Great moments in textual transmission.

[mlinssen]

What do we think of the following listing from A Concise Coptic-English Lexicon (1999), by Richard H. Smith (the same Richard H. Smith who coedited Ancient Christian Magic with Marvin W. Meyer)?


Smith, Page 28, & Gathercole, Page 545.png

You're a madman Ben! LOL. Greatly appreciated, thank you very much.

My "great" in the butter bread example was off, the Coptic means literally great, not grand or splendid or anything. It's been a busy week with 14 hour work days and then some chores on top of that, sorry

Yes, fine and grand summary. What we see is that the first word in Crum is the dairy, with milk, butter and cheese. The second is the leaven, but how that relates to milk is unknown to me

Your last example is splendid. And you're in for a long story

Gathercole, like Deconick, has little understanding of Coptic, if any. He has 12 transcription errors in his book, still better than the dozens that others have. April starts her booklet with misspelling the word hidden in the prologue, she has a ⲧ where it says ⲡ. I haven't even scanned it much, after that, but she translates at will. She could have written without the transcription, likely even without having read Thomas

They all translate it with leaven, they don't care what it says, and highly likely don't even know. Smith I'd think differently of, but apparently not!
Marvin Meyer? A popular translator, his is a imprecise as they get. I criticise Lambdin for translating on the fly, but Meyer is much worse

Grondin translates it with leaven, but he just follows the crowd. I asked him and he stated that he was not one to criticise the big minds, and I think that goes for many. Then again Grondin only cares for his letter count and doesn't give a damn about what the text says. He even very much dislikes my theory just because it's nothing like his

If we get more people like this, at some point we will start believing that ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ indeed does mean leaven, because that's how language works: majority game

[Ben C. Smith]

What do we think of the following listing from A Concise Coptic-English Lexicon (1999), by Richard H. Smith (the same Richard H. Smith who coedited Ancient Christian Magic with Marvin W. Meyer)?


Smith, Page 28, & Gathercole, Page 545.png

You're a madman Ben! LOL. Greatly appreciated, thank you very much.

No problem.

My "great" in the butter bread example was off, the Coptic means literally great, not grand or splendid or anything.

So "great" as in great in size?

Yes, fine and grand summary. What we see is that the first word in Crum is the dairy, with milk, butter and cheese. The second is the leaven, but how that relates to milk is unknown to me

You do not buy Crum's explanation, then?

They all translate it with leaven, they don't care what it says, and highly likely don't even know. Smith I'd think differently of, but apparently not! Grondin translates it with leaven, but he just follows the crowd.

Apparently Bentley Layton and Thomas O. Lambdin, too:

Coptic Gnostic Library 2, Pages 86-87.png (34.8 KiB) Viewed 8143 times

Are there any Coptologists out there who dissent?

[mlinssen]

My "great" in the butter bread example was off, the Coptic means literally great, not grand or splendid or anything.

So "great" as in great in size?

Yes

Yes, fine and grand summary. What we see is that the first word in Crum is the dairy, with milk, butter and cheese. The second is the leaven, but how that relates to milk is unknown to me

You do not buy Crum's explanation, then?

My mother anyways told me never to take kitchen advice from a Coptologist
(I'm kidding, I haven't bothered to look up the reference)

They all translate it with leaven, they don't care what it says, and highly likely don't even know. Smith I'd think differently of, but apparently not! Grondin translates it with leaven, but he just follows the crowd.

Apparently Bentley Layton and Thomas O. Lambdin, too:


Coptic Gnostic Library 2, Pages 86-87.png


Are there any Coptologists out there who dissent?

No, none. They all, without exception, translate the gospel of Thomas the same. They all make the exact same errors, emend without emendations, and write down as they please.
I talked to Miroshnikov about logion 74, he stated that the text was corrupt - he was the first to actually say something about what was wrong, viz. the two female articles to the two male nouns. I then asked him whether there were more errors like that in Thomas, or at all. He didn't respond

And I can tell you that there aren't, it's just as my translation says: only these two errors in the entire text, of the exact same type, in one and the same logion. What are the odds?

