I'm a biblical scholar, at least to the extent that I am doing a PhD in biblical studies and that I can read Greek (and some Hebrew).
I'm currently working very hard to read Coptic. I've managed to translate Matthew's Gospel all the way through, and have also translated some of Mark as well. I use a critical edition of Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic produced back at the beginning of the 1900s by a non-Copt scholar named Horner. Unfortunately, only the New Testament is available.
What do Copts use for their Bible now? I searched the forum some and found one thread which recommended New KJV (NKJV) and NIV, and even RSV. But what do scholars of the Coptic church read? Surely they don't read the English versions. Surely they read from their own Coptic Bibles!
If so, I really need a copy for myself, but cannot find one.
This is especially critical for me in regard to the Old Testament, since I only have access to about 25% of the Old Testament books through scattered manuscripts published in various books hither and yon.
I would appreciate any help!
Thanks
Comments
on this site u can find a digital version of most of the bible books:
http://www.coptic.org/language/bible/bible.htm
(or via the link http://www.remenkimi.com/ then scroll down, and u'll find "coptic bible" to the left)
Perhaps you could mail the people of that site for more information about manuscripts.
Do Copts not have the Bible written in Copt?
If I were in Egypt, what version of the Bible would I read?
By the way, thanks for the speedy reply.
As a church, we do not have the resources to produce our own Bible. Coptic is also a pretty dead language as you'll now, being a scholar, and is only used as far as I know in the Liturgical or Clergical services of the church. A growing number of Copts (such as myself for example) can or are learning to read their ancestral language, but few can actually speak the language fluently. I heard somewhere that two families in Upper Egypt still spoke Coptic as their native language fluently and that they preserved the language, but the vast majority of Copts do not even read (without understanding) the language. If you were in Egypt, the language everyone speaks is Arabic, so you would be reading the Bible in Arabic. As to versions, NKJV is Ok I have heard, but as Oriental Orthodox Christians, we do beleive in the Deutrocanonical books, (Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom, etc.), but again few people possess a copy of the full Bible, with these books included (due to lack of resources, and Protestant Bibles being widely available). I know there is a Septuagint translation of the Bible on http://www.orthodoxbookstore.org/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=1551 in English, but I don't know where a Coptic bible is. Hope this has helped. Pray for me
joe
we read the coptic bible only from the Katameros during services (especially Holy week).
Perhaps you could find parts of the books you need in the Coptic Katameros for Lent / Holy week because these are the only service books that contain prophecies from the old testament in coptic. U'd have to find them in a big coptic bookstore in Egypt (el ma7aba in Shobra perhaps).
In Egypt you would probably read an arabic bible (dar el ketab el mokaddas it's called if I remember correctly)
I don't know if there's a bible written in coptic entirely. The best people to ask are the ones on the site of remenkimi.com
I have visited Remenkimi.com and tried to view the Coptic Bible, but when I clicked on the book of Genesis and the book of Exodus, they came up in English letters, rather than Coptic. Despite having downloaded Coptic fonts before I did what the website remenkimi.org advised and clicked on the link of "Download Coptic fonts", which I have done, and run the programmes, but nothing seems to have happened. Can I ask you all to please help me with this?
God bless you all and pray for us a lot
Ophadece, did you try to actually install it on to Internet Explorer or Safari(depending on if you use pc or mac)?
I've had the same frustrations with reading biblical texts from the remenkimi site. However, for whatever reason, I've found that the downloaded fonts do get imbedded into my word processor. Then, if I cut and paste a text from the remenkimi site into a Word document, then change the font to CS Avva Sheouda (i.e., the name of the downloaded font from remenkimi) that I can read most of the letters well enough, although with frequent imperfections.
I wouldn't know, however, how to install the font onto Internet Explorer.
I know very, very little about the modern Coptic church. But I get the impression that Copts generally believe in the Bible but don't have a faith commitment to the ancient Coptic version of the Bible. I presume, then, that biblical authority lies in the Greek text behind the Coptic version.
If a Copt really, really wants to study the Bible deeply, then I presume that his or her objective would be to learn to read Greek.
I'm just guessing, so let me know if I'm wrong.
I myself am working on a Coptic manuscript which dates to the early fourth century. It is one of the oldest substantial manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel in any language. It is in a rather rare Coptic dialect known as Middle Egyptian or Mesokemic and contains readings which you don't find in most other manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel.
I guess in relation to my technical problem, I can follow Schoyen's idea (and I guess it will work). You didn't tell us how to install the fonts onto either IE or safari (I use both for XP). If anything different from downloading and copying them into the fonts folder of windows (or running the downloaded programme from remenkimi.com) then please direct me.
