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).
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.
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