This edition, which takes its name from him, was issued under the Bull “Aeternus ille” of the 1st March 1589, and published in the following year. It is the first official edition of the Vulgate. Sixtus died on the 27th August 1590, and was succeeded by four Popes in the space of two years. |Clementine.| His fourth successor in the Chair of Peter, Clement VIII., issued a new edition under the name of the old Pope, accompanied by the Bull “Cum sacrorum” of the 9th November 1592. This edition, containing a preface written by Cardinal Bellarmin, was substituted for the former, and has continued from that day without any alteration as the authorised Bible of the entire Roman Church. The text of this second edition approximated more closely to that of Henten, for which the Commission of Pope Sixtus had also expressed their preference, though their printed edition went rather by that of Stephen. The number of the variations between these two editions has been estimated at 3000. For our purpose both alike are superseded by the edition of Wordsworth and White. It may be added that the first edition to contain the names of both the Popes upon the title page is that of 1604. The title runs: “Sixti V. Pont. Max. iussu recognita et Clementis VIII. auctoritate edita.” Those printed at Rome at the present day are entitled: “Sixti V. et Clementis VIII. Pontt. Maxx. iussu recognita atque edita.” See below, p. 132.

An enumeration of all the manuscripts of the Vulgate mentioned by Tischendorf in his eighth edition, or even of the earliest and most important of them, cannot be attempted. Those, however, mentioned by Gebhardt in his Adnotatio Critica are given here, with the notation adopted by Wordsworth and White.

The best manuscripts, in the judgment of the English editors, are Codex Amiatinus, Codex Fuldensis, and the one in the Ambrosian Library at Milan (C 39 inf.), written in the sixth century. (M in W.-W.; not cited by Tischendorf.)

am. Amiatinus (vide supra, p. 122), written ca. 700, is an excellent manuscript, and particularly interesting as containing in the introduction a double catalogue of the Books of the Bible resembling that of the Senator Cassiodorus. See Westcott, Bible in the Church, Appendix B; Canon, Appendix D. (A in W.-W.) (See Plate VI.)

bodl. Bodleianus, of the seventh century, formerly belonging to the Library of St. Augustine at Canterbury. (O in W.-W.)

demid. Demidovianus, belonging to the thirteenth century, but copied from an earlier exemplar; formerly at Lyons; present locality unknown; not cited in W.-W.

em. Emeram, written in the year 870, in gold uncials with splendid miniatures: at Munich, Cimelie 55: not cited in W.-W.

erl. Erlangen, of the ninth century (Irmischer’s Catalogue, 467): used only indirectly by Tischendorf, and not cited in W.-W.

for. Foroiuliensis, written in the sixth or seventh century, and now at Cividale, Friuli: fragments of it at Venice and Prague. (J in W.-W.)

fos. Of the ninth century: from St. Maur des Fossés, now in Paris. (Lat. 11959.)

fu. Fuldensis (vide supra, p. 122), written between 540 and 546: contains the Epistle to the Laodicaeans after Colossians: edited with facsimiles by E. Ranke. (F in W.-W.)

gat. Gatianus, from St. Gatien’s in Tours: written in the eighth or ninth century: stolen from Libri: purchased by Lord Ashburnham and now in Paris: not cited in W.-W.

harl. Harleianus 1775, of the sixth or seventh century: in the British Museum, formerly in Paris 4582: stolen from there by John Aymont in 1707. (Z in W.-W.)

ing. Ingolstadt, of the seventh century, now in the University Library at Munich: defective. (I in W.-W.) See von Dobschütz, Vulgatastudien (with two facsimiles).

mm. Of the tenth or eleventh century, from Marmoutiers, near Tours: in the British Museum, Egerton 609. (E in W.-W.)

mt. Of the eighth or ninth century, from St. Martin’s, and still at Tours: written in gold letters. (M̅, in W.-W.)

pe. A very old purple manuscript of the sixth century at Perugia, containing Luke i. 1-xii. 7. (P in W.-W.)

prag. The fragments cited under for. (see above).

reg. Regius, of the seventh or eighth century, a purple manuscript inscribed in gold, containing Matthew and Mark, with lacunæ: at Paris 11955: not cited in W.-W.

