GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLIV, Issue 750, 5 July 1923, Page 5

GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

COPTIC VERSION FOUND.

LONDON, July 3. A copy of one of the earliest Coptlo versions of St. John's Gospel is being exhibited at tho University College. It is dated 400 A.D., and has not yet been translated, But it seems certain that it will throw an important light on Bible study, by showing how the Greek text of the Gospels was interpreted in Egypt in tho fifth century. The copy was found written on about a hundred leaves ol papyrus, wrapped in rags and buried in a pot in tho Qua-el-Kebir cemetery. Apparently it was hastily hidden during the Moslem invasion of Egypt. Tho cemetery is a great hill of rock, riddled with tombs, thirty miles south of Asyut. Near bv wore fossilised human bones. Sir W. Flinders Petrio estimates the bones to be at least fifty thousand years old. These bones had been collected by some ivory worker, and were, found in his studio, along with ivory carvings in various stages of completion. Sir W. Flinders Petrie, the famous Egyptologist, in a letter to the Times dealing with the .operations of tho British School of Archaeology at Qua-el-Kebir, declared that the objects found cover every period prehistoric to Coptic. The work has had an important result on Egyptian history, clearing up the period between the sixth and eleventh dynasties.—A. and N.Z. oable.