Shenoute's literary corpus

Abstract

This long-awaited publication of Stephen Emmel's reconstruction of the literary corpus of Shenoute, monastic leader in Upper Egypt from 385 until 465, and Coptic author par excellence, marks the beginning of new era in Shenoute studies. On the basis of about one hundred parchment codexes from the library of Shenoute's monastery, pieced together from nearly two thousand fragments scattered among some two dozen collections, Emmel demonstrates that Shenoute's corpus was transmitted in two multi-volume sets of collected works, nine volumes of Canons and eight volumes of Discourses. At the core of his study is a description of each reconstructed codex, demonstrating the organization and coherence of the corpus as a whole, followed by a survey of its contents in which nearly 150 individual works are catalogued. A research-historical and methodological introduction, tables, concordances, and an extensive bibliography make Emmel's book a mine of information that will be indispensable for future research on Shenoute, whether philological, historical, or theological.

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