Here are two of my forthcoming studies on Coptic Christian traditions concerning the childhood of Christ. The versions of the papers are subsequent to the peer-review process.

1) “‘Me, This Wretched Sinner’: A Coptic Fragment from the Vision of Theophilus Concerning the Flight of the Holy Family to Egypt,” forthcoming in Vigiliae Christianae 67 (2013);

Abstract: The Vision of Theophilus is one of the important apocryphal narratives concerning the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt. Although the text is known to survive in Arabic, Ethiopic and Syriac, a lost Coptic original has long been accepted by scholars. The present paper introduces a hitherto unidentified fragment from the Coptic version of this text. The fragment came from the White Monastery in Upper Egypt and it is currently kept in the National Library in Paris. The fragment is edited in this article together with its Arabic and Ethiopic parallels.

2) “A Coptic Fragment from the History of Joseph the Carpenter in the Collection of Duke University Library,” forthcoming in Harvard Theological Review 106:1 (2013).

Abstract: The History of Joseph the Carpenter (BHO 532–533; CANT 60; clavis coptica 0037) is readily accessible in many collections of New Testament Apocrypha. The text is fully preserved in Arabic and Bohairic, which was the regional dialect of Lower Egypt, and fragmentarily in Sahidic (i.e. the dialect of Upper Egypt). The present paper introduces P. Duk. inv. 239, a previously unidentified Sahidic fragment of this writing, which surfaced recently among the manuscripts in the Special Collections Library of Duke University. The new textual witness supplies us with a portion of the History of Joseph the Carpenter previously unattested in Sahidic. Moreover, the Duke fragment displays at least one interesting variant reading, unrecorded in the Bohairic and Arabic versions of the text.

P. Duk. inv. 239: fragment of the Sahidic version of the History of Joseph the Carpenter (source of the image)