Syncretism and the holy man in late antique Egypt

Journal of Early Christian Studies

Volumn 11, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 339-385

  Frankfurter, David ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049377215     PISSN: 10676341     EISSN: 10863184     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/earl.2003.0043     Document Type: Article

References (172)

1. See Paul Christopher Johnson, "Migrating Bodies, Circulating Signs: Brazilian Candomblé, the Garfuna of the Caribbean, and the Category of Ind igenous Religions," HR 41.4 (2002): 301-27.
2. See, e.g., Hans Bonnet, "On Understanding Syncretism," tr. John Baines, and John Baines, "Egyptian Syncretism: Hans Bonnet's Contribution," Orientalia 68 (1999): 181-214.
3. Cf. C. Guignebert, "Les demi-chrétiens et leur place dans l'Église antique," RHR 88 (1923): 65-102.
4. Cf. W. M. Ramsay, "The Worship of the Virgin Mary at Ephes us" and "The Permanence of Holy Places in Western Asia," Pauline and Other Studies (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1906), 125-88.
5. See, e.g., E. A. W. Budge, Coptic Apocrypha in the Dialect of Upper Egypt (London: British Museum, 1913; repr. New York: AMS, 1977), lix-lxxii;
6. Frank Hudson Hallock, "Christianity and the Old Egyptian Religion," Egyptian Religion 2 (1934): 6-17;
7. O. H. E. Burmester, "Egyptian Mythology in the Coptic Apocrypha," Orientalia 7 (1938): 355-67;
8. and Ernst Hammerschmidt, "Altägyptische Elemente im koptischen Christentum," Ostkirchliche Studien 6 (1957): 233-50.
9. Cf. Jan Zandee, "Traditions pharaoniques et influences extéreures dans légendes coptes," Chronique d'Egypte 1971): 211-19, whose rejection of all such efforts at catalo guing survivals is itself overly sweeping.
10. See now Heike Behlmer, "Ancient Egyptian Survivals in Coptic Literature: An Overview," Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms, ed. A. Loprieno (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 567-90.
11. Charles Stewart and Rosalind Shaw, "Introduction: Problematizing Syncretism," Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism: The Politics of Religious Synthesis, ed. C. Stewart and R. Shaw (London: Routledge, 1994), 1-26.
12. See also David N. Gelln quot;For Syncre tism: The Position of Buddhism in Nepal and Japan Compared," Social Anthropology 5.3 (1997): 277-91;
13. and compare Michael Pye, "Syncretism versus Synthesis," Method and Theory in Study of Religion 6 (1994): 217-29.
14. See critiques of this "conversion" model in Jack Goody, "Religion, Social Change and the Sociology of Conversion," Changing Social Structure in Ghana, e d. J. Goody (London: International African Institute, 1975), 102-3;
15. See, e.g., Webb Keane, "From Fetishism to Sincerity: On Agency, the Speaking Subject, and Their Historicity in the Context of Religious Conversion," Comparative Studies in Society and History 39.4 (1997): 674-93.
16. See, for Egypt, Jan Quaegebeur, "Les 'saints' égyptiens préchrétiens," Orientalia Loveniensia Periodica 8 (1977): 129-43.
17. David Frankfurter, "Introduction: Approaches to Coptic Pilgrimage," Pil grimage and Holy Space in late Antique Egypt, ed. David Frankfurter, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 134 (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 13-28;
18. cf. Michael J. Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes: Regional Cults in Cusco (Washington: Smithsonian, 1987).
19. See esp. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, tr. R. Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 81, 82-83;
20. cf. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
21. See, e.g., David Frankfurter, "Stylites and Phallobates: Pillar Religions in Late Antique Syria," VC 44 (1990): 168-98;
22. Douglas H. Johnson, Nuer Prophets: A History of Prophecy from the Upper Nile in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 88-94, 137-38.
