St. Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society

Third St. Shenouda Annual Coptic Conference Registration Form

July 27-28, 2001

Presentations @ UCLA, Royce Hall Room 314, Los Angeles California 90024

• Fees
• Schedule (periodically updated)
• Location
• Directions & Parking
• Abstracts

Registration Fee (Suggested Contributions):

• Members: $20
• Non-Member : $25
• Students: $10
• UCLA Students/Faculty: Free

Back

Schedule:

Schedule: The following is a tentative schedule for the conference:

Friday, July 27, 2001

• Note: For e-mail registration, the registration fee will be collected at the first day of attendance and will cover entrance fees, program packet, and lunches.

Back

Location:

The Conference will be located on the Campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Royce Hall, Room 314.

Back

Directions and Parking:

Coming from the south or from the Santa Monica Freeway:
Take the 405 N, Exit Wilshire East (Bear to the right at the exit)
Turn Right on Wilshire Blvd.
Turn Left on Westwood Ave. (the 3rd traffic light after exiting the fwy)
Turn Right on Leconte Ave
then turn Left on Hilgard Ave (the second light after turning into LeConte
Turn Left on Westholme Drive, then turn right immediately in a driveway to the information booth.
Request parking in Lot #2, parking is $6 per day and mention that you attending the St Shenouda Coptic Conference at Royce Hall.
The attendant at the booth can direct you to Royce Hall.
Enter in the left-most doors of Royce Hall and take the elevator up to the third floor (Room #314).

Coming from the north (The San Fernando Valley):
Take the 405 S, Exit Sunset East
Turn Left on Sunset Blvd.
Turn Right on Hilgard Ave.
Turn Right on Westholme Drive, then turn right immediately in a driveway to the information booth.
Request parking in Lot #2, parking is $6 per day.
The attendant at the booth can direct you to Royce Hall.
Enter in the left-most doors of Royce Hall and take the elevator up to the third floor (Room #314).

Back

Abstracts:

Title: The Importance of the Coptic Language and Its Relation with Other Classical Middle Eastern Languages
Presenter: Prof. Boulos Ayad Ayad, (Boulder, Colorado)

Abstract:

One can assert that the Coptic Language is the same language as that of ancient Egypt but in a "more recent" form. This explains the many similarities found by scholars between both languages, although Coptic was written in the Greek alphabet plus seven letters from Demotic. The importance of Coptic appeared as Champollion attempted to decipher the Rosetta stone. In preparation, he had studies the Coptic Language as a tool. Coptic served as one of the languages that assissted scholars in discovering the correct pronunciation of certain ancient Egyptian vocabulary. Similarily, a knowledge of Coptic grammar proved valuable to the early Egyptologists in the study of the ancient Egyptian language. Moreover, because Coptic was written in the Greek and Demotic alphabet, it supported the scholars' research into the Merotic inscriptions and the Nubian Christian languages. Coptic literature is varied: the saying of the Church Fathers, theological writings, the monastic rules, biographies of the saints and martyrs that have been included in the Synaxarium and other books, stories, contracts, letters, funeral and religious texts borrowed from the New and Old Testament, grammatical studies, Gnostic writings, and magical and medical texts. Coptic writings have close links to both ancient Egyptian and Greek literature and have been employed by scholars in comparative studies among the languages. The impact of the Coptic language and literature expanded with the spread of Christianity throughout the classical world in the first five centuries A.D. During that period there was an "International" aspect to Christian literature, flowering among the Coptic and the Syrian churches and those in Armenia, Ethiopia, Greece, Russia, and even the Roman Catholicism. After the movement of Arabs into much of the Middle East in the seventh century A.D., the Egyptian Copts and other Christian Arabs began to translate many texts from their original languages into Arabic as well as now using Arabic for their contemporaneous writing. This is the reason that Dr. George Graf believes another Arabic dialect (aside from the well-known classical, spoken, and modern forms) exists based on such writings and translation: Arabic Christian literature.

-------------------------

Title: The Roots of Coptic Art
Presenter: Prof. Boulos Ayad Ayad, (Boulder, Colorado)

Abstract:

Examples of Coptic art are varied and can be seen in both secular and religious applications: the style of buildings (from palaces to villas, modest homes, and granaries); burial activities (from tombs to coffins, sarcophagi, stellas, masks, paintings, and geometric designs); the churches (from the roots to the facades, the two towers, pillars, and columns and the Interior decorations with the icons and paintings); and a host of other forms such as amulets, papyri and religious books, crosses, tools, and garments and textiles. All of such art elements came from the ancient Egyptian traditions, especially that of the villages, which was influenced directly by ancestral art. In larger cities, however, Coptic art was affected by the Greco-Roman and Byzantine artistic fashions. Nonetheless, the roots of Coptic art emante from the context of ancient Egyptian art traditions.

