Project description
Studying the development and use of Coptic apocrypha in Egyptian monasteries
Coptic manuscripts from the 4th to the 12th centuries contain a multitude of apocryphal texts and traditions, usually attributed to the apostles or other important early Christian figures, and often embedded in pseudepigraphical homilies. The EU-funded APOCRYPHA project will investigate the contents, developments and functions of apocrypha, as they were copied, adapted and used in changing socio-religious contexts over time. The period covered by the project, when Coptic was used as a literary language, saw drastic changes in the religious landscape of Egypt, with Christianity being the dominant religion at the beginning of the period, before being increasingly marginalised in relation to Islam following the Arab conquest of Egypt in 7th century. The project will review how these changing contexts are reflected in the Coptic apocrypha, which were copied and used in Egyptian monasteries throughout the period under review.
Objective
This project proposes the first systematic study of Coptic apocrypha covering the entire timespan of Coptic literary production, and it aims to do so with unprecedented methodological sophistication. Apocrypha is here defined as (1) texts and traditions that develop or expand upon characters and events of the biblical storyworld; (2) and/or contain a claim to authorship by a character from that storyworld or a direct witness to it. A great number of such apocryphal texts and traditions has been preserved in Coptic manuscripts from the fourth to the twelfth centuries. Most of these texts are attributed to apostles or other important early Christian figures, and over time such materials were also increasingly embedded in pseudepigraphical frames, such as in homilies attributed to later, but still early, heroes of the Church. The manuscripts in which this literature has been preserved were almost exclusively produced and used in Egyptian monasteries. Although the use of such apocrypha were at times controversial, the evidence clearly indicates the widespread use of such literature in Coptic monasteries over centuries, and this project will investigate the contents, development, and functions of apocrypha over time, as they were copied, adapted, and used in changing socio-religious contexts over time. The period covered by the project saw drastic changes in the religious landscape of Egypt, from its Christianity having a dominant position in the fourth century, through the marginalization of Egyptian Christianity in relation to the imperial Chalcedonian Church after 451, to a period of increasing marginalization in relation to Islam following the Arab conquest of Egypt in the mid-seventh century. The project will investigate how these changing contexts are reflected in the Coptic apocrypha that were copied and used in Egyptian monasteries, and what functions they had for their users throughout the period under investigation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionreligionsislam
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionreligionschristianity
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
0313 Oslo
Norway