rus. The so-called Rushworth Gospels, written by an Irish scribe who died in the year 820: has an interlinear Anglo-Saxon version. (R in W.-W.)

san. At St. Gall, a fragment containing Matthew vi. 21-John xvii. 18, written by a scribe who says that he used two Latin and one Greek manuscripts. In the Epistles san. is a palimpsest at St. Gall containing Ephes. vi. 2 to 1 Tim. ii. 5, the Biblical text being the uppermost.

taur. Of the seventh century, at Turin, contains the Gospels beginning at Matthew xiii. 34: not cited in W.-W.

tol. Written in the eighth century: this manuscript, which was written by a Visigoth, was given by Servandus of Seville to John, Bishop of Cordova, who presented it to the See of Seville in 988: it was afterwards at Toledo, and is now at Madrid. It was collated for the Sixtine Recension by Palomares, but reached Rome too late to be of use. (T in W.-W.)

In addition to the eleven manuscripts mentioned above as cited by Wordsworth and White, twenty-one others are regularly used by them, and a great number are cited occasionally. For these reference must be made to their edition, and for further particulars to Berger’s incomparable work.

On the Latin Versions compare TiGr., 948-1108, 1313, and especially Scrivener. The chapter on The Latin Versions in the Fourth Edition of the latter work (c. iii.) was re-written by H. J. White, the collaborateur of Wordsworth. See also Urt., 85-118, which deals with the Old Testament as well, and the article on the Old Latin Versions in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible, iii. 47-62.

1. G. Riegler, Kritische Geschichte der Vulgata, Sulzbach, 1820; Lean. van Ess, Pragmatisch-kritische Geschichte der Vulgata im Allgemeinen und zunächst in Beziehung auf das Trientische Decret, Tübingen, 1824; Kaulen, Geschichte der Vulgata, Mainz, 1868; Berger, Histoire de la Vulgate pendant les premiers siècles du moyen âge, Paris, 1893 (List of the chief works dealing with the history of the Vulgate given on p. xxii. ff.).

2. On the subject of the Itala see Ziegler, Die Lateinischen Bibelübersetzungen vor Hieronymus und die Itala des Augustinus, Munich, 1879; Zycha, Bemerkungen zur Italafrage, in the Eranos Vindobonensis, 1893, 177-184; Burkitt, The Old Latin and the Itala (Texts and Studies, vol. iv., No. 3, 1896).

3. On the language see Rönsch (d. 1888), Itala und Vulgata, 2nd Edition, 1875; also Die ältesten lateinischen-Bibelübersetzungen nach ihrem Werthe für die lateinische Sprachwissenschaft, by the same writer in the Collectanea Philologa, Bremen, 1891, 1-20; Kaulen, Handbuch zur Vulgata, Eine systematische Darstellung ihres Sprachcharakters, Mainz, 1870. Saalfeld, De Bibliorum S. Vulgatæ Editionis Graecitate, Quedlinburg, 1891.

4. Editions of the Text:—Among the earlier works the most important is that of Sabatier, which is not yet superseded, in the Old Testament at least, Bibliorum sacrorum Latinæ Versiones antiquæ, seu Vetus Italica, et cæteræ quæcunque in codicibus MSS. et antiquorum libris reperiri potuerunt, etc., opera et studio D. Petri Sabatier, 3 vols. folio,^[105] Rheims, 1743. Jos. Bianchini (Blanchinus), Evangeliarium Quadruplex, 2 vols. folio, Rome, 1749 (copies now cost about £4). After a long interval work in this field has been resumed in the Old Latin Biblical Texts, published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford, of which four parts have appeared:—1. The Gospel according to St. Matthew from the St. Germain MS. (g₁), now numbered Lat. 11553 in the National Library at Paris, with Introduction and five Appendices, edited by John Wordsworth, D.D., 1883 (6/-). 2. Portions of the Gospels according to St. Mark and St. Matthew from the Bobbio MS. (k), now numbered G. VII. 15 in the National Library at Turin, together with other fragments of the Gospels from six MSS. in the Libraries of St. Gall, Coire, Milan, and Berne (usually cited as n, o, p, a₂, s, and t). Edited, with the aids of Tischendorf’s Transcripts and the printed Texts of Ranke, Ceriani, and Hagen, with two facsimiles, by J. Wordsworth, D.D., ... W. Sanday, D.D., ... and H. J. White, M.A., 1886 (21/-). 3. The Four Gospels, from the Munich MS. (q), now numbered Lat. 6224 in the Royal Library at Munich, with a Fragment from St. John in the Hof-Bibliothek at Vienna (Cod. Lat. 502). Edited, with the aid of Tischendorf’s Transcript (under the direction of the Bishop of Salisbury), by H. J. White, M.A., 1888 (12/6). 4. Portions of the Acts of the Apostles, of the Epistle of St. James, and of the First Epistle of St. Peter from the Bobbio Palimpsest (s), now numbered Cod. 16 in the Imperial Library at Vienna. Edited, with the aid of Tischendorf’s and Belsheim’s printed Texts, by H. J. White, M.A., with a Facsimile, 1897 (5/-). (See notice in the Expository Times, April 1898, p. 320 ff.)

