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The Roots of Egyptian Christianity (Studies in Antiquity and Christianity)

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This is a scholarly work par excellence. Because of its appeal to experts some readers with a serious interest in the subject may be turned away by the first 100 pages. My advice: skip them. The remaining 200 pages are a wealth of updated information and insight into a subject that has haunted students for years. The most important contribution of this volume is the convincing notion that Christianity in Egypt had its origins in multiform Alexadrian Judaism. Therefore, as in other parts of the Empire Christianity in Egypt started as an urban phenomenon, albeit clothed in the variegated cloth of Judaism. I also found enlightening treatments on what I term "the playground of theologians," i.e., gnosticism, both Christian and otherwise. The soil of the gnostic arena was made of a rich compost mixed up by Plato, Philo, Origen, Valentinus, and others. Insights into the relationship between Manichaeism and Egyptian asceticism and monasticism were of special interest to this reviewer. The contributors to this book are tops in their fields. I was captured by the topic, and finished it in two days between other pressing duties.

"If Walter Bauer...can extrapolate backwards in time from such early second-century gnostic teachers as Basilides, Carporates, and Valentinus, it is equally valid to extrapolate into the first century other varieties of Christianity, including more 'orthodox' ones, such as are represented in other early second-century literature." B. Pearson



Christianity in Egypt:
The history of Christianity in Egypt dates back verily to the beginnings of Christianity itself. The Coptic Church tradition holds that Christianity was brought to Egypt by the Apostle John Mark in the early part of the first century AD. Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, in his Ecclesiastic History states that Saint Mark first came to Egypt between the first and third year of the reign of Emperor Claudius, which would make it sometime between AD 41 and 44, and that he returned to Alexandria some twenty years later to preach and evangelize. Saint Mark's first convert in Alexandria was Anianus, a shoemaker who later was consecrated a bishop and became Patriarch of Alexandria after Saint Mark's martyrdom. This succession of Patriarchs has remained unbroken down to the present day, making the Egyptian Christian, or Coptic, Church one of the oldest Christian churches in existence. Evidence for this age comes in the form of the oldest Biblical papyri discovered in remote regions of Upper Egypt. These papyri are written in the Coptic script and are older than even the oldest Greek copies of the Bible ordered by Constantine in AD 312, and copied in the Alexandrian scriptorium,

Roots of Egyptian Christianity:
The first volume produced by the project (The Roots of Egyptian Christianity, SAC 1. Fortress, 1986) contained revised versions of papers presented in its first conference. The Roots of Egyptian Christianity Project of the IAC (Institute of Antiquity & Christianity) was inaugurated with an international conference by that name held at Claremont and Santa Barbara in 1983, with sponsorship by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project's goal is to foster scholarship on early Egyptian Christianity up to the time of the Arab conquest of Egypt in the seventh century. It seeks to understand the inception of Christianity in Egypt, first in Greek-speaking Alexandria, its further development and spread among the native populations of Egypt, and its emergence as the national religion of Egypt. By studying the development of Egyptian Christianity as an expression of Egyptian culture, often in reaction to the dominant culture of the Graeco-Roman world, one is better able to understand what makes Coptic Christianity Egyptian.
Several volumes have been published by members of the project, all in the Roots of Egyptian Christianity sub-series of the IAC series, Studies in Antiquity and Christianity. Since its inception the project has been directed by Birger A. Pearson, now Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Essays:
This ground breaking collection of scholarly essays is grouped in five parts. The first of which deals with the various sources written by five experts in their fields covering Coptic manuscripts, Papyri, and inscriptions, and Arabic sources in Early Egyptian Christianity. The Early Egyptian Christianity background and milieu follows. Part three covers the emergence of Christianity and its Jewish roots. Part four and five are the most interesting to the non specialized reader, and should be briefly described:
IV. Theological Speculations and Debates; includes, Theological education in Alexandria, Jewish and Platonic speculations (Eugnostus, Philo, Valentinus, and Origen), Athanasius Vs. Arius, Anti-Chaledonian polemics in Coptic texts.
V. Monasticism; Pachomian studies, Shenute of Atripe, Monasticism and Gnosis, and the manichean Challenge to Egyptian Christianity.

The Contributors:
All contributors are towering scholars, led by Tito Orlandi, James Robinson, Charles kannengiesser, and Armand veilleux. The editors Birger Pearson and James Goehring gave a concise forward for the book and the project, while Robinson's Preface covered the IAC fourty volumes, with a detailed list of the Institutes various related projects.