Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 23 January 2024
pseudo-athanasius, arabic
Ibrahim Saweros Keywords: Athanasius of Alexandria, Copto-Arabic Literature, Patristics, Pseudo-Athanasius, Christian Arabic Literature.
Three dozen Arabic texts are falsely attributed to athanasius of Alexandria (ca. 296/298–2 May 373), the twentieth archbishop of Alexandria (Saweros 2020a: 146–147). The presence of Athanasius’ name in so many texts he did not write attests to the immortal importance of the archbishop, as so many anonymous authors continued to compose religious texts in Arabic or translate them from Coptic under his name. The collection of texts discussed here is a large mixture of all kinds of genres including Biblical commentaries, homilies, encomiums, letters, canons, and dogmatic writings (cpg 2298, 2154, 2302 and 2331; Witte 2011: 394–395; see also canons of pseudo-athanasius). This collection has not received due attention from scholars, and most of it is still unedited.
In the fourteenth century, ibn kabar mentioned that Athanasius wrote answers to 45 questions from the Melkite Antiochus, related to Trinity, Unity, and the Creed (Samir 1971: 292). This well-known encyclopedic work entitled Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem (cpg 2257) was originally composed in Greek in a Syro-Palestinian milieu in the late seventh century. Hundreds of manuscripts contain translations of this text into Arabic, Slavonic, Armenian, Georgian, and Ge’ez, with several recensions in each language. An Arabic version is preserved in the oldest known manuscripts dating to 885/6 AD (Roggema 2020: 21). The original Greek text consists of 137 questions, while the Arabic versions include only 45. This text is of extraordinary importance, since it reflects polemics among Christians, Jews, and Muslims from the early ninth to tenth centuries. Later, it was used by Melkite authors as an apologetic text. The translator of the Arabic version says that the answers to these questions were sent down to Athanasius’s mouth by the Spirit of God (Roggema 2020: 24). The Quaestiones address issues that are still in demand today, such as how to explain the Trinity to Muslims, the creation of angels and the anecdote of Adam refusing to worship angels, the intercession of saints, and the cult of wooden crosses and icons. The name of Athanasius was used to give authority to some liturgical texts.
A short addition to Gloria in Excelsis Deo was identified in both Syriac and Arabic in two manuscripts from Mingana’s collection dating to the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (Ebied 2017: 68). The text is entitled Praise of the Angels on the Day of the Carnal Birth of Our Lord, which was known earlier in Greek form without an attribution to Athanasius. The same text is also attested in Coptic Museum MS 38, f. 175r–177r dating from the eighteenth century and given Athanasius’ name as author (Macomber 1995: Roll A-3, Item 2). Many Coptic-Arabic manuscripts assure that Athanasius of Alexandria was first to order his clergymen to consecrate the holy Chrism, but do not attribute the composition of the texts directly to him; for example, Coptic Museum Ms. 229, f. 14v, dated to 1706 (Macomber 1995: Roll A-17, Item 2).
A prophecy from the prophet Daniel to Athanasius is preserved in two recensions. The longer one starts with Athanasius being accused of murdering Arsenius, the bishop of Hypsele; then, by a miracle, he manages to have himself exonerated. The rest of this text consists of long prophecies concerning the late Roman emperors and early Muslim rulers who would control Egypt. These historical prophecies about this group of rulers were given to Athanasius by Daniel while Athanasius was in exile. The nineteen kings are not mentioned by name but can be identified © Claremont Graduate University 1 I. Saweros, Pseudo-Athanasius, Arabic 23 January 2024 easily from the historical details provided by the prophecy. Among them, the time of the fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir (1036–1094) is explained in detail. The shorter recension ignores the miraculous part of the story and starts with the prophecies (van Lent 2011: 291). Presumably the author of the text was a Christian clergyman who lived in the eleventh century and who possessed a wide knowledge of Coptic and Coptic-Arabic historical sources.
A well-known apocalypse attributed to Athanasius in both Coptic and Arabic predicts the arab conquest of egypt (Martinez 1985: 364–371). The text was composed to address several issues including the feast of the archangel michael, the evil deeds of monks and priests, and to comment on Leviticus 21:9. As in the Prophecy of Daniel mentioned previously, this apocalypse mentions Arsenius as an enemy of the church whom Athanasius overcame, concentrates on the difficult days the Copts will live in after Muslims rule Egypt, and notes that these prophecies were given to Athanasius in the time of his exile as well.
In the eleventh century, Mikhail, Bishop of Tinnis, translated the church canons attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria from Coptic into Arabic. The Coptic version is partially preserved and lacks divisions, while the Arabic version is divided into 107 canons. Some scholars believe in the existence of a now-lost Greek original, and that this original text was composed not much later than the death of Athanasius (Hołasek 2020: 281–284). Regardless of its creation date, the text is a treasure for the study of the Coptic Church, its history, and its hierarchy.
