Post by Marty FeldmanPost by TyPost by Jeffrey Salzbergsays...
Post by TyPost by Jeffrey SalzbergNo, it's biased when news coverage is deliberately slanted to favor
one
Post by Jeffrey SalzbergPost by TyPost by Jeffrey Salzbergside or another, as you accuse some networks of doing, while
conveniently ignoring the fact that Fox actually does it.
Unlike you, I have given specific examples of recent pro-Kerry bias by
both
Post by Jeffrey SalzbergPost by TyABC and CBS. So please give specific examples of Fox doing anything as
egregious as Dan Rather in Memogate,
If you'd bothered to actually follow what was happening, of course,
you'd know, as most of the rest of us do, that CBS was victimized by a
self-agrandizing forger.
Oh, I see. CBS chooses to rely on obviously forged memos, ignores the
warnings from its own experts that they are fake, uncritically relies on an
obviously mentally unstable rabid Bush hater, and runs a story that
effectively accuses Bush of desertion two months before a presidential
election. When it is brought to their attention that the memos are obviously
fraudulent, CBS then lies about what it's experts said, and engages in a
desperate attempt to shore up and utterly indefensible position. This makes
CBS a victim??
Post by Jeffrey SalzbergYou'd also have noticed that when the forgery was discovered, CBS
immediately retracted
<stunned look>
This is an outright false statement. You are either completely ignorant of
what happened, or you are intentionally lying. CBS only backed off the story
when they became a laughingstock (some weeks later), and after their
feckless attempts to cover up utterly failed. This does not comport with the
generally accepted definition of an "immediate retraction".
And by the way, what about Mark Halperin's memo and ABC?
i thought it was perfectly fair. there's a difference between
stealing $1 vs stealing $1 billion, and journalists should make that
distinction.
i think the memo leak is interesting. hey, marky mark, wanna know who
leaked it? it's easy. it's the person on your team who hates kerry
the most. you know who that is. wanna know something else? that
person will lie like a persian rug in denying it.
hate not knowing for certain who it is or how corrosive leaks can be
for your morale and/or your team's morale? that's easy to fix. stop
caring about your staff (much like how the note doesn't really care
about the country) and become insufferably trivial like the rest of
political media. c'mon, it's fun and easy this way! yay!
THE HISTORY OF THE COPTIC LANGUAGE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I. Definition
II. Short History of the Egyptian Language before Coptic
III. Origin of Coptic among Egyptian Pagans:
IV. Origin of Coptic among Christians in Egypt
V. Dialects
VI. The Golden age of Coptic:
VII. Coptic During the Early Arabic Period (7th to 10th Century AD)
VIII. Coptic versus Arabic (from 11th to 14th Century AD.)
IX. Coptic Decline as a Spoken Language (to 17th Century)
X. Revival of Coptic in the 19th Century AD
XI. Coptic in the 20th Century
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I. Definition
The Coptic Language is the name used to refer to the last stage of the
written Egyptian language. Coptic should more correctly be used to
refer to the script rather than the language itself. Even though this
script was introduced as far back as the 2nd century BC., it is usually
applied to the writing of the Egyptian language from the first century
AD. to the present day.
II. Short History of the Egyptian Language before Coptic
The ancient Egyptians devised a writing system to record their spoken
language over 60 centuries ago. The first application seems to have
been the calendar. The system started by giving each word a symbol,
called hieroglyph. This convention was of course doomed because of the
tremendous vocabulary it would have generated. Out of such ideas they
took some of these hieroglyphs and associated a sound value to them
which, when combined together, would spell out the spoken word. The
sound values of such characters depended mostly on the pronunciation of
the word that it denoted in the early stage. Thus the hieroglyph for
mouth, pronounced 'ro' became the sound 'r' in the new system. About
130 hieroglyphs have been identified as voiced characters. Some
represented a single sound, others a two-character sound, and some a
three-character sound. Many more hieroglyphs were added to represent
the idea or to enhance the meaning of the word. These are commonly
referred to as 'ideograms' and they brought the number of identified
hieroglyphs to over 4,000. This script, popularly called hieroglyphic,
was both beautifully drawn as well colorfully painted. It was used for
inscription on Egyptian monuments as well as a variety of written texts
on papyrus.