God bless you and pray for us a lot
Right, I get the impression that Copts don't think that the Coptic version is inspired or inerrant. It sounds like you'd rather base your English translations on the Greek Bible rather than the Coptic. This is what I meant by a faith commitment to the Coptic version.
I was at the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin Ireland yesterday. They say that they have more ancient Coptic manuscripts than they will ever be able to analyse. There is a serious need for Coptic scholars. I'm going to Leipzig this summer to work as part of a team analysing Coptic manuscripts. They too have more ancient Coptic manuscripts than they'll be able to process.
MacQuarrie University (Australia) has a highly reputed M.A. and PhD program in Coptic studies if anyone wants to answer the call.
In particular, there is a critical need to produce a critical edition of the Coptic Old Testament and to update Horner's editions of the Coptic New Testament.
Horner, G., The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Northern Dialect, otherwise Called Memphitic and Bohairic (4 vols.; Oxford 1898-1905).
Horner, G., The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern Dialect, otherwise Called Sahidic and Thebaic (7 vols.; Oxford, 1911-24).
I really respect this work. As a Church, we NEED a revival of our language - I will not go into much detail about that here. Perhaps these scholarly ambitions will do much to benefit us.
Good luck, let us know how it goes!
I'm not good enough to produce an English translation of any substantially long Coptic text fit for anyone to read. I meant only to say that I've studied enough Coptic to have read Matthew plus part of Mark. I'm just a Coptic newbie!
lol... u translated a Gospel, and u think ur Coptic is bad?.... wow.... at my Church, i think that we can sing the praises in Coptic but not understand over half of it.... and u think u r bad?
I agree with coptic pharaoh and Severus. It is sad to see non-Egyptians (as I assume you don't have Egyptian roots from the style of your writings) very keen on learning Coptic language, and revive the heritage of the Copts, while the Egyptians (being influence by the muslims, Arabs and Turks acquired the laziness qualities) don't really care. No one really cares to even understand, or sing Coptic hymns, let alone read paragraphs of the Bible or psalms in Coptic during the Holy Week. Just for the sake of simplifying, they sing it in either English or Arabic, or whatever land they are in, but not Coptic at all. I actually met someone who came from Germany to Egypt to pick her Coptic up as she was studying Egyptology, on the false beliefs that Egypt has got a strong Coptic community speaking the original language of the land!!!
I understand that large part of the Coptic manuscripts of Old Testament and New Testament were burnt down with the Alexandrian library when the muslims occupied Egypt, because simply they were instigated by satan to drive away all the Christian heritage, and I am afraid the consequences of which we live now, they succeeded.
God bless us all and pray for us a lot
In regard to Old Testament, we do indeed have many, many manuscripts containing the Coptic Old Testament. The problem is that they are not of a single manuscript, but are almost always fragmentary. These fragments have been published one by one in hundreds of scholarly articles and books over the last 150 years. Unfortunately, who has the time and means to go chase these down. Even here at Cambridge with a library of 8 million books, we don't have them all!
In the mid-1990s, one entire codex (i.e., a manuscript in a book form) was found containing the entire book of Psalms in a dialect of Coptic called Middle Egyptian. It was found buried with the body of a 12 year old Coptic girl dating to the fourth century or so! It is called Codex Mudil.
Sitting within a short arm's reach is an edition of a manuscript containing Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Judith, and Esther. The manuscript was actually erased a few hundred years after its original inscription in order to recycle the writing material for another writing. But the Coptologist Herbert Thompson painstakingly studied the faint writing of the original and has published its text.
Also, I have here three different books at hand containing, respectively, Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy. Another book here is the Achmmimic version (another Coptic dialect) of the 12 "minor" prophets (i.e., Hosea through Malachi), and a critical edition of all the manuscripts (especially Sahidic and Bohairic) of the same books. Also, Proverbs and four chapters of Joshua and a few miscellaneous passages.
I'm going over to the big library today to find some more published OT texts, most of which are buried away in obscur and old journals.
So, anyway, there is a huuuuuge need for a team of scholars to get together and produce a critical edition of the Coptic Old Testament.
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2006/09/coptic-digital-resources.html
Do Copts use this critical edition? It differs somewhat from the Greek text behind the King James Version. I've been told, although I'm far from sure, that Eastern Orthodox use a Greek text associated with Chrysostom.
Thanks for sharing.
You are using very technical terms, and I am not sure I will be someone who can inform you of anything. I just like to say I am very grateful to you for enlightening me with all of this. God bless you and bless your efforts, and hope I benefit from other members' knowledge about this as well. I do have a strong feeling that members like Cephas and Orthodox11 can help you out with that, but just bear with them, as they haven't contributed for a while now.
