Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia — G. R. S. Mead — Section 30

we thus may account for some puzzling repetitions and for equally puzzling lacunfe. What was the histoi-y of the MS. after that date is almost impossible even to conjecture. Its history must, however, have been exciting enough for it to have escaped the hands of fanatics both Christian and Mohammedan. It was during this period also that some of the pages, as we have seen, w^ere lost. May we not also hope that Abyssinia and Upper Egypt may still preserve some MSS. that may throw further light on this obscure but most interesting subject? In fact, I was told in 1891 by Achinoff, chief of the Free Cossacks, a resident in the country, that the monasteries of Abyssinia do actually contain a mass of very ancient MSS. which would be of exceeding great value to the scholarship of Europe. In presenting the following translation to the English- reading public, I may say that I should not have The ventured on such an undertaking if any Coptic t^ansla- scholar had undertaken the task, or I had heard apolo- that such a task was contemplated. In a matter 8^^' of such difficulty every possible liability to error should be eliminated, and it stands to reason that the translation of a translation must needs be but an apology for a first-hand version. Nevertheless I am not without predecessors. The Coptic MS. itself is in the first place a translation, so that even Coptic scholars must give us the translation of a translation. I am persuaded also that the anonymous and imperfect French translation in the Appendix to Migne's Dictionnaire des Apocryphes (vol. i.) is made from Schwartze's Latin version and not from the Coptic text. C. W. King in his Gnostics and their Kemains has also translated a number of pages of the Pistis Sophia from Schwartze. Some three or four years ago Mr. Xutt, King's publisher, sent out a notice for the publication of the whole of King's translation, but the project fell through. Last year I oflFered to edit this translation of King's, but was informed that the literary legatee of the deceased scholar was of XXXVl INTRODUCTION.