The third print of Part 1 and Part 2 of Saji Neman by Emile Maher (supervised, reviewed and introduced by Pope Shenouda III)
Pope Shenouda III (1971 – 2012), who succeeded Pope Kyrillos VI (1959 – 1971) to the Throne of St. Mark in Alexandria becoming the 117th Coptic Pope or Patriarch, was Bishop for Christian Education and Dean of the Coptic Orthodox Theological Seminary in Cairo before he was elected Pope. He was Bishop Shenouda then.
Bishop Shenouda was a saintly, intelligent, progressive[1] and charismatic figure with a great following, particularly from the Coptic youth; and it seemed that any project he launched was blessed with success. He set himself to revolutionise Coptic education, and one part of that mission was to revive the Coptic language. Unfortunately, no one has researched Bishop Shenouda’s, and later Pope Shenouda III’s, Coptic revival project.
I will try to touch on that, and hope others will write in more depth about this matter. There seem to be no references or available documents to help in such a study, but I was glad to find hints of that in Deacon Dr. Emile Maher Ishak’s collection of the books called “Saji”, which means “speak”: “Saji Neman (Speak with Us)”. When I was little, the priest of our local church, a good monk by the name of Fr. Mina, gathered all interested children in our parish and started a Coptic educational programme at the church based on the above series. This was in the late years of the 1960s. It was my first encounter with Coptic as a language; and much of what I had learned then stuck in my memory, for the books (there were only two parts published) were written in a way that encourage the learning and retention of Coptic (see below on the method followed in these books).
Unfortunately, I lost these two books which I once had. But fortunately, a much-loved person sent me photocopies of the two books, which he found at the Ashmolean Library in Oxford University in UK. These two copies found at the Ashmolean Library were presented by Emile Maher himself on 29 October 1975 to the library, after he had finished his PhD on Coptic Phonology[2] at the same university. The reader can see the presentation in Maher’s own handwriting in the picture above. This is the third print of this series, made in June 1972. It was shortly after Bishop Shenouda was elected to be Pope Shenouda III on 30 September 1963. When did the first two prints came out? I don’t know; however, they must have been printed sometime in the period between 1964 and 1971 (Bishop Shenouda’s tenure). Bishop/Pope Shenouda has written introductions to all three prints; and Maher wrote a “thank you piece” too. From these we know the fundamental role of Bishop/Pope Shenouda in their production, and that they formed part of an ambitious programme to revive Coptic using a very advanced for learning.
Bishop/Pope Shenouda did not only introduce this series; he was actually behind the whole idea. Maher himself writes in the third print of Part 1:
[The series] was a fruit of the struggle of Pope Shenouda [to revive Coptic] when he was Bishop for Christian Education. He encouraged me to author it, and tolerated a lot of trouble until it saw the light.
He set himself the method used in it: a modern educational style which makes it easy for the learner to learn the language and speak in it fluently, with ease and no difficulty.
And His Holiness followed the application of this method step by step, revised the content of the book[s] word for word, and wrote an introduction to it.[3]
In Part 2 of the third print, Maher writes:
The collection of the Saji books is a fruit of His Holiness’ struggle when he was Bishop for Christian Education. He encouraged me to author them, and tolerated much trouble until they saw the light; and he himself chose its title, “Saji Neman”, i.e., “Speak with Us”, in order to set method it followed: a method of discourse, which makes it easy for the learner to learn the language and speak it fluently, with much ease and without difficulty.
In the Introduction to Part 2, the third print, Pope Shenouda writes:
The doctor [Emile Maher] has shown great keenness to use the style of dialogue and debate which aids in making the Coptic language a spoken language, not a language of documents and manuscripts.
He was also keen to make the discourse in the books be based on practical matter from the depth of everyday life: at the school, in the church, at home, within the family, in family surroundings, when eating and drinking, when going out or coming in, when getting up or sitting down, and in frequently used conversations.
And he did not forget, in the middle of that, to increase the learner’s gain on grammatical rules and vocabulary of the language.
Bishop/Pope Shenouda’s vision for Coptic was advanced and differed from the usually encountered one within the Church or outside it: he wanted Coptic to be a spoken language, not just a language to use in the church or in studying ancient documents and manuscripts. He wanted the Copts to use Coptic in their daily life at home, church, school, and with friends, etc. For this, he introduced an advanced method for teaching a language, and based it on the style of discourse, which is proven to be more effective in learning to speak the language. This is revolutionary approach compared to previous methods, which focused mainly on producing grammar educational material.
