Early Egyptian Christianity (like Egypt as a whole in the period from 100 to 450ce) reflects sharp differences between its urban and rural expressions. Alexandria was a vast Greek-speaking cosmopolitan city, with a substantial Jewish community, and a hub of the Roman imperial system. Its famous library and imperially patronized museum helped make it one of the main intellectual and cultural centers of the Hellenistic world. Alexandrian Christianity was Greek-speaking, and it developed an intellectual tradition that made it one of the principal foci of Christian theological activity. But Alexandria had a massive hinterland, not only in the Nile Delta but also in the lands beyond, watered by the Nile and shading off into desert, supporting a large rural population engaged in agriculture. This population spoke Coptic (in several dialects), a language derived from old Egyptian, with a script derived from Greek. Ethnically, the population was descended from the old Egyptians, with an admixture of the darker-skinned peoples long resident in Egypt and known to the Hebrews as Cushites; the traditional religion was also derived from old Egypt. A vigorous vernacular Christianity grew up in these rural areas, and produced at least one innovation that spread across the Christian church at large, and helped to ensure the survival of Christianity in Egypt to the present day. The two Christian streams were never wholly separated. Alexandria and its hinterland were interdependent in the social, economic, and political spheres, and, in a period of rapid social change and increasing urbanization, townsfolk were often transplanted villagers. A single church structure linked Alexandria and the rest of Egypt, with all Egyptian bishops recognizing the leadership of the see of Alexandria, and its bishop as patriarch and coordinator.
Christian Origins
The New Testament writings speak of Jesus being taken to Egypt as a refugee child, but the origins of Christianity, urban or rural, are obscure. The Acts of the Apostles mentions a learned Alexandrian Jew called Apollos who became a notable Christian teacher, and some have attributed to him the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews, since its style of argument is consonant with what we know of Alexandrian Jewish writing; but all references to Apollos locate his activity outside Egypt. In any case, Christianity probably entered Alexandria through its large Jewish community; church tradition from the fourth century attributes the foundation of the church to the Gospel writer Mark. The tract known as the Epistle of Barnabas, variously dated between 70 and 138, is probably Alexandrian. It reflects intense controversy between Christians and traditional Jews over the right use of Scripture; the author may himself have been Jewish. Fragments of an early Gospel, otherwise unknown, have been found in Egypt, but the first named Egyptian Christian writers (all using Greek) belong to the Gnostic wing of Christianity, which produced a radically Hellenistic interpretation of the Christian message, distancing it from the synagogue. There are also works of Gnostic tendency, purporting to represent the words of Jesus, most notably the Gospel of Thomas, found in Coptic translation. None of these works necessarily represents the ethos of Alexandrian Christianity of the time as a whole, but they do reflect the intellectual challenges that the Greek tradition in Alexandria presented for Christianity, and perhaps a reaction against an earlier period when Christianity was presented in essentially Jewish terms.
Clear evidence of an organized Alexandrian church appears around 180 (though its origins must be much earlier), with a bishop and twelve presbyters. Public preaching was hardly possible where Christianity was not a legal religion, and a key to Christian expansion lay in its teachers, resembling those of a philosophical school. The catechetical school of Alexandria, first heard of about this time, not only prepared enquirers for baptism, but presented Christianity in terms of the Greek intellectual tradition. Successive leaders of the school were Pantaenus, a converted Stoic philosopher, Clement, also a converted philosopher, of Athenian origin, and Origen, born of Christian parents around 185, who studied under Ammonius Saccas and other
Alexandrian philosophical luminaries. Much of the writing of Clement and of Origen survives. Clement saw philosophy as part of a divine educational process to prepare humanity for Christianity, and the Christian life as a school of perfection. Origen was the most prodigious scholar of early Christianity, pioneering new forms of learned activity such as textual criticism and systematic theology, extending others such as the biblical commentary, and engaging with the whole range of Greek thought and science. Origen left for Caesarea after a dispute with his bishop, but Alexandria was his intellectual home. Like Clement he drew on the Platonism already used by the Alexandrian Jewish scholar Philo to present biblical teaching, and, like Philo, used allegorical exegesis of the Old Testament, thus maintaining the link between Christianity and Israel that more radical Gnostics rejected.
