Old Testament, Coptic versions of the: Update

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 22 November 2023

old testament, coptic versions of the: update

Frank Feder Keywords: Coptic Bible, Coptic Versions of the Septuagint, Coptic Literary Dialects, Sahidic Standard Translation 4th/5th century, Coptic Literature, Coptic Manuscripts, Miscellany Manuscripts, Coptic Glosses in Greek Bible Manuscripts, Monastic Movement in Egypt, Shenoute, Athanasius’ Biblical Canon, Textual History of the Septuagint, Digital Edition. 1. Preface 2. The Emergence of Coptic Biblical Translations 2.1. The oldest witnesses of Coptic biblical translations: Coptic glossing to Greek biblical texts 2.2. The first Coptic manuscripts with biblical translations: Miscellany manuscripts of the fourth century 2.3. Coptic biblical translations in the fourth century and the Sahidic Standard Translation 2.3.1. The place of the Sahidic fourth-century manuscripts in comparison to the Sahidic Standard Translation 3. The Fate of the Biblical Translations of the Other Coptic Literary Dialects 3.1. The short-lived versions 3.2. The long-lived versions 3.2.1. The Fayyumic version 3.2.2. The Bohairic version 4. The State of the Reconstruction and Edition of the Manuscript Sources of the Coptic Version of the Old Testament 4.1. The first initiative for a systematic reconstruction of the Sahidic Old Testament 4.2. The complete digital edition and translation of the Sahidic Old Testament and current research on the Coptic Bible in the digital age 5. The Place of the Coptic Versions of the Old Testament in the Textual History of the Septuagint (lxx) 5.1. Pentateuch 5.2.

Historical books 5.3. Poetical and wisdom books 5.4. Prophetical books © Claremont Graduate University 1 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 1. Preface In the more than thirty years that have passed since the publication of Peter Nagel’s old testament, coptic translations of (1991), not only has immense progress been made in documenting and reconstructing the notoriously fragmentary and dispersed manuscript record of the Coptic Bible, but also new methods and tools have been developed that greatly facilitate the study of the Coptic versions. The advent of the “digital age,” especially in the last decade, has brought about a paradigm shift for the study and exploration of the Coptic versions. More than three generations of scholars, from the nineteenth to the end of the twentieth century, tried in vain to overcome the obstacles of the dispersal and fragmentation of the manuscripts and (to an equal extent) their state of publication, in order to produce a printed edition of the Coptic Old Testament—at least comparable to Horner’s edition of the Bohairic and Sahidic New Testament (see new testament, coptic versions of the). It is only very recently that databases, digital imaging, and the internet have provided the means for successful realization of this extraordinary enterprise.

As will become clear in the following, this article cannot be merely an update to the (short) 1991 article but must provide nothing less than a reassessment of the entire topic. For the sake of conciseness, and to avoiding overloading the bibliography with individual publications, mainly recent and comprehensive overview articles and books are listed, and, wherever possible, publicly accessible online references and resources are quoted. Nevertheless, it is foreseeable that future progress in the work of the Göttingen CoptOT project will soon make it necessary to update this update, especially with regard to the textual history of the Coptic versions in comparison to one another and their place within the textual history of the Septuagint (lxx).

2. The Emergence of Coptic Biblical Translations The first three centuries CE certainly witnessed a gradual development of Christian communities in Egypt. There can be no doubt that, in the beginning, the Christian mission and its texts were transmitted more or less exclusively in Greek. Egypt’s strong bilingual milieus in the Metropoleis were the natural recipients for this (Feder 2020a: 213–214; Feder 2020c: 643–644; Feder 2022b: 66–67). This is aptly confirmed by the earliest manuscripts containing Christian texts from Egypt. Although secure dating of these manuscripts is still a delicate matter, we can currently say with a fair degree of certainty that the oldest manuscripts with Christian texts can, arguably, be dated to the third century CE (Bagnall 2009; Nongbri 2018). These manuscripts were mainly acquired by European and American collectors and are now in collections outside of Egypt. Their exact findspots remain mostly unknown, and their original affiliation with a particular library (private or “monastic”) is also highly debated and uncertain. Two of the most important groups of early manuscripts with Christian texts are known as the chester beatty biblical papyri and the bodmer papyri. A third important group, this time with a secure provenance, are manuscripts from Oxyrhynchos.

In this context, we will speak of Christian or biblical texts/books because—as will become clear in the following—for the time before athanasius of Alexandria (archbishop 328–373); we cannot assume a closed and clearly defined canon of books that corresponds even approximately to the Old and New Testament as we know them from the Greek pandect Bibles of the fourth century.

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 2 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 The Chester Beatty Papyri (Nongbri 2018: 130–134) originate probably from the region between Aphroditopolis and Beni Suef (Nongbri 2018: 122–130) in the Nile Valley, not far from the Fayyum Oasis. These papyrus manuscripts include biblical texts (from the Septuagint and from the collection of texts that later became known as the New Testament), as well as some texts, like the Letter of Enoch or the Apocryphon of Ezekiel, which were later considered non-canonical or even heretical. All of these texts are in Greek and have been dated to the third and fourth centuries (some even to the second, although this is unlikely).

The Bodmer Papyri (Nongbri 2018: 168–194) form a very heterogenous group of manuscripts that most likely originate from different locations in Upper Egypt (more precisely, from the Panopolites (see akhmim), which is, however, not more than an informed guess). The papyrus and parchment manuscripts contain liturgical texts, biblical texts (which later became part of the OT and NT), apocryphal texts (later considered non-canonical or even heretical), and even classical (non-Christian) texts in Greek, Coptic, and Latin. Taking into account again the problems of dating, the manuscripts that could be dated to the third century are almost exclusively Greek. The papyrus and parchment manuscripts from Oxyrhynchos come from the rubbish mounds of the ancient city, alongside all kinds of documents and classical literature (Nongbri 2018: 224: “the whole spectrum of Greek writing from an Egyptian town in the Roman era”); they include a significant amount of Christian literature with a strong biblical stratum, datable from the second to the seventh century (Nongbri 2018: 228–246). Coptic manuscripts from Oxyrhynchos are rather an exception and do not seem to date before the fourth century (Nongbri 2018: 231).

2.1. The oldest witnesses of Coptic biblical translations: Coptic glossing to Greek biblical texts If we summarize the cultural background of the Hellenized culture in Roman Egypt and the bilingual milieus in the Egyptian cities, as well as what is known about the earliest surviving Christian texts, it seems in some ways logical that the earliest witnesses of Coptic biblical translations, or, more precisely, of biblical “text work” by Egyptian “philologists,” are Egyptian glosses or “annotations” in the margins of Greek manuscripts. The custom of glossing or “annotating” manuscripts may have been adopted from a longstanding (pharaonic) Egyptian tradition still active in the second century CE (Feder 2020c: 644–646).

The papyrus codex vii from the Chester Beatty Papyri with the Greek book of Isaiah (TM 61951; lxx ms 965), dated to the mid-third–early fourth century, contains a significant number of Coptic “annotations” (ca. 30; Wagner 2021: 293–295) in Greek letters (still without the signs borrowed from Demotic; Wagner 2021: 406–407). The fragmentary state of the manuscript makes it very likely that many more glosses have been lost. Apart from the fact that the Demotic signs— representing the Egyptian phonemes unknown to Greek, used irregularly in Pre-Coptic (see old coptic, and alphabets, old coptic), and as a standardized set of five or six letters in the developed writing system of the Coptic dialects (see alphabets, coptic)—are absent, the glosses clearly show a still barely standardized form of Fayyumic which is not free of Mesokemic influence and arguably quite typical for the region between the Fayyum Oasis and the nearby Nile Valley. Provided that MS 965 was actually written in the third century, we have good reasons to assume that the glosses could have been added still in the third or in the early fourth century. Another important early manuscript is the papyrus codex of the Minor Prophets in the Freer Collection in Washington (TM 61966; lxx ms: W) which has been dated to the third–fourth century.

In contrast to the Coptic glosses in the Chester Beatty Isaiah papyrus, the approximately 20 glosses reveal a well-standardized Sahidic close to that of the Sahidic biblical manuscripts of Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 3 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 the fourth century. This led Wagner to the suggestion that “W’s annotators copied them (i.e., the glosses FF), perhaps all, of their Sahidic notes from one or more Sahidic biblical manuscripts” (Wagner 2021: 274–275). Since this can hardly have happened in the third century, there are two possible explanations for this phenomenon. Either W has to be dated to the fourth century, or, if we insist on dating W to the third century, the Sahidic glosses must have been added considerably later.

A third important example is a fragmentary papyrus leaf in the British Museum (EA 10825) with a Greek–Coptic glossary to Hosea and Amos (TM 61982). The glossary is written on the verso; on the recto we find a Greek land register dated around 200 CE, while the glossary itself is dated to the third–fourth century. The papyrus was presumably found in the region of Oxyrhynchos. The glossary was organized in columns each containing first Greek words or phrases, often in abbreviated form, from the books of Hosea and Amos, to which a Coptic translation was then added. As the editors (Bell and Thompson 1925) correctly noted, the Coptic idiom is clearly Mesokemic (see: mesokemic (or Middle Egyptian)). Since a Mesokemic version of the Minor Prophets has otherwise not survived we cannot directly compare the phrases of the glossary with the later and well-standardized texts of this dialect. However, the textual form of the Coptic translation in this glossary does not have much in common with the other extant Coptic versions either (Sahidic, Akhmimic, and Bohairic). Although further research certainly will shed more light on this matter, we can at least confirm from the dialect that the papyrus does indeed originate from the Oxyrhynchite region.

