SSCN Voumes 1-10, 1994-2004

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

the Sahidic dialect. This rare study dealt with contents of the readings found in six different manuscripts. Only one of these is a complete codex; Vatican, Borgia 109 Fasc. 99. The paper unfortunately was presented in German which limited its audience among the Copts present who would have benefited the most from such a study. It is interesting to mention that the presenter was primarily adopting the manuscript numbers found in Prof Schüssler of Salzburg University listing of Sahidic Old and New Testament. Fr. Bigoul el-Suriani (Egypt). The Manuscript Collection of El-Surian Monastery: Its Survival into the Third Millennium. The presenter is the monk in charge of the Library of the El-Surian monastery in Wadi 'N Natroun. This contains over 900 manuscripts, a good portion of it are Syriac manuscripts. It is these Syriac manuscripts that particularily encouraged the preservation of the contents of the library. According to the presenter, this effort started a few decades ago and never was complete. The purpose of the new project; titled "Deir al-Surian 2000"; is to restore the key manuscripts in Coptic, Arabic, and Syriac. This preservation and restoration project will also include work on the history of the scribal tradition and schools found in the monastery. The presenter also introduced some of the more important of these manuscripts and the significant annotations found in them. Worthy of mention is that the only available catalogue of the library contents is in the form of handwritten cards by a monk, named Fr. Antonious el-Suriani (now H.H. Pope Shenouda III). The project director is a British Conservationist, Elizabeth Sobczynski with a working committee including the presenter, Prof. Lucas van Rompay, Prof. Andrea Schmidt, and Dr. Johannes den Heijer. For further information on this promising and important project, one can contact Ms. Sobczynski, 106 St. George's Square, London SW1V 3QY, England, Tel/Fax: +44 (0)20 7928- 6094, Email: es.aicp@btinternet.com. Bolman, E. S. (USA). The Coptic Galaktotrophousa, Revisited . The subject of this

paper is derived from the presenter's doctoral dissertation. In short, the Galaktotrophousa is a fancy name that the art historians use to refer to the image of the Virgin breast-feeding the infant Christ. Lucia Langener, in her 1996 dissertation, convincingly demonstrated that such image developed from the Ancient Egyptian image of Isis, nursing the infant Horus. The interpretation of the image has always been that it is a statement about Christ's human nature. The presenter, however argued against such explanation for this image as it exist in a Coptic Monastic setting. She further advanced and demonstrated a new meaning that centered around God being the source of the milk of the virgin. This turned the emphasis of the image to the subject of the Eucharist. According to the presenter, this made it suitable for a male monastic audience! We are hopeful that Dr. Bolman, an Associate Member of the Society, will be able to present such arguments in details in one of our sponsored Coptic Conferences! Buzi, P. (Italy). Titles in the Coptic Manuscript Tradition: Complex Structure Titles and Complex Expansive Structure Titles . In this paper the presenter explored the structure and development of the titles that the Copts gave in their Homilies. Such titles grew in complexity generally as time went. The presenter assigned the more complex titles to the period between the 9th and the first half of the 11th century. She also advanced the hypothesis that such compositions reflected the presence of a school that shaped and defined the sturcture of such literature in the 10th-11th centuries. The study was done primarily on Sahidic texts. Such study was made possible, no doubt by the extensive manuscript copies that Prof Orlandi has amassed in the past couple of decades in Rome. Dous, R. W. B. (Egypt). The Alexandrian Divine Liturgy of Basil the Great, according to the Coptic Tradition: Critical Edition. This paper deals with the presenter doctoral dissertation on the Greek version of the Egyptian text of the Liturgy of St. Basil. He used nine Greek manuscripts of this text, found in Egyptian libraries with dates ranging from

St. Shenouda Coptic Newsletter

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