5. Wordsworth and White’s edition of the Vulgate is noticed by Berger in the Bull. Crit., 1899, viii. 141-144. It may be added here, as that critic observes, that insufficient regard is paid to the later history of the Latin text in this edition. At least one representative of a recension so important as that of the University of Paris in the thirteenth century might have been collated, and perhaps also the first printed edition, “the forty-two line” Bible.

On the authorised edition of 1590 and 1592, see Eb. Nestle, Ein Jubiläum der lateinischen Bibel. Zum 9 November 1892, in Marginalien und Materialien, 1893; also printed separately.

An exact reprint of the Latin Vulgate has recently been published by M. Hetzenauer from his Greek-Latin New Testament (see above, p. 25), entitled Novum Testamentum Vulgatae Editionis. Ex Vaticanis Editionibus earumque Correctorio critice edidit Michael Hetzenauer. Oeniponte, 1899. As an introduction to this edition reference may be made to the same writer’s Wesen und Principien der Bibelkritik auf katholischer Grundlage. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der offziellen Vulgataausgabe dargelegt. Innsbruck, 1900.

(c.) EGYPTIAN VERSIONS.

Next in importance to the Syriac versions from the East and the Latin from the West are the Egyptian versions from the South. Here too we find not one early version but several.

What used till lately to be called Coptic^[106] is merely one of the dialects into which the language of ancient Egypt was divided. And here we must distinguish three main branches—the Bohairic, the Sahidic, and the Middle Egyptian.

(1) Bohairic^[107] is the name given to the dialect that was spoken in the Bohaira—i.e. the district by the sea and therefore Lower Egypt, the neighbourhood of Alexandria. It was the principal dialect, and being that used for ecclesiastical purposes over the whole country, and, moreover, that with which European scholars first became acquainted, the versions written in it were described as the Coptic simply. The term Memphitic, which was preferred for a time, is incorrect, because it was not till the eleventh century that the Patriarchate was transferred to Cairo—i.e. the district of Memphis, and in early times a different dialect was spoken there.

(2) Sahidic is the name used to describe the dialect of Upper Egypt. It is sometimes and not improperly spoken of as the Thebaic in distinction to the Memphitic.

(3) Under the Middle Egyptian^[108] we have to distinguish—

(a) The Fayumic, spoken in the Fayum—i.e. the district to the S.W. of the Delta, watered by the Joseph Canal, and separated from the valley of the Nile by a narrow strip of the desert. It was in this district that those recent papyrus discoveries were made which have enriched the libraries and museums of Europe.

(b) The Middle Egyptian proper, or Lower Sahidic, a dialect which has its home on the site of ancient Memphis.

(c) The dialect of Achmim, which preserves a more primitive form of early Egyptian than any of those already referred to.

In the eleventh century the Coptic Bishop Athanasius specifies three dialects of the Coptic language—the Bohairic, the Sahidic, and a third which he says was already extinct, and to which he gives the name of Bashmuric; but whether this last is to be identified with the dialects included above under the name of Middle Egyptian, is not quite certain.

(1.) The Bohairic Version.