The Resurrection of Lazarus

The following homily, attributed to St. Athanasius, is one of ten contained in a synaxary formerly in use during Eastertide and Whitsuntide at the Monastery of the Archangel Michael at Hamouli on the southern border of the province of Fayyum. The manuscript, written in A.D. 855 in the Sahidic dialect of the Coptic language, is still in excellent condition and is preserved in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, which has published a facsimile of it under the capable editorship of Professor Henry Hyvernat.' This same manuscript contains two other homilies attributed to St. Athanasius. One, In Passionem domini et iudicium, was published in the Journal of Theological Studies, XXXVIII (April, 1937), 113-29; the other, Cathechesis in festum Pentecostes, has not as yet been published. The genuineness of these and other Coptic Athanasian homilies awaits a thorough investigation of all the available evidence. In the following homily the biblical quotations are made with freedom, and the internal evidence is of little help in dating its composition. The text reproduced here has been edited, and diacritical lines and punctuation have been added.