More Coptic Manuscripts at Gallica

At Gallica you can find now more digitized Coptic manuscripts from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. All of them are Sahidic fragments from the Monastery of Apa Shenoute (i.e. White Monastery):

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BnF Copte 102 Miscellanea

BnF Copte 129(11) New Testament. Acts of the Apostles, Catholic Epistles, Apocalypse

BnF Copte 129(13) Monastic rules and lives of the monks (second part)

BnF Copte 129(19) Katameros

BnF Copte 129(20) Katameros

BnF Copte 131(5) Sermons

BnF Copte 133(1), 102-138 Fragments

BnF Copte 133(2), 1-29 Fragments

BnF Copte 133(2), 42-59 Fragments

BnF Copte 133(2), 60-90 Fragments

BnF Copte 133(2), 195-258 Fragments

BnF Copte 133(2), 259-337 Fragments

BnF Copte 161(6) Miscellanea

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Guest Post: Anthony Alcock – The Mysteries of the Greek Alphabet (Part 3)

Christ Pantocrator Al-Mu'allaqa

Part 3 of Anthony Alcock’s translation of the Mysteries of the Greek Alphabet.

Part 1, Part 2.

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“I am the King, I am the Son of the King”. Psalm 71:1 (LXX) in the Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense (aka Unbekanntes Berliner Evangelium), Coptic Literature and Patristics (Paper Delivered in Honour of Peter Nagel)

On April 26-27 I participated in a symposium organized on the occasion of Peter Nagel’s 75th anniversary. The symposium took place at the Coptic monastery of St. Mary and St. Mauritius in Höxter-Brenkhausen (near Göttingen). There I had the opportunity to see old friends and meet new people. I am grateful to the organizers (Heike Behlmer, Frank Feder and Ute Pietruschka) for inviting me to deliver a paper in the presence of the celebrated scholar. Our host, the Bishop Anba Damian, did his best to make us feel welcome. If you have enough patience and the topic interests you, you can read below a draft of my presentation (with some references added).

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Honorable audience, distinguished Professor Peter Nagel,

Professor Nagel’s accomplishments have earned him international recognition. We have gathered here today to honor his work. My contribution to this symposium is about a certain passage in a text which has been studied by our esteemed colleague: the so-called Unbekanntes Berliner Evangelium. He wrote a seminal article on this text: “‘Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern von der Auferstehung’ – Zur Herkunft und Datierung des ‘Unbekannten Berliner Evangeliums’,” Zeitschrift für Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 94 (2003) 215-257. When I say seminal, this is not just an encomiastic feature meant to praise him. In fact, Professor Nagel has been the first scholar who argued that this text is not an ancient gospel, but rather a work composed in Coptic, perhaps during the 4th or 5th century.

In the passage under scrutiny, Jesus says “I am the King, Amen. I am the Son of the King, Amen.” At a first glance, Jesus’ utterance sounds mysterious, like a riddle, but I will try to show that the passage is based on an interpretation of Psalm 71:1 (LXX), which was common during the 4th-5th century. Last but not least, I hope to show you by this example that we can experience great benefit by studying Coptic literature with the aid of Patristics.

The Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense

In 1999, Charles Hedrick and Paul Mirecki published together the editio princeps of a Sahidic manuscript in the papyrus collection of the Egyptian Museum in Berlin (P. Berol. 22220).[1] The text is a revelation dialogue of Jesus with the apostles, written in the first person plural. The narrators are the apostles. An important part of the text is occupied by an extensive hymn of the Cross. The hymn is sung by Christ while to apostles are apparently dancing around the Cross and answer “Amen.” The original title of the work has not survived, but because of the title conventionally assigned to it in the editio princeps, the text is largely known today as the Gospel of the Savior. However, as I find this title unsatisfactory, I will avoid it. My main objection to the label “Gospel of the Savior” is that it suggests that the text is an apocryphal gospel, which possibly bypassed the canon. The confusion is already set in motion and the work has often been included among the lost gospels of early Christianity.

The German scholarship usually calls the text the “Unbekanntes Berliner Evangelium,” according to the location of the manuscript edited by Hedrick and Mirecki. However, since Stephen Emmel has shown that several papyrus fragments in Strasbourg belong to the same work, this title is now obsolete. Moreover, it implies that the text belongs to the gospel genre.

Despite these shortcomings, establishing a new title for a text which has already been named in a variety of ways, would only generate more confusion. Thus, I think the most satisfactory title of the text is the one given by the Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari project, directed by Tito Orlandi (Rome/Hamburg). In the CMCL database our text is called Apocryphon Berolinense/Apocryphon Argentoratense. This title takes into consideration, at the same time, the tenor of the text and the location of the two manuscripts in which it is preserved. Besides, the term “apocryphon” is more generous than “apocryphal gospel,” because it does not set any chronological boundary.

Continue reading

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2013 AELAC Meeting (Dole, June 29-July 1)

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The annual meeting of the Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC) will take place June 29-July 1 in Dole, France. Although there is nothing Coptic this year, several papers sound very interesting. Here is the complete list:

Michel-Yves PERRIN, « Apocryphes chrétiens anciens » et participation des fidèles aux controverses doctrinales dans l’antiquité tardive.

Christoph MARKSCHIES, Überlegungen zum Begriff « christliche apokryphe Literatur ».

