Christianity is one of the religions in which a single holy book towers high above everything else as the supreme authority. It comes as no surprise, then, that many of the Coptic manuscripts that have survived are Biblical. In fact, of texts written in dialects other than Sahidic and Bohairic, most of what has been preserved is Biblical. One exception is the Gnostic and Manichaean texts written in Subakhmimic or Lykopolitan.
The overwhelming presence of Biblical texts among what survives is not the only way in which the Bible permeates Coptic literature. Almost all Christian literature in Coptic is steeped in Biblical lore and phraseology. Some homilies are mere patchworks of Biblical citations with minimal commentary. Clearly, the Bible sets strict parameters for (some might say dampens) literary creativity. As a vehicle for Biblical texts, Coptic literature plays a significant role in Biblical studies. The Coptic version of the Bible is ancient and early. It sheds light on how the Bible was understood in the early centuries of its existence, when there was still much variation in the wording and interpretation of the text. In terms of the importance of the translations, Coptic occupies first rank together with the Old Latin version or Vetus Latina and the Syriac version owing to its antiquity. What is more, the Coptic version is distinct from the others in surviving, at least in part, in several dialects. The many variations between the versions offer additional food for interpretation and study.
The New Testament has been analysed so tirelessly for so long that new evidence offering a completely novel angle of approach always comes as a surprise. Coptic literature has delivered such a surprise in the form of the Codex Sch0yen containing the Gospel of Matthew in a new sub-dialect of Coptic (Schenke 2001). Its main dialect is Middle Egyptian, which has omikron where all other dialects exhibit omega, as does the Sch0yen text, even if only rarely and inconsistently. The emergence of the Codex Sch0yen follows the general pattern of the emergence of the Middle Egyptian dialect as a whole. By the mid twentieth century, it seemed as if what was going to be known about Coptic dialect diversity was basically known. Then, in the following decades, several old manuscripts of substantial length evidencing an entirely new dialect, the Middle Egyptian or Oxyrhynchitic dialect, emerged.
The Codex Sch0yen should have a deep impact on New Testament Studies. The Two-Source-Theory, according to which the canonical Greek Matthew was compiled from two Greek sources, is affected. Codex Sch0yen is translated from Greek, as all Coptic Biblical texts ostensibly are, but the text differs from the canonical Greek Matthew which the other Coptic versions translate. There were, therefore, at least two Greek texts of Matthew, and the original Greek of the Sch0yen text is lost. Yet, Matthew can only have written one text. Therefore, if he wrote in Greek, how could the result be two Greek versions that are completely independent of each other? If he did not write in Greek, two Greek translators might have produced different translations of which one is the canonical Greek text, and the other one is preserved in a Coptic translation in the Codex Sch0yen. In his Ecclesiastical History (3.39.16) Eusebius communicates a report that Matthew wrote the Sayings of Jesus in Hebrew (by which Aramaic may be meant) and that different translators translated Matthew’s original as best as they could.
In addition to its significance to Christianity and the history of religions in general, the Bible is unique in being preserved in several different ancient languages. It, therefore, offers much opportunity to students of language for making countless finer observations regarding the phraseology of various ancient languages. Such a comparative Biblical philology was a dream of P. de Lagarde’s (1866: 110) but still needs to be implemented.
World History
