By William Harmless
Within the fourth century, the deserts of Egypt grew to become the nerve middle of a thorough new move, what we now name monasticism. teams of Christians-from illiterate peasants to discovered intellectuals-moved out to the wastelands past the Nile Valley and, within the recognized phrases of Saint Athanasius, made the wilderness a urban. In so doing, they captured the mind's eye of the traditional global. They solid thoughts of prayer and asceticism, of discipleship and non secular course, that experience remained important to Christianity ever on the grounds that. looking to map the soul's lengthy trip to God and plot out the delicate vagaries of the human middle, they created and encouraged texts that turned classics of Western spirituality. those wasteland Christians have been additionally really good storytellers, a few of Christianity's best. This ebook introduces the literature of early monasticism. It examines all of the best-known works, together with Athanasius' lifetime of Antony, the Lives of Pachomius, and the so-called Sayings of the wilderness Fathers. Later chapters specialize in pioneers of monastic theology: Evagrius Ponticus, the 1st nice theoretician of Christian mysticism; and John Cassian, who introduced Egyptian monasticism to the Latin West. alongside the way in which, readers are brought to path-breaking discoveries-to new texts and up to date archeological finds-that have revolutionized modern scholarship on monastic origins. incorporated are interesting snippets from papyri and from little-known Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopic texts. Interspersed in each one bankruptcy are illustrations, maps, and diagrams that support readers kind in the course of the key texts and the richly-textured global of early monasticism. Geared to a large viewers and written in transparent, jargon-free prose, desolate tract Christians deals the main finished and obtainable advent to early monasticism.
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Extra info for Desert Christians: An Introduction to the Literature of Early Monasticism
Example text
Direct Roman control began in 30 BCE with the victory of Octavian over Marc Antony and Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. Unlike other Roman provinces, Egypt was treated as the personal domain of the emperor and was governed not by senators (as other provinces were) but by a viceroy of equestrian rank, whose title was “prefect of Egypt” (or, later, “Augustal prefect”). In the late third century, the empire underwent great administrative reforms, initiated by Emperor Diocletian, who broke provinces into more manageable units.
Reprinted in E. Wipszycka, Études sur le christianisme dans l'Égypte de l'antiquité tardive (Rome: Institutum Patristicum Augustinianum, 1996), 63–106. Origen For an overview, see Joseph W. Trigg, Origen: Bible and Philosophy in the Third Century (Atlanta: John Knox, 1983), and Henri Crouzel, Origen, trans. A. S. Worrall (reprint: Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1998). For a valuable selection of his writings, see Joseph W. , Origen, Early Church Fathers Series (New York: Routledge, 1998). See also: Daley, Brian E.
He was incredibly prolific and dictated commentaries on virtually every book of the Bible. Only a fraction of this output survives, but that which does is remarkable. Origen recognized the hazards of literalism, noting the Bible's anthropomorphisms, historical inaccuracies, and internal contradictions. ” This led him to interpret problematic texts allegorically, seeing beneath the literal surface a manylayered density and rich symbolism. Origen's fondness for allegory would influence later monastic writers, who repeated his interpretations and drew inspiration from his methods.
