Philoponus and the Coptic Eucharist

In centenary commemoration of what happened on 21 February 1910

This study proposes to show that John Philoponus' sixth-century philosophical commentary and biblical exegesis, especially his hexaemeral work De opificio mundi, was deeply connected with and reflective of the eucharist as it was thought about and enacted in the Egypt of his era, the time of the separation of the Miaphysite church. Creation, the De opificio's subject, always is described in the eucharistic liturgies Philoponus and his Christian students would have experienced, and the heavenly powers he enumerates also appear similarly in anaphoras. When he discusses the imperial image, it is in terms that echo the public prayers for emperors offered at eucharists; and he mentions a realistic detail of contemporary social life that also resonates with a well-known passage in an Egyptian eucharistic text. Analysis of this evidence leads to the conclusion that Philoponus in his teaching role thought profoundly about what the eucharist meant to fellow Miaphysite Christians in Justinian's Egypt.