15. THE NEW REVISION OF THE BIBLE.--The convocation of the English House of Bishops, which met at Canterbury in 1870, recommended a revised version of the Scriptures, and appointed a committee for the work of sixty-seven members from various ecclesiastical bodies of England, to which an American committee of thirty-five was added, and by their joint labors the revised edition of the New Testament was issued in 1881. The revised Old Testament is expected to appear during 1884. The advantages claimed for these new versions are: a more accurate rendering of the text, a correction of the errors of former translations, the removal of misleading archaisms and obsolete terms, better punctuation, arrangement in sections as well as chapters and verses, the metrical arrangement of poetry, and an increased number of marginal readings.
In 1875, Bryennios, a metropolitan of the Greek Church, discovered in the library of the Most Holy Sepulchre at Constantinople a manuscript belonging to the second century A.D., which contains, among other valuable and interesting documents, one on the "Teaching of the Twelve Apostles," many points of which bear on the usages of the church, such as the mode of baptism, the celebration of the Eucharist, and the orders of the ministry. It was at first considered authentic and highly important, but more deliberate study tends to discredit its authority.
1. The Language.--2. The Writing.--3. The Literature.--4. The Monuments. --5. The Discovery of Champollion.--6. Literary Remains; Historical; Religious; Epistolary; Fictitious; Scientific; Epic; Satirical and Judicial.--7. The Alexandrian Period.--8. The Literary Condition of Modern Egypt.
1. THE LANGUAGE.--From the earliest times the language of Egypt was divided into three dialects: the Memphitic, spoken in Memphis and Lower Egypt; the Theban, or Sahidic, spoken in Upper Egypt; and the Bashmuric, a provincial variety belonging to the oases of the Lybian Desert.
The Coptic tongue, which arose from a union of ancient Egyptian with the vulgar vernacular, later became mingled with Greek and Arabic words, and was written in the Greek alphabet. It was used in Egypt until the tenth century A.D., when it gave way to the Arabic; but the Christians still preserve it in their worship and in their translation of the Bible. By rejecting its foreign elements Egyptologists have been enabled to study this language in its purity, and to establish its grammar and construction. It is the exclusive character of the Christian Egyptian literature, and marks the last development and final decay of the Egyptian language.