2.2. The first Coptic manuscripts with biblical translations: Miscellany manuscripts of the fourth century While, as we have seen, there is a sound probability that Coptic biblical translations from Greek into Coptic took place in the third century—we can now definitely dismiss the popular story that antony, the “first monk,” must have heard the Gospel preached in Egyptian in around 270 because he did not know Greek, as the Life of Antony by Athanasius claims. Is it possible even to imagine a systematic and organized initiative to translate the holy scriptures into Egyptian in the third century? And which texts exactly would have constituted the collection of holy scriptures at that time? In fact, like Antony, many other educated native Egyptians knew Greek very well, and translating from Greek into Egyptian (and vice versa) had been the order of the day in Egypt since at least 300 bce. And it is not surprising that educated Egyptians, whether they were or saw themselves as Christians or not, also translated writings that were canonized much later as the Christian Old and New Testament. However, they also translated writings with a Christian “connotation” in which the life and deeds of Jesus, or stories and characters of the Jewish Bible, were used, which were (later) severely condemned as apocryphal and/or heretical by the Christian Church leaders of the (second half of) the fourth century; we can also include the Gnostic and Manichaean texts here.

Is it conceivable then that under the conditions of persecution during the reign of diocletian and his immediate successors (284/85–311) even a modest manuscript production and circulation of freshly translated Christian biblical manuscripts was possible? Does it not appear far more probable to expect such manuscripts only after the “Constantinian shift,” i.e., after 313 or, more likely, after 324 (Emmel 2007: 88–89; Funk 2013: 536–537; Feder 2020a: 216)?

Recent scholarship clearly shows the unreliability of paleographic dating (e.g., Bagnall 2009; Nongbri 2018) of both early Greek and Coptic literary manuscripts. Some of the Coptic, or bilingual, manuscripts we will now deal with have been dated tentatively to the third century. Even Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 4 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 if we try to take further criteria into account, such as the material condition of the manuscript, with a scientific investigation of the writing support (up to radiocarbon dating), or an ink analysis, the current state of knowledge does not permit us to date any early Coptic biblical manuscript safely to the third century (Feder 2020c: 644–645).

Before “regular” Coptic Bible manuscripts containing one or several books—as for the OT, apparently organized in a sequence similar to the Greek lxx manuscripts—came into use, collections of texts, which we can call miscellany manuscripts, were obviously the first choice for Coptic biblical texts. These are papyrus manuscripts written in various Coptic dialects, sometimes in combination with Greek texts, and forming probably the oldest stratum of Coptic biblical manuscripts. Typically, they combine texts later regarded as canonical writings of the Old and New Testament and texts later regarded as apocrypha and excluded from the canon of the Christian scriptures accepted by the Alexandrian Church. These are (Feder 2020a: 216–217; Feder 2020c: 647–648):

P. Bil. 1 Hamburg (TM 61979): Fayyumic dialect (sub-variety F7), Greek Acts of Paul (Greek); Canticles (Coptic); Lamentations (Coptic); Ecclesiastes (Greek and Coptic); date (according to TM): 275–350.

Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 (TM 107771; clm 42; lcbm sa 31): Sahidic Dialect Melito of Sardes, On the Passover; 2 Maccabees 5:27–7:41; 1 Peter 1:1–5:14; Jonah 1:1– 4:11; liturgical exhortation; date (according to TM): 250–399.

London, British Library Or. 7594 (TM 107763; clm 1371; lcbm sa 17): Sahidic Dialect Deuteronomy; Jonah 1:1–4:11; Acts; Apocalypse of Elijah 1:1–16; date (according to TM): 350–450.

P. Michigan 3520 (TM 107979): Fayyumic dialect (subvariety V4) Ecclesiastes 1:1–12:14; 1 John 1:1–5:21; 2 Peter 1:1–3:14; date (according to TM): 350– 450.

P. Bodmer iii (TM 107758): Bohairic Dialect (subvariety B4, Old Bohairic) Gospel of John; Genesis 1:1–4:2; date (according to TM): 300–399.

Since these manuscripts are of crucial importance for narrowing down the timeframe in which, according to our manuscript witnesses, the Coptic biblical translations originally emerged, we must try to specify their dating and historical setting as far as possible. Moreover, as far as the emergence of the first proper Coptic biblical manuscripts is concerned, we need to specify further if the miscellany manuscripts are generally older or, overlap in time at least partially with these biblical manuscripts which can be dated to the fourth century. The time range of usually 100 years given by TM reflects the vicissitudes of paleographical dating that are still virulent in the discussions about the dating of early Christian manuscripts. Some recent text critical studies will help guide us along the way.

Actually, only P. Bil. 1 Hamburg and Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 are possibly datable to the third century. While there are no new suggestions for the dating of P. Bil. 1 Hamburg, we can at least add the results of a text critical case study on the text of Lamentations (Feder 2004). The Old Fayyumic version of Lamentations represents an early, quite free, and lexically original Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 5 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 translation, apparently independent of the Sahidic and Bohairic standard translations. It was replaced (or largely reworked) by a more recent and highly standardized Fayyumic version (preserved in a medieval manuscript) that was apparently composed by consulting the Sahidic and, especially, the Bohairic version. The Greek Vorlage of this Old Fayyumic version has strong affinities with the text of the Greek Codex Vaticanus (TM 62316; lxx ms: B), more than the Sahidic and the Bohairic version of Lamentations. This means that the Old Fayyumic version of Lamentations would, at least, confirm that P. Bil. 1 Hamburg is older than the Sahidic and Fayyumic standard versions. However, this does not confirm or even suggest a dating into the third century. In order to come closer to an answer to this question, more detailed studies are also needed on the other Greek and Fayyumic texts in the papyrus.

The dating of the Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 is extremely controversial (Nongbri 2018:

174–175). In addition, a recent radiocarbon analysis could not provide a more precise timeframe since this type of analysis can only give an approximate timeframe for the harvesting of the papyrus plant. However, Hugo Lundhaug, after discussing all relevant data about the papyrus again and summarizing the value of the radiocarbon analysis, came to the conclusion that the manuscript could be dated “in the fourth rather than the third century” (Lundhaug 2020: 233).

Be that as it may, apart from the fact that the verses from a Coptic translation of 2 Maccabees are older than any extant Greek witness—we will see below that the books of Maccabees were excluded from the Sahidic Standard Translation—the passages from the book of Jonah (1:1–4:11) have been analyzed in a text critical study (Bosson 2016b). While working on the edition of the extremely important Old Bohairic manuscript P. Vatican Copto 9 (TM 107766) of the Minor Prophets (Bosson, Kasser, and Quecke, forthcoming), unanimously dated to the fourth century by all specialists, Nathalie Bosson compared the Jonah passages with the extant Sahidic, Akhmimic, and Bohairic versions. The text critical analysis yielded some surprising results. The Jonah text of the Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 apparently represents an earlier Sahidic translation, that was replaced by a translation which is preserved in all other Sahidic witnesses and in the Akhmimic version. Instead, it shares readings with the Old Bohairic version of P. Vatican Copto 9. Interestingly, the identical Jonah passages (1:1–4:11) of P. British Library Or. 7594 (lcbm sa 17) already clearly belong to the Sahidic Standard Translation represented by all other Sahidic witnesses as well as the Akhmimic version (Feder 2020a: 222). We may infer from this that Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 is older than P. British Library Or. 7594.

The text compilations for these two miscellany manuscripts (and this is probably also true for the other manuscripts mentioned above) have been quite convincingly explained as serving liturgical purposes (Feder 2020a: 217; Feder 2020c: 647).

2.3. Coptic biblical translations in the fourth century and the Sahidic Standard Translation It is very likely that the Coptic glosses and the miscellany manuscripts discussed above form the oldest stratum of Coptic biblical translations. There is, however, a fair number of biblical manuscripts that can be dated with good reason to the fourth century and correspond more to the type of codex with biblical books we would expect based on the Greek model of lxx manuscripts. However, full or pandect bible manuscripts never existed in the Coptic tradition. Some of them have already been mentioned. These are almost exclusively papyrus codices in Sahidic, Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, Old Bohairic, Fayyumic, and Mesokemic (Feder 2007). Notoriously, with few exceptions they are connected to the provenance dilemma that is characteristic for the Bodmer Papyri (Nongbri 2018: 157–215; Feder 2020a: 217–220; Feder 2020c: 648–651). Leaving aside the difficult problem of whether they formed one or several libraries, or book collections, they Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 6 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 must all come from Upper Egypt (and perhaps more precisely from the region around Panopolis).