Yes, it's me, an amateur, up against all the Coptologists in the world. Well, me and Crum, because I don't have an opinion on Coptic, I couldn't possibly have one

[Ben C. Smith]

My mother anyways told me never to take kitchen advice from a Coptologist
(I'm kidding, I haven't bothered to look up the reference)

Fortunately, we do not have to rely here upon Coptologists. We are basically talking about clabber, or clabbered milk (the source for the brand name of probably the most popular baking powder in the US):

Nathalie Dupree & Cynthia Graubart, Southern Biscuits, page 22: 22 “Without refrigeration, milk soured quickly, becoming "clabber" or butter-milk because it had pieces of soured milk that looked buttery. Clabber was common, and it was useful for baking, adding acid that aided in leavening, and had a piquant, tart flavor.”

Clabber (Wikipedia): Clabber is a type of soured milk. It is produced by allowing unpasteurized milk to turn sour (ferment) at a specific humidity and temperature. Over time, the milk thickens or curdles into a yogurt-like substance with a strong, sour flavor. / In rural areas of the Southern United States, it was commonly eaten for breakfast with brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, or molasses added. Some people also eat it with fruit or black pepper and cream. Prior to the now-popular use of baking powder, clabber was used as a quick leavener in baking.

Basically, baking powder = baking soda + acid. Cream of tartar has been a common acid to use. And, in the past, so was clabbered/soured/curdled milk. Clabber Girl, a complete baking powder requiring only the addition of a liquid for its leavening power, is essentially a quick and handy kitchen replacement for clabber.

(Sorry for the digression. Culinary history is an abiding interest of mine.)

This use for curdled or soured milk would be the connection that Crum is drawing between the two semantic ranges of ⲥⲓⲣ. Curdled milk is a leavening agent.

[mlinssen]

My mother anyways told me never to take kitchen advice from a Coptologist
(I'm kidding, I haven't bothered to look up the reference)

Fortunately, we do not have to rely here upon Coptologists. We are basically talking about clabber, or clabbered milk (the source for the brand name of probably the most popular baking powder in the US):

Nathalie Dupree & Cynthia Graubart, Southern Biscuits, page 22: 22 “Without refrigeration, milk soured quickly, becoming "clabber" or butter-milk because it had pieces of soured milk that looked buttery. Clabber was common, and it was useful for baking, adding acid that aided in leavening, and had a piquant, tart flavor.”

Clabber (Wikipedia): Clabber is a type of soured milk. It is produced by allowing unpasteurized milk to turn sour (ferment) at a specific humidity and temperature. Over time, the milk thickens or curdles into a yogurt-like substance with a strong, sour flavor. / In rural areas of the Southern United States, it was commonly eaten for breakfast with brown sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, or molasses added. Some people also eat it with fruit or black pepper and cream. Prior to the now-popular use of baking powder, clabber was used as a quick leavener in baking.

Basically, baking powder = baking soda + acid. Cream of tartar has been a common acid to use. And, in the past, so was clabbered/soured/curdled milk. Clabber Girl, a complete baking powder requiring only the addition of a liquid for its leavening power, is essentially a quick and handy kitchen replacement for clabber.

(Sorry for the digression. Culinary history is an abiding interest of mine.)

This use for curdled or soured milk would be the connection that Crum is drawing between the two semantic ranges of ⲥⲓⲣ. Curdled milk is a leavening agent.

You amaze me Ben, marvelous. Thank you, that is it then. Milk as root, going in two directions: butter or cheese, processed by humans, and leaven, processed by nature?

[Ben C. Smith]

You amaze me Ben, marvelous. Thank you, that is it then. Milk as root, going in two directions: butter or cheese, processed by humans, and leaven, processed by nature?

Thanks.

Crum and Westendorf both mention the Hebrew שְׂאֹר in this connection:

Exodus 12.15: 15 “‘Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread, but on the first day you shall remove leaven [שְּׂאֹר, ζύμην] from your houses; for whoever eats anything leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.’”