Origen’s work underlies much of the theology of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries. The first major theological crisis, subsequent to the toleration of Christianity in 313, arose when an Alexandrian presbyter, Arius, produced a theory of the divine “sonship” which, (though this was probably not his intention) could be interpreted as making Christ a sort of demigod. Denounced by his bishop, Alexander, Arius found support elsewhere in the Greek world. The creed of the Council of Nicea (325ce) established the position generally regarded as orthodox, which was elaborated by the Alexandrian theologian and future bishop Athanasius (295-373). Both sides could claim to be drawing on Origen’s legacy. Alexandrian theology continued to focus on the full divinity of Christ, and (perhaps assisted by Coptic spirituality) on the union of the divine and human in Christ—an emphasis later visible when a majority in the Egyptian church adopted a Monophysite form of theology.
Up to 313, Alexandrian Christianity suffered periodic violence, sometimes severe, from the Roman state. Origen became head of the catechetical school at a young age because his seniors were dead or dispersed. Persecution sometimes strengthened bonds; for instance, it drove Bishop Dionysius from Alexandria, but brought him into contact with rural Christians and provided missionary opportunities with non-Christians.
Coptic Christianity
Still less is known of Christian origins in the Copticspeaking areas, where the literary sources are more sparse. The evidence suggests a background of regressive taxation with traditional temples used as tax collection points, administrative corruption and oppression, and abandonment of agricultural land. The earliest literature in Coptic consists of magical formulae. By the third century this gives way to the Bible translated into the Sahidic dialect of Upper Egypt, suggesting a steady spread of Christianity there. The earliest evidence of its nature comes in the story of Antony, born to Christian parents, wealthy by local standards, some 60 miles south of modern Cairo around 251. From his life as written by Athanasius, we gather that by about 270 (still in the age of persecution), Christianity was well established and organized in this rural community on the Nile. Antony evidently rejected Greek education and, seeking to be a radical disciple of Christ, sold his land to devote himself to following Christ’s example. At first he emulated earlier holy men who had lived outside their villages, valued as sources of advice and wisdom. He next took the unusual step of moving into deserted areas, even tombs, recognized as the abode of demonic powers. His spiritual combats were interpreted as demonstrating Christ’s triumph over the demons in their own territory. Others followed his example and sought his advice, until desert areas once left to demons could be described as a city full of those praising Christ.
Antony, who lived to a great age and gained significant celebrity, did not organize his disciples, believing that Scripture and spiritual conversation provided guidance enough. Organization was the contribution of Pachomius, a former soldier (c. 290-346), who formed communities living under strict discipline to imitate Christ’s life and seek perfection. Rural communities saw holy men and women as sources of counsel, power, and protection; the monasteries of Pachomius, numerous and often large, also became important economic units. They could be the landlords of share-cropping peasants, and places of supply and refuge in hard times. Antony and Pachomius, the principal figures of Coptic Christianity, were pioneers of the monastic movement that spread throughout early Christianity and took different forms elsewhere. In Egypt it helped to shape the self-understanding of a whole community.
Coptic Christianity was essentially rural. Antony and Pachomius understood the peasant worldview and the place of spiritual powers within it. It was also a vernacular movement. Antony refused the entry to cosmopolitan society that Greek education offered, and Pachomius eschewed use of it. In its origins the movement was not literary; some of Antony’s letters have survived, but the early Coptic literature is essentially practical; its business is the spiritual life. As Greek works of theology or spirituality were translated, Coptic became a literary language for the first time. Meanwhile, Coptic Christianity developed a distinctive oral genre of its own. Sayings of the “Desert Fathers,” often vivid, pithy, or gnomic, were treasured, collected, and translated into Greek and even Latin. They form perhaps the first literary expression of rural Africa, an early example of collected proverbial lore.
Coptic Christianity was charismatic, its leading figures subject to visions and extraordinary experiences. (Pachomius was credited with second sight and accused by more conventional churchmen of witchcraft.) This Christianity was radical, and honed under hard conditions. It produced single-minded dedication, and a capacity for extreme behavior. In the politico-theological battles of Alexandria, the passionate intensity of the desert monasteries was often a decisive— and sometimes an explosive—factor.
Christianity, in elevating the status of Coptic and giving a voice to its rural population, helped to shape a new Egyptian identity, capable of resisting Roman attempts to establish a single religious discourse throughout the empire. Between the mid-fifth century and the Arab conquest, this came to be expressed in explicitly Monophysite form, and reinforced the political and economic alienation of Egypt from the imperial center.
Andrew F. Walls
See also: Monophysitism, Coptic Church, 379-640.
Further Reading
Haas, Christopher. Alexandria in Late Antiquity. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Pearson, Birger A. Earliest Christianity in Egypt. Claremont, CA: Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, 1997.
Pearson, Birgir A., and J. E. Goehring. The Roots of Egyptian Christianity. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986.
Sellers, R. V. Two Ancient Christologies. London: SPCK, 1954.
World History
