Studies on Simʿān ibn Kalīl’s Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew

Simʿān ibn Kalīl was one of the most important Christian Arabic authors of the 12th/13th century of the Egyptian church. His commentary on the Gospel of Matthew is the only known exegetical work on the Gospel of Matthew in Christian Arabic literature of the Copts, the text of which has so far only survived in manuscripts. The goal of the project is to systematically make Simʿān ibn Kalīl's commentary on the Gospel of Matthew accessible for the first time within the framework of a scholarly critical edition, including a translation into German, and to make it accessible to a broader public. Thereby, an important contribution in the field of Christian Oriental Studies shall be made. The critical edition is to be followed by a detailed investigation, appreciation and evaluation, which on the one hand is to identify and work out the sources of the commentary, and on the other hand pursues the goal of showing the reception history of some parts of the commentary in other contemporaneous and later works.