Letters of St Antony - Monasticism and the Making of A Saint (2

Title: Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of A Saint
Author: Samuel Rubenson
Series: Studies in Antiquity & Christianity
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Trinity Press Int'l (September 1, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0800629108
ISBN-13: 978-0800629106

“This book revolutionizes our understanding of the life and thought of the great anchorite father of the Egyptian desert. It is a signal contribution to our knowledge of Egyptian Christianity in the third and fourth centuries.”
—Birger Pearson, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity

Samuel Rubenson, by means of a fresh analysis of the letters of St. Antony, exposes the distortion of the picture of early Christian monks as unlettered and primitive. Rubenson describes the desert monasteries as centers of theological reflection in Egypt, showing how they combined the speculative philosophy of the Greeks and the biblical tradition. Included in this volume is a new translation of the letters themselves, which are shown to be authentic and an important source for the study of the desert fathers and the early monastic tradition. The later image of Antony is demonstrated to be influenced by church politics of the latter part of the fourth century.

Samuel Rubenson is Associate Professor at Lund University, Lund, Sweden