More Fragments From the Catechetical Orations of St. Cyril of Jerusalem in Coptic

Posted on June 2, 2012 by

In 1974, Prof. Tito Orlandi published in a volume a series of Coptic literary papyri in the collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna.[1] His publication revealed the existence of several previously unknown Coptic translations from Patristic literature. Equally interesting are the fragments K 8502a-i, which had been identified by Prof. Orlandi as coming from the Catechetical Orations of St. Cyril of Jerusalem.[2] Before the discovery of the Vienna material, only one other Coptic fragment from the catecheses of Cyril was known to exist. This fragment, which is kept today in the Heidelberg University Library (P. Heid. inv. kopt. 450), was published by the German papyrologist Friedrich Bilabel but it had been identified only later by Carl Schmidt.[3] The Heidelberg papyrus contains a portion from the 6th Catechetical Oration. Here is the photograph of the fragment’s verso:

(source of the photograph)

In his turn, Tito Orlandi published nine fragments (K 8502a-i) from a different papyrus codex, but which all belong to the same catechesis (the sixth) Continue reading →

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Christie’s Auction of an Early Christian Papyrus Document

Posted on May 31, 2012 by

On June 13, Christie’s will be organizing an auction that will include the opportunity to purchase several Coptic manuscripts. The details of this auction can be found on their website (HERE, HERE, or HERE). From the information supplied by Christie’s, I was able to infer that the manuscripts on sale belonged to Lawrence Feinberg, an American collector who died in 2009. THIS WEBSITE gives the following information concerning Feinberg:

“Lawrence Feinberg was originally on the path to becoming a chemical engineer, but changed direction and followed his passion for papyrology. Mastering Greek, Latin, Egyptian, and various Semitic languages, he received his Master’s Degree from Columbia University in 1967.
He was hired by Columbia in 1968 to sort and preserve more than 1,000 papyri and vellum fragments that the university had acquired from Egyptian dealers. During this project, he discovered one of the oldest written fragments of Homer’s Odyssey, dating to the third century B.C.
Lawrence became a specialist in ancient manuscripts and established a business in rare books and manuscripts out of his home”

It is interesting to note that among the items on sale there are five papyrus fragments which contain portions from 1 Kingdoms (1 Samuel) in Greek. They were edited by their former owner in 1969 in the Harvard Theological Review.[1]

However, there is another manuscript to be sold in the auction which, to me, is even more remarkable. The item appears to be a large fragment from a papyrus roll, described by the auction house as, “A very early Manichaean Psalm text, Ode on the Judgment of God on a papyrus leaf in Akhmimic Coptic.” This sounds, indeed, intriguing. Is this a new Manichaean text? A new document in the Akhmimic dialect? Doubtless, this is also extremely thought provoking for those interested in early Christian literature. Here is a description of the text’s content provided by the seller:

The text of the present manuscript, which is substantial, contains references to the serpent (line 10: ‘even as a serpent ceases [its] strike, that [serpent] hears [and] speaks to them), to Patek (line 11), to Adam (lines 11-12: ‘Adam, as you [are] a God, you [are] a son of God’) and to Genesis 3.2 (line 30: ‘Weep for me all ye trees which [are] in paradise’).

Now below is the picture of the manuscript taken from Christie’s site:

After I examined the picture, I discussed this papyrus with Wolf-Peter Funk and we came to some conclusions. In all certainty, the document is of high interest, being perhaps one of our earliest Coptic literary manuscripts (4th century AD?). This is suggested not only by the script and dialectal features, but also by the fact that it comes from a papyrus roll, not a codex, and Coptic literary scrolls are very rare. Continue reading →

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Red Monastery Video at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Posted on May 27, 2012 by

Reblogged from Hieroi Logoi:

From March 14-July 8, 2012, the Metropolitan Museum of Art is hosting a special exhibition, “Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition.”  The exhibition has a strong online presence, including an extraordinary video of the Red Monastery, one of the best-preserved examples of Late Antique church architecture, especially noted for its vibrantly colored paintings.  These had been largely covered under a dark outer layer for centuries, but since 2000 have been cleaned and studied by an international team of conservators and scholars, directed by the art historian Elizabeth S.

Read more… 135 more words

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Another Patristic Text Attested in Coptic: Gregory of Nazianzus Oration 16 (Pennsylvania University Museum E 16310)

Posted on May 21, 2012 by

A few days ago, I pointed out that the Pennsylvania University Museum holds a previously unidentified fragment from the Coptic version of the Apophthegmata Patrum. I shall now discuss another unidentified fragment from this collection.

Pennsylvania University Museum E 16310 is a parchment fragment which consists of the upper part of a codex leaf. As can be seen in the pictures below, a stub from the conjoint leaf also survives. The quire ornaments and signatures, which occur in the top margin of both leaves’ flesh side, (see Photo 1) indicate that these vestiges originally formed the outermost bifolio of a quire. Unfortunately, the ink of the signature and page numbers has faded away, making it impossible to situate with any precision the positioning of the fragment in the original manuscript.

