Bentley Layton, who has been named the Frederick & Laura Goff Professor of Religious Studies, is a religious historian specializing in the first five centuries of ancient Christianity.
His current research is on the social history of early Christian monasteries, focusing on food consumption and social structure.
Many of his publications concern Christians in Egypt of the Roman period, a part of the world where early manuscripts survive best because of climatic conditions.
Layton was a leading participant from 1972 to 1978 of the UNESCO technical subcommittee in Cairo that conserved, published and edited a newly discovered collection of heretical "Gnostic" scriptures composed in the second and third centuries A.D. These texts opened up a new window on theological diversity in the ancient church.
He has also published standard critical editions of eight Gnostic texts, including the famous "Gospel of Thomas," allegedly written by a twin brother of Jesus. In addition, he is translator of a widely used anthology of the Gnostic scriptures in English and of a number of technical studies about them.
As a specialist on manuscripts in Coptic, the language of Byzantine Egypt, Layton has served on the staff of the British Library in London and published a descriptive catalog of medieval Coptic manuscripts in that collection. He was editor of "The Rediscovery of Gnosticism, Proceedings of the International Conference on Gnosticism at Yale," published in two volumes as part of the Studies in the History of Religions series. In addition, he coproduced "A Survey Map of the Cliffs of Hamra Dom (Nag Hammadi)."
Layton's most recent book is a full-scale reference grammar of the Coptic language, which was published last year. He is currently part of an international team publishing the first critical edition of the writings of Apa Shenoute, a very early leader of ancient Christian monasticism.
In conjunction with his appointment to the endowed chair and in recognition of his scholarly accomplishments, Layton will receive an annual research account of $3,000 for the next five years.
Layton earned his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He undertook private study of Coptic and linguistics in Jerusalem and was a visiting professor there at the Ecole Biblique et Archeologique Francaise, where he taught early Christian literature. He came to Yale as an assistant professor in 1976 and was promoted to a full professor in 1983. In addition to the Department of Religious Studies, he also teaches in the Departments of History and of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. He was director of undergraduate studies in religious studies three times, most recently from 1984 to 1986.
Layton was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows and received major fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies and Yale. He was president of the International Association for Coptic Studies and the New Haven Oriental Club. He is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Research Center in Egypt, the British School of Archaeology in Jerusalem, the Societe d'archeologie copte du Caire and the American Folklore Society. At Yale, Layton is a fellow of Saybrook College.
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