James M. Leonard, Codex Schøyen: A Middle Egyptian Coptic Witness to the Early Greek Text of Matthew’s Gospel: A Study in Translation Theory, Indigenous Coptic, and New Testament Textual Criticism

It deals with a fascinating manuscript housed in the Schyen Collection, near Oslo, Norway: MS 2650, siglum mae 2 , which was first published by no other than Hans-Martin Schenke in 2001.In honor of Hans Martin Schyen, he called it "Codex Schyen," the name by which it has been known since then.Schenkes edition raised a stir among scholars because according to him mae 2 , dated to the fourth century, (1) might represent a rather early and significant witness to a (rather) independent text of the Gospel of Matthew in a minor Coptic dialect, (2) is to be regarded as one of the oldest Middle-Egyptian translations of all, and (3) has a complicated textual history going back to a Hebrew or Aramaic Gospel of Matthew (3-6).Leonard himself argues-on the basis of Coptic grammar and linguistic analyses-for a Greek Matthew as the origin of Codex Schyen being close to (almost) contemporary Codices Sinaiticus (01) and Vaticanus (03).2To cut a long story short, Leonard succeeds in convincingly reevaluating certain reconstructed passages by Schenke and in substantial reasoning for his thesis.His conclusions are drawn from a considerable number of variants and grammatical reflections, so that mae 2 can be associated with the customary main text(s) of the canonical New Testament and be placed within the main witnesses we take as guarantees for the critical Greek text we work with today.