This long-awaited publication of Stephen Emmel´s reconstruction of the literary
corpus of Shenoute, monastic leader in Upper Egypt from 385 until 465, and
Coptic author par excellence, marks the beginning of new era in Shenoute
studies. On the basis of about one hundred parchment codexes from the library
of Shenoute´s monastery, pieced together from nearly two thousand fragments
scattered among some two dozen collections, Emmel demonstrates that Shenoute´s
corpus was transmitted in two multi-volume sets of collected works, nine
volumes of Canons and eight volumes of Discourses. At the core of his study is
a description of each reconstructed codex, demonstrating the organization and
coherence of the corpus as a whole, followed by a survey of its contents in
which nearly 150 individual works are catalogued. A research-historical and
methodological introduction, tables, concordances, and an extensive
bibliography make Emmel´s book a mine of information that will be indispensable
for future research on Shenoute, whether philological, historical, or
theological.
