Coptic
Wells, Joseph Warren *
Joseph Warren Wells is an American computer software expert specialising in Internet security. He has also been engaged in over 30 years of Greek and 20 years of Coptic studies. He is probably best known for his Sahidica trilogy which deals with the New Testament in the Sahidic dialect of pre-Islamic Coptic(a).
Wells has also contributed to Atlantology with a number of useful works that includes a concordance of the Atlantis texts of both the Bury and Jowett translations, which can be downloaded as an e-book(b) for less than €3. A free download of just the Jowett translation plus a concordance is also available(c).
Wells has also written about sexual elements contained in the Atlantis narrative.
2011 saw Wells add to his valuable contribution to Atlantis research with the publication of Atlantis in Context[787]and a slightly condensed edition of it, The Book on Atlantis[783]. In them, he offers a new translation of the Atlantis passages in Plato’s Critias and Timaeus and more importantly engages in a forensic examination of Timaeus 24e-25d, which contains some of the most debated elements in the narrative. However, I was disappointed that he did not expand on Plato’s use of words for various bodies of water and in particular the reference to the ‘ocean’ being navigable in those days, inferring that it was no longer so, which begs the question of how this could possibly refer to what we know as the Atlantic Ocean. That aside, Atlantis in Context is an important addition to Atlantis studies.
A 2008 version of his valuable Atlantis work entitled Plato’s Atlantis is still available online(f). This edition also includes a useful concordance to Jowett’s translation of the Atlantis narrative.
On an older website of his, Wells offered parallel versions of a section of Timaeus by Jowett, Bury, Lee and his own(d).
Wells has also brought together the Greek text as well as seven translations of the most quoted Atlantis passages in Timaeus from 24d to 25d, now available on the AtlantisOnline website(e).
Despite all that, Wells does not appear to support the reality of Atlantis!
(a) https://www.logos.com/product/5965/sahidic-coptic-collection
(b) https://www.lulu.com/product/file-download/a-concordance-for-platos-atlantis-burys-and-jowetts-translations/779346?productTrackingContext=product_view/more_by_author/right/2 (Link broken) *
(d) https://web.archive.org/web/20070217220641/https://www.greekatlantis.com:80/timaeus4.html
(e) https://atlantisonline.smfforfree2.com/index.php/topic,3584.0.html