-------------------------

Title: The Use of Psalms in the Coptic Church
Presenter: Miss Veronia Hanna (Los Angeles, CA)

Abstract:

The book of Psalms represented the earliest Christian hymn book, in the same manner as it served in the times of Jews of the Old Testament. The Jewish background of the Apostles played a major role in this of course. In the Coptic Church, manuscriptal evidence points to early and frequent adoptation of this book in the Coptic translation of the Old Testament from Greek. This paper will briefly discuss the Christian origins of its use and more specifically in the Coptic Church. It will further deal with the where and the how of its use in the Church. This paper will also attempt to survey psalms and psalm verses used in the services to determine pattern of usage if such can be ascertained. For the purpose of this paper, the survey will be limited to the Lectionary Readings, the Horologion, and the Psalmodia.

-------------------------

Title: Pope Timothy II Aeluros, his life and his importance for development of Christianity in Egypt.
Presenter: Prof. David Johnson, S.J. (Washington, D.C.)

Abstract:

No abstract submitted

-------------------------

Title: Conversion after the Arab Conquest of Egypt.
Presenter: Deacon Severus (Maged) Mikhail (Orange, CA)

Abstract:

No abstract submitted

-------------------------

Title: Abba Shenoute and the Melitians: Polemics and Conflict with Formation, Ideology, and Practice of a Separatist Monastic Community
Presenter: Mark Moussa (Washington, D.C.)

Abstract:

Abba Shenoute (d. 465), the famed fifth-century abbot of the White Monastery near ancient Atripe, Egypt, lead his monastic community in the midst of a period of active ideological and practical interchange. The Panopolitan region in particular, during the late fourth and fifth centuries, provides the historian with a landscape of ideological diversity among Christians and non-Christians alike, and an assortment of ascetic practice among orthodox, Melitian, Manichaean, and other monastic communities. The writings of Abba Shenoute, the Coptic author par excellence of Late Antiquity, provides us with a valuable-though hardly explored-window into the period. In fact, the abbot's polemical treatises against suspect groups as such tells us much of their presence and influence on Christian society and culture in the vicinity of the White Monastery community. This paper will explore the portrayal of Melitians-a monastic group much disparaged in Coptic literary sources-as they appear in Abba Shenoute's writings. We find both observations and criticisms of their activities, organization, doctrinal ideology, and liturgical practice in a number of important treatises delivered several generations after the patriarch Athanasius (d. 373) had begun his own polemic against his hierarchical foes. Despite Abba Shenoute's influence and homiletic campaign against Melitians, their existence in monastic Egypt would continue to thrive at least until in the patriarchate of Damian in the late sixth century.

-------------------------

Title: The Egyptian Philosophy and its Impact On the Mediterranean Civilization
Presenter: Prof. Rachad Mounir Shoucri (Kingston, Canada)

Abstract:

Until very recently the history of ancient Egypt has been written according to stereotyped ideas by researchers trained in biblical or classical studies: Greek thought represents rationalism, Jewish tradition is primarily monotheist, Egypt is the land of a pragmatic civilization that has been unable to reach these two perfections of the human mind. Recent studies of the Corpus Hermeticum and of the Coptic gnostic library discovered at Nag Hammadi have revealed the importance on the philosophical thought of ancient Egypt on the shaping of the religious traditions of the ancient Orient. In the same way that St. Albert the Great and St. Thomas Aquinus have started in the 13th century a reconciliation between the ancient Greek philosophy and the principles of the Christian religion, the time has probably come to achieve a similar reconciliation between the ancient Egyptian philosophy and the monotheistic religions that followed it.

-------------------------

Title: Coptic Interest in Patristic Theology: From Habib Girgis to Present
Presenter: Dr. Saad Michael Saad, (RPV, CA)

Abstract: Throughout their history, the Copts expressed a lively interest in the lives and teachings of the early church fathers. Habib Girgis (1876-1951), however, started a theological movement that intensified this interest and made it a focal point for generations of Coptic theologians and laymen who followed him. This paper will trace the movement from its inception to the present, explain its historical and ecclesiastical contexts, and attempt to answer these vital questions: If Protestant missionary activities in Egypt motivated Habib Girgis and his disciples to appeal to the Fathers for the defense of orthodoxy, what are the motivations today? Is patristic theology necessary or sufficient for the establishment of orthodox doctrine? Who are the Coptic patristic theologians since Habib Girgis? What is the mission of patristic theology today?

