A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament, Vol. II.

by Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener

The first fragment, 1 Cor. ix. 9-16, was published at Rome in 1789 by Giorgi, from a MS. in the Borgian Museum, in the work which has been already mentioned. He designated it Bashmuric, and, as the dialect presents affinities to both the Bohairic and Sahidic, he assigned to it a corresponding locality. Herodotus (ii. 42) mentions the inhabitants of the Ammonian Oasis as speaking a language intermediate between the Egyptian and Ethiopian; and on the strength of this passage, combined with the phenomena just mentioned, Giorgi placed Bashmur in this region, deriving the word from the Coptic ⲥⲡⲁⲙⲏⲣ “the region beyond,” i.e. west of the Nile, and gave the dialect a second name Ammonian (p. lxviii sq.). In the same year Münter in his work on the Sahidic dialect (see above, p. 393), published this same fragment independently at Copenhagen. He had not seen Giorgi's work, but adopted provisionally his name Ammonian, of which he had heard, while at the same time he stated his own opinion that the variations of form are too slight to constitute a separate dialect (p. 76). In 1808 appeared Quatremère's work, to which I have more than once alluded. In it he included another fragment of this dialect (Baruch iv. 22-v. 22, and Epist. Jerem.), from a MS. in the Imperial Library of Paris. At the same time he pointed out that the passage in Herodotus will not bear the interpretation put upon it by Giorgi, and that, as a matter of fact, the Ammonians speak not a Coptic, but a Berber dialect. He also refuted Giorgi's opinion about the position of Bashmur, and showed conclusively (p. 147 sq.) from several notices in Arabic writers that this region must be placed in the Delta. In a later work (Mémoires Géographiques et Historiques sur l'Égypte, i. p. 233, 1811) he identified it more definitely with Elearchia, the country of the Bucoli, that fierce and turbulent race of herdsmen, who, living in the marshy pasture land and protected by the branches of the Nile, gave so much trouble to their Persian, Greek, and Roman rulers successively (see Engelbreth, p. x). The defiant attitude, which in earlier times these Bucoli assumed towards their successive masters, was maintained to the end by the Bashmurites towards their Arab conquerors. While the other Copts succumbed and made terms, they alone stubbornly resisted. At length the Arab invaders were victorious, and the Bashmuric race was extirpated. It would seem, [pg 102] therefore, that Bashmur is the Arabic modification of the Coptic ⲡⲥⲁⲙⲟⲩⲣ, “regio cincta,” the country girdled by the Nile.

But this being so, Quatremère, looking at the linguistic character of these fragments, denies that they belong to the Bashmuric dialect at all; and suggests for them a locality which will explain their affinities to both the Bohairic and Sahidic, assigning them to the Great and Little Oasis, and accordingly designating them Oasitic. In 1810 Zoega's “Catalogus,” a posthumous work, appeared, in which he published all the fragments of this third Egyptian dialect found in the Borgian collection, comprising (besides a portion of Isaiah) John iv. 28-53; 1 Cor. vi. 19-ix. 16; xiv. 33-xv. 35; Eph. vi. 18-24; Phil. i. 1-ii. 2; 1 Thess. i. 1-iii. 6; Heb. v. 5-9; v. 13-vi. 8-11; 15-vii. 5, 8-13; 16-x. 22, nearly all of these passages being more or less mutilated. And in the following years these same passages were edited by Engelbreth (Fragmenta Basmurico-Coptica Veteris et Novi Testamenti, Havniae, 1811), who had not seen Zoega's edition. Both Zoega and Engelbreth, though agreeing with Quatremère in the position of Bashmur (the former without having seen Quatremère's book), yet claimed these fragments as Bashmuric.

In this opinion there is good reason for acquiescing. It seems highly improbable that Athanasius of Kos, a Christian bishop, can have been ignorant of a dialect so important that the Christian Scriptures were translated into it (for the various fragments oblige us to suppose a complete version of the Old and New Testaments), a dialect moreover which, on Quatremère's hypothesis, was spoken not so very far from his own neighbourhood. And on the other hand it is not very probable that all traces of a dialect which was known to him should have perished, as would be the case if these fragments are not Bashmuric[100]. To counterbalance this twofold difficulty involved in Quatremère's hypothesis, the linguistic objections ought to be serious indeed. But until we are better acquainted with the early history of Egypt than we are ever likely to be, it will be impossible to say why the Bashmuric dialect should not be separated geographically from the Sahidic by a dialect like the Bohairic [pg 103] with which it has fewer, though still some special affinities. The interposition of an Ionic between two Dorian races in Greece will show the insecurity of this mode of argument.

[We must now continue the history. Although Bishop Lightfoot summed up in favour of the theory which would assign these fragments to the Bashmuric, his acuteness had noticed the difficulties which would be involved in the separation of that dialect from the Sahidic, with which it had close affinities by what was then called the Memphitic. The greater knowledge of Egyptian history, which he desired but did not hope for, has become possible. And the objection is supported.