Nevertheless, one striking fact in this context immediately calls into question the idea of a single library: even if we imagine that a late antique library in an Upper Egyptian metropolis of the fourth century could have consisted of Coptic–Sahidic, Greek, and Latin manuscripts (containing biblical and classical literature), why would it include manuscripts in other Coptic dialects (Bohairic and Mesokemic) whose (presumed) home region was quite distant from there (i.e., the Nile Valley opposite the Fayyum, and the Western Delta)? Moreover, there is also a papyrus in this supposed collection (P. Chester Beatty Ac. 1390) containing Greek mathematical exercises and John 10:7– 13:38 in yet another Upper Egyptian dialect, Lycopolitan (Nongbri 2018: 176–177).

Since the biblical texts of the Old Testament in the Sahidic manuscripts among the Bodmer Papyri all seem to contain the Sahidic Standard Translation, this term must first be introduced and contextualized before we can return to the complex question of the emergence of the Coptic biblical translations.

Before doing so, we need to discuss an exceptional case among the Bodmer Papyri that stands out from the other biblical manuscripts for several reasons. P. Bodmer VI (TM 107761) is a parchment codex containing an “archaic” version of Proverbs (1:1–21:4) in a Pre-Coptic, not yet standardized writing system and a dialect that has been named “Proto-Sahidic” (see dialect P (OR proto-theban)). Due to its archaic dialect and alphabet this manuscript has been dated to the third–fourth century (TM 107761; Nongbri 2018: 170–171), while its editor, Rodolphe Kasser, reconsidering earlier dating attempts, eventually preferred the fourth–fifth century. Kasser certainly avoided dating the manuscript earlier because of the writing support, parchment, as it would have been the only parchment manuscript among the early biblical manuscripts. On the other hand, the non-standardized alphabet and the archaic dialect make its text probably the oldest surviving example of a Coptic biblical translation from the third or very early fourth century. Unfortunately, we do not know why a scribe copied this peculiar version (from a papyrus) onto a parchment codex in the late fourth or even the fifth century.

Since the earliest Coptic biblical translations, as we have seen, appear in diverse forms and in different literary dialects, two important questions arise: a) are they all original translations or dependent on each other; and b) which Greek text form(s) in the textual history of lxx served as Vorlage for the Coptic translations? There are cases of more than one translation into a given dialect, and a single translation into Coptic may have been transmitted in several (linguistically) distinct dialects. And a dialectal variety is not necessarily identical with a biblical version (Funk 2013: 537; Feder 2020a: 213).

It is well known that the Sahidic dialect (see sahidic) stands out among the dialects of Coptic as a particularly codified norm of written Coptic. It became—in the later fourth century— the standard language of Egyptian Christian communication and literature and remained their literary language from the “classical period” (fourth–eighth century) to the Middle Ages (twelfth century). The overwhelming majority of extant Coptic biblical and apocryphal texts were written in Sahidic (Funk 2013: 538–540; Feder 2020a: 213). And it has already been observed (Nagel 1991: 1837; Funk 2013: 539–540) that from the late fourth century until the Middle Ages the Sahidic biblical manuscripts show a high degree of textual uniformity, regardless of their place of origin. Although traces of several redactional phases and revisions can be detected, they evidently preserve the textual basis of an initial translation event. It seems, therefore, inevitable to assume that, together with a standardization of the Sahidic writing system, a careful revision and editing of the biblical text took place, very likely under the control and supervision of “some church-based authority” (Funk 2013: 539–540; Emmel 2007: 88–89). There must have been a concerted effort Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 7 F.

Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 by the Egyptian church, and more specifically the influential monastic movement, “in the interest of missionization beyond the limits of the Greek-speaking cities of Egypt” (Emmel 2007: 89). We have, unfortunately, no explicit information about which authority stood behind this translation initiative and where exactly it took place, but if we observe the historical circumstances and the sequence of events carefully, the following scenario seems to suggest itself. The Alexandrian archbishop Athanasius, in his 39th Festal Letter of 367, tried to establish a canon of biblical books for the Old and the New Testament. He condemned other writings that were circulating as biblical literature as apocrypha to which “heretical movements” had given authority. The high esteem in which Athanasius was held by native Egyptian Christians, and in particular in the monastic circles, is reflected, not much later, by Shenoute’s (see shenoute) positive reactions to Athanasius’ festal letters and his own harsh condemnation of heretical writings. He himself adopted the term apocrypha (Feder 2020a: 214–215).

The Sahidic Standard Translation was certainly a direct reaction to this letter and the policy of Athanasius, and it aimed to replace the earlier Sahidic translations and all the other dialectal versions. What is more, the books of the Sahidic Bible preserved in the manuscripts correspond exactly to the canon authorized by Athanasius. The Sahidic translation became the standard Bible of native Egyptian Christianity and the foundational monument of Coptic literature, around whose text the founding authors of Christian literature in Sahidic, in the first place Shenoute himself, built their works (Emmel 2007: 89; Feder 2020a: 220–223).

If we try to establish a historical framework in which a systematic initiative to achieve a fixed canon for the Greek Bible in Egypt—as well as, in its immediate environment, the development of the Sahidic Standard Translation as the corresponding Bible for the native Egyptian Christians, and especially the monastic movement—might have taken place, the tenure of Archbishop theophilos (385–412) seems to be the most likely historical period. After Emperor theodosius assumed power in 379 and the strict condemnation of all heretical movements (especially the Arians) by the first council of constantinople (381) had taken place, a fixed canon of scripture was necessary to support and strengthen the struggle for the establishment of an orthodox faith and an orthodox church in Egypt and beyond (Feder 2020a: 220). In this context, it might be significant that Shenoute became abbot of a monastic congregation on the west bank of the Nile opposite Panopolis in 385 (the monastery was later named after him). He had a close relation with Archbishop Theophilos and supported his policy in every respect. Although we have no explicit information about his involvement in the organization of the Sahidic Standard Translation, it is hard to imagine that Shenoute was not involved with it if we want to locate its creation during Theophilos’ tenure (Emmel 2007: 92; Feder 2020a: 221). And it is arguably clear that this creation took place in Upper Egypt.

Despite the fragmentary transmission of the manuscripts, it is highly probable (if not certain) that the lxx was translated completely only into Sahidic. Earlier attempts at translation must have been adapted, standardized (writing system and language), and—if considered necessary—revised. If we accept the timeframe proposed above for the creation of the Sahidic Standard Translation, the following books formed the canon of the Sahidic Bible by the early fifth century at the latest (Feder 2020a: 222):

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, 1–4 Kingdoms, 1–2 Paralipomena, [Ezra-Nehemiah (2 Esdras)], [3 Ezra (1 Esdras)] Esther (+ Additions), Judith, Tobit Psalms (151), Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Job, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 8 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 Minor Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Letter of Jeremiah, Baruch, Ezekiel, Susanna, Daniel (+ Additions), Bel and the Dragon If a book is attested in Sahidic manuscripts which can be dated to the fourth century, it is highlighted in bold.

If a book is attested in manuscripts of dialects other than Sahidic that can be dated to the fourth century, it is highlighted in italics.

If a book is attested in Sahidic manuscripts and in manuscripts of other dialects that can be dated to the fourth century, it is highlighted in bold italics.

No direct manuscript evidence in a Coptic dialect has yet been discovered for the books in square brackets. We can, however, conclude from later book lists that they must have existed (Feder 2020a: 222).

Since the Akhmimic and Lycopolitan versions are only avatars of the Sahidic, their oldest manuscripts additionally confirm that a Sahidic version must have existed in the fourth century (this is the case for Exodus, Proverbs, Sirach, and Minor Prophets).

Although some manuscript witnesses of the books of Maccabees are extant in Coptic, their isolated transmission and translation character separate them from the Sahidic Standard Translation (Feder 2020a: 223). And, indeed, they were not included in it. What is more, in this case, the Sahidic Standard Translation conforms to Athanasius’ biblical canon, where the Maccabees are also lacking.

2.3.1. The place of the Sahidic fourth-century manuscripts in comparison to the Sahidic Standard Translation As we have already discussed in some detail above, the exact dating of the earliest biblical manuscripts remains a delicate matter. We will focus here on those manuscripts for which a fourth-century date is highly probable if not certain. For the majority of these (exclusively papyrus) manuscripts a more precise assignment within the fourth century is extremely difficult, as we need additional information besides paleographical dating in order to narrow down the date of a certain manuscript at least to a quarter of the fourth century. In two cases, however, we possess such additional information from other documentary and literary papyrus fragments reused in the book covers of a codex.

The first case is the remains of two leaves from a Genesis manuscript (lcbm sa 2025; clm 1149; TM 108146), which were reused together with the rest of some documentary papyri in the book cover of Nag Hammadi Codex vii. The contents of these documentary papyri have helped to fix a terminus post quem for the manufacture of nhc vii at the year 348. While the dating in TM and clm allowed for a time range of 275–350 (TM), or 276–325 (clm), following the considerations of the editor (Kasser 1972: 76), a recent reevaluation by Hugo Lundhaug—who was able to use a papyrus scrap for radiocarbon dating—came to the result (the radiocarbon data did not contribute significantly to a more precise dating) that we are at the same terminus post quem, 348 (Lundhaug 2021).

The second is another case of reused papyri: here, in the book cover of P. Bodmer xxiii with (the third part of) the Sahidic book of Isaiah (lcbm sa 2004; clm 40; TM 108542). While the time range for the papyrus codex given by clm (375–450) and TM (350–450) extends well into the fifth century, the evaluation of the reused papyri from the book cover again sets a terminus Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 9 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 post quem for the manufacture of the Isaiah codex to 350, since these papyri can be dated to the first half of the fourth century (Nongbri 2018: 167–168).

