The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

Abstract

Abstract The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is among the most vital and engaging texts to emerge from the early Christian world. It was immensely popular among the early monks, who began at a relatively early date to collect and preserve the more memorable stories and sayings of their revered elders. The very qualities that guaranteed the preservation of these sayings also stimulated an abundant growth in the number and variety of collections and in the variations of sayings within those collections; because of this, the number and complexity of critical problems related to the Sayings is extraordinarily high.1 While we are still far from being able to resolve all of these problems satisfactorily, a careful exploration of some of the more important critical questions the Sayings presents to us will contribute greatly toward our understanding of the hermeneutic and the spirituality of the early monks.

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