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Recently identified on the antiquities market, the Copto-Qurʾānic Palimpsest represents an important artifact for the history of the transmission of the Qurʾān. Because its biblical lower (i.e., erased) text is in Coptic, the qurʾānic upper text is likely to have been written in Egypt. Hence, it provides us with our first piece of evidence for localizing early qurʾānic manuscript production. Going beyond the problem of dating and provenance, the present study aims to place the Copto-Qurʾānic Palimpsest in its context of production and to provide a snapshot of the scribal practices of the Qurʾān in the early Islamic centuries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient text known as the Testament of Abraham is preserved in Coptic in the same codex as two other works, the Testament of Isaac and the Testament of Jacob. These testaments were probably written in the late first or early second centuries CE by Jewish writers, although the manuscript of the Coptic codex containing them is dated to 962. These books were considered part of the “testament” literary genre, which featured a biblical hero imparting his last words of religious wisdom to his family gathered at his bedside. Scholars agree that the stylistic and theological differences among these three testaments indicate that they were not written by the same author. Yet a close reading reveals that the Testament of Isaac is dependent on the Testament of Abraham, and that the Testament of Jacob is dependent on the two earlier texts. Moreover, the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac share similarities that distinguish them from the Testament of Jacob: unlike the Testament of Jacob, the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac reflect a universalist worldview that depicts a God concerned for all humankind, not only for his chosen people. This God reigns over all people, and themes specific to the Christian and Jewish faiths are virtually absent. Later Christian and Jewish literature concerning the theme of divine judgment exhibits elements that may reflect an awareness of a written or oral tradition that appears in the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac. The images of judgment and punishment, especially those in the Testament of Abraham, appear in the second-century Apocalypse of Peter and the fourth-century Vision of Paul, which is also known as the Apocalypse of Paul. Likewise, midrashic traditions regarding Abraham and Moses are reminiscent of traditions found in these testaments, particularly the Testament of Abraham. The possibility that early Christian apocalyptic texts were aware of these testaments is grounded in the fact that scholars give these texts a common place of origin, Egypt. The provenance of the midrashic texts is more difficult to identify, but because they share literary elements and theological concerns with the Testament of Abraham and the Testament of Isaac, I suggest that the authors of these midrashic traditions had access to written or oral traditions prominent in these testaments. This paper will examine early Christian apocalyptic and early Jewish midrashic texts that modify some of the traditions prominent in these testaments in order to accommodate their nonuniversalist rabbinic or early Christian worldviews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I explore the creative use of biblical traditions in so-called 'magical' texts through a detailed analysis of the crucifixion tradition on Brit. Lib. Or. 6796(4), 6796, a seventh-century CE spell for exorcism. I examine three overlapping ways in which the practitioner interacts with the crucifixion story: selection and arrangement of pre-existing traditions; invention of new elements of the story; and the juxtaposition of word and image. I then reflect on the implications of the crucifixion tradition in this spell for analyzing the relationship between biblical traditions and metonymy in 'magical' texts, more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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, Ethiopie and Syriac, a lost Coptic original has long been accepted by scholars. The pres-ent 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 Ethiopie parallels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The philosophical debate presented in these pages (edition, translation and analysis) is extracted from a 13th-century Coptic Arabic summa ecclesiastica. The venue is alleged to have taken place in Alexandria under the aegis of its proper founder. In a gathering of five philosophers or sages (?akīm-s) coming from India to the Maghreb, passing of course through Greece, amongst whom was present the great Aristotle, Alexander's preceptor and the undisputed authority that summed up the debate and put an end to it. The disputation turns on the existence or not of a supreme creator and organizer, reminding the public sessions convened by the Sassanid and Muslim Rulers. However, the mise en scène here is linked without contest to the famous encounter of 325 b.C. between the Macedonian Conqueror and the Brahmans or Indian gymnosophites.We know how this episode was glossed in different ways in the Greek literature until it was "recovered" in an apologetic monotheistic view by the new Christian imperial order from the 4th century a.C. onward. Although our Coptic writer from the MiddleAges intends to prove with the text he offers to us the rightness of the "miaphysite" teaching of his Church, he, or his source, stands fully in line with that tradition, despite the fact that we could not trace a specific source from the rich variety of linguistic traditions on the matter. All the same, the ideological and linguistic analysis of the text brings us to suggest a Greek original that goes back to Late Antiquity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]