The problem doesn't have to be maximal or even close to maximal in order to have some significance. We're making probability judgments, and non-maximal evidence can be a substantial part of a cumulative case.
And a cumulative case allows for different evidence to point in different directions. The issue is the overall balance of evidence. Even if you think the overall evidence favors a Catholic Marian interpretation of Zeitoun or a Protestant Marian interpretation, for example, the affiliation with Copticism I'm addressing in this post can still go against your non-Coptic conclusion.
I see no reasonable way to deny that from a non-Coptic perspective like Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or Eastern Orthodoxy, the association of the apparitions with Coptic Christianity is evidence against their being appearances of Mary. What's more debatable is the extent to which that association provides such evidence. What I want to do in this post is expand upon what I've said before about the extent of the apparitions' association with Copticism.
Before I do that, however, I want to address another issue that occasionally comes up. People sometimes claim to be taking something at face value and cite that as an advantage of their position. That often happens in paranormal contexts, including with Marian apparitions. It's true that all other things being equal, we prefer a simpler explanation. But other things aren't always equal. And the claim to be accepting all Marian apparitions at face value is dubious, as a comparison of cases like Zeitoun and Fatima illustrates. If you're taking a non-Coptic view of Zeitoun, that can undermine an appeal to taking the case at face value, an appeal to how easy it supposedly is to see that your position is correct, etc. There's no quick, easy way to make sense of Marian apparitions as a whole. If you don't like that fact, too bad. You have to live with it.
Marian apparitions have been less common in Copticism than in Catholicism, but there were some Marian apparitions in Coptic circles prior to Zeitoun. See Travis Dumsday's discussion in section 2 of chapter 2 of his book The Marian Apparitions At Zeitoun (Yonkers, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2024). He cites Otto Meinardus' discussion of an apparition in which somebody "was instructed by the Holy Virgin to rebuild the [Coptic] Monasteries of the Wadi'n-Natrun." (approximate Kindle location 302) Dumsday goes on, later in the same chapter, to discuss some alleged prophecies of the Zeitoun apparitions, and those supposed prophecies, like the earlier apparition I just cited, are closely affiliated with Copticism. For example:
The Coptic Orthodox Church of St Mary in Zeitoun was constructed in 1924 and consecrated a year later. It has been widely reported that the construction of the church had earlier been prompted by a religious dream or vision experienced by Ibrahim Pasha Khalil, a Copt who donated the land on which the church was built. Supposedly the Virgin Mary appeared to him in 1918 or 1920 (different authors give a different year) and instructed him to help establish a church on the site dedicated to her, and that if this was done, she would return to bless it (with some authors specifying a fifty-year timeline for the return). This story was apparently circulating widely soon after the major public apparitions began, and it is commonly recounted. However, I have not been able to discover whether any documentation of this prophecy exists prior to the start of the apparitions in 1968. If so, that would be potentially significant. However, if future researchers are unable to come up with such written sources, one might worry that this could be an instance of ex post facto "prophecy." At present it is difficult to say....
[quoting Pearl Zaki] "The first appearance of the Virgin Mary on April 2, 1968, began as a public revelation. No one person was singled out or unique in receiving a 'special' message. All received according to the measure given by God. It was reported and well known among the faithful that prior to this first public appearance, the Virgin Mary appeared privately to the holy priest of the church, Reverend Father Constantine Moussa. It was said, 'On one evening she met him on the steps in the church by the altar, she spoke to him, he fainted and fell to the floor.' Father Constantine, a very modest and humble priest, felt urged not to reveal what was said to him at this visit, at least not until after his death so as to bring no attention to himself. He died in June of 1984. Before his death His Grace Bishop Gregorious, Chairman of the [Coptic] Papal Committee sent by His Holiness Kyrillos VI to investigate the events at Zeitun Church, asked Father Constantine 'what was the message that was given you?' Father Constantine told His Grace that the Virgin Mary revealed to him the nature of her impending appearance at St Mary's Church and told him to 'BE READY'!! They were."
(424, 440)
Whatever you make of those alleged predictions and their alleged fulfillment, the source behind the apparitions chose to appear at a Coptic church. There were many other options available.
It then chose to keep reappearing there as its primary location for years on end.
It sometimes went further by going inside the church or showing regard for the church by other means, such as bowing before a cross at the top of it. An early report from Coptic officials referred to how Mary appeared "on and in the domes of the church" (Jerome Palmer, Our Lady Returns To Egypt [San Bernardino, California: Culligan Publications, Inc., 1969], 40). Some other examples:
[quoting a Coptic committee's report] "Then she appeared in her complete form, moving on the domes, then bowing before the cross and at the end, she blessed the multitudes."...
[quoting a statement read by a Coptic official] "Occasionally, the apparition came through the opening in the church's domes, and sometimes it appeared outside the dome. The apparition walked above the altar and bowed before the upper cross of the church."...
[quoting Helen Naguib Louis] "And then, from the chapel (of the church), from the side of the little alley, we saw a light which was not normal: something like the sun, orange, then a halo like in an icon: it was the image of the Virgin and that of a young Jesus, who came out of the dome."
(Travis Dumsday, The Marian Apparitions At Zeitoun [Yonkers, New York: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 2024], approximate Kindle locations 701, 758, 1796)
Palmer wrote that "Feasts of Our Lady in the Coptic Calendar, of which there are thirty-two, seem to be favored [by the apparitions]." (Our Lady Returns To Egypt [San Bernardino, California: Culligan Publications, Inc., 1969], 15) He wrote that while the apparitions were still going on. I don't know how accurate his assessment regarding alignment with the Coptic calendar was at the time when he wrote or whether that trait, if authentic, continued during the remainder of the apparitions.
Even without that alignment with Coptic Christianity, there were a significant number, variety, and quality of alignments in other contexts. As I said before, the evidence doesn't have to be maximal, or even close to maximal, in order to have some significance.
Objecting to the nonverbal nature of some of the evidence I've cited above is an inadequate response. Nonverbal evidence is still evidence, even if it's less explicit than a verbal alternative would be. Paranormal phenomena range across the spectrum, from strictly nonverbal to highly verbal, with a lot between those two. Near-death experiences (NDEs), for example, are frequently highly or entirely nonverbal. That doesn't prevent people from reaching conclusions about the identity of the figures they see in NDEs (recognizing relatives by their appearance, recognizing Jesus by nail prints around his hands, recognizing the gods of indigenous religions by various traits, etc.). And the activities of the figures in NDEs are often interpreted by nonverbal means. The same occurs with Marian apparitions. Often, the figure is identified as Mary by nonverbal criteria. As my citations of the books I quoted earlier illustrate, the Zeitoun apparitions and their activities were often identified by nonverbal means (the clothing of the figure seen, bowing before a cross, a gesture interpreted as a blessing of the crowd, etc.). Healings, for example, are often interpreted by means of their timing or other nonverbal aspects of the surrounding context, not something like a statement from an apparition. Advocates of Marian apparitions can't have it both ways. They can't base their conclusions about the apparitions on so much nonverbal evidence, then turn around and claim that nonverbal evidence has little or no significance when it leads to a conclusion they dislike.
This post has been focused on the issue of how much the Zeitoun apparitions were affiliated with Coptic Christianity. My focus on that issue in this post isn't meant to imply that the Coptic association is my only argument against a Marian interpretation of the events. I've discussed other lines of evidence against a Marian view in other posts. See here, for example.
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