Program / Course 20: Spiritual Theology / Lesson 2.2
What you will learn
- Describe the Sayings of the Desert Fathers as a genre and explain how they were collected.
- Name several of the elders, including women, and the themes of their sayings.
- Read a saying as a word given to a particular person, not as a universal rule.
- Apply simple guidelines for reading short, paradoxical texts fairly.
The big idea
The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, also called the Apophthegmata Patrum, are short stories and spoken counsels from the Egyptian, Palestinian and Syrian deserts of the fourth to sixth centuries. A young monk asks an elder for a word, and the elder answers in a line or a small story. The collections were gathered by later editors and passed through several languages. To read them well, a student must remember that each saying was fitted to one person at one moment. They are best read slowly, one at a time, and with attention to humility, mercy and honesty about oneself.
Key terms
- Apophthegmata Patrum
- Greek for sayings of the fathers. The name of the main collections of desert sayings.
- Abba and Amma
- Aramaic and Coptic words meaning father and mother. They were used for elder monks and nuns recognized as spiritual guides.
- A word
- The desert term for a short piece of counsel an elder gave in answer to a request. A disciple would ask for a word.
- Cell
- The small room or hut where a monk lived. It became a symbol of the place where a person meets themselves and God.
- Alphabetical collection
- The best known collection, which arranges sayings under the names of the elders in the order of the Greek alphabet.
- Systematic collection
- A collection that arranges sayings by topic, such as humility, obedience or hospitality.
- Compunction
- A deep sorrow for sin and longing for God, often with tears. It was prized as a sign of a softened heart.
Background
The elders of the desert wrote little. What survives of their teaching comes mostly from short oral exchanges, remembered by disciples and later written down. The standard Greek collection, called the alphabetical collection, probably took shape in the fifth and sixth centuries. A second Greek collection arranged the sayings by theme, and Latin and other translations of these were made, including a sixth-century Latin translation of a systematic collection. The English translation by Benedicta Ward is the one most students read.
The collections include several women, called ammas, the best known being Syncletica, Sarah and Theodora. Their sayings are fewer in number than those of the men, but they are among the most memorable. Some elders are famous: Anthony, Arsenius, Macarius, Moses the Black, Poemen. Others are little more than names. The sayings are not a rule book. They were not meant to be read in order or as a system.
Because many of the sayings are brief or surprising, modern readers sometimes misread them. This lesson offers some basic principles drawn from the way the sayings themselves function, and the tradition’s own understanding of what a word is for.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: A saying is a word for one person
The typical scene is simple. A brother comes to an elder and says: Abba, give me a word, how can I be saved? The elder gives an answer. The elders knew the questioner. A word that heals one person might harm another.
A famous example is the counsel attributed to Abba Moses to a brother who asked for a word: go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything. For someone restless and running from himself, this was the right word. Said to a lonely or depressed person, the same sentence could do damage.
Step 2: Many sayings are about mercy and humility
A reader expecting extreme demands finds something else. In one well-known story, a brother has committed a fault and the elders gather to judge him. Abba Moses arrives carrying a leaking basket of sand on his back. Asked why, he answers that his own sins are running out behind him and he does not see them, and he has come to judge another. The council dismisses the matter and forgives the brother.
Hospitality takes precedence over fasting in several sayings: an elder breaks his fast to welcome a guest, and says that the commandment of love is greater than the rule. Judgment of others is among the most criticized faults.
Step 3: Women among the elders
Amma Syncletica is credited with the teaching that a person can be a solitary in the mind while living among crowds, and can live in a crowd in the mind while sitting alone on a mountain. She compares the spiritual life to a ship that must be kept from taking in water, and speaks plainly about the dangers of pride and sadness.
Amma Sarah is remembered for her insistence on prayer that asks for purity of heart, and for sharp answers to monks who looked down on her as a woman. Amma Theodora speaks of the hard struggle and the wisdom of staying in place. Their presence shows that the tradition included women as guides, though the numbers are small.
Step 4: Read slowly and read in context
A saying is not a proof text. It is closer to a koan or a parable, and its force is often in what is left unsaid. A good method is to read one saying aloud, ask who is speaking and to whom, ask what fault or temptation the saying seems aimed at, and then ask what part of the saying applies to you.
A second discipline is to read many sayings, so that no single one is taken as the rule. The elders sometimes contradict one another. One praises strict fasting, another praises eating whatever is set before you. The difference is in the people they are talking to.
Step 5: Historical caution
Scholars treat the sayings as a mixture. Some may go back to real conversations, some were edited, some were attributed to famous names later, and some were moved from one elder to another in different collections. The sayings are better evidence of the ideals of desert communities than of the exact words of the named elders. This does not make them less valuable as spiritual reading.
