Bentley Layton

Bentley Layton was born on August 12, 1941,{{citation needed |date=May 2025}} to Nelly Gray (née Oldman) and Reber B. Layton. His father was a teacher, principal and writer.{{Cite news |url=https://news.yale.edu/2025/04/01/bentley-layton-distinguished-coptic-linguist-and-scholar-ancient-christianity |title=Bentley Layton, Distinguished Coptic Linguist and Scholar of Ancient Christianity |date=2025-04-01 |last=Laurans |first=Penelope |work=YaleNews |access-date=2025-05-17}} Layton grew up in Jackson, Mississippi. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts. He was a member of the Harvard Society of Fellows. He later graduated with a PhD from Harvard in religion in 1971.

In 1971, Layton began teaching early Christian literature at École Biblique in Jerusalem. He taught there for five years before joining the department of religious studies at Yale University in 1976. He was a fellow of Saybrook College. He was Goff Professor Emeritus of Religious studies and professor of Near Eastern languages and civilizations at Yale. He studied gnostic texts at Nag Hammadi and the writing of the Egyptian monk Shenoute of Atripe. His studies were central to the late 20th-century Rediscovery of Gnosticism, which was the title of the international conference he hosted at Yale in 1980 and the volume that came of it. His interests lay in the history of Christianity from its origins until the rise of Islam, Gnostic studies and Coptic.{{citation needed |date=May 2025}}

His book The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with Annotations (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., 1987), which presents some of the enigmatic literature of gnostic Christianity for nonspecialists. He sets his selection of gnostic scripture, the writings of Valentinus and his followers, and related writings that display gnostic tendencies within the broader context of Early Christianity and Hellenistic Judaism.{{citation needed |date=May 2025}} For specialists, Layton's Coptic Grammar is a standard text. He catalogued all the Coptic manuscripts in the British Library.{{citation needed |date=May 2025}} He was a board member on the Harvard Theological Review and the Journal of Coptic Studies.{{citation needed |date=May 2025}}

Layton was a member of Christ Church in New Haven. He died from complications of Parkinson's disease at his home in New Haven, on March 26, 2025, at the age of 83. He was buried at Christ Church.

• The Hypostasis of the Archons, Or, The Reality of the Rulers..., serialized in Harvard Theological Review 67 (1974) 351—425 and 69 (1976) 1—71{{citation needed |date=May 2025}}
• thesis on the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Coptic Treatise on the Resurrection (1978){{citation needed |date=May 2025}}
• Co-author, Bluebirds: Their Daily Lives and How to Attract and Raise Bluebirds (1986)
• The Gnostic Scriptures (1987)
• Catalogue of Coptic Literary Manuscripts in the British Library Acquired since the Year 1906 (1987)
• Coptic Grammar (2004)
• The Canons of Our Fathers: Monastic Rules of Shenoute (2014)

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.yale.edu/religiousstudies/facultypages/cvbl.html Yale University:] Bentley Layton curriculum vitae

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Layton, Bentley}}

Category:1941 births

Category:2025 deaths

Category:People from Jackson, Mississippi

Category:Harvard University alumni

Category:American Christian theologians

Category:Yale University faculty

Category:Religion in Egypt

Category:Historians of Gnosticism

Category:Coptologists

Category:Deaths from Parkinson's disease in Connecticut

{{US-theologian-stub}}