On June 17, 2013 I successfully defended my PhD dissertation at the Faculté de théologie et de sciences religieuses, Université Laval, Québec.The dissertation is entitled Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense (Previously Known as the Gospel of the Savior). Reedition of P. Berol. 22220, Strasbourg Copte 5-7 and Qasr el-Wizz Codex ff. 12v-17r with Introduction and Commentary.

The jury was composed of five members: Prof. Paul-Hubert Poirier (Université Laval, Québec, supervisor), Prof. Louis Painchaud (Université Laval, Québec, co-supervisor), Dr. Wolf-Peter Funk (Université Laval, Québec), Prof. André Gagné (Concordia University, Montreal), Prof. Pierluigi Piovanelli (University of Ottawa). The president of the jury was Prof. André Couture (Université Laval, Québec). I would like to thank all of them for having accepted to participate in my PhD defense!

The dissertation will be available soon on the website of the Faculté des études supérieures et postdoctorales, Université Laval. Until then,  the final version of the thesis is available upon request (just write me on one of the email addresses available in the ‘Curriculum vitae’ section of this blog).

My thesis is about a Coptic text which is largely known as the “Gospel” of the Savior. Although this title suggests that the text is an uncanonical apocryphal gospel, literary evidences which I document in my thesis firmly indicate that the text does not belong to this genre, but it is rather one of the numerous “memoirs” of the apostles and disciples, which were composed in Coptic, most likely after the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE). Sometimes, the pseudo-apostolic memoirs were incorporated into sermons attributed to the Fathers of the Coptic Church. The fact that the text belongs to a well-defined genre, formed mostly of homilies with apocryphal insertions, has caused me to eschew the label “gospel,” which I find unsatisfactory and misleading. Instead, I have chosen to call the text the Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense (ApoBA), after the location of the two main manuscripts. In fact, the label “apocryphon” is larger and more generous than “apocryphal gospel.”