Academic career

Stephen Emmel was born in Rochester, NY, 27 June 1952, and earned his B.A. from Syracuse University in 1973 (department of religion). He began graduate study with James M. Robinson

James M. Robinson

James McConkey Robinson is Professor Emeritus of Religion, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California. He is a member of the Jesus Seminar and arguably the most prominent Q and Nag Hammadi library scholar of the 20th century. He is also a major contributor to The International Q...

, who took Emmel with him to Cairo, Egypt, in 1974 as a research assistant in the international project to publish the Coptic

Coptic language

Coptic or Coptic Egyptian is the current stage of the Egyptian language, a northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century. Egyptian began to be written using the Greek alphabet in the 1st century...

 Gnostic

Gnosticism

Gnosticism is a scholarly term for a set of religious beliefs and spiritual practices common to early Christianity, Hellenistic Judaism, Greco-Roman mystery religions, Zoroastrianism , and Neoplatonism.A common characteristic of some of these groups was the teaching that the realisation of Gnosis...

 texts of the Nag Hammadi Codices

Nag Hammadi library

The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. That year, twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman...

. Emmel lived in Egypt 1974–77 in order to complete the conservation of the Nag Hammadi papyri in the Coptic Museum

Coptic Museum

The Coptic Museum is a museum in Coptic Cairo, Egypt with the largest collection of Egyptian Christian artifacts in the world. It was founded by Marcus Simaika Pasha in 1910 to house Coptic antiquities. The museum traces the history of Christianity in Egypt from its beginnings to the present day...

 and to assist in the publication of both a facsimile edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices and an English-language edition and translation of the texts contained in them. During those years he traveled several times to Jerusalem to meet with the Egyptologist and linguist H. J. Polotsky

Hans Jakob Polotsky

Hans Jakob Polotsky was an Israeli orientalist, linguist, and professor for Semitic languages and Egyptology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.- Biography :...

 in order to deepen his knowledge of Coptic grammar. In 1978 Emmel resumed his graduate study, now with Bentley Layton

Bentley Layton

Bentley Layton , is Professor of Religious Studies and Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University...

 at Yale University, where in 1980 he discovered a part of Nag Hammadi Codex III in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library was a 1963 gift of the Beinecke family. The building was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft of the firm of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, and is the largest building in the world reserved exclusively for the preservation of rare books...

, which had acquired the previously unidentified fragment in 1964 among a group of miscellaneous papyri. Emmel’s first major publication was an edition of the Nag Hammadi text “The Dialogue of the Saviour

Dialogue of the Saviour

The Dialogue of the Saviour is one of the New Testament apocrypha texts that was found within the Nag Hammadi library of predominantly gnostic texts. The text appears only once in a single Coptic codex, and is heavily damaged...

” (1984). At about that same time, he became the first scholar to see the now famous Gnostic scripture titled “The Gospel of Judas

Gospel of Judas

The Gospel of Judas is a Gnostic gospel that purportedly documents conversations between the Disciple Judas Iscariot and Jesus Christ.It is believed to have been written by Gnostic followers of Jesus, rather than by Judas himself, and probably dates from no earlier than the 2nd century, since it...

,” in what is now called the Codex Tchacos

Codex Tchacos

The Codex Tchacos is an ancient Egyptian Coptic papyrus containing early Christian Gnostic texts from approximately 300 AD:*The Gospel of Judas*The First Apocalypse of James*The Letter of Peter to Philip...

, when it was offered for sale in 1983 in Geneva, Switzerland. However, Emmel did not see the title “The Gospel of Judas” in the papyrus manuscript and so was not the first person to identify the text as such. Nevertheless, when the National Geographic Society

National Geographic Society

The National Geographic Society , headquartered in Washington, D.C. in the United States, is one of the largest non-profit scientific and educational institutions in the world. Its interests include geography, archaeology and natural science, the promotion of environmental and historical...

 was considering a project to fund the conservation and publication of the Codex Tchacos in 2004, Emmel was asked to join its “Codex Advisory Panel,” and he also appeared in the society’s much publicized documentary about the Gospel of Judas project.

Emmel earned his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1993 (department of religious studies, program in the study of ancient Christianity). His doctoral dissertation, “Shenoute’s Literary Corpus” (published in 2004), laid the groundwork for his current main research preoccupation, which is an international collaborative project to publish the writings of the ancient Coptic monastic leader Shenoute the Archimandrite (ca. 347–465). In 1996 Emmel was appointed professor of Coptology

Coptology

Coptology is most commonly defined as the science of Coptic studies, the study of Coptic language and literature.-Origin:The European interest in Coptology may have started as early as the 15th century AD. The term was used in 1976 when the First International Congress of Coptology was held in...

 at the Institute of Egyptology and Coptology at the University of Münster in Germany. During the academic year 2010–11 he was on leave of absence from the University of Münster in order to serve as the first full-time professor of Coptology at the American University in Cairo.

In 1976 Emmel became a charter member of the International Association for Coptic Studies, whose first international congress (Cairo, December 1976) he helped to organize; between 1996 and 2000 he served as the association’s president, and since 2000 he has been its secretary. He was a founding editor of the Journal of Coptic Studies (Leuven: Peeters, 1988–2001 with Gerald M. Browne), and he has helped to edit several scientific monograph series.

Music as a hobby

Emmel began singing and playing piano and guitar in his youth and has maintained music-making as a hobby. An acquaintanceship with David Tibet

David Tibet

David Tibet is a British poet and artist who founded the music group Current 93, of which he is the only full-time member. He had earlier collaborated with Psychic TV and 23 Skidoo...

 via a common interest in the Coptic language (Tibet has an M.A. in Coptic studies from Macquarie University) resulted in Emmel performing on stage with Tibet’s band Current 93

Current 93

Current 93 is an eclectic British experimental music group, working since the early 1980s in folk-based musical forms. The band was founded in 1982 by David Tibet .-Background:Tibet has been the only constant in the group, though Steven Stapleton has appeared on...

several times during 2007–10. A part of one of those performances was recorded and released in 2008.

Major Scientific Works

• Emmel, Stephen. “Text and Translation” and “Indexes.” In: Nag Hammadi Codex III,5: The Dialogue of the Savior, edited by Stephen Emmel, pp. 37–127. Nag Hammadi Studies, vol. 26. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984.
• Emmel, Stephen. Shenoute's Literary Corpus. 2 vols. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium, vols. 599–600 (= Subsidia, vols. 111–112). Leuven: Peeters, 2004.