23. See esp. Peter Brown, The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1978),
24. and, for religious innovation in other contexts, David Frankfurter, "The Consequences of Hellenism te Antique Egypt: Religious World s and Actors," Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2.2 (2000): 162-94.
25. See, on politics of modern syncretisms, essays by Stewart, Guss, and Koepping in Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism, and Stephan Palmié, "Against Syncretism: 'Afric anizing' and 'Cubanizing' Discourses in North American òrìsà Worship," Counterworks: Managing the Diversity of Knowledge, ed. Richard Fardon (London: Routledge, 1995), 73-104.
26. Similar politics of authenticity surrounded the discourse of "coptism" in fifth-century Egypt and subsequently under Arab rule: see Johannes Leipoldt, Schenute von Atripe und die Enstehung des national ägyptischen Christentums, TU 25 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1903),
27. whose "nationalistic" terminology is discusse d in Ewa Wipszycka, "Le nationalisme a-t-il existé dans l'Égypte byzantine?" Journal of Juristic Papyrology 22 (1992): 83-128.
28. See the useful qualifications of the Bourdieu structuralist model in R. W. Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person, and Sexual Politics (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 92-99.
29. Peter Brown, "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity" [1971], in his Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), 103-52;
30. and "Arbiters of the Holy: The Christian Holy M Late Antiquity," in his Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 55-78.
31. Brown, Authority and the Sacred, 68.
32. Brown's work on saints has influenced Steven Kaplan, The Monastic Holy Man and the Christianization of Early Solomonic Ethiopia, Studien zur Kulturkunde 73 (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1984),
33. and R. L. Stirrat, Power and Religiosity in a Post-Colonial Setting: Sinhala Catholics in Contemporary Sri Lanka (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
34. E.g., Johnson, Nuer Prophets; Richard P. Werbner, ed., Regional Cults, ASA Monographs 16 (London: Academic Press, 1977);
35. and Werbner, "Regional Cult of God Above," Ritual Passage, Sacred Journey: The Process and Organization of Religious Movement (Washington: Smithsonian Institution; Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1989), 245-98.
36. Millennialist prophets in Melanesia and North America also embody some of these patterns in linking tradition and innovation: see, e.g., Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven, New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980);
37. Thomas W. Overholt, ed., Prophecy in Cross-Cultural Perspective (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986).
38. Cf. Elizabeth Colson, "Continuing Dialogue: Prophets and Local Shrines among the Tonga of Zambia," Regional Cults, 119-40,
39. On the social topography of local and regional pilgrimage cults, see esp. Victor Turner, "Pilgrimages as Social Processes," Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 166-230.
40. Life of John the Little 78, ed. E. Amélineau, Histoire des monastères de la basse-Égypte, Annales du Musée Guimet 25 (Paris: Leroux, 1894), 393,
41. tr. adjusted from Maged S. Mikhail and Tim Vivian, "Life of Saint John the Little: An Enc omium by Zacharias of Sakha," Coptic Church Review 18.1-2 (1997): 51-52.
42. Compare similar images of western European heathenism: Richard M. Price, "The Holy Man and Christianization from the Apocryphal Apostles to St. St ephen of Perm," in The Cult of Sain Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. P. A. Hayward and J. D. Howard-Johnston (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 215-38, esp. 217-20.
43. on which see Jacques van der Vliet, "Spätantikes Heidentum in Ägypten im Spiegel der koptischen Literatur," Begegnung von Heidentum und Christentum im spätantiken Ägypten, Riggisberger Berichte 1 (Riggisberg: Abegg-Stiftung, 1993), 99-130;
44. Frankfurter, Religion in Roman Egypt, 77-82, 131-42,
45. and "'Things Unbefitting Christians': Violence and Christianiz ation in Fifth-Century Panopolis," JECS 8.2 (2000): 273-95.
