Wolf-Peter Funk | |
---|---|
Born | 1943 |
Died | February 18, 2021 |
Nationality | German, Canadian |
Occupation | Professor |
Academic background | |
Doctoral advisor | Hans-Martin Schenke |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Coptology |
Institutions | UniversitéLaval |
Main interests | Gnosticism,Manichaeism,Coptology |
Wolf-Peter Funk (born 1943 in Oederan,Germany;died February 18,2021,in Quebec City,Canada) was a German linguist and Coptologist known for his pioneering studies on Gnosticism,Manichaeism,and Coptic manuscripts such as the Nag Hammadi library.
Wolf-Peter Funk was born in 1943 in Oederan,Germany as the only son of Johanna Roeber and Wolfgang Funk. [1]
As a student of Hans-Martin Schenke,Wolf-Peter Funk was one of the founders of the Berlin Working Group for Coptic Gnostic Writings. As part of the research group in Berlin,he translated many texts in the Nag Hammadi library during the 1970s. [2]
In 1986,Funk became a visiting professor in the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at Laval University,specializing in Coptic linguistics and biblical and Gnostic literature. At Laval,he worked on the "Bibliothèque copte de Nag Hammadi" (Nag Hammadi Coptic Library) Project,and was later appointed associate professor at Laval. He has worked on digital concordances of the Nag Hammadi texts,which were originally stored on floppy disks. [2]
Wolf-Peter Funk has worked on the reconstruction and translation of the Manichaean Coptic manuscripts held at the National Museum of Berlin. [1] He taught Coptic at Laval University until 2009. [3] He has also worked on concordances of the Manichaean Kephalaia and the Manichaean Homilies. [2]
He died from cancer at the Hôpital de l'Enfant-Jésus in Quebec City on February 18,2021,at the age of 77. [1]
Selected works (books authored or with contributed articles): [4]
French translations and concordances published by Laval University Press: [5]
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian and Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945.
The Apocryphon of John, also called the Secret Book of John or the Secret Revelation of John, is a 2nd-century Sethian Gnostic Christian pseudepigraphical text attributed to John the Apostle. It is one of the texts addressed by Irenaeus in his Against Heresies, placing its composition before 180 AD. It is presented as describing Jesus appearing and giving secret knowledge (gnosis) to his disciple John. The author describes it as having occurred after Jesus had "gone back to the place from which he came".
The Books of Jeu are two Gnostic texts. Though independent works, both the First Book of Jeu and the Second Book of Jeu appear, in Sahidic Coptic, in the Bruce Codex. They are a combination of a gospel and an esoteric revelation; the work professes to record conversations Jesus had with both the male apostles and his female disciples, and the secret knowledge (gnosis) revealed in these conversations.
The Epistle of Eugnostos or Eugnostos the Blessed is a Gnostic epistle found in Codices III and V of the Nag Hammadi library. Both copies seem to be a Coptic translation of a Greek original that was composed in Egypt around the late 1st century; the copy from Codex III is the earlier translation. Scholars note that the text is interrelated with The Sophia of Jesus Christ; SJC adds more specifically Christian elements to the cosmology-focused Eug. The text is a philosophical discourse on the nature of God and the world. The author asserts that previous human inquiries have failed to reach the truth about the nature of God, who is ineffable and beyond human understanding. The author describes a belief system in which there is an Immortal Man who reveals various aeons and powers with different names and authorities over different kingdoms and worlds.
The Thought of Norea is a Sethian Gnostic text. It is the second of three treatises in Codex IX of the Nag Hammadi library texts, taking up pages 27–29 of the codex's 74 pages. The text consists of only 52 lines, making it one of the shortest treatises in the entire library. The work is untitled; editor Birger A. Pearson created the title from the phrase "the thought of Norea" that appears in the final sentence of the text. The text expands Norea's plea for deliverance from the archons in Hypostasis of the Archons. It is divided into four parts: an invocation, Norea's cry and deliverance, her activity in the Pleroma, and salvation.
