Copts
EthnicityWikipedia
337
MENTIONS
165
EPISODES
147
PODCASTS
Search complete. 337 mentions across 165 episodes found for "Copts".
Sep 15, 2026
Stephen HopkinsGUEST
It's still a very open question in scholarship.
Stephen HopkinsGUEST
But sometimes, like, we will find apocryphal texts attested in old Irish and only in Syriac, or only in Coptic, and we are like, how did that text get there without intermediaries? Uh, we don't totally know.
Stephen HopkinsGUEST
It seems, it's hard to prove because it was so long ago and so little survives, and also, like, Rome was busy doing its, you know, crumbling thing.
Stephen HopkinsGUEST
But it seems like, you know, at the very least we could say that these pan-Mediterranean, uh, networks of contact were still at least somewhat intact by the 5, 5 and 600s when texts-
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
So here's what happened.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
20 poor Egyptian men, Coptic Christians, some of the most poorest workers you'll ever meet, traveled to Libya for construction work.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Just trying to feed their families back home.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
So ISIS kidnapped them.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
They were ordinary men, bricklayers and laborers.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And on that beach, the video shows them dying in the name of Jesus.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And in Coptic, they were reciting Ya Rabbi Yasur, which means, oh, my Lord Jesus.
Simshon TimoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
But count the jumpsuit, 21.
Joseph HadadSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
[clapping]
Larry ElderHOST
Have you heard about the Egyptian Christians, Coptics, murdered by Hamas, by ISIS rather? This is an ordained Orthodox Christian priest named Simshan Shimon, number forty-seven.
speaker_25NARRATOR
Twenty-one men in orange jumpsuits kneeling on a beach in Libya, and you've probably seen this image, one of the most infamous videos ISIS ever released.
speaker_25NARRATOR
But I promise you don't know the full story, because the story isn't the twenty, it's the twenty-first.
Todd WornerSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
So let's talk about a few of the martyrs that are featured in this book, What Do Their Deaths Demand? Yeah.
Todd WornerSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Many listening still remember the shocking starkness of 21 Coptic martyrs of Libya.
Todd WornerSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
They're marching in their orange jumpsuits along the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, and then they're kneeling with black-clad, knife-wielding ISIS executioners standing behind them.
Todd WornerSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Just say a few words about this horror show.
Robert BarronSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
It was 2015, so I would have been, I was named a bishop in 2015, so I was either in California or I was still in Chicago, and I heard that story.
Robert BarronSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
These young men, they were all young men, and they were, I think, laborers.
Robert BarronSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
They were in Egypt, the Coptics, and they were kidnapped by Islamic extremists.
Robert BarronSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
and the extraordinary thing is is they're brought out and this thing is filmed you know we've seen you know happily just bits and pieces of that the whole thing was filmed and they they did not fight against their uh persecutors and most of them were murmuring uh prayer yeah and expressions of their faith And there was a kind of calmness about them, even as they faced what they knew was certain death.
Irenaeus DunlevyGUEST
So just to return to that initial metaphor from Plotinus when he talks about purification as a type of sculpting, you may ask yourself, "Well, what is being sculpted?" Well, it's the image of Christ in your soul.
Irenaeus DunlevyGUEST
That's what your perfection looks like, and that's what the saints model for us, right? So even those with a baptism of blood, like the 21 Coptic mur- uh, martyrs, um, before you, you can see in this icon that there's, there's an affiliation going on where, you know, this is in 2015 on the coast of, uh, Libya where this, this took place.
Irenaeus DunlevyGUEST
These men were killed.
Irenaeus DunlevyGUEST
And you can see the orange of Christ's vestment matching the orange of their jumpsuits.
Sherlock HolmesVOICE_ACTOR
The slight marking on it was a Coptic G.
Sherlock HolmesVOICE_ACTOR
A Coptic G? The Copts, my dear Watson, are an ancient minority of Muslim Egypt.
Sherlock HolmesVOICE_ACTOR
They have a singular language.
Sherlock HolmesVOICE_ACTOR
And it's a fascinating fact of contemporary journalism that just one, one newspaper on Earth publishes a considerable number of items in Coptic, as well as in English.
MaishaPANELIST
I think an older woman can even be better than a younger woman in supporting a mission.
MaishaPANELIST
And she's the only one, except for Maria the Coptic, who had his children, Subhanallah.
Abu TobaGUEST
Okay, but see in that case right there.
Abu TobaGUEST
One point.
David WalesNARRATOR
The next morning was to be devoted to an expedition to the famous rock of Abusir, from which a great view may be obtained of the second cataract.
David WalesNARRATOR
At eight-thirty, as the passengers sat on deck after dinner, Mansoor, the dragoman, half-Copt, half-Syrian, came forward, according to the nightly custom, to announce the programme for the morrow.
David WalesNARRATOR
Ladies and gentlemen, said he, plunging boldly into the rapid but broken stream of his English, to-morrow you will remember not to forget to rise when the gong strikes you for to compress the journey before twelve o'clock.
David WalesNARRATOR
Having arrived at the place where the donkeys expect us, we shall ride five miles over the desert, passing a very fine temple of Amon-Ra, which dates itself from the eighteenth dynasty upon the way, and so reach the celebrated pulpit rock of Abusir.
Red BarberSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And Lepre makes the play at first base.
Red BarberSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
As Officer Rizzuto would say, he is not playing it in the Coptic tradition.
Phil RizzutoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Is that what you said? Well, words to that effect, right? Yes.
Phil RizzutoSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
He's making the plays, but...
speaker_0NARRATOR
Words of love do more than words of blame ever will.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Pope Kyrillos hears her teach and does something almost unheard of for a woman in the Coptic Church.
speaker_0NARRATOR
He hands her the right to anoint people with oil, a role kept everywhere else for priests alone.
speaker_0NARRATOR
By the time she's done building this place, she's one of the quietest, most influential women the modern Coptic Church has.
speaker_0NARRATOR
She never wants us to be.
speaker_0NARRATOR
Years pass this way, decades.
6 MINS LATER
speaker_0NARRATOR
She was 70 years old.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The next day, thousands of people who had never met her lined up outside the convent of Abu Sifin to say goodbye.
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