46. New manuscripts disc ussed by Stephen Emmel show not only that the landowner was pretending to be a Christian, but also that Shenoute was obsessed with revealing and exposing the images that he had hidden in his house: "From the Other Side of the Nile: Shenute and Panopolis," in Perspectives on Panopolis: An Egyptian Town from Alexander the Great to the Arab Conquest, P. Lugduno-Batava ed. A. Egberts, B. P. Muhs, and J. van der Vliet (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 95-113.
47. Texts in Mark R. Moussa, "Abba Moses of Abydos" (M.A. diss., Catholic University of America, 1998);
48. see in general René-Georges Coquin, "Moïse d'Abydos," Deuxième fournée d'études coptes, Cahiers de la bibliothèque copte 3 (Louvai n: Peeters, 1986), 1-14,
49. Apophth. Patr. (Anon.), ed. Nau, "Histoire des solitaires égyptiens," ROC 13 (1908): 275-76, no. 191
50. = Benedicta Ward, The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers (Fairacres, Oxford: SLG, 1986), no. 59.
51. Serge Sauneron derived this image of the sacrificial cauldron from curse iconography on the walls of many Egyptian temples: "Le chaudron de Sohag: Comment naît une légende," Villes et légendes d'Égypte, 2nd ed. (Cairo: Institut Français d'archéologie orientale, 1983), 160-64.
52. and Rodney Needham, Primordial Characters [Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978], 33-44), implying that these kinds of tableaux of evil are easily and universally invoked to mobilize against subversive evil.
53. See Robert K. Ritner, The Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice, Studies in Ancient Oriental Civilization 54 (Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1993).
54. On illocutions - ritually contextual pronouncements meant to accomplish what is said via the utterance itself - see esp. Stanley J. Tambiah, "The Magical Power of Words," Man 3 (1968): 175-208,
55. following ideas of J. L. Austin, How to Do Things With Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).
56. E.g., from the Life of Moses of Abydos: the devil declares, "woe unto me, I, the wretched one, for I have been cast out of every place, even this house [Abyd os] that was left for me. See how I heen thrown out of it and left outside like a beggar. In Shmin Shenoute threw me out. He took away my temples and converted them into churches. Even my pagan children, he took from me. And he was not satisfied with this, but chased me out of the region. . . . (ed. Walter Till, Koptische Heilige n-und Martyrerlegenden, OCA 108 [Rome: Pontifical Institute for Oriental Studies, 1936], 50-51, tr. Moussa, "Abba Moses of Abydos," 34).
57. See esp. Birgit Meyer, "Beyond Syncretism: Translation and Diabolization in the Appropriation of Protestantism in Africa," Syncretism/Anti-Syncretism, 45-68;
58. "Modernity and Enchantment: The Image of the Devil in Popular African Christianity," Conversion to Modernities, 199-230;
59. Mary Douglas, "Sorcery Accusations Unleashed: The Lele Revisited, 1987," Africa 69.2 (1999): 177-93;
60. Lionel Caplan, "The Popular Culture of Evil in Urban South India," The Anthropology of Evil, ed. D. Parkin (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1985), 110-27.
61. Cf. Andrew D. Roberts, "The Lumpa Church of Alice Lenshina," Protest and Power in Black Africa, ed. Robert I. Rotberg and Ali A. Mazrui (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 528-32.
62. On the invention of a new class of afflicting spirits, see I. M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 1989), 116-18,
63. with examples of subsequent demonologic al classifying in Adrian Hastings, "Emmanual Milingo as Christian Healer," African Medicine in the Modern World, Centre of African Studies Seminar Proceedings 27 (Edinburgh: Centre of African Studies, 1987), 147-71, esp. 163, 166;
64. Wyatt MacGaffey, "Kimbanguism and the Question of Syncretism in Zaire," Religion in Africa, ed. T. Blakely, W. van Beek, and D. Thomson (London: Currey, 1994), 248-52;
65. and (in a western urban context) Stephen Hunt, "Managing the Demonic: Some Aspects of the Neo-Pentecostal Deliverance Ministry," Journal of Contemporary Religion 13.2 (1998): 215-30.