Interestingly, according to recent text critical research by CoptOT, both the Genesis text of sa 2025 and the Isaiah text of sa 2004 correspond, almost without variation, with the text of the Sahidic Standard Translation extant in the entire subsequent Sahidic manuscript transmission up to the Middle Ages.

The same applies to the Exodus text of P. Bodmer xvi (lcbm sa 2000; clm 35 [dated 301–400]; TM 108536 [dated 300–399]); the Deuteronomy text of P. Bodmer xviii (lcbm sa 2001; clm 36 [dated 351–400]; TM 108536 [dated 350–399]; and the text of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and EpJer of P. Bodmer xxii (lcbm sa 2003; clm 39 [dated 375–450]; TM 108176 [dated 350–450]). Only the book of Baruch in this manuscript was revised later, since the manuscripts of the ninth–tenth century have a modified text that, however, still shares a common textual basis with the text in sa 2003 indicating that the initial translation was not completely abandoned. The order of books was also changed at a later date from Jer–Lam–EpJer–Bar to Jer– Bar–Lam–EpJer (Feder 2002: 64–69; Feder 2020a: 221).

Although it is very likely that the text of Joshua of P. Bodmer xxi (lcbm sa 2023; clm 38 [dated 301–500]; TM 108536 [dated 300–499]) also corresponds to the Sahidic Standard translation, more detailed research is needed to prove this (Feder 2020a: 221–222).

What conclusions can we draw from the details presented above regarding the emergence of the Sahidic Standard Translation? First, the miscellany manuscripts seem to have disappeared in the course of the fourth century. The text of Jonah in the Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 (sa 31) must be based on an earlier translation event anterior to the Sahidic Standard Translation, since the text of Jonah and of Deuteronomy in P. London, British Library Or. 7594 (sa 17) clearly corresponds to the Sahidic Standard Translation. This means that, if we want to locate the systematic production of the Sahidic Standard Translation in the tenure of Archbishop Theophilos (384–412), sa 31 would have to be dated before 384 or even earlier (before 350?, clm 42). Due to the abandonment of the miscellany format, sa 17 could also be dated before 384, but not as early as sa 31. The text of Deuteronomy and Jonah in sa 17 (or a similar textual model) was apparently adapted to the Sahidic Standard Translation. In my opinion, a dating of sa 17 to the fifth century can be ruled out.

The only manuscript that seems to be clearly datable before 350 is the Genesis leaves reused in the book cover of nhc vii (sa 2025). Since the Genesis text clearly corresponds to the Sahidic Standard Translation, this text (or a similar text model) must have been used for the Genesis text of this translation.

All the other manuscripts mentioned above from the Bodmer Papyri are either the earliest extant examples of the Sahidic Standard Translation (sa 2000 and sa 2003, thus to be dated to the late fourth or early fifth century), or, in some cases such as sa 2004, their text (or a similar text model) was used for the Sahidic Standard Translation. However, the papyrus manuscripts (sa 2001, sa 2004, and sa 2023?), which are already organized as codices, cannot, in my opinion, be dated before 350.

3. The Fate of the Biblical Translations of the Other Coptic Literary Dialects There can be no doubt that the Sahidic Bible in the form of the Sahidic Standard Translation became the canonical Bible of native Egyptian Christians in the course of the fifth century—just as the Sahidic dialect became the language of literature, liturgy, and conversation in daily life. It Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 10 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 retained this position after the schism of Chalcedon (451), and after the arab conquest (640), when the separation of the Coptic Church of Egypt from the Byzantine (Chalcedonian) Church became permanent.

As we have seen above, biblical translations in other literary dialects of Coptic are among the oldest extant textual witnesses. Since the lifespan of some dialects as literary languages was rather limited whereas some other dialects apparently survived much longer, we will divide them (following Funk 2013) into short-lived and long-lived versions. Because of the outstanding importance, alongside Sahidic, of the Bohairic dialect, it will be treated in a separate subsection. 3.1. The short-lived versions Though the early witnesses of an Old Bohairic (or Paleo-Bohairic) version, and a variety of subdialectal forms attesting early Fayyumic translations, which both were replaced by a later “classical” version, strictly speaking, belong here, they will be treated together with the Bohairic and Fayyumic versions.

Besides the glosses to Hosea and Amos in P. British Museum EA 10825 discussed above, and some other fourth-century witnesses written in a dialectal form that somehow is mixed with Fayyumic (P. Michigan 3521, Gospel of John, dialect W; P. Michigan 3520, miscellany, see above, dialect V), the Mesokemic (or Middle Egyptian) version proper is characterized by high-quality fourth–fifth century manuscripts of Psalms, Matthew, Acts, and the Pauline Epistles, all written in the same standardized dialect norm. They must have been the result of an equally centrally organized translation effort in the geographically limited but densely populated and culturally as well as economically active region on both sides of the Nile from the eastern border of the Fayyum to the area around the Metropoleis Herakleopolis and Oxyrhynchos. Vestiges of Genesis, 4 Kingdoms, Job, Isaiah, and the Pauline Epistles suggest that a (complete?) Mesokemic (Standard?) Bible existed in that region, but it did not survive the fifth century and was replaced by the Sahidic Bible, arguably already in the same century (Funk 2013: 543–544; Feder 2020a: 226).

While the Mesokemic version appears to be largely an original translation, the surviving Akhmimic and Lycopolitan biblical translations—two Upper Egyptian dialectal varieties in close vicinity to Sahidic—are only avatars of the Sahidic version. They represent the culturally remarkable phenomenon of an interdialectal translation. Although their texts are written in a linguistically clearly distinct idiom, consequently, as a biblical version they belong to the Sahidic version. Akhmimic biblical texts are extant in fairly complete manuscripts of Proverbs and the Minor Prophets, as well as vestiges of Exodus, Sirach, and the New Testament.

As lycopolitan was the preferred idiom for Manichean and Gnostic texts, only a few biblical texts have survived (John, fragments of Galatians, Genesis, and Psalms). Although Akhmimic and Lycopolitan manuscripts are among the earliest extant Coptic biblical witnesses, and regardless of what motivated the transfer of the Sahidic version into Akhmimic and Lycopolitan, they probably disappeared in the course of the fifth century (Funk 2013: 544–545; Feder 2020a: 226).

3.2. The long-lived versions These are primarily the Sahidic and the Bohairic versions. The emergence of the Sahidic version and its development into the standard Bible for the native Egyptian population and subsequently the Coptic Church has been already thoroughly discussed. Before the Bohairic version is addressed in more detail, the Fayyumic version must be presented.

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 11 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 3.2.1. The Fayyumic version As we have seen, the Fayyumic manuscripts which transmit biblical translations are clearly among the earliest extant witnesses of the Coptic versions. We have already discussed above the glosses to Greek biblical texts and miscellany manuscripts in a variety of text forms and in differing linguistic varieties of Fayyumic (including the texts in the subdialects V and W mentioned above in connection with the Mesokemic version). This (early) diversity stands in marked contrast to the rather limited geographical area of the Fayyum Oasis, which is generally assumed to be the home region of this dialect. The transmission of Fayyumic biblical texts continued, as far as we know, into the early Middle Ages. The development of the Fayyumic version seems to parallel that of the Sahidic not only in the lifespan of textual transmission, but also in the phenomenon that these early translation attempts must have been replaced (equally in the fourth or early fifth century?) by a standardized version which possibly remained constant over a longer period of time (i.e., the fourth/fifth century to the ninth/tenth century). Due to the extremely fragmented state of the manuscripts and the unsatisfactory state of research, we can neither clearly prove nor disprove this (Boud’hors 2006; Funk 2013: 542–543; Feder 2020a: 226).

However, as a study on the Fayyumic versions of Lamentations (Feder 2004) and further observations (Funk 2013: 542–543) suggests, the Fayyumic version underwent a thorough revision, probably parallel with the creation of the classical Bohairic version in the early seventh century.

The following OT books are more or less well preserved in Fayyumic and its subdialects: Canticles (F7), Ecclesiastes (F4/V4; F5; F7), Isaiah (F4; F5), Jeremiah (F4; F5), Lamentations (F5; F7), Epistle of Jeremiah (F5).

Extant only in isolated fragments: Exodus, Numbers, 1 Kingdoms, Psalms, Job, Susanna, and Daniel.

3.2.2. The Bohairic version The Bohairic version is the current Coptic Bible of the Coptic Church (alongside the Bible in Arabic (see old testament, arabic versions of the)), and the Bohairic language is the only Coptic dialect still in use in the liturgy (in addition to Greek and, above all, Arabic). While we possess a comprehensive Bohairic manuscript transmission from the Middle Ages onward, namely from the twelfth/thirteenth to the eighteenth century, the historical origin of the Bohairic version is largely concealed by the vicissitudes of manuscript transmission, mainly because the humidity of the Delta region in Egypt does not favor the preservation of manuscripts, especially those made of papyrus.