In parallel with the development of the hieroglyphic script, a second
script came to light. Such script was a mere simplification of the
artistic, and sometimes laborious, hieroglyphic. It was originally
devised by the priests to record the records of the temples and then
became a tool of the government servants, educated by the learned
priests, who used it to record the affairs of the state. Due to the
priestly origin of the script the name 'hieretic' was popularly affixed
to it. This script used the same symbols, drawn in a simplified way.
There is no indication that script had as many ideograms as the
hieroglyphic had.
With the decline of the state such a cumbersome writing method became
impossible to preserve it as is. So in the fifth century BC. a new
script was devised that was both simpler to write and included about
ten percent of the total number of hieroglyphs used previously. This
new script came to be referred to as 'Demotic'. The cursive, and
relatively ugly appearance of characters, in comparison to the
hieroglyphic, was compensated for by its relative compactness. Many
written records were preserved in that script but they dared not
inscribe it on temple walls.
III. Origin of Coptic among Egyptian Pagans:
In 313 BC. Alexander the Great invaded Egypt. His legacy was carried on
by his general Ptolemeus and his successors in Egypt. That legacy,
simply stated, was to have a universal culture. Such culture would of
course be the Greek or Hellenistic one. With the culture comes the
language, so it became the proper way for the educated classes to learn
Greek and encourage their children to learn it for the economical as
well as the social advantages. In script, the Greek was far superior to
the Demotic, the last surviving Egyptian script at the time. It offered
24 characters all pronounceable as opposed to over 400 symbols that
only a small percentage represented sounds and the rest were ideograms.
It is important to note here that the Greeks learned their writing
system from the Egyptians through the frequent travelers of the ancient
world, the Phoenicians. In the course of their commercial dealings with
the Egyptians, the Phoenicians imported the Egyptian script and molded
it into an alphabet with a far smaller number of characters, all
pronounceable and all consonants. As they traveled the Mediterranean
and traded with the inhabitants of the Greek Isles, they gave their
version of the Egyptian writing system to the Greeks. They in turn
revised its orthography and added a number of written vowels. A system
that eventually became the basis for the new Egyptian script, i.e. the
Coptic.
The pagan Egyptian priests, as a result of the invasion of the Greek
language, found themselves at a disadvantage. The source of income as
well as the power of their temples depended a great deal on the making
and the sales of magical amulets. Now these amulets, written in
Egyptian, can not be pronounced by those who can afford to pay for
them. If they can not use, properly or at all, it is safe to say that
they would not buy it. To avert such economic and religious massacre,
they reverted to a transliteration system of these amulets. This new
system used the Greek characters along with several other characters
borrowed from the Demotic to denote sounds not available in Greek. The
economic success of such system made them extend its use to other
applications such as horoscopes and the like. The number of borrowed
Demotic characters eventually were reduced. The resultant script was
highly standardized, in the common tradition of the Ancient Egyptians.
IV. Origin of Coptic among Christians in Egypt
Christianity in Egypt owes its formal introduction to St. Mark the
Evangelist. He most likely came first to Alexandria in the early
fifties of the first century AD., accompanying his uncle St. Barnabas.
This came as a result of the news of Apollo, who represented an
imperfect Christianity that existed in Alexandria at the time. After
the repose of St. Barnabas in Cyprus, St. Mark came again by himself
and started proclaiming the word of God among the Jews. The legacy that
St. Mark left in Egypt was a Christian community made up primarily of
converted hellenized Jews. Christianity remained eclipsed by the
powerful Jewish community in Alexandria at the time. After the Jewish
Revolt in the first quarter of the second century AD. and subsequent
annihilation of the Jews in Alexandria, the Christians of Egypt became
visible to the world.
The first visible signs of such presence were rather blemishing to the
character of the Church. Two teachers of Gnostic, heterodox repute,
traveled abroad at different times during the middle of the second
century AD. They were Basilides and Valentinus. The latter became
infamous due to his quest to be the bishop of Rome. In any case, these
teachers influenced the arrival of Pantanus, the missionary, presumably
to introduce the orthodox teachings of Christianity to a seemingly
Gnostic community. After his arrival he discovered that this was not
exactly the case and there was a strong orthodox community present as a
result of the evangelizing work of St. Mark and his successors. Being a
renowned Christian teacher he was put in charge of the Christian school
of Alexandria, a rather small school that taught those who are willing
to serve the Lord the fundamentals of Christianity. Shortly after his
arrival, St. Demetrius, the first bishop of Egyptian origin, became the
bishop of Alexandria about 189 AD.
