Pistis Sophia

Pistis Sophia — G. R. S. Mead — Section 37

u. 1895. Amelineau. Pistis Sophia, Ouvrage gnostique de Valentin, traduit du copte en fran^ais, avec une Introduction (Paris), pp. xxxii. and 204, 8vo. Amelineau goes thoroughly into the Valentinian origin of the treatise, but leans almost exclusively to an Egyptian origin of the ideas. The MS. itself, however, he places very late, writing on page xi. of his Introduction as follows : " After an examination of the enormous faults which the scribe has committed, I cannot attribute to the MS. which has preserved the Pistis Sophia to us, a date later than the ninth or tenth century, and that too the minimum. For this I have several reasons. Firstly, the MS. is written on parchment, and parchment was hardly ever commonly used in Egypt before the sixth or seventh century. Secondly, the writing, which is uncial, though passable in the first pages of the MS., becomes bastard in a large number of leaves, when the scribe's hand is fatigued ; no longer is it the beautiful writing of the Egyptian scribes of the great periods, but slack, inconsistent, almost round and hurried. Thirdly, the faults of orthography in the use of Greek words INTRODUCTION. xliii evidently show that the scribe belonged to a" period when Greek was almost no longer known." In a footnote Am^lineau says that he is perfectly aware that this opinion of his will "raise a tempest," and begs for a suspension of judgment till he has published his reasons as to the late use of parchment, at greater length. Now it was Ptolemy II. (Philadelphus), King of Egypt from 283-247 b.c, who fox'bade the exportation of papy- rus from Egypt, and forced the rival bibliophiles at Pergamus to copy their books on parchment. The library of Pergamus was bequeathed to the Senate of Rome, and Antony handed it over to Cleopatra somewhere about 35 B.C. ; this library, consisting for the most part of parchment rolls and books, was placed in the new Brucheion at Alexandria, to replace the old Library which was totally destroyed by the fire of Caesar's fleet in 47. Parchment, then, was common enough as a book-fabric in Alexandria, at least 600 years before Am^lineau's limit.