The Human Being as the Image of God in Fourth-to-Sixth Century Coptic Texts

The Human Being as the Image of God in Fourth-to-Sixth-Century Coptic Texts

 

A Lecture by Alberto Camplani, Sapienza University of Rome

Introduced by Donna Rizk, Fordham University

Tuesday Dec 5, 6 pm, Lincoln Center, 12th Floor Lounge

This lecture will propose a new contextualization of fourth- and fifth-century Egyptian Christian debates about the human being “in the image of God” (Gen 1:26-27), by locating them within broader intellectual and institutional tensions in the Egyptian church and highlighting the originality of the Coptic contribution. The controversies surrounded such issues as the place of God’s image in the human compound; the image’s permanence after the fall of Adam and Eve; the role of the body in higher forms of prayer and mysticism; and the significance of anthropomorphic expressions found in the Bible. The sources analyzed will include Greek fragments by Theophilus and Cyril of Alexandria as well as a number of Coptic texts (either translated from Greek or directly composed in Coptic) such as Melito’s On the Soul and the Body, two of Shenute’s sermons, the anonymous Life of Aphu (a bishop of Oxyrhynchus and monk), and the works attributed to Agathonicus of Tarsus.