Less *eighty are the rapidly. mu/tiplying Coptic New Testaments in the vanous dialects: (Sahidic) of southern, (Bohairic) of northern, (Fayum-Alchmimic) of middle Egypt. Nearly the whole New Testament may now be pieced together out of fragments in Bohairic; lately has also been found a manuscript (not com plete) of the Gospels in Bohairic with Paul's, Peter's and John's Epistles in Sahidic pos sibly representing a text older than B's or n's; and Dr. Budge has published (1912) the oldest known copy (350?) of any translation of any large part of the Greek New Testament (the Acts and the Apocalypse) in Sahidic (found 1901). Besides Proverbs and the Minor Prophets (the latter not yet published), not much of importance is offered m Fayum-Akh mimic.
More, if not most, important textually are the Old Latin versions, especially current in North Africa. These, displaced (384-400) by Jerome's Vulgate,t reach back into the 2d cen tury, but only of late are coming into their rights as witnesses. Of the 18 fragmentary manuscripts 5 date from the 5th or even the 4th century. Thus far their voice has been faint, but very recent criticism as represented by E. S. Buchanan and others, gives them full ear and would revise thereby the New Testa ment in the most radical manner, claiming a Latin original for Mark's Gospel and regard ing the present accepted New Testament text as the result of a systematic corruption by the hierarchy in a semi-rationalistic sense. What ever may be the final verdict of criticism, it seems certain that the deeper study.of the Old Latin texts is both imperative and hopeful. Hardly less, nay, even more important than Grenfell and Hunt's unearthing of New Testa ment texts was their discovery (1896), of seven (Logie or Sayings of the Jesus, copied in the 3d century and referred directly to the Jesus by the recurring formula: ((The Jesus says (6 'Iqeovc A4yei), seeming to indicate high antiq uity. Several such were already known from extra-canonical sources: but the newest seemed to form part of a handsome volume and breathed a more mystical speculative spirit than prevails in the Canonic Gospels. In 1903, Grenfell and Hunt, on returning to Oxyrhyn chus, exhumed five more such ancient Oracles (42 lines), written on the back of a list of land-surveys not later than 300 Am., oracles of highly Christian but not quite canonic tone, veering still more from the Synoptics toward the mystical Fourth Gospel. In collected form these (Logia' seemed to be not later and most probably much earlier than 140, in fact, quite as primitive as any Gospel, if not indeed present ing the very earliest known form in which ((The (Doctrine) concerning the Jesus* (r4 repi roll 'ItMa) was reduced to writing.
This momentous find has been supplemented in various directions. It had long been known that Tatian, the Syrian rhetorician and friend of Justin Martyr, had produced about the year 170 (180?) a (Diatessaron,) a kind of Gospel Harmony, which in spite of criticism and in spite of the virtual absence of the human in its Jesus, almost displaced the Canonics in the Syrian Church (especially at Edessa) and was laid by Ephraem Syrus at the base of his Gospel Commentary (4th century), though itself displaced* in the 5th century by the Peshitta version of the Edessan Bishop Rabbula (411-35). But Tatian's (Diatessaror0 was known only from one in complete manuscript of an Arabic version (14th century , a Latin version (Fuldensis, 6th and the Commentary of Ephraem till 1888, w en Ciasca published, with Latin trans lation, a far better Arabic text (11th century translated from Syriac in the 9th century, which omitted the last 12 verses of Mark as well as the Lucan incidents of the bloody sweat and prayer on the cross (xxii, 43-44, xxiii, 34). The (Diatessaron,) by its early testimony to a Four fold Tradition, has brought the orthodox much satisfaction not untempered with keen regret that in stressing the divinity it has slighted the humanity of the Saviour. Far more important the discovery, announced 1875 by Bishop Philo theus Bryennios, in the library of the Jerusalem Monastery of the Most Holy Sepulchre in the Phanar of Constantinople, of a parchment volume (copied and dated 11 June 1056, by the and sinner,* Leon) of 120 leaves, containing besides the so-called Epistles of Clement to the Corinthians and other less in teresting matter, 10 priceless pages written with the (Didache), a long-lost document of two parts, often mentioned in early Christian literature, composed probably before and containing matter far more primitive. Published in 1883, after a strangely accurate forecast•by Adam lerawutzely, 1M, it startled all Christendom with its voice, silent for 16 centuries. The earliest manual of Christian theory and practice, it is full of parallels to the teaching of the New Testa ment, agreeing strikingly in phraseology with the Gospels, but with hardly the slightest al lusion to the familiar narrative element. Of course, it has been a storm-centre of discussion, but its witness remains unimpeached and un equivocal.