The Great Letter that Fell Down from Heaven to Pope Athanasius is a widely attested apocryphal text preserved in several languages including Latin, Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic. The Arabic version, which is kept in two separate recensions, narrates that Athanasius was leading the Eucharist in Rome when suddenly the daylight turned into darkness and a letter fell from heaven to him. Its sender was Christ himself; He ordered the earth’s inhabitants to worship him by visiting churches on Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. Athanasius states in the text that this letter was not written by the fingers of a human, but by God Himself (Bittner 1906: 210-211). The oldest manuscript of the Great Letter text is in Greek and dated to the fifteenth century; however, there is evidence that the text was known from the seventh century. Its assigned date and place of composition are both problematic, but overall, this was a very popular text (Saweros 2020a: 142). Two homiletic works on Pentecost are falsely circulated under the name of Athanasius. The first short homily (Graf 1944: 314) begins with a short prayer, in which Athanasius asks God to allow the great grace of Pentecost to come upon him so he might preach to his congregation in a proper way. The homily is divided into well-connected parts and its continuity is clearly logical. Athanasius discusses the events of Pentecost and connects symbols from the Old Testament with the events of the New Testament.
A long part of this homily consists of polemics against Jews who beheld Christ but were not able to mark him as the savior (Saweros 2018: 235–242). Presumably, this homily was composed in Arabic. In the second long homily, Pentecost is mentioned as its theme in the title, but is not the major subject of its contents. Instead, it largely discusses the nature of the three Hypostases and their relationships with each other. Athanasius explains why the Holy Spirit resembles fire and gives some commentaries on the symbolism of the number seven (Saweros 2020b: 174–182). This homily is marked by long, well-formulated Arabic sentences and a large number of Biblical quotations. Storytelling is missing in both homilies; they are merely paraenetic speeches. Both homilies have no parallels with pseudo-Athanasius’ Coptic sermon On Pentecost (cpg 2191; Saweros 2019: 57–82, 49–74). The Sahidic Coptic sermon discusses many themes, such as poverty and wealth and the Christian household, but not Pentecost itself. Pentecost as a main theme is the subject of the first Arabic sermon; the second one and the Sahidic version Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 2 I. Saweros, Pseudo-Athanasius, Arabic 23 January 2024 name the Pentecost feast in the title in order to fit with the liturgical year. These three sermons were certainly composed in Egypt, but setting a certain date for any of them is difficult.
Graf identified many homilies praising the Archangel Michael being attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria (Graf 1944: 310–313); however, a large number of manuscripts containing the same theme were identified after his seminal work. Unlike the pseudo-Athanasian works on Pentecost, these homilies about Saint Michael are mostly narratives. Two miraculous stories are adapted as instruments to praise Saint Michael and entertain the audience. As the protagonist of these narratives, Michael appears as the one who presents endless support to their poor and oppressed human characters. In one narrative, Michael permits a poor boy to marry a rich girl in order that he might inherit her greedy father’s fortune, which was acquired by fraud. In another, Michael helps a lazy man to become rich simply because the man believes in Michael’s intercession (Kratshokovsky 1909: 448–454). These miraculous stories seem to have been composed so rapidly that even basic Christian morals may not be clear in the stories. The remaining homilies on Michael are marked by long glorifications of the archangel as leader of the celestial troops, whose requests on behalf of humans are always accepted before God. Warnings against sin and the description of the horrible end of sinners in Hell are always graphically presented in the Arabic homilies attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria.
A Sahidic homily from the Hamuli collection entitled On Michael and Gabriel, the Archangels (cpg 2197; Saweros 2019: 3–16, 13–32) shares some features with the Arabic Michael homilies. It is very interesting that the name of the archangel gabriel appears suddenly with Michael’s name as one of the main actors in the stories. Although the Arabic homilist focuses on Michael, it seems that Gabriel’s name may have slipped in inadvertently. With some caution, the Pseudo-Athanasian homilies on these angelic figures could be called a corpus. They exist in Coptic, Arabic, and Ethiopic, share some features, and some are mere translations from each other (von Lemm 1912: 340–354).
Literary works falsely attributed to Athanasius of Alexandria form neither a single corpus nor even a cycle (Saweros 2017: 138–151). The name of Athanasius is the only common feature among them, and even his name is sometimes missing in the most popular works that circulated in many languages and dialects in the Christian East, such as the Testament of Abraham (Guidi 1900: 157–180). Consequently, this false attribution happened mostly intentionally and rarely by mistake during the transmission of these texts. All of the texts have several recensions and are preserved in many manuscripts with different dates and places of composition; additionally, all of them have a long history of editorial process. Thus, every text is a good case study and at the same time contributes to understanding the personality of Athanasius of Alexandria in the Christian East and how he was received—or more accurately how his reception evolved—centuries after his death. This collection, connected only to the name of the saint who was daring enough to canonize the books of the Holy Bible (Brakke 2010: 61), needs a large scientific project to enable several enthusiastic scholars to edit and study the collection and shed more light on the history of Christian literature in the East.