As late as the first half of the twentieth century, the oldest known Bohairic manuscript witnesses at the time dated to the ninth/tenth century. This picture changed profoundly after new discoveries in the 1950s. Due to the climatic conditions described above, discoveries of early Bohairic manuscripts are limited to isolated specimens of northern provenance in collections in the south from abandoned monastic sites in the arid outskirts of the Fayyum to Upper Egyptian hoards such as the Bodmer Papyri. The fact that there is no “gap” in the documentation of Bohairic between the fourth-century witnesses of an Old Bohairic biblical version and the oldest examples of the “classical” Bohairic version in the manuscript transmission from the ninth century is clearly proven by the Kellia inscriptions and a considerable number of documentary witnesses (Funk 2013: 540–541; Luisier 2018; Feder 2020a: 225–226).

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 12 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 Two early and important witnesses of an Old Bohairic version, P. Bodmer iii (Gospel of John, Genesis 1:1–4:2) and P. Vatican Copto 9 (Minor Prophets), have already been introduced above (section 2.2). They are unanimously dated to the fourth century. Unfortunately, we are not yet in a position to determine more precisely when they were produced. In any case, the paths database (clm 6295) narrows down the time range of P. Vatican Copto 9 to 351–400. Both were assigned to the illusive collection of the Bodmer Papyri. While this attribution and the exact provenance of the manuscripts cannot be verified with certainty, it is clear that they must have been discovered in Upper Egypt.

According to our current state of knowledge, however, these early Bohairic translations are not identical with the later, “classical” Bohairic version in the medieval manuscripts. Their possible relationship with the other early versions, on the other hand, still needs to be investigated in more detail (see section 2.2, the textual affinity of P. Vatican Copto 9 with the Sahidic Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 in the book of Jonah).

Unlike all other Coptic versions, in particular the Sahidic, the highly standardized classical Bohairic version suggests that a thorough revision and very likely re-translation in an organized and concentrated effort, not unlike the Sahidic Standard Translation initiative, led to these early versions being replaced. While the original text of the Sahidic Standard Translation has been preserved and transmitted almost without alteration, the creation of the classical Bohairic version must have occurred at a significantly later date, possibly, as Funk suggested, in the sixth and seventh centuries (Funk 2013: 540–542).

Since no biblical manuscript of the classical Bohairic version seems to have survived from these centuries, we must reexamine the historical events that might have favored such an initiative. After the schism that resulted from the Council of Chalcedon (451), the Egyptian and the Syriac Churches found themselves in permanent disaccord with Constantinople. In the period of severe suppression of the anti-Chalcedonian confession, especially during the reigns of justin (518– 527) and justinian (527–565) and during further tensions, including between the Egyptian and Syriac sister churches, the Egyptian anti-Chalcedonian church was nevertheless able to undergo a profound reorganization (Feder 2020a: 227–228).

In 616, a new alliance was forged between the anti-Chalcedonian, Miaphysite churches of Egypt and Syria. Under the conditions of the war between the Byzantine and Sassanian Empires, Constantinople’s influence on Egypt became limited. Moreover, the Persian invasion of Syria in 613 forced the Syrian patriarch athanasius of antioch (595–631), together with his bishops, to flee to Egypt, where they enjoyed the hospitality of his Alexandrian colleague anastasius (607–619). An ecclesiastical summit was held in an Egyptian monastery near Alexandria (probably at the enaton) which confirmed and strengthened the alliance between the sister churches and defined their common theological heritage. It is very likely that, in the wake of this summit, an outstandingly important event for the Syriac church and Christianity as a whole took place in Egypt: a new translation of the Greek Bible into Syriac. According to the colophons of the manuscripts that transmit the so-called Syro-Hexapla version, this translation was created by the Syriac bishop Paul of Tella (and by Thomas of Harkel for the NT), in all probability between 615 and 617, shortly before the Persians also occupied Egypt in 619. In my opinion, the Syro-Hexapla version of the OT, a new and very literal translation from Greek into Syriac loaded with great prestige, cannot have been without effect and influence on the Egyptian partners and hosts.

Moreover, Athanasius and his bishops probably did not have the opportunity to carry a considerable number of Greek manuscripts with them during their flight from Antioch (although this cannot be ruled out either). The manuscripts used for the translation work would, therefore, Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 13 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 have been provided by the Egyptians at the Enaton (or came from Alexandria). As the colophons report, Paul of Tella used the fifth column of origen’s hexapla to translate the OT. This suggests that a copy of that work must have been available (Feder 2020a: 227–228).

My hypothesis is now that the Syriac translation initiative prompted the Egyptian patriarch and his bishops to launch a new translation initiative in their turn, at the same time or in the wake of the Syriac translation, the result of which would be the classical Bohairic version (or, perhaps, the other way around?). Since this translation would have taken place in the north, the choice of (a highly standardized) Bohairic for a new authoritative version, probably to replace the Sahidic, seems natural and logical. The fact that the Bohairic version did not acquire this authority in Upper Egypt before the twelfth century is evident from the omnipresence of Sahidic manuscripts in Upper Egypt and the Fayyum as late as the ninth and tenth centuries. However, here too, we can learn from the Syriac version, as the Syro-Hexapla has never completely replaced the older Peschitta version either.

Recent cataloguing work in the Berlin papyrus collection unveiled a fragment of a Bohairic psalter manuscript of unknown provenance. The editor of the fragment (Hasznos 2020: 114–116) dated it to the sixth–eighth century. The text is identical with the classical Bohairic version but clearly older than any other extant Bohairic manuscript of the Psalms (no other manuscript dates earlier than the twelfth century). If the historical scenario outlined above is correct—and given that the fragment shows a lower-quality manuscript and handwriting, perhaps a copy from a codex?—the fragment can only be dated to the (later) seventh or eighth century. Nevertheless, it proves that the classical Bohairic version emerged before the ninth century and seems to confirm the hypothesis that it was created in the early seventh century.

Although the Bohairic Bible became the only Coptic Bible of the Coptic Church from the twelfth century onward—the Sahidic Bible tended to fall into disuse because of the gradual loss of the knowledge of the Coptic language and the disappearance of the monasteries in Upper Egypt—it did not completely replace the older Sahidic version. As for the OT, only a reduced canon of biblical books is transmitted in the classical Bohairic version (Feder 2020a: 236). The following books are completely extant, usually in several manuscripts:

Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy Psalms (151, usually with Odes), Job Minor Prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Baruch + Epistle of Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Susanna, Daniel (+Additions), Bel and the Dragon Only the first half of book of Proverbs (until 14:26) is transmitted together with the book of Job Only excerpts as readings in liturgical books (lectionaries) are known from the books Joshua, Judges, 1–4 Kingdoms, 1–2 Paralipomena, Wisdom of Solomon, and Sirach. Since it has been proven that the pericopes of Wisdom and Sirach in the Bohairic Lectionaries are merely transpositions from a Sahidic Vorlage (Feder 2020b, 431), this might be true for all these excerpts in Bohairic lectionaries.

The following books are not extant in Bohairic at all, i.e., there is not a single manuscript witness of them: Ruth, Ezra-Nehemiah (2 Esdras), 3 Ezra (1 Esdras), Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther, Judith, and Tobit. In fact, it is more than likely that all these books were not included in the classical Bohairic version.

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 14 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 4. The State of the Reconstruction and Edition of the Manuscript Sources of the Coptic Version of the Old Testament The reconstruction and edition of the Coptic versions of the OT remains an unfinished task. After ambitious beginnings in the nineteenth century to edit the Bohairic OT (Feder 2022a: 437–444), and, at least, the best preserved and most comprehensive manuscripts of the Sahidic (and Akhmimic) version in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Feder 2022a: 444–455), the huge obstacle which the dispersal and fragmentation of the Sahidic manuscripts has placed in the way of a complete reconstruction and edition has hindered its realization to this day. New manuscript discoveries, after the Second World War, brought further early texts in different dialects to light (see above). Although the majority of these manuscripts were published immediately (Feder 2022a: 455–459), Melvin Peters’ unfinished (and inadequate) edition project of the Bohairic Pentateuch (1983–1986; Feder 2022a: 460) and the project for a complete edition of the Sahidic OT at the University Halle-Wittenberg which obtained only short-term funding (1997–1999; cf. Feder 2022a: 460–461) remain the only attempts at a systematic edition of the Coptic versions.

Therefore, the indispensable inventories of places where Coptic biblical texts are kept and published, which were provided by Vaschalde between 1919 and 1933 (Feder 2022a: 451) and continued by Till in 1960 (Feder 2022a: 456) and Nagel in 1990 (Feder 2022a: 459), must continue to be used. In addition, plenary reports presented at the international congresses of the International Association for Coptic Studies used to give comprehensive updates on the research on the Coptic Bible. The last of these reports, however, was given by Nathalie Bosson at the 2008 congress in Cairo (for the years 2000–2008; Bosson 2016a; the last systematic report printed in the congress acts before Bosson 2016a is Nagel 1999). More recently, the history of research on the Coptic versions (Feder 2022a) and the (printed) editions of Coptic biblical texts (Feder, forthcoming) has been treated in detail.

