Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 11 November 2024 nagel, peter (1938–2024), german coptologist, theologian, and
philologist
Ute Pietruschka Keywords: Apocrypha and pseudepigraphic texts, Biographies, Coptic Language, Coptic Language–Dialects, Coptic Literature, Coptic Old Testament, Coptology, Gnosticism, Linguistics, Lycopolitan (or Lyco-Diospolitan or Subakhmimic), Manichaeism, Nag Hammadi codices, New Testament Apocrypha, Sahidic Septuagint, Syriac Literature.
Peter Nagel was born in Erdmannsdorf (Saxony, Germany) on April 3, 1938. He studied theology, Egyptology, and languages of the Christian Orient in Leipzig, Germany with johannes leipoldt, siegfried morenz, and Alexander Böhlig (Richter 2015; Behlmer et al.
2018, vii–IX) and received his doctorate from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Leipzig in 1961 (Nagel 1966). His second thesis at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Leipzig (Nagel 1965) was a study of the grammar of the lycopolitan Coptic dialect.
From 1961 Nagel taught at the Institute for Byzantine Studies at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, also in Germany, where he received his Habilitation in 1967 (Nagel 1967). In 1975, he traveled to Cairo for the first time to study the Nag Hammadi codices. The translation and Peter Nagel. Photo by Ave Maria Mõistlik commentary of these writings became one of courtesy Wikimedia Commons Nagel’s main fields of work (Nagel 1969, 1980, (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File 1998, 2014, 2023). In 1976 he spent an extended :Nagel,_Peter.img_9181.jpg).
research stay in Leningrad and worked at the Oriental Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the ussr, in particular with Alla I. Elanskaya (1926–2005). For many years, Nagel was the organizer of the Koptologische Arbeitskonferenzen (Coptological Working Conferences) in Halle, which pursued an interdisciplinary research approach, and he was co-editor of the Hallesche Beiträge zur Orientwissenschaft (1979–1990).
From 1980 to 1992 Nagel was an Associate Professor at the Section of Oriental and Ancient Studies at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, where he taught courses on the languages and literatures of the Christian Orient. From 1993 until his retirement in 2003 he was Full Professor of Christian Oriental Studies at the University of Bonn. Nagel was one of the founding members of the International Association of Coptic Studies and served as its president from 1988 to 1992. He was a member of the Saxon Academy of Sciences (1988–1992) and the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences. Nagel died on August 1, 2024, in Lutherstadt Eisleben near Halle, Germany.
Peter Nagel’s teaching and research activities were wide-ranging. The spectrum of his scholarly interests included his main field of research, Coptic linguistics and literature, but also Syriac literature, the New Testament Apocrypha, gnosticism, and manichaeism. He made a name for himself as a translator of Syrological and Coptological literature from Russian, © Claremont Graduate University 1 U. Pietruschka: Nagel, Peter (1938–2024) 11 November 2024 and served as an important specialist in the transmission of the Coptic Old Testament (see old testament, coptic versions of the: update). In 1980, Nagel initiated the project of a systematic edition of the Sahidic Septuagint at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, which continues today as a digital project at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Lower Saxony, and to which he made significant contributions (Nagel 2020, 2022a, 2022b; see also Nagel’s Collected Biblica (https://coptot.manuscriptroom.com/peter-nagel.) Peter Nagel studying manuscripts circa 1975, possibly in Cairo. Photo courtesy of Claremont Graduate University’s Institute for Antiquity and Christianity’s Nag Hammadi Archive, The Claremont Colleges Digital Library (https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/nha/id/702/).