Allogenes is a series of Gnostic texts. The main character in these texts is Allogenes, which translates as 'stranger,' 'foreigner,' or 'of another race.' The first text discovered was Allogenes as the third tractate in Codex XI of the Nag Hammadi library. The Coptic manuscript is a translation of a Greek original, likely written in Alexandria before 300 AD. In this text, containing Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic elements, Allogenes receives divine revelations.
James McConkey Robinson was an American scholar who retired as Professor Emeritus of Religion at Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, specializing in New Testament Studies and Nag Hammadi Studies. He was a member of the Jesus Seminar and arguably the most prominent Q and Nag Hammadi library scholar of the twentieth century. He was also a major contributor to The International Q Project, acting as an editor for most of their publications. Particularly, he laid the groundwork for John S. Kloppenborg's foundational work into the compositional history of Q, by arguing its genre as an ancient wisdom collection. He also was the permanent secretary of UNESCO's International Committee for the Nag Hammadi codices. He is known for his work on the Medinet Madi library, a collection of Coptic Manichaean manuscripts.
John D. Turner was the Cotner Professor of Religious Studies and Charles J. Mach University Professor of Classics and History Classics & Religious Studies at the University of Nebraska. He was well known for his translations of the Nag Hammadi library.
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul is a New Testament apocryphal work, the first manuscript from the Jung Codex of the Nag Hammadi Library. Written on the inner flyleaf of the codex, the prayer seems to have been added after the longer tractates had been copied. Although the text, like the rest of the codices, is written in Coptic, the title is written in Greek, which was the original language of the text. The manuscript is missing approximately two lines at the beginning.
Pheme Perkins is a Professor of Theology at Boston College, where she has been teaching since 1972.
Stephen Emmel is a Coptologist and musician.
Nag Hammadi Codex XIII is a papyrus codex with a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts in Coptic. The manuscript is generally dated to the 4th century, though there is some debate regarding the original composition of the texts.
Jean-Pierre Mahé is a French orientalist, philologist and historian of Caucasus, and a specialist of Armenian studies.
Anne Vachon-Pasquier is a Canadian emeritus professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences at Laval University, (Quebec) since 2003. Her teachings and research have had focus on the field of ancient Christianity, particularly in ancient Christian literature.
Kephalaia is a genre of Manichaean literature represented mainly by two large papyrus codices containing Coptic translations from 5th-century Roman Egypt. The kephalaia are sometimes seen as the actual words or teachings of the prophet Mani, but are probably better viewed as later discourses and interpretations laid upon "an authoritative oral tradition" ostensibly going back to Mani and thus analogous to the Talmud in Judaism and the ḥadīth in Islam.
Melchizedek is the first tractate from Codex IX of the Nag Hammadi Library. It is a Gnostic work that features the Biblical figure Melchizedek. The text is fragmentary and highly damaged. The original text was 750 lines; of these, only 19 are complete, and 467 are fragmentary. The remaining 264 lines have been lost from the damage to the text. Like much of Nag Hammadi, the text was likely used by Gnostic Christians in Roman Egypt. It makes reference to Seth, suggesting it may have been used in Sethianism, a school of Gnosticism. The date it was written is unknown; all that can be said is that it was created during the period of early Christianity, presumably at some point during the 3rd century.
Madeleine Scopello is a French historian of religion. She is director of research at the CNRS and director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études. She also teaches at the Institut catholique de Paris, Faculty of History.
The Prayer of Thanksgiving is a Hermetic Gnostic prayer text preserved in Coptic, Greek and Latin.
The Medinet Madi library is a collection of Manichaean texts discovered at Medinet Madi in the Faiyum region of Egypt in 1929. There is a total of seven codices, some of which have been split up and held in different collections across Europe. The texts, many of which remain unpublished and untranslated today, were composed in the Lycopolis dialect of Coptic during the 5th century A.D.
Bernard Barc was a French lecturer and an author of the Bibliothèque Copte de Nag Hammadi (BCNH) volumes, as well as publications on the history of ancient Jewish hermeneutics.