66. In general see Jean S. La Fontaine, "Concepts of Evil, Witchcraft, and the Sexual Abuse of Children in Modern England," Etnofoor 5 (1992): 6-20;
67. M. F. C. Bourdillon, "Witchcraft and Society," African Spirituality: Forms, Meanings, and Expressions, ed. J. Olupona (New York: Crossroad, 2000), 176-97.
68. On such concepts of encroaching, anti-human "evil" in antiquity, see Richard Gordon, "Lucan's Erictho," Homo Viator: Classical Essays for John Bramble, ed. Michael Whitby, Philip Hardy, and Mary Whitby (Bristol: Bristol Classical Press), 231-41 ;
69. Sarah Iles Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), chs. 4-5;
70. Peter Brown, "Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of Christianity from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages," Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ASA Monographs 9, ed. M. Douglas (London: Tavistock, 1970), 17-45;
71. Norman Cohn, Europe's Inner Demons, rev. ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), ch. 1;
72. and James B. Rives, "Human Sacrifice among Pagans and Christians," JRS 85 (1995): 65-85,
73. with application to Christians and Heretics. On earlier fears of, and mobilizations against, supernatural subversion in Egypt, see David Frankfurter, "Lest Egypt's City be Deserted: Religion and Ideology in the Egyptian Response to the Jewish Revolt (116-117 C.E.)," JJS 43 (1992): 203-20.
74. Peregrine Horden, "Responses to Possession and Insanity in the Earlier Byzantine World," Social History of Medicine 6.2 (1993): 177-94, esp. 184.
75. Goody, "Religion, Social Change and the Sociology of Conversion," 96.
76. and Alison Redmayne, "Chikanga: An African Diviner with an International Reputation," and R. G. Willis, "Instant Millennium: The Sociology of African Witch-cleansing Cults," Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, 103-28 and 129-39, respectively.
77. Shenoute's account of "booty" from Plewit: Only I Tell Everyone Who Dwells in This Village (ed. Johannes Leipoldt, Sinuthii archimandritae vita et opera omnia 3, CSCO 42 [Paris: Sécretariat CSCO, 1906], no. 26):
78. and Valerie Flint, "The Demonisation of Magic and Sorcery in Late Antiquity: Christian Redefinitions of Pagan Religions," Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, ed. Bengt Ankarloo and Stuart Clark (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 277-348.
79. Meyer, "Beyond Syncretism"; Douglas, "Sorcery Accusations Unleashed"; and Wyatt MacGaffey, "Kibanguism: An African Christianity," Africa Report 21.1 (1976): 40 ; 43.
80. and Janet Ann Timbie, "Dualism and the Concept of Orthodoxy in the Thought of the Monks of Upper Egypt" (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1979), 113-59;
81. Antony's own demonology: see Samuel Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), 86-88, 139-40,
82. Note the preponderance of protective spells among the Egyptian Christian "magical" corpora, most of which were issued by monks, monasteries, and saint-shrines as a typically expected service: e.g., Marvin Meyer and Richard Smith, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco: Harper, 1994), nos. 19-24, 26.
83. Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission archéologique française au Caire 4 (Paris: Leroux, 1888-95), 2: 750.
84. Early modern European witch-finders often claimed this mantic capacity or were accompanied by those who did: see Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbors: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (New York: Viking, 1996), 177-208.
85. On Shenoute's advice to monks on the Devil, see Jacques van der Vliet, "Demons in Early Coptic Monasticism: Image and Reality," Coptic Art and Culture, ed. H. Hondelink (Cairo: Shouhdy, 1990), 148-52,
86. e Congrès Copte, vol. 2, Publications de l'Institut Orientaliste de Louvain 41, ed. M. Rassart-Debergh and Julien Ries (Louvain-la-Neuve: Institut Orientaliste, 1992), 41-49.
