Tuesday, March 12, 2024

The effects of Egyptian dialect on Late-Antique literature

One issue as is had in "Syriac" studies is dialect. This is acute when people start talking about the Qurân and Islamic literature generally, where it takes in loanwords as are Aramaic. Which Aramaic, Alphonse Mingana's readers should have shouted at him. Palaestinian Aramaic flutters around the edges of the essays in Christmas in the Koran but otherwise little consistent and serious has been done on these dialects until, I think, van Putten in 2020ish. Dialect also affects how the Christian Bible entered into Aramaic, and if a Jewish Bible preceded it; Joosten has been working this angle.

Anyway: the Copts. This blog doesn't recommend oecumenical dialogue with Miaphysites. However there do exist in Egypt, Catholic brethren as well, and some pay respect to the indigenous Christian language. But then comes the next question - which?

Coptic is negligible in Quran as compared with Syriac, even Latin (qasr, sirât, I'd add burûj). What Coptic does affect, is the translation-history of the Bible in Egypt, alongside apocryphal texts like "Thomas" (the upstream monks were... lax, on the distinction). What was the state of the Greek Bible, when it got up there? Also: we might be interested in the Coptic which formed the basis of the Patriarch histories, or of John of Nikiu.

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