The contact between Pantaenus, the missionary, and St. Demetrius the
representative of the large and mostly non-Christian Egyptians was
truly a match made in Heaven. As a result a missionary movement to
convert the Egyptian peasants began. The School of Alexandria probably
became a school to prepare the missionaries and direct their
activities.
The dilemma faced by those responsible for directing such missionary
work was the uniformity of the message to be given to the Egyptians.
The missionaries knew how to read Greek but not Demotic. The Egyptian
peasants did not know how to read either but they understood the sounds
of the language written by the Demotic script, i.e. Egyptian. To insure
that the Word of God, written in the Scriptures, be preached the same
by the different missionaries, it had to be written in a way that the
missionaries can read and the Egyptians can understood when it was read
to them. So the missionaries translated the Scriptures into the
Egyptian tongue but wrote them using the Greek characters they are
familiar with. These attempts differed from those of the pagans in that
they did not use any Demotic character in the beginning. The
shortcomings of that system were eventually realized and more
characters, borrowed from the Demotic, were added to bring them to the
current six or seven additional characters that survived in the Sahidic
and Bohairic dialects respectively.
V. Dialects
Now we see two independent attempts to write the Egyptian language in
new script. Each attempt was unique in its motive, approach, and
audience. Due to the distribution of the population along the length of
the Nile, many dialects developed. Each was characterized by the use of
different vowels in pronouncing the same words as well as some distinct
variation in the vocabulary. The pagans attempted from the start to
develop a uniform written language in a neutral Dialect, the Sahidic.
Because of their early start, they were successful in their efforts and
nearly erased any influence that such regional dialects had on their
own version of Coptic. The Christians on the other hand put the benefit
of the people ahead of proper language development and resurrected all
these regional dialects in a written form. Eventually most of these
dialects fell into disuse as the uniform Sahidic became the more
dominant again. Another factor that affected these the dialects was the
fact that the Coptic language was generally weakened by the influence
of Arabic.
All the dialects were to a large extent geographically-dependent. Their
spanned the entire length of the Nile Valley. Based on literary records
we have such dialects as the Akhmimic and the Lycopolitan (Asyutic)
dialects of Upper Egypt, the Middle Egyptian and the Fayoumic of Middle
Egypt, and the Bohairic of the Delta. Then there is the Sahidic dialect
that became, from the earliest times, a neutral dialect used throughout
Egypt and eventually gained literary dominance with the extensive
writings of St. Shenouda the Archimandrite. There is also a host of
minor dialects as well as subdialects to the ones mentioned above.
Now Bohairic is the only surviving dialect of Coptic. It was kept alive
first by the strength of the monastic communities of Wadi n' Natrun
which used it extensively. Then with the move of the Patriarchate from
Alexandria to Cairo in the 11th century, Bohairic, the dialect of the
District, became the official dialect of the Church replacing the
Sahidic.
VI. The Golden age of Coptic:
Coptic was used from its Christian beginnings in the late second
century AD. till the time of the Great persecution of Diocletian in the
early 4th century AD. predominantly as a translational tool from Greek
to Egyptian. After the persecution, the monastic movement picked up
tremendous steam. It was for the Copts the only way they can express
their great love for God, that they earlier expressed with the willing
sacrifice of their most precious possession, their earthly lives. These
monastic communities were large and mostly Egyptian. This generated the
need for the abbots of these communities to write their rules in their
own language, i.e. Coptic. Also the Fathers of the Coptic Church, who
usually wrote in Greek, addressed some of their works to the Egyptian
monks in Coptic.
So with monastic fathers like St. Antony, St. Pachomius, and St.
Macarius and their respective disciples writing to their monks; and
Church Fathers like St. Athanasius, St. Theophilius, and St. Cyril
writing also to them in Coptic, the Golden Age of Coptic was about to
begin.
