It was with deep sadness and sorrow that we received the terrible news that Peter Nagel, the doyen of Coptic Septuagint Studies and most important supporter of our project, passed away last Thursday, August 1, 2024. As Professor of Christian Near Eastern Studies in Halle (Saale) and Bonn he taught and influenced several generations of scholars not only in Coptic Studies. It is difficult to list the many achievements and merits of Peter Nagel as an outstanding scholar of the 'old school'. Since this will be done in many places, we will concentrate here on his significant contributions to the study and edition of the Coptic Old Testament. It was Peter Nagel who launched and directed the first systematic attempt at a complete reconstruction and edition of the Coptic Old Testament, or the 'Coptic Septuagint', at the Seminar Christlicher Orient and Byzanz of the Martin–Luther–University Halle-Wittenberg in the late 1970s. After his move to the University of Bonn the project Koptische Septuaginta continued its work in Halle from 1994–2000 under his advice and direction. When it was already confirmed that our project would be funded at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities as apart of the long-term research funding program of the German Academies we celebrated Peter Nagel's 75th birthday and thanked him for his support and guidance with an international symposium at the Coptic Monastery in Höxter-Brenkhausen in April 2013. We were also able to honor Peter Nagel with a Festschrift celebrating his 80th birthday. This volume very fittingly was the first to appear in our new monograph series Texts and Studies on the Coptic Bible. It is difficult to describe in a few lines how much our digital edition has profited from the numerous and diverse analogue materials he has made available to us. It is, therefore, only appropriate that we have dedicated a special section in our digital resources menu to Peter Nagel's contributions to the study of the Coptic Bible, including his most recent editions.
Like Coptic Studies in general, the field of Coptic Biblical Studies in particular will for ever be connected with the name of Peter Nagel: ⲡⲉϥⲣⲁⲛ ⲛⲁⲱⲛϩ ϣⲁ ϩⲉⲛϫⲱⲙ ⲛ̄ϫⲱⲙ