4.1. The first initiative for a systematic reconstruction of the Sahidic Old Testament Among the recent efforts at a systematic reconstruction of the Sahidic version, Karlheinz Schüssler’s cataloguing project Biblia Coptica merits special mention for its pioneer character and its still useful collection of data. Schüssler catalogued 120 Sahidic manuscripts with OT texts between 1995 and 2000, and another 140 manuscripts between 2012 and 2015 (the last fascicle was published by Feder and Förster after Schüssler’s death in 2013; Schüssler, Feder, and Förster 2015). The years in between were devoted to the Sahidic New Testament (Schüssler 1995–2012). Although Schüssler wanted to provide comprehensive data on each manuscript, the pace of his publication schedule and the fact that he did not use a database or digital tools resulted in an increasingly unsystematic collection. Moreover, he included liturgical manuscripts, ostraca, and other secondary sources quite indiscriminately. In this way, the biblical manuscripts and their reconstruction fell out of focus, and each fascicle contained a growing list of addenda and corrigenda (Feder 2022a: 462–463).

4.2. The complete digital edition and translation of the Sahidic Old Testament and current research on the Coptic Bible in the digital age After the pioneering initiative of creating a digital repository and database for Coptic literary manuscripts launched by Tito Orlandi (cmcl) in the 1980s, it became clear that digital tools and databases would provide the ultimate solution for the dispersed and fragmented manuscript transmission of the Coptic OT. With the advent of the internet the obvious medium for the Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 15 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 publication of digital editions was at hand. We will focus here on the digital edition of the Coptic OT; for other types of writing, the corresponding entries on Coptic Literature (literature, coptic) and the Coptic New Testament (new testament, coptic versions of the) may be consulted.

When the project Complete Digital Edition and Translation of the Coptic Sahidic Old Testament (Behlmer and Feder 2017) began its work at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony in 2015, it was able to make use of the archival material (inventories, transcriptions, and images) collected by the projects Koptische Septuaginta (University Halle– Wittenberg), Biblia Coptica (Salzburg and Vienna), and cmcl (Rome and Hamburg). The New Testament Virtual Manuscript Room (ntvmr) created in 2011 – a database and manuscript repository for the Editio Critica Maior of the Greek New Testament in Münster (Germany), as well as an editorial platform for the diplomatic edition of the individual manuscript witnesses and for the critical edition of the NT books including the Greek manuscript transmission and the versions, among them Coptic – served as a model system for the creation of the Coptotvmr for the Coptic Old Testament. The Coptotvmr is thus a further development of the ntvmr especially adapted to the needs and particularities of the Coptic manuscript transmission and of the critical edition of the Coptic OT (Feder 2022a: 464–466). The two projects have worked in close collaboration ever since.

Siegfried Richter (Münster) and Frank Feder (Göttingen) developed a new and integrative numbering system for the Coptic biblical manuscripts of all dialects (lcbm; Feder and Richter 2020), which replaces former numbering systems and avoids the confusion in the numbering of the Sahidic manuscripts of the OT and NT caused by Schüssler’s Biblia Coptica.

In the CoptOT project, individual manuscripts are successively digitally edited in the Coptotvmr. In the manuscript catalogue (https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/manuscript-catalog) the leaves and fragments of a manuscript are reconstructed in their original sequence, and each page or fragment is represented by an image. Only in this way can the dispersal and fragmentation of the manuscripts be virtually healed (leaves and fragments of a manuscript can be dispersed over eight to ten different collections, and isolated fragments forming a leaf can be kept in up to three different collections). All texts on the pages are transcribed in a Unicode-based font (Antinoou) and are exportable in tei xml format. Individual transcriptions are collated using CollateX, a tool that makes it possible to create digital critical editions with an apparatus of variant readings. In addition to the numerous existing and future diplomatic editions of manuscripts, critical editions of the biblical books, starting with the Pentateuch and the Prophets, will be available in the Coptotvmr. According to the project schedule, the critical editions of the books of the Pentateuch and the Prophets are to be published first, by the end of 2024 (https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/biblical-books).

Two examples may be sufficient to illustrate the significant progress of the project work. Although practically all 260 Sahidic OT manuscripts catalogued by Schüssler are already included in the CoptOT manuscript catalogue, and many others have been added, their number has been significantly reduced, to currently 194. Due to Schüssler’s hasty way of cataloguing he simply overlooked many complementary leaves that can be joined to a manuscript, and merely assigned more numbers. In addition, the manuscript catalogue already contains numerous new discoveries unknown to Schüssler. And the ostraca, writing exercises, and amulets included in Biblia Coptica have been separated and given their own numbers (var = Varia) as secondary witnesses. The digital archive of the CoptOT project is currently the world’s largest repository of manuscript surrogates (microfilms, black and white photographs, negatives, and color images of Coptic manuscripts, all of which have been digitized or are originally digital). More and more collections worldwide are Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 16 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 making high-resolution digital images of their Coptic manuscripts available to the public. The most prominent examples are the Vatican Library in Rome, the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the Bodmer Foundation in Genève/Cologny, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, and the British Museum in London.

One of the largest collections of Coptic manuscripts in the world, the British Library in London, is currently preparing a digital repository for its Coptic and Syriac manuscripts.

In 2008 Hany Takla estimated in an article (Takla 2008) the number of biblical manuscripts (excluding lectionaries) that the White Monastery near Sohag (see dayr anba shinudah), one of our main sources for Sahidic manuscripts, once possessed. We compare his estimate here with current figures from the CoptOT project.

Takla 2008 CoptOT 2021 Pentateuch 36 Pentateuch 16 Historical Books 6 Historical Books 6 (4 without Macc) Psalter 10 Psalter 15 (2 Greek–Sahidic) Poetical and Wisdom Books 2 Poetical and Wisdom Books 6 (without Ps) Major Prophets 6 Major Prophets 9 or 11 (Dan and Sus could also have been part of a liturgical ms) Minor Prophets 2 Minor Prophets 6 The suspiciously high number of Pentateuch manuscripts given by Takla is certainly based on Schüssler's lack of attention to joining leaves in Biblia Coptica, described above. An important factor in the CoptOT project’s progress is its close cooperation with other projects and initiatives in Coptic Studies and Egyptology based on digital tools and databases. These are cmcl, paths, Coptic scriptorium, and Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae (tla). All of these projects share their digital data and are developing common standards for Coptic Studies as well as new useful tools, such as the Coptic Dictionary Online (https://coptic-dictionary.org/). An up-to-date bibliography on the Coptic Bible, with a focus on the Sahidic version and the Old Testament, can be consulted on the CoptOT website located at https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/bibliography.

5. The Place of the Coptic Versions of the Old Testament in the Textual History of the Septuagint (lxx) All major endeavors to produce a critical edition of the Greek Old Testament, the so-called Septuagint (lxx), have included the Coptic versions due to their age and extensive manuscript transmission from the fourth century onward (e.g., Albrecht 2018; Albrecht and Feder 2022). In view of the importance of the Coptic versions to the textual history of the lxx, again, the dispersal and fragmentation of the Sahidic manuscripts in particular has prevented their systematic inclusion in the lxx editions. This has led sometimes to a rather random selection of Coptic witnesses, e.g., in the Göttingen lxx editions, which is not representative and does not accurately reflect the variant readings actually found in the Coptic versions. Moreover, variant readings might have been caused by translation or a particular translation technique, which was barely taken into account in the lxx editions (Feder 2002: 79–103). However, if Coptic scholars criticized the insufficient inclusion of Coptic witnesses (e.g. Schüssler 2004: 226–230), they should also have admitted that the lack of comprehensive inventories and proper editions (which they should have provided) has Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 17 F.

Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 made the work of the lxx editors who also include all the other Eastern versions, such as Armenian, Georgian, Syriac, and Ethiopic, in their critical editions significantly more complicated. Although scholars have been trying since the nineteenth century to determine the exact place of the (various) Coptic versions in the textual history of the lxx, a correct picture can only be drawn once the extant manuscripts have been reconstructed and edited. Our knowledge on this topic therefore remains sparse and the few conclusions gained so far are rather provisional. As we have already outlined, whenever we speak of a biblical version, the linguistically clearly distinct Coptic dialects are not necessarily identical with a specific version. Thus, the Sahidic version actually consists of the Sahidic, Akhmimic, and Lycopolitan witnesses. As for the Mesokemic version, only one complete manuscript of the Psalms is so far available for comparison. The Old Bohairic version is only extant for Genesis 1:1–4:2 and the Minor Prophets, but it must clearly be separated from the classical Bohairic version. As we have tried to demonstrate, this version was probably created in the early seventh century and comprised not more than the Pentateuch, the Psalms, Job with the first half of the book of Proverbs (until 14:26), and the Minor and the Major Prophets.

The excerpts from the other OT books in Bohairic liturgical manuscripts all seem to depend on Sahidic models. Although we have numerous Fayyumic witnesses, in different linguistic varieties, from the fourth century to the Middle Ages, their insufficient state of publication and research prevents any further conclusions (beyond most recently Boud’hors 2006). It seems obvious that only the Sahidic version encompassed the entire set of lxx books. Although we have already discussed the text critical value of the Coptic versions in some detail, we will summarize the conclusions drawn so far for the relationship of the Coptic versions to the lxx text groups in a concise form and in the usual sequence of books of the lxx— as it is also generally reflected in the Coptic Bible (for further reference, see Feder 2022b). A recent treatment of the Coptic versions in the context of the textual history of the Old Testament can also be found in the handbook series The Textual History of the Bible (Lange and Tov 2016–2017; Feder and Henze 2019–2020; the overview article Feder 2016 in thb 1A is partially outdated by current research).

