A NEW VERSION 0F THE COPTIC "HOMILY ON THE RESURRECTION OF LAZARUS"

Janet Timbie, Washington, D.C. [typescript draft, ca 1980]

A new version of the Coptic "Homily on the Resurrection of Lazarus," attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria, has recently been discovered in the collection of the University Museum at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.\1/ Previously, this text was known only through a single manuscript, M595 in the Pierpont Morgan collection, which has been edited and translated by Joseph Bernardin.\2/ The University Museum version, E16262, was identified by Robert A. Kraft, and my own work on this manuscript -- the editing, translating, and text critical analysis -- has been assisted by Professor Kraft at many points.

\1/Acknowledge permission of Museum.

\2/Joseph Bernardin, "The Resurrection of Lazarus," American Journal of Semitic Languages 57(1940):262-290.

The exact provenance of the manuscript is unknown. It is part of a miscellaneous collection that was acquired for the University Museum between 1900 and 1910 by William Maxwell Müller, through a dealer in Cairo.\3/ As the manuscript itself is undated, paleographic analysis is the only available means by which to date the manuscript (see below).

\3/See John R. Abercrombie, "Egyptian Papyri," Expedition 20(1978): 32--33, for a brief description of the circumstances of the acquisition.

The text is written on parchment in brown ink. The Coptic dialect used is Sahidic with a few minor deviations (see below). The manuscript does not contain a complete text of the "Homily" since only three broken leaves, written on both sides, are preserved. The manuscript is a palimpsest:  underwriting is legible on all six pages and a text contained therein has been tentatively identified as the "Homily on the Passion," attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem.\4/    However, the present article will deal only with the text contained in the overwriting, the "Homily on the Resurrection of Lazarus," and statements about the characteristics of "the manuscript" refer only to that overwriting.

\4/The complete text of this homily is also found in the Morgan collection -- M610, which is the only previously known manuscript of the text. A complete description of the version contained in the underwriting of the University Museum manuscript will appear separately.

Due to the poor condition of the manuscript, it is difficult to determine its exact dimensions but an approximate measurement is possible. The written area measures 12.2 cm (breadth) by 17.2 cm (height); the entire page, insofar as this can be reconstructed, measures 16.5 cm by 20.5 cm. The 4:5 ratio between breadth and height seems to be common in early parchment codices.\5

\5/Eric G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977) 26-32.

The manuscript is written in a fairly neat, but not elegant, slanting hand with occasional large initial letters in the left margin (ekthesis). It corresponds closely to the thin "bookhand" that Victor Stegemann assigns to the ninth century or later.\6/    At this point the influence of the documentary style on book-hands, which began in the seventh century, becomes quite important. Characteristics of this ninth century, thin book-hand include the following: 1) The rounded letters E (epsilon) and C (sigma) are very small; 2) small hooks or eaves appear on the letters G (gamma), T (tau), and Y (upsilon); 3) the diagonal stroke of N (nu) intersects the right vertical in the middle; 4) the horizontal saddle stroke of M (mu) is very low and rests on the line in subscripts to ninth and tenth century manuscripts. According to Stegemann, this type of M appears in the body of manuscripts in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.\7/ All these features are prominent in the manuscript under discussion, E16262. Comparing E16262 to the examples in Maria Cramer's paleographic album gives a similar result. It most closely resembles numbers 25, 30, and 32 in the album -- all ninth and tenth century manuscripts.\8/ While it is not possible to be very precise, the weight of the paleographic evidence favors a late ninth or tenth century date for the manuscript.

\6/Victor Stegemann, Koptische Palaographie (Heidelberg: Bilabel, 1936) 19.

\7/Stegemann, 21.

\8/Maria Cramer, Koptische Palaographie (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1964) #25 = Morgan 603 (903 C.E).; #30 = BM Or 3367 (10th-11th C.E.); #32 = BM Or 1320 (1006 C.E).

Four pages of E16262 (folia 1a-b and 2a-b as numbered below) follow pp. 115 rb - 117 ra in the Morgan manuscript (M595) quite closely, though there are many small variants. In several instances, E16262 uses a different verbal form or tense from that used in M595: a conjunctive continues the I future where M595 uses I perfect (see 1a.15 below); present circumstantial appears instead of future circumstantial (1b.9); present circumstantial is used instead of I perfect (2a.19-20); etc.\9/ These verbal variants have little or no effect on the meaning of the text, but neither can they all be discounted as scribal errors introduced in the copying of either E16262 or M595.

\9/Other instances of tense variants are 2b.11 (present circumstantial vs. imperfect), 2b.14 (1 present vs. 1 future), and 2b.20 (1 future vs. conjunctive signifying future).

In many passages within these four pages, E16262 offers a slightly shorter or longer text than M595. There are more "omissions" (13) than "expansions" (9) in E16262 but nearly all are very minor variants involving a single word. A few major variants occur; in all of these cases E16262 has a longer text than M595. For example, where E16262 has eNTAMESTE THUTN eNTAIENE hRAI eNTAORGH MeNPAgWNEAT . . . . (la.15-17), M595 has jE AIMESTE THUTN . . . .  At other points the longer text of E16262 contains the same kind of redundancy.\10/ In one instance the longer text seems to derive from an identifiable source: E16262, 2b.14-17 is considerably longer than the parallel passage in M595 and the additional material offers a more complete citation of Lk 22.29.\11/

\10/See la.12--13 and 2a.6-8.

