SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

History of the Church to AD 337 . W e also received a com plimentary copy of Fr. Sheridan' s publication of his doctral dissertation, titled: Rufus of Shotep, Homilies on the Gospels of Matthew and Luke - Introduction, Text, Translation, Com- mentary (courtesy of the author) . Also we kindly received off prints of articles published by Prof. Detlef Müller and Dr. Tim Vivian. 11. Coptic Classes: A new session of Introductory Bohairic Coptic is scheduled to begin at the Center in the last week of April. The tim e for this session is to be determined. Two advanced translation sem inars are also conducted at the Center. The first is conducted on Saturdays, 6-7:30 p.m., dealing with translations of excerpts from the Bohairic Genesis. The second is conducted on Thursdays 7-8 p.m ., dealing with a Bohairic text, attributed to St. Cyril of Alexandria, concerning the Three Saintly Youth. Developm ent of a series of 2-hour sem inars to train students on how to conduct research using prim ary sources like manuscripts is under way. These sem inars will be jointly sponsored by the Society and the New Christian Education Departm ent of the Los Angeles Coptic Diocese. Mr. Hany N. Takla, the Society's president, is the instructor for the above courses and seminars. 12. Research Projects: Mr. Ashraf Hanna, a member of our center's staff, is continuing his work on the collation of the different m anuscripts of the Coptic (Arabic) Synaxarium . Sim ilarly, Mr. Sherief Sorial is working on the Coptic Psalm odia. All of these projects are designed to trace the developmental history of these im portant books in the Coptic Church.

excavation of the ancient monastery of St. John the Little. 14. Third Woodbrooke-Mingana Symposium: We have received a letter from Dr. David Thom as of the Center for the Study of Islam & Christian- Muslim Relations announcing the tim e for the 3rd Mingana Sym posium on Septem ber 7-11 1998. The subject m atter will be " Arab Christianity in Bilad al-Sham in the Pre-Ottoman Period ". The place will be the W oodbrooke College, Selly Oak, Birmingham UK. The Society was represented in the previous symposium in September 1994 which dealt with the theme of " Coptic Arabic Christianity before the Ottomans: Text and Context ". This afforded us a great chance to introduce activities of the Society to m any Scholars in the field of Christian Arabic Literature. This was done primarily with the great encouragement of Prof. Fr. Samir Khalil. 15. The Electronic Edition of the Coptic Encyclopedia : One of the projects that the new St. Mark Foundation has proposed is an electronic version (CD) of the Coptic Encyclopedia. According to Dr. Fawzy Estafanous, the organization's founder, Dr. Lola Atiya has granted her perm ission. Macm illan Publishing has also informally granted publishing rights to the foundation, an official written letter is pending. Hany N. Takla, the Society' s president was asked to do the prelim inary technical work f or this project, including the electronic m ethod of publishing and other issues. At this tim e, we encourge all scholars to send any proposed

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter 13. The Annual Meeting of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE): The 49th ARCE Annual m eeting is scheduled for April 24- 26 at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). For m ore inform ation you can e-m ail modifications, corrections, or new entries they may want to incorporate in this edition. The inclusion of corrections or m odifications will probably be in the form of footnotes. Changes to the original text will be lim ited to obvious errors and will be done with the approval of the di fferent authors involved. Such decisions will m ost likely be m ade by the editorial board selected for this project. Dr.

ARCE at eschapker@arce.org. The Society encourages all who can from the Coptic community in Southern California to attend. ARCE has sponsored m any projects in Egypt related to Coptic Studies, e.g. the Scriptorium

Gawdat Gabra, the noted Coptologist will likely be the person in charge of such board. The foundation will also be in contact with people in Egypt as well

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