In 1878 Stern examined the history and character of the third Egyptian dialect (Z. A. S. 16, 1878, p. 23), and showed that it was almost impossible on either linguistic or historical grounds to assign it to the district of Bashmur. He pointed out that all the fragments we possessed of it had come from Upper Egypt, that we had positive evidence that there was no version of the Scriptures in the Bashmuric dialect, and that in dialectic affinities it was clearly akin to Sahidic. He also found evidence in Tuki of the existence of another dialect there called Memphiticus Alter, and that this was supported by papyrus documents which came from the site of Memphis (see below), which have some, although not a complete, resemblance to the Bashmuric fragments. Hence he concluded that the third dialect was Middle Egyptian, and, guided by two or three words on a fragment of papyrus brought from the Fayoum, he decided that that district must have presented the characters of isolation and independence, which would make the development of a third dialect possible. The proof of his theory was not long to seek. Already in the year 1877 attention had been called to the fragments now known as the Fayoum papyri, and very soon they began to appear in European libraries; it was not long before Berlin and Vienna acquired very large collections. An examination of the Coptic papyri in these collections has proved conclusively the truth of Stern's conclusions. The vast majority of these present the same dialectic affinities as the third Bible translation, and show also (as these had hinted) that the orthography of the dialect was not fixed, in fact that hardly two documents present exactly the same linguistic character, although all are definitely distinguished from the other two dialects. [pg 104] It may therefore be confidently asserted that all the literature hitherto published as Bashmuric is in the dialect of the Fayoum.

But the discoveries do not stop here. As early as 1876 M. E. Revillont had published (Papyrus Coptes, 1876, p. 103) a collection of documents in the Louvre which came from the Monastery of Abba Jeremias, close to the Serapeum, near the site of the ancient Memphis. These were examined by Stern (Z. A. S. 23, 1885, p. 145 sq.), who shows that here we have again a different dialectic form. It has affinities to the Sahidic, affinities to the Bohairic, and affinities to the Fayoum dialect. It represents in fact the language of ancient Memphis, and an attempt has been made to call it Memphitic, but this would create endless confusion. Stern suggests Lower Sahidic (Unter Sahidisch), but the name Middle Egyptian is the one which has been generally adopted. It is this discovery that shows the necessity of avoiding the term Memphitic for the principal Egyptian version, and substituting the Arabic name 'Bohairic.' That was the language of the province on the sea-coast in the neighbourhood of Alexandria. And it was not until the eleventh century, and the removal of the Patriarchate to Cairo, that it became the language of the district of Memphis, that is, long after the decline of Memphis had begun.

But our knowledge of the dialects of Egypt was still further to be extended. About ten years ago excavations were undertaken by the Egyptian Department of Antiquities in the Coptic Cemetery of Akhmîm, the ancient Chemnis or Panopolis in Upper Egypt. Amongst the results of this discovery were the Apocryphal fragments, which have created a considerable sensation lately. These seem to have been considered by their discoverers to possess so little interest, that they were only accidentally given to the world seven years afterwards. The Coptic fragments were more fortunate, and in 1884 M. Bouriant, head of the French School at Cairo, published considerable fragments of the Old Testament, including a hitherto unknown Apocryphal work, the Testament of Sophonias (Zephaniah), in a fifth dialect, to which, for some reason, he at the time gave the name of Bashmuric (Mémoires, i. 1884, p. 243). This dialect was examined by Stern (Z. A. S. 24, 1886, p. 129), who showed that, while its affinities were with the Middle Egyptian or Lower Sahidic, it represented a more primitive stage in the [pg 105] language, and that these documents are our oldest literary remains of the Coptic language.

In the place then of the two or three dialects known until recent years, we have now at least five: the Bohairic, Sahidic, Fayoumic, Middle Egyptian, and Akhmimic, not to speak of the Bashmuric, in which no literary remains exist. The exact relations of these dialects to one another have not yet been satisfactorily worked out, and the problem is complicated by the fact that most of them had no fixed or standard form, and that papyri (especially those containing documents in the popular speech) vary in every locality and every age. To write the history then of these dialects and of the New Testament in them is not at present possible; but the following may suggest some more or less tentative conclusions.

In the earlier stages of the Egyptian language as we have it now in a written form, there are apparently no certain signs of dialectic variations, although there is certainly evidence that such did exist in the spoken language; and the changes introduced by Christianity are of great interest. The old language was fixed and definite in its orthography, and it represented the traditions of a caste of scribes, and not of the popular speech. Christianity on the other hand was in Egypt a great popular movement; a new and simple alphabet became necessary; the Scriptures were translated, not into the literary language, but into that of the people; and the copies of these translations in each locality reflected the local peculiarities of speech which had existed for centuries, but which up to that time had left behind no literary memorial. Gradually, however, the Christian Church created for itself literary traditions, and a tendency towards unification set in round three centres, the monasteries of the Natron Lakes, the great home of monastic life in Lower Egypt, the monasteries of the Fayoum, and the great White Monastery Deir Amba Shenoudah near Sohag in Upper Egypt. Hence came the three dialects which have a more or less literary character. Then began the decay of the Coptic language. First the dialect of the Fayoum died out, then the Sahidic, until finally Bohairic became, as it is now, the church language of the whole country.

The relation of these changes to the history of the versions has not yet been satisfactorily worked out. It has been sufficiently [pg 106] proved that translations into Coptic existed in the third century, very probably in the second; but in what dialect they were made, and what relation they bore to the existing translations, has not yet been discovered, and the problem remains unsolved.]