87. In general on applications of demonology to ascetic struggles, s ee Richard Valantasis, "Demons and the Perfecting of the Monk's Body: Monast ic Anthropology, Daemonology and Asceticism," Semeia 58 (1992): 47-80;
88. Douglas Burton-Christie, The Word in the Desert (New York: Oxford University, 1993), 123-26;
89. and David Brakke, "The Making of Monastic Demonology: Three Ascetic Teachers on Withdrawal and Resistance," Church History 70.1 (2001): 19-48.
90. In general, see L. Keimer, "L'horreur des égyptiens pour les démons du désert," Bulletin de l'Institut d'Égypte 26 (1944): 135-47,
91. and S. Aufrère, "L'Égypte traditionnelle, ses démons vus par les premiers chrétiens, Études Coptes V, Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte 10, ed. M. Rassart-Debergh (Paris: Peeters, 1998), 63-92.
92. Cf. Rossi Tractate §19, ed. Angelicus M. Kropp, Ausegewählte koptische Zaubertexte (Brussels: Fondation égyptologique Reine Élisabeth, 1930-31), 1: 77
93. (repr., tr. Marvin W. Meyer, Rossi's 'Gnostic' Tractate, Occasional Papers 13 [Claremont: Institute for Antiquit y and Christianity, 1988], 26),
94. with discussion in Adolf Erman, "Heidnisches bei den Kopten," Zeitschrift für ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde 33 (1895): 47-48,
95. and W. E. Crum, Coptic Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1939), 230b.
96. On the reordering of indigenous religion to emphasize previously otiose high gods, see Robin Horton, "African Conversion," Africa 41 (1971): 85-108,
97. See also Jacques van der Vliet, "Satan's Fall in Coptic Magic," Ancient Magic and Ritual Power, ed. Marvin W. Meyer and Paul Mirecki, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 129 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 410-18.
98. See, e.g., on Catalonia: María Helena Sánchez Ortega, "Sorcery and Eroticism in Love Magic," Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World, ed. Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne J. Cruz (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 58-91,
99. Shenoute, De certamine contra diabolum = "Discourses 4: A Beloved Asked Me Years Ago," Klaus Koschorke, Stefan Timm, and Frederik Wisse, "Schenute: De Certamine Contra Diabolum," OC 59 (1975): 70.
100. On the nature of this text see also Stephen Lewis Emmel, "Shenoute's Literary Corpus" (Ph.D. dissertation, Yale University, 1993), 892, 900.
101. and Jean Daniélou, "Les démons de l'air dans la 'Vie d'Antoine," Antonius Magnus Eremita, ed. Basil Steidle (Rome: Herder, 1956), 136-47.
102. On the apocalyptic legacy in Egyptian monastic culture that informed the se prophetic rs, see David Frankfurter, "The Legacy of the Jewish Apocalypse in Early Christian Communities," The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity, Compendium Rerum Iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 3.4, ed. James C. VanderKam and William Adler (Assen/Maastricht: van Gorcum; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 170-85.
103. Apocalypse of Elijah. See David Frankfurter, Elijah in Upper Egypt: The Apocalypse of Elijah and Early Egyptian Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), esp. chs. 7-8.
104. and "The Cult of the Martyrs in Egypt before Constantine: The Evidence of the Coptic Apocalypse of Elijah," VC 48 (1994): 25-47.
105. tr. Robert C. Gregg, Athanasius: The Life of Antony and Letter to Marcellinus (New York: Paulist, 1980), 96, 91.
106. On the historical realities behind such descriptions see Dominic Monsterrat, "Death and Funerals in the Roman Fayum," Portraits and Masks: Burial Customs in Roman Egypt, ed. M. L. Bierbrier (London: British Museum, 1997), 33-44,
107. and Cornelia Römer, "Das Werden zu Osiris im römischen Ägypten," Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 2.2 (2000): 141-61.
