Of these only fragments are as yet known to exist. Portions of Matthew and John, and of 1 Cor., Ephes., Phil., Thess., and Hebrews in the Fayumic, or, as it used to be called, the Bashmuric dialect, were first published by Zoega in 1809, by Engelbreth in 1811, and especially by Bouriant (1889) and Crum (1893). Fragments in the Lower Sahidic have been published in the _Mitteilungen aus der Sammlung der Papyrus des Erzherzogs Rainer_. In the Achmim dialect, James iv. 12, 13 and Jude 17-20 are the only fragments that have been discovered as yet, and these have been published by Crum. Whether these fragments are really parts of a separate version, or merely dialectical modifications of the Sahidic, is not quite certain.[111] As to the =date= of these versions we have no definite information. It has been understood from certain passages in the Life of St. Anthony, who was born about the year 250, that in his boyhood he heard the Gospel read in Church in the language of Egypt, but that need not imply the existence of a written version, as the translation may have been made by a reader who interpreted as he read. In the third century, however, versions may have arisen, and it was certainly in the South that the first attempts at translation were made. Our oldest known manuscripts, a Sahidic containing 2 Thess. iii., and one in Middle Egyptian of Jude 17-20, date from the fourth or fifth century. The Sahidic version seems to have been made first, then the Middle Egyptian, and finally the Bohairic. To what extent the one influenced the other is a question requiring further investigation. A correct edition and a critical application of these Egyptian versions is, next to a fresh examination of the minuscules, the task of most importance at present for the textual criticism of the New Testament. For the Sahidic version in particular represents a type of text found hitherto almost exclusively in the West, and looked upon as the outcome of Western corruption and licence, whereas it may really bear the most resemblance to the original form. In the Acts especially its agreement with the text of Codex D is remarkable. One might instance, _e.g._, the mention of Pentecost in Acts i. 5, the insertion of the Golden Rule in its negative form in xv. 20, 29, the relation of the vision in xvi. 10, and the description of the stone which twenty men could not roll away in Luke xxiii. 53, all of which are now found in a Greek-Sahidic manuscript. The Sahidic version, like the Bohairic, is well represented in European libraries, and the manuscripts are dated as a rule in the Egyptian fashion according to the years of the Martyrs—_i.e._ according to an era reckoned from August or September 284 A.D.