It was not until St. Shenouda the Archimandrite came on the scene that
Coptic really achieved its literary excellence. St. Shenouda who lived
from 348 to 466 AD. was able to transform the language form a tool to
communicate instructions to the monks to a wide-variety literary
language that addressed monks, ecclesiastic authorities, laymen, and
even government officials. His charisma, knowledge of Greek language
and rhetoric, and his innovative mind gave him the necessary tools to
elevate the Coptic language, in content and style, to a literary height
never achieved before nor equaled since. The Coptic scholars are
constantly astounded by his great writings as more and more of them are
being studied and accurately published.
This literary legacy continued to a lesser degree through the writings
of his disciple St. Besa in the second half of the fifth century. But
such writings were mostly for the edification of the large monastic
community in the White Monastery. later in the sixth and seventh
centuries other fathers wrote many works in Coptic like Rufus of
Shotep, Constantine of Asyut, and Pisentius of Qift.
VII. Coptic During the Early Arabic Period (7th to 10th Century AD)
By the middle of the seventh century, Egypt came under the dominance of
Arab rulers that eventually tried to force the Copts to learn Arabic to
keep their government jobs. This policy slowly eroded the number of
Coptic lay readers who were mostly from the ranks of these government
workers and their families. In other words the pressure put on such
families to learn Arabic to ensure their continuing service in the
government and the inheritance of such work by their offspring, made
them slowly neglect educating their children in literary Coptic. Within
a few hundred years Bishop Severus of Al-Ashmunain found it necessary
to write his 'History of the Patriarchs' in Arabic to address such a
drastic decline.
Ecclesiastically, the language continued strong. In fact, a great
number of Hagiographic texts were composed during the early parts of
this period. Coptic continued to be used in the Church with Greek as
the second language, as seen from the texts that survived from the
period. However a relatively small number of liturgical manuscripts
survived from such period to show how it was being used. This was due
to the heavy use that such manuscripts were subjected to, poor
preservation during the period of decline in use, and the parchment
material they were written on that did not lend itself to such heavy
use.
During this period some Arabic loan-words made their way into the
language. But there was no indication that the Arabic language was used
in the Church. There were no Coptic-Arabic manuscripts that belong to
this period or any literary citation to indicate its possible use.
Coptic was also the spoken language of the peasants and probably the
clergy.
VIII. Coptic versus Arabic (from 11th to 14th Century AD.)
As the 11th century approached, the excellent relations between the
rulers of Egypt and the Church were drastically changed as the
Hakem-bi-Amr-Allah became the ruler. His violent mood swings took their
toll on the Christians who were periodically subjected to open
persecutions, had their churches closed for up to two years at time,
and saw their language being prohibited from use. Through God's grace,
this period did not last long, but it definitely left open the door for
further decline in Coptic use.
During the same period, the European Crusaders waged their wars against
the Moslem rulers of the Middle East in an effort to secure the holy
places. Their presence in the area generated waves of persecutions and
oppressions against the Copts. This was due to the Moslems seeing in
the sign of the Cross, displayed by the Crusaders, an implied alliance
of the Copts with those invaders and a great threat to the country. Of
course there was no chance of such alliance, for the Crusaders
considered the Copts as heretics and treated them worse than they
treated the Moslems, as sad as it might sounds. Introduction of Arabic
in the 12th century by Patriarch Gabriel ibn Turaik was probably an
attempt to show the Moslems that the Copts are different from real
enemy that they were fighting.
Such move may have been considered wise at the time but it actually
opened the flood gates. Christians Arabic literature flourished
afterward. Later in the period, Arabic invaded the liturgical books,
replacing Greek in bilingual texts and intruding on traditionally
non-bilingual ones. Even purely Arabic liturgical texts began to
appear, indicating that Arabic moved from a mere reference translation
to actual use in the churches. Original composition in Coptic became
limited to liturgical hymns and prayers. The only Coptic literary texts
composed in the later part of the period were the martyrdom of St. John
of Phanidijoit, written as such to shield from the eyes of the Moslems,
and compositions, urging the Copts to revive their language.
