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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A. Suciu, Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense (Diss. Laval, QC)

Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense
(Previously Known as the Gospel of the Savior).

Reedition of P. Berol. 22220,
Strasbourg Copte 5-7 and
Qasr el-Wizz Codex ff. 12v-17r
with Introduction and Commentary.




My thesis is about a Coptic text which is largely known as the “Gospel” of the Savior. Although this title suggests that the text is an uncanonical apocryphal gospel, literary evidences which I document in my thesis firmly indicate that the text does not belong to this genre, but it is rather one of the numerous “memoirs” of the apostles and disciples, which were composed in Coptic, most likely after the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE). Sometimes, the pseudo-apostolic memoirs were incorporated into sermons attributed to the Fathers of the Coptic Church. The fact that the text belongs to a well-defined genre, formed mostly of homilies with apocryphal insertions, has caused me to eschew the label “gospel,” which I find unsatisfactory and misleading. Instead, I have chosen to call the text the Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense (ApoBA), after the location of the two main manuscripts. In fact, the label “apocryphon” is larger and more generous than “apocryphal gospel.”