Coptica 15, 2016

76 Carolyn Schneider there were many works of Origen and of other heretics in the area, these writings were to be sought out and confiscated. 20 I Am Amazed takes on not only Origenism, but also Gnosticism, Arianism, and Nestorianism. Shenoute linked these movements by accusing them all of dividing spirit from flesh, a division that he saw inviting both disdain for the body and speculation about the spiritual world. The beginning of I Am Amazed is missing, and where the extant text picks up, Shenoute is speaking of Gnosticism and calling into question the gnosis of teachers of apocryphal books who speculate about God and God’s creation of other worlds instead of learning from the scriptures about God and God’s creation of this world. Referring to Athanasius’s 39 th Festal Letter for the year 367, Shenoute notes that “our Father Apa Athanasius the archbishop, of true knowledge” rejected apocryphal books. Instead, that “exceptional teacher of the faith, Apa Athanasius,” urged the church to rely only upon the canonical scriptures. 21 Athanasius next appears in I Am Amazed as Shenoute takes on Arianism. In Shenoute’s eyes, positing previous spiritual creations, as the Gnostics did, made possible the Arian claim that the Word of God was the conceptual creation through which the material world was made. Shenoute attacks this idea with the anti-Arian letter to the Bishops of Egypt that “the very wise Apa Athanasius the archbishop” wrote in 356, during his third exile. In the letter Athanasius presents a string of quotations from the Arians, from which Shenoute makes a selection, praising Athanasius for exposing such “evil words” as, for example, “ ‘After [God] desired to create us, then he created this one, and he named him “Word and Son”.’ ” Shenoute declares that he does not need to add anything to “what the holy man Apa Athanasius the archbishop” has said because it is sufficient. 22 In the extant pages of I Am Amazed Athanasius last appears where Shenoute is arguing against speculation about God and what existed or happened before creation. Because God is the only one who knows, Shenoute equates inquiries about such things as the generation of the Son from the Father with doomed attempts to usurp God’s place. Shenoute calls Athanasius to his side with a series of quotations that seem to be taken loosely from Athanasius’s second discourse against the Arians. 23 20 Herbert Thompson, “Dioscorus and Shenoute,” in Recueil d’études égyptologiques dédiées à la mémoire de Jean-François Champollion (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, Edouard Champion, 1922), 376. 21 I Am Amazed , in Selected Discourses of Shenoute the Great , 56-57. See also Davis, Coptic Christology in Practice , 65-66; Orlandi, Shenute contra origenistas , §§ 308 and 319, pages 22-25; and Mark Moussa, “ I Am Amazed : Shenoute of Atripe’s Endorsement of Alexandrian Theology in the White Monastery,” Bulletin of Saint Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society 5 (1998-1999): 19-40. 22 I Am Amazed , in Selected Discourses of Shenoute the Great , 58. See also Athanasius, To the Bishops of Egypt , 2.12; and Orlandi, Shenute contra origenistas , §§325-330, pages 24-27. 23 Contra arianos II.16.22, 18.34, 36.