Whenever religious texts are read as holy Scripture, an individual or an interpretive community appropriates the text by assuming that the text has relevance “today”—that is, there is a reference to the present in the text. By pointing out such a referent, the texts are contextualized. This study analyses this process as it is expressed in Apophthegmata Patrum (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers).



The prominent historian Peter Brown has called the collection “the last and one of the greatest products of the Wisdom Literature of the ancient Near East.” It has had a tremendous influence on Christian monasticism in the East as well as the West, and the different collections are widely read today. This publication is the first major text-centered study of the use of Scripture in Apophthegmata Patrum. Thirty-two sayings are analyzed in detail. The analyses, together with examples taken from the whole range of sayings of the Greek systematic collection of Apophthegmata Patrum, form the basis of systematization. One set of categories is developed in terms of how the threads of biblical material are woven into the new text of Apophthegmata Patrum to bear on questions relevant to its first readers. Another set of categories is developed in terms of the role biblical texts have in individual sayings, and it becomes evident to what extent the Bible functions pedagogically as a source of images to illustrate the teachings of the Fathers and Mothers of the desert.