108. (Copt), ed. L.-Th. Lefort, S. Athanase: Lettres festales et pastorales en copte, CSCO 150, S. Coptici 19 (Louvain: Durbecq, 1955), 62-63,
109. tr. David Brakke, "Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cult of the Holy Dead," SP 32 (1997): 14;
110. See, e.g., J. F. Borghouts, "Martyria: Some Correspondent Motifs in Egyptian Religion," Die Enstehung der jüdischen Martyrologie, ed. J. W. Van Henten (Leiden: B 1989), 197-203,
111. and Françoise Dunand, "Lieu sacré païen et lieu sacré chrétien: Autour des pèlerinages," Le comparatisme en histoire des religions, ed. F. Boespflug and F. Dunand (Paris: Cerf, 1997), 239-53.
112. On the relationship between "utopian" and "locative" religious conceptual strategies, see Jonathan Z. Smith, "The Influence of Symbols upon Social Change: A Place on Which to Stand," Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity 23 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 129-46,
113. See also Willy Clarysse, "The Coptic Martyr Cult," Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans, ed. M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (Leuven: University Press, 1995), 377-95.
114. Shenoute, "Discourses 8: Those Who Work Evil," ed. Émile Amélineau, Oeuvres de Schenoudi, vol. 1 (Paris: Leroux, 1907-9), 212-20,
115. e siècle," La nouvelle Clio 6 (1954): 225-30.
116. Sergio Donadoni, "Una domanda oracolare cristiana da Antinoe," Rivista degli Studi Orientali 29 (1954): 183-86.
117. On the fifth- and sixth-century use of Theban temples to legitimate t he charisma of deceased monastic founders, see now R. Boutros "Les installations chrétiennes entre Ballâs et Armant: Implantation et survivance," Études coptes VII, ed. N. Bosson, Cahiers de la Bibliothèque copte 12 (Paris: Peeters, 2000), 82-83, 86-91.
118. See, e.g., Sallnow, Pilgrims of the Andes; Humphrey J. Fisher, "Hasseb u: Islamic Healing in Black Africa," Northern Africa: Islam and Modernization, e d. M. Brett (London: Cass, 1973), 32-33;
119. Terence Ranger, "Taking Hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimages in Twentieth-Century Zimbabwe," Past & Present 117 (1987): 158-94;
120. Ethel Sara Wolper, "Khidr, Elwan Çelebi and the Conversion of Sacred Sanctuaries in Anatolia," Muslim World 90, 3-4 (2000): 309-22;
121. Sandra E. Greene, Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memo ry in Ghana (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002).
122. See Arietta Papaconstantinou, "Oracles chrétiens dans l'Égypte byzantine: Le témoignage des papyrus," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 104 (1994): 281-86;
123. Geneviève Husson, "Les questions oraculaires chrétiennes d'Égypte: Continuités et changements," Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses, Berlin 1995, ArchivPap, Beiheft 3 (1997): 482-89;
124. Dominique Valbelle and Geneviève Husson, "Les questions oraculaires d'Égypte: Histoire de la recherche, nouveautés et perspectives," Egyptian Religion: The Last Thousand Years, ed. W. Clarysse et al., Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 85 (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 2: 1055-71;
125. tr. Norman Russell, The Lives of the Desert Fathers (London & Oxford: Mowbray, 1981), 52.
126. On the closure of the Bes temple of Abydos see David Frankfurter, "The Zenith and Destruction of a Native Egyptian Oracle in 359 C.E.," Religions of Late Antiqui ty in Practice, 476-80;
127. and on the fear of divination (rather than religious purity) th at motivated these fourth-century cult-repressions, see Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, tr. B. A. Archer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 38-41.
128. and, on the reach and authority of John's interventions, Constantine Zuckerman, "The Hapless Recruit Psois and the Mighty Anchorite, Apa John," Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 32 (1995): 188-94.