I have read the Saji series again, and I was struck by its advanced method and style. Something else struck me, and that is it is based on a well-studied graded method. There was a clear thinking of producing a series that cover the language from the easiest to the more difficult in a ladder-style, to create a comprehensive curriculum for teaching the language.
To what extent has the programme succeed? We have a hint from Pope Shenouda’s Introduction to the third print:
The first two prints [of the series] were sold out with astonishing speed: 7,000 copies went to the hands of learners and teachers within a very short period. And many called for a third print, which could have been produced a year earlier had it not been for the presence of many other responsibilities.
Pope Shenouda was very pleased by the production of the third print, for as he says, it tells us:
- That there are many learners of our “beloved Coptic language”, which will help in the understanding of the Liturgy, Church melodies and the Bible;
- That it was possible to graduate many Coptic language teachers, who could teach Coptic in the churches and to families and the youth (at the beginning, he says, Emile Maher took the responsibility of teaching more than one thousand student in different locations, and was able, with God’s help, to graduate many teachers);
- That the method on which the Saji educational books is based on was successful, and that it proves that studying Coptic is easy.
Pope Shenouda gives an example of how the Saji series’ method was successful and that it made the learning Coptic easy:
[The production of these books] was accompanied with a great surge in spreading Coptic and speaking in it. With much happiness, I had the occasion to see a little child, in his third year of age, speaking Coptic with astonishing ease, using it to say the Lord’s Prayer, and responding to some questions… This was because his mother was a student of Dr. Emile; and this veritable mother was able to teach her son Coptic. She even brought him to the church [for lessons] so that he could pick some phrases and words.
I think the combination of, and cooperation between, Bishop/Pope Shenouda and Dr Emile Maher worked very well. While both were fluent in Coptic, the former was visionary and the latter understood modern methods and styles of teaching languages and had a grip of how to design a graded curriculum. In my opinion, Pope Shenouda would have revived the Coptic language, or at least advanced its cause to a great extent had his mission not been rudely interrupted by Sadat’s Islamisation policies. In 1971, even before Bishop Shenouda became Pope, Sadat had introduced Sharia into the Egyptian Constitution and gave the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists the freedom to agitate; and on 6 November 1972, a few months after the third print of the Saji series, Islamists attacked a Coptic church at Khanka, a locality north of Cairo, and killed several Copts. Since then, Pope Shenouda III’s efforts were diverted, and became mainly focused on defending his Church and people against Sadat’s Islamisation policies and attacks. At the same time, Maher went to Oxford, UK, to prepare for his D.Phil Thesis – a doctorate in which he spent his time to prove that the traditional Coptic pronunciation introduced by Pope Cyril IV was wrong. Geography, politics and disagreement on the phonology of Coptic seem to have stopped the great project of reviving the language; and while Pope Shenouda became embroiled in politics, Maher got embroiled in a mission to change the traditional pronunciation of Coptic which alienated many against him.
Note. Many don’t like Dr Emile Maher because he advocated for a pronunciation of Coptic different from that introduced by Pope Cyril IV in 1858; but there is no question of his intentions or his scientific credentials. It is also important to note that in the Saji series, the traditional pronunciation of Coptic was used. The writer wants to thank Dr Maher (now Fr. Shenouda Maher Ishak) for his great work in collaborating with Bishop/Pope Shenouda and production of the Saji series. How I wish that he could complete the series, following the same method and style, thereby building a comprehensive and graded curriculum. And I beseech him to forget about the divisive issue on Coptic phonology, which in my opinion has delayed the progress of the Coptic language revival, in order to concentrate on this project.
[1] Beware not to confuse the word ‘progressive’ which I use here with what it means in American politics.
[2] Maher Ishak, Emil. The Phonetics and Phonology of the Bohairic Dialect of Coptic and the Survival of Coptic Words in the Colloquial and Classical Arabic of Egypt and of Coptic Grammatical Constructions in Colloquial Arabic. Volumes 1 – 4. (A D.Phil Thesis submitted to the University of Oxford, September 1975).
[3] All English translations are mine.