\11/The Coptic Version of the New Testament in the Southern  Dialect, vol. 2, the Gospel of St. Luke, ed. G. W. Horner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911).

There is one other example of a variant derived from a different treatment of a biblical text. As noted earlier, the entire homily is based on the story of Lazarus in Jn 11.25­12.18. But at the point in the story at which Jesus is anointed by Mary (Jn 12.3) E16262 (2a.14) uses the word ALABASTRON for the ointment -- in agreement with the synoptic account (Mt 26.7, Mk 14.3, Lk 7.37) of the anointing of Jesus -- while M595 has LITRA as in the Gospel of John.

Finally, a small group of phonetic variants should be noted. E16262 uses B rather than f as in M595 (1a.14, 1.22); G rather than K (1b.21, twice in Greek loan-words); D rather than T (2b.9 Greek loan-word); and doubles certain vowels (2a.4, 2b.9 NAAU). This is very meager evidence upon which to build a case for separate dialectical affinities in E16262 and M595. Both are essentially Sahidic. The use of G for K and D for T in Greek loan-words is common and is not linked to any one dialect. According to Crum, use of B for f is associated with Fayyumic.\12/  The doubling of vowels (NAAU) is "Theban," according to Worrell\13/ and more specifically associated with AA\2 by Kahle.\14/ The data does not produce any clear picture. If more of the Coptic fragments in the University Museum were edited -- and if they seemed to share dialectical features -- a stronger case might be made and conclusions could perhaps be drawn concerning the provenance of (at least some of) the manuscripts in the University Museum collection.

\12/W. E. Crum, A Coptic Dictionary, 620a.

\13/Worrell, Coptic Sounds, 110, 117.

\14/Paul E. Kahle, Bala'izah, vol. 1, 233.

The remaining two pages (5-6 = folio 3a-b) of the six pages in E16262 contain material that does not precisely parallel any part of M595. These two pages continue to discuss the resurrection of Lazarus and there is a vague resemblance between them and a section near the beginning of M595. In M595, pp. 113 rB - 114 ra, Jesus summons Lazarus from the tomb: "Come forth. Behold, I am standing by you. I am your Lord; you are the work of my hands. Why have you not known me, because in the beginning I formed Adam from the earth and gave him breath. Stand upon your feet and receive strength for yourself; for I am the strength of the whole creation. Stretch out your hands and I will give them strength . . . ." The direct address to Lazarus continues in this manner to the end of 113 v, then the homily turns to Jesus' statement to the crowd gathered at the tomb: "Loose him and release him, in order that he may go" (114 r).

The independent material in E16262 covers essentially the same topics: "He calls to Lazaruss 'Come out: Why are you sleeping? Rise, O Lazarus and listen to God who summons you. Rise and stand . . . . Know the one who created you . . . . Free yourself from the linen garment so that you may wear the garment of spirit' "(pp. 5-6 [3a-b]). But there are no verbal parallels with M595; the two versions differ in every detail. For example, in E16262, P. 5, Jesus orders Lazarus to free himself from his grave clothes; in M595, 114 r, this command is directed to the onlookers (as it is in Jn 11.44). Thus these two pages (5-6 [3a-b]) in E16262 seem to be an independent composition rather than an expansion or revision of 113 r - 114 r in M595.

It must also be noted that it is unclear where pages 5-6 [folio 3a-b] fit thematically in relation to pages 1-4 [folios 1a-b and 2a-b]. Given the condition of the manuscript and the usual style of this type of literature, the independent material in E16262 (pp. 5-6 [=3a-b]) could either precede or follow the parallel section (pp. 1-4 [=1a-b and 2a-b]) in the hypothetical complete manuscript of this text.

In conclusion, while it is clear that E16262 contains a version of the "Homily on the Resurrection of Lazarus," the relationship between this version and the M595 version cannot be characterized with precision at this time. The variant readings in the parallel passages do not indicate that E16262 was copied from a text of the M595 type, or vice versa. The nature of the variants -- many involve the use of different tenses or syntactical forms -- cannot be explained by any simple or close dependence of one version on the other. The parallel passages could represent independent translations of a Greek prototype, which were then augmented with other homiletic material to form two distinct homilies on the theme of the resurrection of Lazarus.\15/

\15/See Lefort's comments on a similar problem in certain Athanasian texts, in S. Athanase. Lettres festales et  pastorales en copte, CSCO 150, ed. L.-Th. Lefort, xxxii.

A transcription and translation of the homily on the resurrection of Lazarus in E16262 follows. In both transcribing and translating I have attempted to reconstruct broken portions of the text by using parallels in M 595 or my own hypotheses. These reconstructed passages are clearly marked. All textual variants in the critical apparatus derive from M595; these are not separately labeled because no other version of the text is available.

The following textual signs are used:

. A dot under a letter indicates that the letter is visually uncertain.

[ ] Square brackets indicate a lacuna in the manuscript.

An estimate of the number of missing letters is indicated by [±3] or by [. . .] in the translation.

< > Pointed brackets indicate a correction of a scribal omission or error.

l(l) indicates line number(s).

folio 1a

folio 1b

folio 2a

folio 2b

folio 3a

folio 3b

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