A camel, a horse, a troupe of pigs rising from the waters of the Nile; an ostrich with its young; genuflecting crocodiles; souls flying up to heaven, a malevolent giant stopping some of them; a female monk who has transgressed; a dummy dressed up like . . .

When I first proposed to Father Terrence Kardong a new translation, with commentary, of the sayings attributed to Arsenius of Seeds in the Greek Alphabetical Apophthegmata Patrum (et Matrum), he was enthusiastic, but then drily added that he was not s . . .

Sometime in the sixth century, according to Palestinian monastic tradition, “a certain woman, poor in appearance,” arrived late one evening after vespers at the Monastery of Saint George of Choziba outside Jericho (a monastery that still exists)1and a . . .

Journeying to the interior is both physical fact and spiritual reality in early Christian monasticism, especially in Egypt, where the physical interior is clearly marked and life-threatening. The attacks of the demons in the Life ofAntony demonstrate . . .

In a recent issue of The American Benedictine Review, David N. Bell offered a searching critique of early Christian monasticism and found it severely deficient in a number of ways. He points out that the monks of the fourth and fifth century were not . . .

In January and February of 1996 I had the great good fortune of joining the team of American archeologists, faculty, and students who went to Wadi Natrun, Egypt; we were there to excavate the Monastery of Saint John the Little and study firsthandCopti . . .