Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary by AnneMarie Luijendijk (review)

Luijendijk has produced the editio princeps of a parchment codex, perhaps from the fifth or sixth century and containing 37 Coptic oracles (sortes). After an unusual incipit (“The Gospel of the Lots of Mary . . .”), each set of facing pages contains a single sors, usually composed in the first-person and addressed to a second-person inquirer (15–16). The manuscript was probably owned by a monk or priest who was sought out by clientele, and it was probably consulted by opening it at random in the manner of sortes biblicae (64–69). The oracles address matters that humans generally either fear or desire (suffering, comfort, success) with more positive fortunes than negative ones.

The codex is owned by Harvard’s Sackler Museum. Its dialect is Sahidic and its script is “quite elegant” (44; beauty is in the eye of the beholder). One of the manuscript’s many interesting features is its miniature size, and Luijendijk provides an important discussion of this format (esp. 51–56). As for provenance, she argues on the basis of parallels with some fragmentary sortes from Antinoë, as well as the known oracular shrine of St. Colluthus there, that the codex may have been produced in Antinoë, but this is not certain (47–51).

In a lengthy introduction, Luijendijk offers insight into the context. This includes a valuable contribution to the study of sortes literature. But there is also much to be found here for those who are interested in terminology (e.g., 19–28 on in the incipit), mariolatry, the sociology of book production and consumption, the relationship between text and power, contests over religious authority, and other topics of broad interest that intersect with the codex. This introduction is followed by an edition of the Coptic text with accompanying commentary that documents biblical allusions and other parallels. The edition concludes with photographs, bibliography, and standard indices.

Luijendijk has left her reviewers very little to criticize. This was a mistake, because reviewers may therefore be tempted to manufacture things to criticize. For example, those who know Luijendijk will spot her personality and sense of humor on nearly every page of the introduction; this will be either refreshing or insufficiently formal, according to taste. A second example: some pedantic reviewer might be tempted to append a list of errata (and there are more typographical errors and other infelicities than one would like, but not in the Coptic text itself, as far as I noticed, and that is the most important thing). Another classic mistake would be to quibble over minor matters of translation. For example, (“he who will . . .”) in the incipit might be better rendered “whoever . . .” (Layton, CG, 311, 501a), and (“they will trust you”) in Oracle 5 might be better taken as a dynamic passive (Layton, CG, 175). But since any Coptic reader is free to make independent choices, this is not a reasonable complaint either.

The only genuine criticism is that some of the technical editorial matters receive rather cursory treatment in comparison with the very full treatment of context and interpretation. This has unfortunate consequences in the brief codicological report (42), where there is some confusion. After a footnote intended to clarify her terminology (1 bifolium = 2 leaves = 4 pages), Luijendijk immediately states that the codex contains “80 leaves total” when she means eighty pages. Eighty pages would normally correspond to the recto and verso of forty leaves. In this case, however, there are forty-one, since the recto of the first leaf and the verso of the last leaf are glued to the inside of the front and back covers respectively and were not reckoned in the page count. The confusion deepens when Luijendijk gives the number of leaves in each of the six quires as follows: , , , , , . (The initial is a typographical error for ; Luijendijk does not comment on the fact that the scribe jumped straight from 5 to 7 in the numbering.) The result is a sum of forty-four leaves...