129. see David Brakke, Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 250-52,
130. On the holy man as new oracle, see Peter Brown, "Holy Man in Late Antiquity," 132-34;
131. Françoise Dunand, "Miracles et guérisons en Égypte tardive," Mélanges Étienne Bernand, ed. N. Fick and J.-Cl. Carrière (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991), 243-46;
132. W. E. Crum, "Theban Hermits and Their Life," The Monastery of Epiphanius at Thebes, part 1 (New York: MMA, 1926), 164 (ST 360).
133. and Coptic version of Palladius, Hist. Laus. 17, ed. M. Chaîne, "La double recension de l'Histoire Lausiaque dans la version copte," ROC 25 (1925/ 26): 232-75,
134. with discussion and translation in Tim Vivian, "Coptic Palladiana III: The Life of Macanus of Egypt," Coptic Church Review 21.3 (2000): 82-109.
135. and James E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1999), 125-30.
136. and compare the monastic almanac oracles discussed by Terry Wilfong, "Agriculture among the Christian Population of Early Islamic Egypt: Practice and Theory," Proceedings of the British Academy 96 (1999): 224-33 .
137. Cf. Kaplan, Monastic Holy Man, 74-75.
138. See Lorenzo Perrone, "Monasticism as a Factor of Religious Interaction in the Holy Land during the Byzantine Period," Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, ed. A. Kofsky and G. Stroumsa (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi, 1998), 74-75.
139. Fear of these animals is evident in the rituals preserved for their repulsion: J. F. Borghouts, Ancient Egyptian Magical Texts, Nisaba 9 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), nos. 122-33;
140. and Penelope Wilson, "Slaughtering the Crocodile at Edfu and Dendera," The Temple in Ancient Egypt, ed. Stephen Quirke (London: British Museum, 1997), 179-203.
141. P. du Bourguet, "Diatribe de Chenouté contre le démon," Bulletin de la société d'archéologie copte 16 (1961/62): 32, cf. 44, 51-52,
142. Coptic crosses: Dumbarton Oaks acc. no. 40.61, on which see David Frankfurter, "The Binding of Antelopes: A Coptic Frieze and Its Egyptian Religious Context," JNES 63 (2004),
143. in press, and examples from Kellia (Marguerite Rassart-Debergh, "Quelques croix kelliotes," Nubia et Oriens Christianus, ed. Piotr O. Scholz and Reinhard Stempel, Bibliotheca Nubica 1 [Cologne: Dinter, 1987], 377-78).
144. See Catherine Mayeur-Jaouen, "Crocodiles et saints du Nil: du talisman au miracle," RHR 217.4 (2000): 733-60,
145. in a very convincing application of Jan Quaegebeur, "Divinité s égyptiennes sur des animaux dangereux," L'Animal, l'homme, le dieu dans le Proche-Orient ancien, Cahiers du Centre d'étude du Proche-Orient ancien 2 (Louvain: Peeters, 1984), 131-43.
146. Quaegebeur, "'Saints' égyptiens préchré tiens"; and Christian Cannuyer, "Saint Mina aux chameaux: Autour des origines d'un iconotype copte," Le monde copte 27/28 (1997): 139-54.
147. See, e.g., Gary Vikan, "Art, Medicine, and Magic in Early Byzantium," DOP 38 (1984): 65-86.
148. and Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
149. ed. L.-Th. Lefort, "L'homélie de S. Athanase des papyrus de Turin," Mus 71 (1958): 35-36,
150. On relationships of Coptic ritual spells to monastic culture, see François Lexa, La magie dans l'Égypte antique, de l'ancien empire jusqu'à l'époque copte (Paris: Paul uthner, 1925), 1:139-53;
151. Kropp, Koptische Zaubertexte 3:314-71, 390-412;
152. Siegfried G. Richter, "Bemerkungen zu magischen Elementen koptischer Zaubertexte," Akten des 21. Internationalen Papyrologenkongresses = Archiv für Papyrusforschung, Beiheft 3 (1997): 835-46;
153. David Frankfurter, "Collections of Recipes: Introduction," Ancient Christian Magic, 259-62;
154. Pregnancy spell: Coll. Moen inv. no. 107, ed. P. J. esteijn, "A Coptic Magical Amulet," Chronique d'Égypte 57 (1987): 183-84.
