▼

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

New bit of Jeremiah in Coptic

by 7
Alin Suciu has identified a ms of Jer 21-22 in Coptic amid a British Museum acquisition from Christie's. Details here. [via Jack Sasson]

7 comments

  1. Anonymous9/21/2011 9:42 am

    Has anyone ventured a date of this papyrus?

    ReplyDelete
  2. EDGAR EBOJO9/21/2011 11:35 am

    I don't think this is a papyrus manuscript, but a parchment. Nonetheless, it would be indeed interesting to have some info about its possible date.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Alin Suciu9/21/2011 2:28 pm

    It is, indeed, a parchment.

    The Coptic uncial scripts are hard to date because Coptic paleography is still in its beginnings. The ductus might indicate that we are dealing with c. 7-8, but c. 9-10 is also possible. The language, which is still a good classical Sahidic, seem to strengthen the first possibility .

    ReplyDelete
  4. Christian Askeland9/22/2011 3:20 pm

    Alin has discovered an enormous amount over the past few years, delving through the various European collections. He is one of those rare scholars who actually is interested in the larger picture of the Coptic literary tradition and its transmission. Well done, Alin!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Daniel Buck9/22/2011 8:52 pm

    "The fragment is paginated 213-214, which means that the original codex must have been quite substantial."

    That puts page 1 at about the first verse of Isaiah. This would be just about the middle page in a codex of the LXX Major Prophets.

    That's a lot of slain sheep. Any other comparable Coptic parchments out there?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Alin Suciu9/22/2011 11:17 pm

    I suspect that the manuscript must have included at least Isaiah and Jeremiah. We have several such Sahidic codices.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Timo Flink9/27/2011 6:27 am

    Interesting. I noticed that DSS scrolls are now being put to the Internet (http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/). Maybe we'll get these Coptic texts online the same way someday.

    And as always, one Finnish newspaper just claimed that the DSS are Jewish and early Christian documents describing the lives of these two communities. I wonder do the press ever get it right :(

    ReplyDelete