SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

Worrell, W. H. The Proverbs of Solomon in Sahidic according to the Chicago Manuscript . Chicago 1931. [Loaned]

Watts, Roger. pijwm n te pi'alt/rion n te dauid . (Pijom ente pipsalterion ente Dauid). London 1826

Abba Shenoute’s Treatise I Have Been Reading the Holy Gospels (by Mark R. Moussa)

codices survive with varying degrees. With notable lacunae appearing throughout, the beginning of the work appears in four of those codices. The concluding 36 pages of the work, doxological in form, appear in GP. The final page also appears in AV. I Have Been Reading the Holy Gospels sheds light on Abba Shenoute’s outlook towards ecclesiastical jurisdiction and the promotion of orthodoxy in the Panopolitan region, an area laden with doctrinal and practical diversity. The texts echo Shenoutian sentiments towards the role of patriarchal authority and teaching, particularly those of Athanasius, as well as pronounced views on marriage and its relation to the ascetic life. As is the case elsewhere in the Shenoutian corpus, there are strong concerns with the presence of pagan, barbarian, and heretical groups near the White Monastery community. Independent of the abbot’s vita , attributed to his disciple Besa, the treatise provides attestation to Abba Shenoute’s presence in Ephesus at the time of the third ecumenical council. If we are to trust Abba Shenoute’s estimations, the beginning of the work also gives us dates of his tenure as abbot of the monastery, and possible dates as to when he joined the community as a young novice and when his parents (or possibly, past monastic leaders) died. The chief purpose of my doctoral dissertation, undertaken at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., is to provide textual accessibility to the treatise I Have Been Reading the Holy Gospels. The immediate contribution will be definitive editions of previously unpublished Shenoutian manuscripts as well as a re-edition of 36 leaves from White Monastery Codex GP. With

In 1993, Stephen Emmel’s remarkable Yale dissertation entitled Shenoute’s Literary Corpus appeared. The findings of his work and the results thereof have effectively changed the study Coptic patristics in general, and that of Abba Shenoute’s writings in particular, for the long-term future. Indeed, the ability of students and scholars alike to access and study individual treatises by Abba Shenoute is due in no small part to the systematic categorization and painstaking codicological work discussed in the dissertation’s almost 1400 pages. The main observation in Emmel’s dissertation is the division of Abba Shenoute’s corpus of writings into two principle literary genres – eight volumes of Discourses and nine volumes of Canons . The former contain important and richly informative treatises such as I Am Amazed , And It Happened One Day , and God is Blessed . It is in these compositions that one begins to grasp the extent of Abba Shenoute’s rhetorical sophistication, awareness of and combativeness towards doctrinal and practical diversity in Upper Egypt, and the range of guests in attendance at the community’s gatherings. One of the better preserved and historically valuable treatises found in the corpus’ eighth volume of Discourses is entitled I Have Been Reading the Holy Gospels . Portions of it have been published by É. Amélineau, J. Leipoldt, W. Crum, H. Guérin, H.G. Evelyn-White, and most recently by D.W. Young, though important portions housed in the British Library, the Louvre, and the Bibliothèque Nationale remain unedited. The treatise is extant in six White Monastery Codices (GP, HD, ZP, AV, FZ, and DT) and one ostraca (P. Epiph. 65). Manuscripts in these

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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