Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts : Acts and Epistles book

Medieval and Early Modern Greek Manuscripts

<p style='text-align: justify;'>This fragment, which has been variously dated to between the 6th and the 9th century, is a bifolium from an Acts and Epistles book in Coptic and Greek. The bulk of the text is Coptic, including most of the last two chapters of the Letter to Titus and all of the Letter to Philemon. However, one column of text and seven lines of the adjacent column are in Greek, containing part of the Letter to Titus. The Greek text constitutes only 15% of the total, leaving most of the Coptic text without a Greek counterpart, while the arrangement does not divide up into corresponding columns respectively in the two langauges.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>It has been argued that the Greek text was copied into the manuscript in error (Elliott, 'Greek-Coptic (Sahidic) fragment', pp. 183-184). However, the fragment has subsequently been identified as belonging to the same source manuscript as three other small fragments (Aland, <i>Kurzgefasste Liste</i>, p. 314). These also include Greek text as well as Coptic, from other Epistles, though again less extensive than the Coptic text.</p><p style='text-align: justify;'>Dr Christopher Wright</p>