The volume contains a critical review of data, results and open problems concerning the principal Greek and Coptic majuscule bookhands, based on previous research of the author, revised and updated to offer an overview of the different graphic phenomena. Although the various chapters address the history of different types of scripts (i.e. biblical majuscule, sloping poitend majuscule, liturgical majuscule, epigraphic and monumental scripts), their juxtaposition allows us to identify common issues of the comparative method of palaeography. From an overall critical assessment of these aspects the impossibility of applying a unique historical paradigm to interpret the formal expressions and the history of the different bookhands comes up, due to the fact that each script follows different paths. Particular attention is also devoted to the use of Greek majuscules in the writing of ancient Christian books. A modern and critical awareness of palaeographic method may help to place the individual witnesses in the context of the main graphic trends, in the social and cultural environments in which they developed, and in a more accurate chronological framework.

The incomplete state in which many Coptic writings have survived makes them difficult to assess, and the text studied in this book is no exception. Preserved in two fragmentary manuscripts, the Berlin-Strasbourg-Apocryphon - previously known as the Gospel of the Savior - has been wrongly identified as a second-century gospel which was bypassed in the formation of the Christian canon. Alin Suciu demonstrates that this misunderstanding of the text derives from an insufficient knowledge of Coptic literature. Rather, the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon is one of the numerous "apostolic memoirs," a peculiar genre of Coptic literature which consists of writings allegedly written by the apostles, often embedded in sermons attributed to famous church fathers. These texts were composed following the Council of Chalcedon, as part of the attempt of the emerging Coptic church to mold its identity after the schism.

Shenoute of Atripe led the White Monastery, a community of several thousand male and female Coptic monks in Upper Egypt, between approximately 395 and 465 C.E. Shenoute's letters, sermons, and treatises—one of the most detailed bodies of writing to survive from any early monastery—provide an unparalleled resource for the study of early Christian monasticism and asceticism. In Monastic Bodies, Caroline Schroeder offers an in-depth examination of the asceticism practiced at the White Monastery using diverse sources, including monastic rules, theological treatises, sermons, and material culture. Schroeder details Shenoute's arduous disciplinary code and philosophical structure, including the belief that individual sin corrupted not only the individual body but the entire "corporate body" of the community. Thus the purity of the community ultimately depended upon the integrity of each individual monk. Shenoute's ascetic discourse focused on purity of the body, but he categorized as impure not only activities such as sex but any disobedience and other more general transgressions. Shenoute emphasized the important practices of discipline, or askesis, in achieving this purity. Contextualizing Shenoute within the wider debates about asceticism, sexuality, and heresy that characterized late antiquity, Schroeder compares his views on bodily discipline, monastic punishments, the resurrection of the body, the incarnation of Christ, and monastic authority with those of figures such as Cyril of Alexandria, Paulinus of Nola, and Pachomius.

This E-Book contains the seven canonical hours of the Agpeya in Coptic

This collection of studies in honor of François Bovon highlights the rich diversity found within early expressions of Christianity as evidenced in ancient texts, in early traditions and movements, and in archaic symbols and motifs.