Further testimony to the gradual decline of the language as a reading
tool was supplied by the many lexicographic works that were introduced
during the period. They were in the form of Muqadimat (Grammar) and
Salalem (Scalae or word lists). Another sign of decline was Arabic
texts circulating among the monks but written in Coptic characters, as
they could not still read the Arabic script. This eventually was
replaced with the writing of Coptic text in Arabic letters that we see
nowadays in the Coptic Church.
In summary, this period saw the decline of Coptic literary use in its
last stronghold, the Church. Eventually, it led to the weakening of the
Church which subsequently weakened the language more, a natural chain
reaction. The number of Christians declined due to conversion to Islam.
This can probably be attributed to the decline in Coptic which
represented a cultural barrier for the Copts from the Arabic-Moslem
Culture. But now the increasing use of Arabic bridged that barrier and
made it easier for the border-line Christians to cross to seemingly
greener grounds!
IX. Coptic Decline as a Spoken Language (to 17th Century)
After the 14th century the Church experienced a decline spiritually and
in numbers. The dominance of the Ottoman Empire over Egypt in the early
16th century seemed to accelerate such decline. Production of Coptic
Manuscripts slowed down to a trickle. This is an indication that Coptic
books were not used as often as before in the Church, so there was no
need to produce more. Tradition still mandated that Coptic be used in
Church services but in a decaying fashion. Eventually Vansleb, the
French traveler, concluded upon seeing an old man speaking in Coptic
that with his death (the man's) Coptic will die. Such observation may
not have been completely accurate but it gave an indication that Arabic
has replaced Coptic as the primary spoken language among the Copts, if
not the only one!
X. Revival of Coptic in the 19th Century AD
God, in His great mercy, did not let that decline goes unchecked. In
His usual fashion, He brought forth a gleam of light in the midst of
that self-imposed darkness. Such light was St. Cyril IV, Patriarch of
Alexandria in the beginning years of the second half of the 19th
century. St. Cyril started a Church-sponsored movement to educate the
clergy and the new generations. Revival of Coptic seemed to be a
necessary tool for such a movement. So Coptic language education was
offered in all the schools that he built alongside the other
curriculums that was needed to make a new, better, and educated
generation.
St. Cyril did not last long on the throne of St. Mark. In fact too
short of time for such a great figure in Church history. His death was
in part brought upon by opponents of his reforms. But he laid the
ground work for such movement to continue. In the last half quarter of
that century the movement to revive the Coptic language intensified.
The eyes of those in that movement turned to Greece in an effort to
establish a standardized method of pronouncing Coptic. It was felt that
Greek preserved the original sound value of many of the characters in
Coptic because of its close association with Coptic in its early days.
However the Greek tongue underwent some modifications due to the effect
of 150 years of Turkish (Ottoman) dominance. Because of the lack of any
other available means, a new pronunciation system was established for
Coptic that made it sounds not as Egyptian as it should have sounded.
In spite of the above shortcoming, those dedicated people spread the
language among the masses. They printed many of the Coptic service
books for the first time, as they were only extant in manuscript form.
Thus reviving the use of Coptic in the Church services. Several works
of grammar was produced as a result along with a more comprehensive
dictionary that was available before. The establishment of the Clerical
College also aided in the propagation of the movement.
XI. Coptic in the 20th Century
Coptic continued its growth in the Church and among the
Ecclesiastically-educated groups that were produced in the early parts
of the 20th century. Coptic schools, instituted by St. Cyril IV and
others that emulated them, continued their valuable work among the
Coptic community. The clerical college also continued the tradition of
the 19th century revival of Coptic. However, the pronunciation system
established seemed to be a hindrance to the spread of the language
among the masses. With the advent of the revolution of 1952, Arabic
became more prominent in Egypt and eventually it had an influential
effect on the new educated classes among the Copts. As members of these
groups were called upon to serve the Church, they brought with them a
preaching spirit that put Arabic in a new prominent position in the
services, i.e. sermons. Unintentionally, and in spite of the good will
of such people and their love of the tradition of the Church, they
introduced again an element that eventually weakened the revival
process. If such process is not wisely put in check and eventually
reversed, we are liable to face in the future a Church with a lost
identity. May God have mercy on those who would contribute to such a
sorry end!