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 . . .