Coptic Versions of the Bible

There have been many Coptic versions of the Bible, including some of the earliest translations into any language. Several different versions were made in the ancient world, with different editions of the Old and New Testament in all four of the major dialects of Coptic: Bohairic (northern), Fayyumic, Sahidic (southern), Akhmimic, and Mesokemic. Biblical books were translated from the Alexandrian Greek version.

The Sahidic was the leading dialect in the pre-Islamic period, after the 11th century Bohairic became dominant and only used dialect of the Coptic language.

Partial copies of a number of Coptic Bibles survive. A considerable number of apocryphal texts also survive in Coptic, most notably the Gnostic Nag Hammadi library. Coptic remains the liturgical language of the Coptic Church and Coptic editions of the Bible are central to that faith.

Translators of books of the Old Testament into Egyptian dialects were naturally made from the Alexandrian Greek version (Septuagint), and there is no reason to doubt that they were translated at as early a date as the Gospels and Epistles, if not indeed before them. Portions of the Old Testament exist in each Egyptian dialect.

In Sahidic, some Biblical books survived with complete text, there is a large number of extant fragments representing most of the canonical books and certain of the deutero-canonical (the two Wisdoms, the Epistle of Jeremiah, and the Greek additions to Daniel).

Some early manuscripts:

The two main dialects, Sahidic and Bohairic, are the most important for the study of early versions of the New Testament. The Sahidic was the leading dialect in the pre-Islamic period. The earliest Bohairic manuscripts date to the 4th century , but most texts come from the 9th century and later.

The collection of manuscripts of Sahidic translations is often designated by cop^sa in academic writing and critical apparatus ("Sa" for "versio Sahidica" in BHS). The first translation into the Sahidic dialect was made at the end of the 2nd century in Upper Egypt, where Greek was less well understood. So the Sahidic is famous for being the first major literary development of the Coptic language, though literary work in the other dialects soon followed. By the ninth century, Sahidic was gradually replaced by neighbouring Bohairic, and disappeared. Knowledge of the Sahidic manuscripts was lost until they were rediscovered in the 18th century. In 1778 Woide issued a prospectus in which he announced his intention of publishing from Oxford manuscripts the fragments of the New Testament "iuxta interpretationem dialecti Superioris Aegypti, quae Thebaidica seu Sahidica appellantur". Another fragments were published in 1884 by Émile Amélineau. Amélineau also edited other fragments in 1886-1888.

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