155. Another cache of magical texts was found in a sixth-century monk's cell at Naqlun: Włodzimierz Godlewski, "Naqlun: Excavations 1997," Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean 9 (1998): 79-80, 82-83,
156. and Jacques van der Vliet, "Les anges du soleil: À propos d'un texte magique copte récemment découvert à Deir En-Naqloun (N. 45/95)," Études coptes VII, ed. N. Bosson (Paris: Peeters, 2000), 319-37.
157. See David Frankfurter, "Urban Shrine and Rural Saint in Fifth-Century Alexandria," Seeing the Gods: Pilgrimage in Graeco-Roman a rly Christian Antiquity, ed. Jaś Elsner and Ian Rutherford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), forthcoming.
158. Posthumous cult of Shenoute: Janet Timbie, "A Liturgical Procession in the Desert of Apa Shenoute," Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, 415-41.
159. e siècle," Les reliques: Objets, cultes, symboles, Hagiologia 1, ed. Edina Bózoky and Anne-Marie Helvétius (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 19-38.
160. and Leslie S. B. MacCoull, "The Coptic Inscriptions on the Votive Cross of the Monastery of Shenoute," Cahiers archéologiques 44 (1996): 13-18.
161. ed., tr. Leo Depuydt, "A Homily on the Virtues of Saint Longinus attributed to Basil of Pemje," Coptology: Past, Present, and Future: Studies in Honour of Rodolphe Kasser, ed. S. Giversen, M. Krause, and P. Nagel (Leuven: Peeters, 1994), 274, 285.
162. In general on these kinds of appeals to holy men as intercessors see Claudia Rapp, "'For Next to God, You Are My Salvation': Reflections on the Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity," in Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, 63-81.
163. and Youri Volokhine, "Les déplacements pieux en Égypte pharaonique: Sites et pratiques cultuelles," Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt, 51-97.
164. Cf. the Vatican ostracon (KSB I.292) hailing the "angel" of Apas Constantine, Ananias, and Victor, ed. Alexis Mallon, "Quelques ostraca coptes de Thèbes," Revue de l'Égypte ancienne 1 (1927): 154-56,
165. and Monika R. M. Hasitzka, Koptisches Sammelbuch I (Vienna: Hollinke, 1993), 111.
166. See Robert K. Ritner, "Curses: Introduction," Ancient Christian Magic, 183-86;
167. and Nicole B. Hansen, "Ancient Execration in Coptic and Islamic Egypt," Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World, Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 141 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 427-45.
168. See, e.g., A. Piankoff, "La descente aux enfers dans les textes égyptiens et dans les apocryphes coptes, Bulletin de la société d'archéologie copte 7 (1941): 33-46;
169. Reinhold Merkelbach, "Altägyptische Vorstellungen in christlichen Texten aus Ägypten," Mélanges Étienne Bernand, ed. N. Fick and J.-Cl. Carrière (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1991), 337-42;
170. David Frankfurter, "Tabitha in the Apocalypse of Elijah," JTS 41 (1990): 13-25;
171. to which one can now add Alexandra von Lieven, "Wissen, was die Welt im innersten Zusammenhält, oder Faust in Ägypten?" Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions 2 (2002): 75-89.
172. On artistic "survivals," see M. Rassart-Debergh, "De l'Égypte pharaonique à l'Égypte chrétienne: Technique et thèmes (Peinture copte)," Proceedings of the Seventh International Congress of Egyptologists, Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 82, ed. C. J. Eyre (Leuven: Peeters, 1998), 931-35.