(source of the image)

(source of the image)

A photographic reproduction of the verso of E 16310 was included in an article published by John R. Abercrombie in an issue of Expedition (Winter 1978). The text which accompanies the photograph describes the fragment as part of a “Coptic homily on Isaiah I.” On the webpage Papyri and Related Materials at the University of Pennsylvania, Robert A. Kraft noted, with much hesitation, that the fragment might belong to the works of Shenoute.

In fact, E 16310 contains a portion from the Coptic version of the 16th Oration of St. Gregory of Nazianzus. Continue reading →

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Guest Post Yavor Miltenov: The Versiones Slavicae Project – An Electronic Corpus of Medieval Slavic Translations Is Under Construction

Posted on May 18, 2012 by

I am delaying my post about the identification of another Coptic fragment in the Pennsylvania University Museum in order to publish Yavor Miltenov’s interesting report on a new Patristic project.

As a result of the work of generations of philologists, the researchers in the field of Byzantine studies have at hand numerous index-catalogues dealing with classification of texts. The most recent and significant of them are, of course, Clavis patrum Graecorum, Bibliotheca hagiographica Graeca, Clavis apocryphorum Veteri Testamenti, Clavis apocryphorum Novi Testamenti, and many others – a centuries-old tradition, that serves as a base for these exceptional reference books. Any study on (or even related to) certain medieval literary monuments must as a rule consult them, as they cover an enormous material, facilitate identifications of certain works, offer standardization, unification and classification, contain the primary bibliography, and represent not only the basics of our knowledge about one particular text, but also give an opportunity to study groups of texts and corpora. Recently, the intensive research has even brought the process to further development – an online Clavis Clavium will be built upon the base of previous indexes[1].

It is a well-known fact, that almost all medieval Slavic literary monuments (9th–16th c.) are translations from Byzantine works: whole miscellanies, single texts, excerpts used in compilations. In this sense, their adequate study is possible only if a comparison with the Byzantine originals is made. In Slavic medieval studies, however, there is no such instrumentum studiorum that contains a) classification of the translated texts and b) reference to their Greek originals[2]. For this main reason the Slavic tradition, unlike the Armenian, Georgian, Arabic, Coptic, is not “visible” to the researchers of the Byzantine cultural commonwealth, it is not fully reflected in the above-mentioned and other Claves[3], and, finally, remains isolated and thought more as a subject to be researched by the “national philologies”, than as a full member of the Byzantine-Slavic cultural space in the Middle Ages.

(source of the image)

In 2011 the Bulgarian Science Fund announced a call for Young Scientists Program. I and four other colleagues decided to apply with a project entitled “Electronic database Operum patrum Graecorum versiones slavicae: cataloguing and study of the writings of John Chrysostom in Old Church Slavonic” with the kind institutional support of Central Library of Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Surprisingly, we won a grant and the project has started in the beginning of 2012!

Continue reading →

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A New Fragment from the Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The University of Pennsylvania Coptic Fragment E 16395

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

Dr. Janet Timbie, from the Catholic University of America, informed me some time ago that Robert A. Kraft has been working on a catalogue of the manuscripts and papyri held in the University of Pennsylvania Museum. Those interested in the Coptic manuscripts in this collection can check the webpage, Papyri and Related Materials at the University of Pennsylvania, which offers good quality reproductions, transcriptions and descriptions of these items.

The Pennsylvania collection of Coptic manuscripts is mainly formed of small papyrus and parchment fragments with very little surviving text. Even so, Robert Kraft has performed excellent work in identifying many of them. In this, and the following post, I should like to introduce two previously unidentified parchment fragments from the University of Pennsylvania Museum collection.

I shall start with fragment E 16395. This is a parchment fragment from a two-column codex elegantly written in uncial letters. The left hand column of the recto and the right hand one on the verso are wrinkled, those portions being very difficult to decipher solely on the basis of the photographic reproductions.

(source of the image)

(source of the image)

However, the decipherable text allows us to identify the fragment as part of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Apophthegmata Patrum). More precisely, the Pennsylvania fragment contains an apophthegm concerning Abba Arsenius the Great. Continue reading →

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A plea for the inclusion of manuscripts in language teaching

Posted on May 16, 2012 by

Reblogged from hmmlorientalia:

(Reposted here for easy access and future convenience from the HMML Chronicle, Aug 4, 2011; see here.)

I hope the title is not too grandiose for the little petition here offered: my intent can be made clear in few words, but the practical working out of its actual implementation will naturally require more time and purposeful planning.

Manuscript study has been and will continue to be the focus of codicological learning and the preparation of text editions (however one might envision this latter task), but does it not, too, have a broader setting in the study of the languages and literatures of this or that community?

Read more… 762 more words

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