-------------------------

Title: 'Our Brother, the Monk Eustathius': A Ninth-Century Syrian Orthodox Theologian Known to Medieval Arabophone Copts
Presenter: Dr. Mark Swanson (St. Paul, MN)

Abstract:

A few manuscript collections, especially in the Middle East, preserve a lengthy and wide-ranging Arabic-language apology for the Christian faith sometimes known simply as Kitab Ustath, "The Book of Eustathius." Very little is known about this author, and his book has not yet been the object of editing projects or studies (apart from a few limited-circulation theses). However, Eustathius and his book were known to important Coptic Orthodox theologians of the medieval period: Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffa' in the tenth century A.D., Abu Shakir ibn Butrus al-Rahib in the thirteenth, and Shams al-Ri'asah Abu l-Barakat Ibn Kabar in the fourteenth. This paper will briefly introduce "The Book of Eustathius," summarize what we know about its author, and demonstrate the extensive use that Sawirus ibn al-Muqaffa' makes of it. It is suggested that in "The Book of Eustathius" Sawirus may have found a significant model for the task - new at that time for the Copts - of writing an apology for the faith of the Church in the Arabic language.

-------------------------

Title: Sahidicism in the Current Edition of the Bohairic Pascha Book.
Presenter: Mr. Hany N. Takla, (Los Angeles, CA)

Abstract:

The current edition of the Bohairic Pascha Book represents a variety of readings adopted from a previous edition in addition to new and unique ones found in a particular manuscript. Very scanty information is found about such manuscripts, however. The majority of these texts displays some Sahidic features which the late Coptic Scholar Yassa 'Abd al-Masih transcribed them exactly as found in the original. Such Sahidic elements are not in pure grammatical style nor are they mere variant readings of some words in the text. They seem to be original (or transcription of) texts translated from Sahidic to Bohairic by one or several that did not have an excellent command of the classical Bohairic dialect. Strangely enough most of these texts are extant in pure Bohairic! This paper will survey some of the interesting grammatical differences found in these reading as compared by the classical Bohairic equivalent if found.

-------------------------

Title: Ritual Healing in Coptic Liturgical Discourse
Presenter: Miss. Nefertiti M. Takla, (Los Angeles, CA)

Abstract:

No abstract presented.

-------------------------

Title: A Figure in the Carpet: The Spirituality of St. Macarius the Great
Presenter: Rev. Dr. Tim Vivian, (Bakersfield, CA)

Abstract:

Monks have been in the Wadi al-Natrun for almost 1700 years. Why? Why did the early monks come to live in the forbidding desert? I hope to answer this question, or make an effort at answering it, by looking at the spirituality of early monasticism in the Wadi al-Natrun. Such an effort will, I hope, offer a history of a different sort, a history of the heart, mind, and spirit in one particular place and at one particular time. Such a history, I firmly believe, has relevance for own places and time. For this paper I will focus on Saint Macarius the Great. My hope is that by the end of the paper he will have given us a clearer view of early monasticism and will help us better understand why the early monks were out in the desert and what they were hoping to accomplish with their lives.

-------------------------

Title: The Fifth Ecumenical Council of the West and the Coptic Church
Presenter: Mr. Ramses Wassif, (San Gabriel, CA)

Abstract:

After the fourth council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, the Coptic Church together with the Syrian Church became independent while the west looked at them as heretical churches. Together with the Armenian Church, they are known today as the non-Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches or the Oriental Churches. In the two centuries that followed Chalcedon, several attempts for reconciliation were made. However, for the most part these efforts were unsuccessful in restoring the unity to the Church. The Churches in the west continued in their unity until the second schism became official in 1054 AD. This time, the churches that had agreed with Rome at Chalcedon, split. These are known today as the Chalcedonian Orthodox Churches or the Eastern Orthodox Churches. Between the first and second schisms of 451 and 1054 AD, The church in the west had three major councils which are recognized by the Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Churches (Chalcedonian) as ecumenical. These are the Fifth, Six and Seventh Ecumenical Councils. The Fifth Council (Constantinople II), which is one of the attempts at reconciliation, was held in 553 at the request of Emperor Justinian. It dealt mainly with what is known as the Three Chapters. This paper will examine the historical background that led to this council, will define the three chapters, and their relation to the Coptic Church. It will further demonstrate that although the council was held as a means to reunite the Church and its decisions were in line with the theology of the Coptic Church, the council did not succeed in resolving the differences that caused the schism in the first place.

-------------------------

Title: Job in the Coptic Tradition
Presenter: Dr. Youhanna N. Youssef, (Melbourne, Australia)

Abstract:

The book of Job played a significant role in the liturgical life of early Coptic Christianity. This paper will discuss the image of Job in the actual Liturgical books. There they stress three themes about Job: The Renewing, Temptation and sadness (as reflection of the Passion of Christ), and the Right Man. These points will be illustrated by quotations from the various liturgical books, used currently in the Coptic Church, such as the Difnar, Psalmodia, Pascha Book, and the Euchologion.

Back

Prepared by Hany N. Takla, July 24, 2001

For more information contact: htakla@stshenouda.com