SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

h. General Addresses: There were three brief introductory addresses that were made during the two days of the conference. The first was by Dr. Dorothy Abrahamse, Dean of Liberal Arts Studies, CSULB, whose original field of study was Byzantine Hagiography. In it she cordially welcomed the participants of this conference and went on to recount some of the educational activities of the university in fields closely-related to Coptic Studies and expressed hope for the expansion of these programs. Bishop Samuel followed with a brief opening remarks on the importance of this conference and the other activities that the Society is performing in the field. At the beginning of the second day of the conference, bishop Serapion gave an opening address that praised the efforts of the Society. He further introduced the project of the formation of the Diocese's Christian Education Department. A diocese-managed organization, designed to coordinate all the Christian educational activities with the diocese. He also announced the appointment of the Mr. Maged S. Mikhail, a Society research assistant, as an interim director of The following are the remainder of the abstracts of the papers presented at the conference: Title: The Correlation Between the Phonological Systems of Coptic and Arabic Presenter: Mrs. Mary Erian (Los Angeles, CA) Coptic and Arabic can be traced back to the same Semitic phonological roots. The two main dialects of Coptic, Sahidic and Bohairic, contributed to the Egyptian Arabic sound system. The influence Coptic had on the development of Arabic in Egypt is still evident in colloquial Egyptian today. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate some of the similarities within the two phonologies. These

the department. It is worthy to mention that two of the Society's officers serve on the managing committee of the department. Format: The presentations are classified into two types. The first is major papers which are mainly slide presentations of monastic and archeological topics. Each of these papers was scheduled as a 30-minute presentation with a 15-minute follow-up discussion. The second type is the regular presentations where the researcher briefly presents the work that he/she has or is doing in the field. These presentations was structured in a 20-minute format with a 10-minute follow-up discussion. The maximum time allotted to these presentations, including the discussion, was 30 minutes. Publication of Proceedings: The papers presented at the Conference will be published in the 5th volume of the Society's bulletin for the year 1998-99. A final draft of each paper shall be submitted by the presenter to the Society not later than October 31, 1998.

The First St. Shenouda Conference for Coptic Studies Conference Abstracts (2)

(by Hany N. Takla)

similarities will serve as an advantage to the native Egyptian speakers attempting to learn Coptic. ----------------------- Title: St. Mark Foundation for Coptic History . Presenter: Dr. Fawzy Estafanous, (Cleveland, OH) The history of the Copts is nearly 2,000 years old. It is extensive and filled with challenges. Much of the work done in that field is either biased for or against it. In either case accuracy suffered as a result. To remedy this situation, a new foundation is being formed to take on this most challenging work. In this paper, I will describe in more details, the purpose, organization, sponsored projects, and

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

-6-