Breathing Life into Mummified Texts: Prof. Scott Carroll talks about his research on ancient texts (II)

He was in Jos doing training in textual criticism of ancient manuscripts with professors and PhD students from the University of Jos, Nassarawa State University, and seminaries based in Jos and Lagos. Although the ASUU strike complicated his long-planned visit, Jos ECWA Theological Seminary provided space for his lectures. Last week he talked about discovering […]

He was in Jos doing training in textual criticism of ancient manuscripts with professors and PhD students from the University of Jos, Nassarawa State University, and seminaries based in Jos and Lagos. Although the ASUU strike complicated his long-planned visit, Jos ECWA Theological Seminary provided space for his lectures. Last week he talked about discovering ancient fragments in mummy cartinage.
Tell me about the Coptic texts you’ve studied.
I’ve had a great interest in Egyptian Christianity and the origins of African Christianity. Early in my career, I directed an excavation in Egypt of a Coptic monastery between Alexandria and Cairo. One of the most important gifts Africa gave medieval Europe was monasticism, and it influenced everyone from the Middle East and Far East to Ireland. We had the privilege of excavating the earliest unoccupied monastery in the world. You have ones about the same date, but people are still living in them. Consequently, I have worked with Coptic texts. Coptic is an Arabic word for Egyptian, and it is a name that describes the language, ethnicity and even branch of religion of indigenous Egyptian people, the descendents of the Pharaohs who were Christianized in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. They still exist in numbers of about 20 million. The Coptic language is an indigenous African language, in the Afro-Asiatic language family. Coptic writing is Egyptian hieroglyphics spelled with Greek letters plus, depending on the dialect, a couple more thrown in to make up for sounds. The texts that we encounter, like with the Greek texts, are on papyrus. They tend to be predominantly literary Christian texts, biblical texts. We have found a number of texts of enormous interest and significance: large portions of both the Old and New Testaments, filling in our gaps of understanding. We have even have found some unknown Gnostic texts, from an early Christian heretical movement.
How old were these texts?
The earliest Coptic texts date to the late 3rd century, the early 4rth century AD. We are finding biblical texts from that time period, and in some cases biblical texts that are earlier than any known Greek text, which, of course, was the language of the New Testament. So you can find in this African language the very earliest records we have of things that are precious both to Christians and even the Islamic tradition. For instance, Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb of Jesus, Matthew 27 and 28. The earliest text for that passage is in Coptic. It parallels in time a Greek text, but it is among the earliest that survives. Another one recently was Acts chapter 19 about the revival in Ephesus and the riot of the silversmiths. The earliest surviving texts of that passage are in Coptic. So the Coptic language speaks to us and sometimes preserves the very earliest textual traditions.
What is the significance of finding such early biblical texts in Coptic and Greek?
It has enormous significance. Now we’re getting back to within generations of Jesus and the apostles, and the records show that the text is stable and is reliable and has been preserved wonderfully. When it is spoken to us in the African language and it is preserved there, it is even more meaningful. You may say that the conversion of the Copts to Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd century marked the footprint of Christianity on this continent in 200 A.D.
Just as a point of interest, in my doctoral programme, in order to be sufficiently broad in our training, we were required to work outside of our areas of interest and specialization, and while I was required to have about 13 ancient languages, my doctoral professor suggested I study the archaeology and culture of Iron Age sub-Saharan Africa. I did broad surveys of archeological studies and was very interested in the early exploration accounts, the interface between Muslim and European cultural and religious contacts. My earliest work in archeology and interest in ethnologies was actually in this region, here with the Nok culture. So, for me to be here is of enormous interest, because I’ve studied it, and I’ve actually published both on East and West Africa, so I have a passion for the antiquity of this place.
What brings you to Nigeria now?
I had the opportunity to come and lecture in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia on several occasions in 2011 for sessions that were organized by West Africa Theological Seminary. I travel a lot, but to come here was a kind of intellectual homecoming. I sat stupefied that I had the opportunity to come to a place that I had studied and had never thought would be in my circuit. In the process, I learned of the great need that professors, educators, and students here have for access to primary materials and the training that accompanies that. Over the course of several years an idea germinated to bring primary sources to strategically located and equipped universities, thereby providing unique unprecedented access, a democratization of materials, not driven by colonial educational interests, but now providing access and freedom to study in the context of careful and experienced mentoring. The hope is to develop professors and educators, giving them stature, along with their university, through publication of these hugely important materials. In the process, we will mentor and induct students into the research process, with the hopes of giving them not only passion but also skills and stature. We’re developing a strategic educational mission with the University of Jos to situate it in an African home, with the hopes of building something of such significance that it can be replicated in other places on the continent.
What kind of skills do students interested in the study of ancient literature need?
Well, they need language skills, and they need to have curiosity, and they need to not be intimidated by the unknown, and they have to have a passion and a desire to work hard. But the prerequisite for what we are doing is simply Greek. We will be looking at Hebrew, Latin, and Coptic. There are students already signed up to be working with Coptic material. I’ll be teaching them Coptic. They’ll be working with scrolls, they’ll be working with papyri, they’ll be working with early ancient manuscripts. They’ll be working with all kinds of things in all kinds of media and written texts, so as to learn to be good managers of that.
Are you doing online seminars?
Yes, I think that the most successful kind of programme like this mixes both face to face seminars and mentoring with ongoing online contact, so we’ve designed a programme, crafted and supported by the tech IT people at Jos and the other participating seminaries and universities. On a weekly basis the participants will be conferencing together from around Nigeria with us in the U.S. or wherever we are, following up on the guiding research to make sure everyone, as a team, is on track together. I will be here periodically throughout the year.
Primarily we are looking for both professors and PhD track students to work together. We’re not handing out dissertations, we’re not desirous of doing that. We don’t want to distract students from their dissertation process but instead to supplement their experience with a rich publication record.
This will be startling to professors at elite universities. This is so unique, and we are so appreciative of University of Jos’s engagement with it. They will be bringing to the academic market the most important documents being discovered and their names will be associated it. Scholars will grow out of this.
Is there anything in conclusion that you think is important for people to know?
In some ways this reconnects young scholars in Africa with an intellectual and religious tradition, the library of Alexandria and the early footprint of Christianity. It opens the door for them to be serious scholars to be reckoned with in these areas, by working with the important building blocks of history and understanding primary sources.
Concluded