God bless you and pray for us a lot
I am sorry I forgot to mention Iqbal. I think he can help you a great deal as well. You may try PMing these members I mentioned if they don't directly post their opinions in this thread.
God bless you and pray for us a lot
I was a proofreader for the New King James Version (NKJV) back before they invented computers. ;)
NKJV is a translation based on the Greek text edited by Erasmus back in 1520 or so. It became known as the Textus Receptus. It has gone through a number of revisions, all back in the 16th or 17th centuries. Unfortunately, it was done with some haste, and was based only on five very late, and mostly incomplete manuscripts. The Textus Receptus (Recieved Text) is the Greek text behind the KJV (and NKJV).
Today, we have access to more than 5700 Greek manuscripts. Through a careful analysis, through the discipline of textual criticism, scholars today have produced three different editions of the Greek New Testament. The one which is most accepted is the Nestle-Aland text, currently in its 27th edition; but this text is also the same text of the United Bible Society text which is in its 4th edition. All the modern standard English versions, as well as most modern versions throughout the world, are based on this text which is sometimes called the Standard Text.
Two scholars named Robinson and Pierpont have produced a critical edition of the Byzantine text type. The authors think that the Byzantine text type is closest to the original writings, although almost all other biblical scholars reject this conclusion.
Two other scholars named Hodges and Farstad have produced a critical edition of what they call the Majority Text. Most manuscripts are of the Byzantine Text Type. Hodges and Farstad simply took a vote of all the manuscripts, and whichever reading had the most votes was included as the reading in their edition. The Hodges and Farstad edition is very, very close to Robinson and Pierpont's edition, but Robinson and Pierpont's edition is not based on the majority of manuscripts, but rather on what they thought was the purest reading regardless of how many manuscripts supported it.
The latter two texts were produced by conservative Protestant evangelicals. The Standard Text was produced by a small committee consisting of a theologically mixed group.
As intimated before, I was told that there is a Greek New Testament based on something purported to be Chrysostom's text, but I can't verify it. I would like very much to acquire it if it exists.
[coptic]Au`[non `nje nefcaji `ehote ouneh@ ouoh `n;wou han co;nef ne@ [i`cmy V] `eta `proceu,y@ ouoh `mperhi `pho `mpatwbh@ =a=l.[/coptic]
This site includes a translation that is derived from coptic.
His words were softer than oil, Yet they were drawn swords. Give ear to my prayer, O God, And do not hide Yourself from my supplication. Alleluia.
but the NKJV and NRSV and the arabic translation, which is also NKJV because the presses they are printed under do belong to protestants, have different translation.
We can be sure of the coptic translation of the hymn because it is said the way in different regions of Egypt despite the nonexistence of a central authority to coordinate and maintain a single copy.
The NKJV might be accurate, or might not but reading the original codex and the gospels in the Katamareous gives a new insight to the text. This is true especially since coptic and english have principle differences as languages, eg. coptic doesn't have a passive voice.
It's not really a matter of differing translations as much as it is a matter of translations of different base texts. The primary text upon which the NKJV translation is based is the Greek NT and the Hebrew OT (granted, there are numerous types of Greek NT's and Hebrew OT's).
That is why it is good to learn Coptic, because the Coptic testifies to a unique understanding of the text, but it is not an understanding that is necessarily "better" or "more correct" than that offered by any of the various Greek or Hebrew texts.
Regardless of the authenticity or reliability of the NKJV bible, reading the original coptic bible can yield some great insights. If you try comparing verses from a hymn said during holy week [coptic]Au`[non[/coptic], derived from psalm 55.
[coptic]Au`[non `nje nefcaji `ehote ouneh@ ouoh `n;wou han co;nef ne@ [i`cmy V] `eta `proceu,y@ ouoh `mperhi `pho `mpatwbh@ =a=l.[/coptic]
This site includes a translation that is derived from coptic.
His words were softer than oil, Yet they were drawn swords. Give ear to my prayer, O God, And do not hide Yourself from my supplication. Alleluia.
the translation of this psalm on the text library is taken from the psacha book here, http://copticchurch.net/paschabook. where the coptic and the arabic psalms are from the katameros, the english is from NKJV, where of course the numbers are a little confusing to match that in coptic.
This seems to be the case with most NKJV based works. It is very important to know that this version of the bible was based on the interpretations of King James and thus portray his opinions and that of the Anglican church. As we all know some of those opinions aren't in agreement with our own faith.