Caitríona O DOCHARTAIGH, L’Histoire de Thècle en irlandais.

Andrey VINOGRADOV, Les Actes d’André et de Matthias et leur place dans la tradition apocryphe.

Stephen J. DAVIS, The Childhood Deeds of Jesus in Arabic Christian and Muslim Encounter.

Stefan HAGEL, Présentation du logiciel « Classical Text Editor ».

Els ROSE, Editing the Virtutes apostolorum: Lectio improbabilior and other editorial principles tried on the Virtutes Simonis et Iudae.

Enrico NORELLI, Un chapitre du commentaire sur l’Apocalypse de Pierre.

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Guest Post: Mark Sheridan, O.S.B. – The Homilies of Rufus of Shotep

Rufus was bishop of Shotep, known in Greek as Hypsele, a town located about seven kilomenters southeast of Assiut (Lycopolis) in Upper Egypt, in the last part of the sixth century. References to Rufus apart from the manuscripts containing his homilies make him a contemporary of Constantine of Assiut, who is known to have been ordained bishop by the Patriarch Damian (578-604). Rufus is also mentioned in the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria.

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These previously unpublished works consist of two sets of homilies on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke respectively. Of these only 126 pages or fragments thereof are known to survive. They belong to four principal manuscripts, all of which come from the White Monastery in Upper Egypt. The manuscripts, now scattered in eight different libraries, date probably from the ninth to the eleventh centuries. The surviving text represents a small portion of the original sets of homilies, which may have extended to more than two thousand pages. The portions of the Gospels commented on in these surviving fragments are Matt 1–5 and Luke 1:1-46.

The writings by Rufus belong to the genre of the text-based homily as opposed to the festal sermon or encomium of which there are numerous examples in Coptic as well as in Greek. They are the only surviving examples of this genre in Coptic. They are not stricly speaking  “commentaries” because the homilist was not expected to explain the whole text, but only selected portions.

An analysis of the Greek exegetical terminology and of the exegetical rules employed by Rufus, as well as of specific interpetations, reveals that he stands unambiguously in the Alexandrian tradition of allegorical exegesis represented by Origen, Didymus and Cyril. Moreover, the fact that a number of specific examples of his exegesis have close parallels in the works of Origen suggests that he may have had direct access to some of the works of Origen. This is particularly interesting in view of the polemic against Origen found in Coptic literature and in view of the condemnation of Origen, Didymus and Evagrius by the Council of Constantinople in 553. Notable also is the fact that these homilies represent original literary production in a period when such sets of running homilies were no longer being produced in the Greek speaking world.

These homilies contribute significantly to our knowledge of Coptic literary and religious culture in the last part of the sixth century, the period immediately before the Arab invasion of Egypt.  The period of the Patriarch Damian, whose long reign of over twenty-five years seems to have been conducive to the stability and consolidation of the non-Chalcedonian church in Egypt, was also a time of renewed literary activity in which Damian perhaps led the way. A passage from the History of the Patriarchs states: “And Damian, the blessed patriarch, remained all his days composing letters and homilies and treatises, in which he refuted the heretics.”

Since the publication of these homilies in 1998, a number of additional fragments have come to light. Their publication and additional studies regarding Rufus’ homilies are in preparation.

You can download the book here: J. Mark SHERIDAN, Rufus of Shotep: Homilies on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. Introduction, text, translation, commentary, Roma, CIM, 1998, 360 p., ISBN 88-85354-05-X

Father Sheridan, O.S.B., (b. 1938) was Rector of the Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo, Rome. He received his PhD in 1990 from Catholic University of America. He is a monk of the Dormition Abbey in Jerusalem and professor emeritus in the Faculty of Theology of the Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo. Short list of publications (until 2001). His latest book is From the Nile to the Rhone and Beyond. Studies in Early Monastic Literature and Scriptural Interpretation (Studia Anselmiana, 156), Rome, 2012.

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Photographs of White Monastery Fragments on Gallica Website

It was a nice surprise to discover a few days ago that the National Library in Paris put up on the Gallica website photographs of some of the Sahidic parchment fragments in their possession. More precisely, they have uploaded until now good quality reproductions of BnF Copte 161(6), fol. 36-44. It’s not much yet but it’s a start.

I suspect that the fragments included in BnF Copte 161(6) were donated to the library in Paris by the papyrologist Seymour de Ricci. It appears that they came from the Monastery of Apa Shenoute (aka the White Monastery) in Upper Egypt.

As most of the fragment available at Gallica have not been identified until now, here are some hints that may be helpful:

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fol. 36 = Life of Shenoute attributed to Besa (BHO 1074-1078; clavis coptica 0461). I identified this fragment in an article to be published in Continue reading

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The Martyrdom of Macrobius in Gǝʿǝz (and Arabic)

Reblogged from hmmlorientalia:

Yesterday Alin Suciu posted a notice of a Bohairic Coptic leaf with some lines from the martyrdom of Macrobius that was recently found in a Syriac manuscript from Saint Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem. He also mentioned the entry for that martyr in an Arabic synaxarion (published in PO 16.2, 190-193). The same entry also exists in the Gǝʿǝz synaxarion (published in PO 46.3, 304-309).

Read more… 632 more words

Adam McCollum has further details about Abba Macrobius, extracted from the Copto-Arabic and Gǝʿǝz synaxary.
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