NEW BIBLE MS.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 91, 4 June 1912, Page 1

NEW BIBLE MS.

'The Times' lately contained an account of an important Biblical discovery in Egypt—that of an old papyrus volume containing the text of the greater part of the Hook of Deuteronomy, the whole of Jonah, and nearly all tho Acts of the Apostles. Written in the dialect of Upper Egypt, the volume was found last year and acquired by the British Museum Trustees, who have now printed the documents in a volume entitled "Cop, tio Biblical Teste in the Dialect of Dp. per Egypt" (15s net, and sold at British Museum, Longmans and Co., Bernard Quaritch, Asher and Co., and Henry FrowdeJ. The three books are evidently copies made for or by some person for private use from an existing manuscript, and are' not ind«|i>endent translations. The script was probably written not later than the mid die of the fourth Cfentury. The new manuscript "proves beyond doubt that copies of the Egyptian, *»v is to say Coptic, translation of some of the books of the Old and New Testaments were in use among Egyptian Christians in the early portion of the fourth century, therefore the origin of the version cannot be placed later than the third century." The manuscript is the earliest known copy of any translation of any considerable portion of the Greek Bible, and is probably as early aa any copy now in existence of any substantial part of the Bible.