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Very interesting piece of information regarding the importance of Coptic Bible fragments:

"Because the climate of Egypt is especially favorable for the preservation of antiquities—desert conditions prevail south of Cairo, as one goes up the Nile Valley—an astonishing number of very early Coptic manuscripts have been discovered, dating from AD 300 onwards, and the number continues to grow.

"Coptic literature, which survives in a number of dialects, comprises both original works and translations from the Greek and was mostly intended for use in the non-Greek churches and monasteries of Egypt. It includes several translations of the Bible made from Greek starting about AD 300, which are a very early indirect attestation of the Greek text and a direct indication of an Egyptian (perhaps Alexandrian) understanding of what it meant: the Coptic versions are of great importance to modern scholars of Biblical textual criticism." ~COPTIC IN 20 LESSONS by Bentley Layton - Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University.

More information on the importance of ancient Coptic bible texts By Tommy Richards

Read free online: "Coptic Biblical texts in the dialect of Upper Egypt" by Budge, E. A. Wallis, Sir, 1857-1934

"Contains Coptic versions of the Books of Deuteronomy, Jonah, and the Acts of the Apostles, from the papyrus Codex Oriental no. 7594, and the Book of the Apocalypse from the paper manuscript, Oriental no. 6803."

"The oldest known copy of any translation of ... the Greek Bible."

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Budge says in the Preface: "The texts in the papyrus Codex are of great importance, for the script in the Greek hand which comes at the end of the Acts of the Apostles proves that the volume cannot have been written later than the middle of the fourth century. Hence it is now certain that copies of some Books of the Old and New Testaments, written in Coptic, were in circulation among the Egyptian Christians early in the first half of this century: and it is legitimate to conclude that the origin of the version itself cannot be placed later than the third century. The Codex is, in fact, the oldest known copy of any translation of any considerable portion of the Greek Bible: indeed it is probably as early as any copy now in existence of any substantial part of the Bible."

That was in the early 20th century. Not long after, an incredible discovery was made. In the forward of Crum's thousand-page Coptic Dictionary, we read "...Only in rare instances did a Coptic document preserve a text, or part of a text, whose Greek original was lost, in which case it became the only source..." "All this changed dramatically with the discovery late in 1945 of the Nag Hammadi codices. The discovery consisted of thirteen Coptic codices copied about the middle of the fourth century C.E. (A.D.)..." "Suddenly, learning Coptic became the middle-age crisis of the New Testament and Patristics scholars and produced another language requirement for their doctoral students." "The thirteen codices contained fifty-two tractates, but since six are duplicates, there are only 46 works. All are translations from Greek, and most were composed in the second and third centuries C.E." ~Forward by James M. Robinson (The forward contains many more important details which you may read after purchasing online, as I have done.)

As you can probably (hopefully) see, there is good cause for attention to be paid in this field of study!

If anyone is interested in learning basic Coptic language and grammar, I recommend reading and/or printing the [free] book found online: "Layton, Bentley. Coptic in 20 Lessons: Introduction to Sahidic Coptic With Exercises & Vocabularies. Leuven. Paris and Dudley. Peeters, 2006." which is required for Washington University's "COPTIC 101 A: Introduction to Sahidic Coptic".

Best wishes to all, in and through Christ Jesus!

Tommy Richards
https://septuagint-lxx.com
https://spirituallysmart.com

Why ancient Coptic bibles are so important:

The Coptic language is an incredible language based off the Greek. It was in use between 200BC and 1700 and many ancient bibles were translated into Coptic from Greek and was used to preserve the Bible! Yet ANOTHER proven fact of how important and popular the #Septuagint #LXX was and IS. Here is a graph I put together comparing the Coptic alphabet with the Greek alphabet, and a link to the page where I am gathering information and PDFs of Coptic Bibles with Greek and English notes, Coptic dictionaries, Bible commentaries and a learner's Grammar. https://www.septuagint-lxx.com/coptic

May God Almighty bless you through His Christos Son, JESUS. Amen.