5.1. Pentateuch (Feder 2022b: 70–71) The Sahidic witnesses represent the oldest available Coptic textual version. They all show the text of the Sahidic Standard Translation and thus prove its extraordinary textual stability from the fourth century to the ninth–tenth century. Unfortunately, the most complete manuscript, sa 2006 (Morgan Library and Museum M 566; Lev–Exod–Deut; St. Demiana, Forthcoming), from the Archangel Michael Monastery at Hamuli in the Fayyum Oasis has a widely corrupted text. A much older Sahidic manuscript from the White Monastery (lcbm sa 2044; seventh century), that originally comprised the entire Pentateuch, preserved a much better text, but it is unfortunately incomplete. There is as yet no relevant study that sheds light on the textual character of the Sahidic version in comparison with the Greek textual history. Nevertheless, Peter Nagel’s recent re-edition of the Deuteronomy text of sa 17 (Ms. BL Or. 7549; Nagel 2020) provided a reliable textual basis for the complete digital edition which is being prepared by CoptOT. Nagel’s Genesis edition (Nagel 2022b) was intended to be a full edition of the Sahidic transmission; however, it does not provide a reliable text throughout, and clearly lags behind the new standards set by the digital edition.

Gen 1:1–4:2 in the Old Bohairic P. Bodmer iii differs from the verses in the classical Bohairic version and seems to be adapted from the Sahidic version. The classical Bohairic version of the Pentateuch is preserved in its entirety in numerous manuscripts. However, they mostly date Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 18 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 from after the thirteenth century (Takla 2007: 83–85). One exception is Vat(icanus Copt(icus) 1, a ninth–tenth century manuscript from the Macarius Monastery in Wadi Natrun, which was a purely Bohairic codex before an Arabic version was added on its margins in the thirteenth century. All Bohairic manuscripts of the Pentateuch remain unpublished. It is still uncertain whether the classical Bohairic version is an independent translation or whether it was influenced by the Sahidic. Neither a systematic comparison between the Sahidic and the Bohairic versions, nor a systematic study on their relationship to the Greek textual history, has yet been undertaken. An attempt at an edition of the Bohairic Pentateuch by Melvin K. Peters in the 1980s did not significantly change this situation (Feder 2022b: 70–71).

5.2. Historical books (Feder 2022b: 71–73) The Sahidic manuscript transmission leaves many gaps in the historical books. The book of Joshua is completely preserved in a fourth-century manuscript (P. Bodmer xxi; lcbm sa 2023), in a palimpsest manuscript, as well as in some fragmentary manuscripts from the White monastery. It was usually combined with the book of Tobit. The observation that the text of P. Bodmer xxi seems to differ from later manuscripts could be neither confirmed nor denied, since we lack a critical edition and/or a relevant study on the textual character of the Sahidic transmission. The situation for Tobit is even worse: in P. Bodmer xxi only Tobit 14:13–15 is extant, and a fragmentary manuscript from the White Monastery (lcbm sa 2049) is all that survives. A very interesting manuscript is lcbm sa 2012 (London BL, Add. 17183), a palimpsest from the Wadi Natrun with Syriac texts written over the Sahidic texts of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Judith, and Esther (dated to the seventh century). Unfortunately, none of the books is complete. Ruth, however, is extant in other manuscripts, apparently preferably combined with Judges, while Esther is only preserved in sa 2012. There is as yet no edition or text critical study that analyzes the textual character of Judges, Ruth, or Esther.

While 3–4 Kingdoms are only sporadically transmitted, the Sahidic transmission of the books 1–2 Kingdoms is an outstanding case. There is a virtually complete manuscript from the Archangel Michael Monastery in the Fayyum Oasis which is kept in the Morgan Library and Museum in New York today (M 567; lcbm sa 2007, dated 892/93). What is more, it was published in 1970 (Drescher 1970) in a semi-critical edition and translation including nineteen other Sahidic witnesses. This exceptional situation called for a text critical study, which Elina Perttilä provided in a very systematic way in 2017 (Perttilä 2017). She benefited from some older studies and focused on 1 Kingdoms. Perttilä investigated the impact of the translator’s translation technique in order to better assess the variant readings of the Sahidic version compared to the Greek text of the lxx edition. Her analysis made it clear that the Greek text model of the Sahidic translation deviates in a significant number of cases from the text form extant in the main Greek witnesses—Codices Alexandrinus (A), Vaticanus (B), and Sinaiticus (S)—which correspond partly to the Hexaplaric-type readings found in the Lucianic recension, with a tendency to align the text closer to the Hebrew Masoretic text.

However, these readings do not occur as often and as regularly as in the Hexaplaric recension, so that the Greek text type which must have been the Vorlage for the Sahidic translation remains unknown as it is not traceable in any extant Greek manuscript group. This phenomenon seems to have been typical of the Sahidic Standard Translation—the Sahidic witnesses of 1 Kingdoms show hardly any variation—and we will encounter it again in the prophetical books.

Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 19 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 As far as the other Coptic dialects are concerned, as we show above (section 3.2.2), only the Bohairic version has preserved significant text portions as pericopes in liturgical manuscripts, the texts of which very likely depend on Sahidic models.

5.3. Poetical and wisdom books (Feder 2022b: 73–77) These books were extremely popular with Egyptian Christians, and with monks in particular— above all, the Psalter, which was omnipresent not only in the liturgy, but also in private use as an amulet or in magical practice. Besides the Gospel of John, the Psalter is the best-preserved book of the Coptic Bible; there are even complete manuscripts in Sahidic, Mesokemic, and Bohairic, and at least some fragments in all other dialects. Moreover, the Psalter is the only book of the Sahidic Bible with a long tradition of bilingual Greek–Sahidic manuscripts. The outstanding importance of the Coptic version for the reconstruction of the lxx Psalter was recognized already by the eminent Septuagint scholar Alfred Rahlfs. In his edition of the Greek Psalter (1931) he reconstructed an Upper Egyptian recension of the Greek text (including the Sahidic version) and a Lower Egyptian recension (represented by the Greek codices B and S, and the Bohairic version). However, this distribution was fundamentally challenged by the discovery of the Mesokemic psalter (Gabra 1995; Emmenegger 2007) and the early Greek papyrus P. Bodmer xxiv (published in 1967), which were unknown to Rahlfs. In fact, P. Bodmer xxiv shares some important variant readings with the Sahidic version, so the Greek Vorlage of the Sahidic version must have been similar to P. Bodmer xxiv.

Therefore, it seems that an older text of the Greek Psalter, which is also reflected in the Sahidic version, might have been circulating in Egypt before it was replaced by an Alexandrian model. The detailed textual history of the Greek and Coptic Psalter will be studied in Göttingen by the partner projects CoptOT and the Editio Critica Maior of the Greek Psalter (https://septuaginta.uni-goettingen.de). Currently, Peter Nagel’s recently published editio minor (Nagel 2022a) of the London Psalter (lcbm sa 2031) is a useful reference work.

Of the other poetical and wisdom books, we have a number of fourth-century manuscripts in almost all Coptic dialects. The book of Proverbs is extant in several Sahidic manuscripts, the best witness being a miniature codex in Chicago (isac Museum E10485; lcbm sa 2009; around 600). The edition by William H. Worrell (Worrell 1931), who included all other witnesses known to him (including quotations in Sahidic patristic literature) is still a good starting point for textual criticism. However, it confirms the stability of the Sahidic text transmission which goes back to the Sahidic Standard Translation. We have already discussed the peculiar dialect and text form of P. Bodmer VI (section 2.3).

A fourth-century papyrus manuscript (Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Ms. or. Oct 978) preserves the complete text of the Akhmimic version of Proverbs. In an early study, Alexander Böhlig (Böhlig 1936) compared it with the texts of the Sahidic version and concluded that the Akhmimic Proverbs are also only an avatar of the Sahidic. Of the other dialects, only the Bohairic version transmits roughly half of the book (up to Prov 14:26) together with the book of Job. However, the manuscripts are all late (fourteenth century and later). Böhlig observed in his study the same Hexaplaric-type variant readings in the Sahidic version, while the Bohairic text seems to follow the main witnesses of the Greek lxx text. The CoptOT edition of all available Sahidic witnesses, the Göttingen edition of the Greek Proverbs, and further studies will doubtlessly soon clarify the text-historical position of the Coptic versions of Proverbs.

Ecclesiastes and Canticles are well preserved in Sahidic and Fayyumic. Of particular interest are the early Fayyumic manuscripts in different varieties of Fayyumic which we have already discussed above (section 2.2.). Although we possess two fourth–century Fayyumic Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 20 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 manuscripts of Ecclesiastes: P. Bil. 1 Hamburg with Ecclesiastes in Greek and Fayyumic, and P. Michigan 3520, there has not been any attempt at a text critical study in comparison with the Sahidic transmission. The Sahidic text of Ecclesiastes is fairly complete and extant in several fragmentary manuscripts, mostly from the White Monastery. As we observed above, Ecclesiastes is one of the books that are not attested in the Bohairic version. Of Canticles there is only a short excerpt (Cant 4:14–5:10), which appears in Bohairic lectionaries. The recent lxx edition of Ecclesiastes by Peter Gentry (Gentry 2019) also includes the Coptic versions; his treatment, however, can only be regarded as very unsatisfactory.

