This book is, in a way, a by-product of the Dutch Gnosticism Seminar, animated since 1999 by Abraham P. Bos and Gerard P. Luttikhuizen, where we met in 2000 or 2001. Having cooperated previously on Roig Lanzillotta’s 2007 article on the Coptic text of the Apocalypse of Paul, which is at the origin of the present publication, we decided in 2015 to finish the job and republish the Sahidic manuscript from the British Library. The tangible outcome of our collaboration is now in the hands of the reader.
In the course of our work, we enjoyed the help and friendship of many colleagues worldwide. We are greatly indebted to the staff of the Oriental reading room of the British Library for facilitating Roig Lanzillotta’s autoptic study of the London manuscript in 2000. The text of the manuscript was retyped from the Library’s images by Arco den Heijer in 2016, with the financial support of the Groninger Universiteitsfonds (GUF). His very accurate transcript laid the foundation for the present edition. Antti Marjanen (Helsinki) and Alin Suciu (Helsinki / Göttingen) generously shared their work on a Sahidic manuscript fragment from a Finnish private collection. Vincent Walter (Berlin) granted us the primeur of his discovery of a Fayoumic version in the Leipzig University Library. We thank Bernhard Palme, director of the Papyrussammlung of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, and his staff, in particular Guus van Loon, for kindly providing new photos of the Vienna leaf from the Sahidic Apocalypse of Athanasius (re-edited in Appendix 1). Jos van Lent (Rome) graciously contributed a re-edition of the Arabic Apocalypse of Athanasius (Appendix 2) and made us profit from his unrivalled knowledge of the Coptic literary heritage as preserved in Arabic. Egyptian publications were checked for us by Ibrahim Saweros (Sohag Unversity). Renate Dekker accepted the arduous task of preparing the indices, aided by a subvention of the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen. At the final stages of writing, during the somewhat difficult corona-period, the assistance of the Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NINO) at Leiden and its tireless staff proved invaluable.
Over the past years we were able to present parts of our research on the Apocalypse of Paul during several public lectures, seminars and conferences. We are grateful to our colleagues all over the world for their interest and their kind invitations and to our respective audiences for their critical acumen. Sharing our work crucially helped in bringing it to fruition. We likewise extend our warmest thanks to Jan Bremmer (Groningen / Regensburg), Joost Hagen (Leipzig) and Alessandro Mengozzi (Turin) for their stimulating lectures, delivered during a symposium on “The textual transmission of the Apocalypse of Paul in Egypt and beyond,” organized by the Institute of Eastern Christian Studies and Radboud University in Nijmegen on 24 January 2020.
Finally, we thank Brill’s anonymous reviewer, the editors of the series and the staff of Brill, in particular Louise Schouten and Marjolein van Zuylen, for their vital contributions to the printed result of our work.