Exodus 12.19: 19 “‘Seven days there shall be no leaven [שְׂאֹר, ζύμη] found in your houses; for whoever eats what is leavened, that person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is an alien or a native of the land.’”

Exodus 13.7: “Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and nothing leavened shall be seen among you, nor shall any leaven [שְׂאֹר, ζύμη] be seen among you in all your borders.”

Leviticus 2.11: 11 “‘No grain offering, which you bring to Yahweh, shall be made with leaven [שְׂאֹר, ζύμην], for you shall not offer up in smoke any leaven or any honey as an offering by fire to Yahweh.’”

Deuteronomy 16.4: 4 “For seven days no leaven [שְׂאֹר, ζύμη] shall be seen with you in all your territory, and none of the flesh which you sacrifice on the evening of the first day shall remain overnight until morning.”

J. Černý has the fullest treatment of the matter that I have found so far, stating that the Semitic root lurking behind שְׂאֹר is the point of origin for ⲥⲓⲣ, and that both relevant ⲥⲓⲣ lexemes are the same word:

Černý, Page 160.png (85.87 KiB) Viewed 8126 times

This directionality would basically line up with your suggested trajectory, with the simple modification that "milk," per se, is not the root, but rather curdled or soured milk. (Correct me if I am wrong, but if you wished to talk about just plain old milk in Coptic, there is another word, right?)

[Secret Alias]

FWIW In the gematria of Eleazar of Worms, the Hebrew words "temunah" (image) and "parsuf 'adam" (human face) both had the numerological value of 501. Eleazar used this equivalence to argue that, in several Biblical passages, God appeared to His prophets in the form of a human face.

ראש = head. The ראש = Christ.

the verb ארש = betroth. A step before actual consummating a marriage.

The sages also think this is connected to tetzaveh (also 501) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetzaveh

For those who are interested the tradition goes back to Maimonides the very pillar of orthodoxy - https://www.zefat.ac.il/media/3589/maim ... bbalah.pdf. Abulafia (1271–1291) too. "... and let god forgive me for what I shall reveal of that matter whose secret is temunah and its meaning is Parzuf Adam."

[mlinssen]

J. Černý has the fullest treatment of the matter that I have found so far, stating that the Semitic root lurking behind שְׂאֹר is the point of origin for ⲥⲓⲣ, and that both relevant ⲥⲓⲣ lexemes are the same word:


Černý, Page 160.png


This directionality would basically line up with your suggested trajectory, with the simple modification that "milk," per se, is not the root, but rather curdled or soured milk. (Correct me if I am wrong, but if you wished to talk about just plain old milk in Coptic, there is another word, right?)

I'm not sure about that, because a root distinguishes itself by phase, form, anything. Curdled or sour milk already is very close to butter and leaven, and most certainly past the stage that colostrum is in.
I agree with the latter, yes, Thomas picks his words with extreme care, and I merely glanced at the word you just provided but no, he could have picked that if he wanted to

In the picture you show, it is exactly like you argued a few posts back: the first ⲥⲓⲣ is the root, translated with colostrum / butter; and the derived is below, ⲥⲓⲣ again, yet meaning leaven, and that is linked to the Hebrew. So the point of origin is not the latter, but the former

A very nice visual again, thank you Ben. It looks like we're at the bottom of this word - just one single word LOL

[Ben C. Smith]

I'm not sure about that, because a root distinguishes itself by phase, form, anything. Curdled or sour milk already is very close to butter and leaven, and most certainly past the stage that colostrum is in.

Okay, but none of those is just plain milk. That is what I am saying.

[DCHindley]

Something that struck me about the alternate meanings Milk/Butter & Leaven is that both fatten things up (leaven makes bread or cake rise, and for newborn men or beasts milk/butter in their diet makes them grow up stronger). The basic meaning, then, might be simply fattening something up.

DCH (taking my union mandated afternoon break, boss ... )