The book of Job has been transmitted in a considerable number of Sahidic manuscripts. None of them have preserved the complete text, however, and the majority are fragmentary. They range from an almost complete text in a parchment manuscript containing wisdom books (lcbm sa 2038, tenth century) to individual fragments. Nevertheless, all of them taken together transmit the complete Sahidic version. Already in the nineteenth century, Ciasca, in his edition of the Borgia manuscripts (Ciasca 1889: xviii–xxxvii) observed that the Sahidic version represents the pre-Hexaplaric short text of the lxx, i.e., the Old Greek text! Regrettably, the most recent study on this interesting phenomenon dates from 1912 (Dieu 1912). The Bohairic version seems to be independent of the Sahidic and represents the long lxx text, but its manuscripts, in which Job is always combined with Proverbs, are all late (fourteenth century and later). Only a critical edition of all witnesses will bring us closer to a definitive explanation of the textual character of the Coptic versions of Job. This will include, of course, the few Fayyumic fragments.

Wisdom and Sirach were also very popular with Egyptian Christians. The Sahidic version is transmitted in many manuscripts, but they are mostly fragmentary. Since the texts in these manuscripts show little or no variation, we can safely assume that their basis must be the Sahidic Standard Translation. There is only one fragment extant in Akhmimic, the text of which shows, again, dependence on the Sahidic version. Of the Bohairic version only excerpts in lectionaries are known. Their text is clearly only a transposition from a Sahidic model (see section 3.2.2). Obviously, only the Sahidic version can be relevant for a text-historical evaluation of Wisdom and Sirach.

5.4. Prophetical books (Feder 2022b: 77–80) The text-historical assessment of the Prophetical Books is in part by far more advanced than that of the other books of the Coptic versions. On the one hand, they are transmitted in very early manuscripts in different dialects, which, on the other hand, has led to more detailed studies on the emergence of the Coptic versions and on their textual character within the textual history of the

lxx.

The Minor Prophets are an outstanding case in the transmission history of the Coptic versions. They are preserved in their entirety in the classical Bohairic version (several manuscripts, fourteenth century and younger) and in an almost complete Old Bohairic version (P. Vatican Copto 9, fourth century). Although, as usual, we have many different manuscripts of the Sahidic version, dating from the fourth century to the Middle Ages, they are so fragmentary that only the text of Jonah is fully extant. The Akhmimic version, on the other hand, is almost completely preserved (only parts of Amos and Malachi are missing) in a single small-format parchment manuscript (sixth century) the leaves of which are kept in Vienna (önb, K 11000) and Paris (BnF, Copte 157). In addition, we have come across an early papyrus (third?–fourth century) with a Mesokemic glossary to Hosea and Amos (see section 2.1). This extraordinary situation prompted Willem Grossouw to Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 21 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 undertake a study on the Coptic versions of the Minor Prophets (Grossouw 1938) that is still regarded as exemplary.

The comparison of the Akhmimic version with the (fragmentary) Sahidic leaves no doubt that, here too, the Akhmimic version is only an interdialectal transposition from the Sahidic. However, of the two earliest Sahidic witnesses of Jonah that we have encountered among the miscellany manuscripts (see section 2.2), the text of Jonah in the Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 significantly differs from all other Sahidic witnesses. This is not only an argument for an early dating of this manuscript, but shows that there was, at least for Jonah, an early version, which was replaced in the Sahidic Standard Translation. Although the relationship of the Coptic versions to the early Greek Papyrus of the Minor Prophets in the Freer Collection in Washington (lxx ms W; section 2.1), the best witness for the Old Greek lxx text, has always interested scholars, it became even more relevant with the discovery of the Old Bohairic papyrus P. Vatican Copto 9 (Bosson 2016b). Crosby Schøyen Codex 193 and P. Vatican Copto 9 not only share a significant number of readings which separate them from their (Sahidic and Bohairic) standard versions, between them, but also with the Greek papyrus W. Thus, together with W, P. Vatican Copto 9 is a very relevant witness for the Old Greek lxx text of the Minor Prophets (Albrecht 2019). The Sahidic–Akhmimic version, on the other hand, again shows the Hexaplaric-type readings we have already encountered in 1 Kingdoms.

The relations of the Coptic versions to each other and with the lxx will be discussed in detail in the edition of P. Vatican Copto 9 (Bosson, Kasser, and Quecke, forthcoming).

The Major Prophets were important books in the liturgy of the Egyptian/Coptic Church and extremely popular with the monastic movement and its leaders, most notably Shenoute of Atripe. His works are full of quotations from the prophetical books, especially Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel (see shenoute: update). The books of the Major Prophets are completely preserved in the classical Bohairic version, but only in medieval or more recent manuscripts (Takla 2007: 87–88).

The Sahidic version is extant in many manuscripts from the fourth to the ninth–tenth century, but almost all of them are incomplete and fragmentary. Fortunately, the book of Isaiah is completely preserved. Tragically, the only complete manuscript, New York, Morgan Library and Museum M 568 (lcbm sa 2008, one bifolium is kept in Cairo, another in Berlin; ninth–tenth century), like the other manuscripts from the Archangel Michael Monastery (sa 2006, Pentateuch; sa 2007, 1–2 Kingdoms), has a sometimes unreliable text.

Only about half of the books of Jeremiah and Ezekiel survive, but the CoptOT project is constantly revealing new fragments that can fill more and more gaps. The other books of the Jeremianic Corpus, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah, and Baruch, are completely transmitted. In contrast, there are only meager remnants of Susanna, Daniel, and Bel and the Dragon. The fragmentation is so severe that transmission of these books in biblical manuscripts can only be confirmed if they are added to a manuscript containing other books (e.g., lcbm sa 2037, or sa 2040). Isolated leaves and fragments could equally have been part of manuscripts of the Odes, or excerpts for magical purposes. What is more, additions to chapter 3 of Daniel (Prayer of Azariah, Song of the Three) were very prominent in liturgy and popular culture.

Although only vestiges of the Fayyumic version of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah, Baruch, Susanna, and Daniel are preserved, they are significant enough to suggest that there was once a complete Fayyumic version of the Major Prophets (Boud’hors 2006). An outstanding case, of course, is the transmission of an early Fayyumic version of Lamentations in one of the oldest manuscripts, P. Bil. 1 Hamburg, with (Greek and) Coptic biblical texts that we Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 22 F. Feder, Old Testament, Coptic Versions of the: Update 22 November 2023 have already discussed (see section 2.2). It seems that we must grant this Fayyumic witness of Lamentations the same originality as that given to P. Vatican Copto 9 for the Minor Prophets. Text-historical research on the Major Prophets is unevenly distributed. There is no critical edition or text-historical study of the book of Isaiah. Nevertheless, the current work of CoptOT confirms that all Sahidic manuscripts, from the fourth century to the fourteenth century, show very stable text transmission almost without variation. We can safely say that the Sahidic transmission of the text of Isaiah results from the Sahidic Standard Translation (Suciu 2020), and when the digital critical edition is published in the near future, we will be able to demonstrate reliable results. The Sahidic Jeremianic Corpus (i.e., Jeremiah, Lamentations, Epistle of Jeremiah, and Baruch) was edited and studied by me (Feder 2002).

This is a critical edition in the strict sense, as it notes not only the inner Sahidic variants but also the variant readings compared to the Greek lxx. It demonstrated that the same textual stability existed for the text of Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Epistle of Jeremiah, from the earliest manuscripts to the latest. Only the book of Baruch, as it is transmitted in the earliest manuscript P. Bodmer xxii (sa 2003, late fourth–fifth century), was later revised, but without completely abandoning the original textual basis (Feder 2002: 64–69). Text-historical analysis revealed that the books of the Jeremianic Corpus show the same Hexaplaric-type variant readings compared to the main Greek witnesses—which align the text closer to the (Hebrew) Masoretic Text like the witnesses of the Origenic and Lucianic recensions— as in 1 Kingdoms. However, these readings do not correspond to any known Greek lxx text type, so the exact Greek model for the Sahidic translation of these books remains obscure (Feder 2002: 69–78). Although nothing comparable exists for the book of Ezekiel, a digital critical edition by CoptOT is in preparation and will yield results very soon.

The classical Bohairic version is completely preserved and extant in many (late) manuscripts. However, none of the manuscripts themselves have been published. We are still dependent on the only available edition, from 1852 (Tattam 1852). Since the nineteenth century it has been postulated that the Bohairic version would be independent from the Sahidic. Although this is likely to be correct, no definitive proof for this hypothesis has been provided. A crucial witness could be P. Bodmer 44 (with five complementary leaves in the Palau Ribes Collection in Barcelona), which contains the Daniel corpus in Bohairic in a parchment manuscript from the ninth–tenth century and is the oldest extant manuscript of the Bohairic Major Prophets still without an Arabic translation. Its edition in the Coptotvmr is currently being prepared by Daniel Sharp, and this will certainly put our knowledge of the classical Bohairic version on a new footing.