- Which saying in the collection speaks most directly to a fault of mine?
- Whom would I ask for a word, and why?
- What does it mean that the same word can help one person and harm another?
- How does the story of Abba Moses and the basket of sand challenge me?
- Where do I treat a spiritual saying as a rule for everyone?
- What is the difference between reading a saying and obeying it?
Examples
The leaking basket
The story of Moses carrying a basket of sand that leaks behind him teaches that self-knowledge should come before judgment. Students often find it more demanding than any rule of fasting.
A word that fits
A young woman, overwhelmed by too many commitments, hears the saying about sitting in the cell as an invitation to stop for ten minutes a day. A friend who has been alone for months hears the same saying as a reproach. The text is the same and the right use is different. (A constructed example.)
Contradiction as teaching
One elder is said to have told a brother to fast severely. Another told a different brother that eating what is set before him is no sin. A student who tries to harmonize them misses the point, which is that each answer was fitted to a person and a moment.
Different perspectives
Orthodox
Orthodox readers treat the sayings as living teaching, often read aloud in monasteries and quoted in sermons. They value them as the voice of the desert tradition and stress the need of a living guide to apply them.
Catholic
Catholic monastic orders have long read the sayings. Benedict recommended the Conferences, the Institutes and the Lives of the Fathers in his Rule, and the desert tradition fed Western monastic teaching about humility and obedience. Catholic readers often treat them as part of the common heritage of the church.
Protestant
Protestant opinion varies. Some readers are wary of the ascetic emphasis, which Reformers criticized as seeking merit. Many modern Protestants have found the sayings valuable for their honesty and their emphasis on mercy, and read them selectively alongside Scripture.
Scholarly view
Historians of early Christianity treat the Apophthegmata as a source for the social and religious world of the desert, stressing the editing involved. Literary scholars compare them to the wisdom sayings of other cultures, while noting their distinctively Christian concerns.
Why it matters
The sayings train a reader in a particular way of attention: slow, humble and suspicious of the urge to judge others. They also correct the idea that the desert tradition was only about severity. A student who reads them well learns to ask what a spiritual teaching is for, and to resist treating every saying as a command for everyone.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The sayings are rules for monks to follow literally.
Correction: They are words fitted to persons. The collections preserve them as wisdom to learn from, and elders disagree with one another.
Misunderstanding: The sayings preserve exact quotations from the elders.
Correction: They were passed on orally, edited and collected later. They are valuable evidence of desert ideals, but exact wording and attribution are uncertain.
Misunderstanding: The desert tradition was only male.
Correction: Women such as Syncletica, Sarah and Theodora are recorded as spiritual mothers, though fewer sayings survive.
Misunderstanding: The sayings glorify severity over love.
Correction: Many sayings stress mercy, hospitality and the avoidance of judgment, and place love above fasting.
Knowledge check
What is a word in desert usage?
A short piece of counsel an elder gave in answer to a request. A disciple would ask for a word, and the elder responded in a line or a small story fitted to that person. It was not a general rule for everyone.
What does the story of Abba Moses and the basket of sand teach?
It teaches that a person should be aware of their own faults before judging another. Moses carried a leaking basket of sand and said his sins were running out behind him. The council dropped the case. The story centers mercy, not severity.
Name two women recorded among the desert elders and one theme from their sayings.
Amma Syncletica taught that a person can be inwardly solitary in a crowd and warned against pride and sadness. Amma Sarah is remembered for sharp replies to monks who disdained her and for seeking purity of heart. Amma Theodora is another example.
Why should a student read many sayings and not one?
Because the elders sometimes disagree, each answering a different person in a different state. A single saying read alone can be mistaken for a universal law. Reading widely shows the underlying concerns of humility, mercy and honesty.
Think it through
- What question would you bring to an elder if you could ask for a word?
- Why do you think the editors kept sayings that contradict each other?
- Which saying challenged you most when you first read it, and what in you resisted it?
Independent assignment
Ten sayings
In your notebook, copy ten sayings from the Ward collection that you find memorable, choosing from different elders. Under each, write two or three sentences stating who it was probably said to and what it asks of a reader today. Then write a paragraph on any two that seem to disagree and how you would reconcile them. Suggested length: 400 to 600 words in all. Do not share this with anyone.
Further study
- Benedicta Ward, trans., The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection Read a few sayings each day. Include Anthony, Moses, Poemen, Syncletica, Sarah and Theodora.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, Life of St. Anthony Compare the sayings of Anthony with the speeches in the Life.
- John Cassian, The Conferences Cassian reports conversations with desert elders in a similar spirit.
- Benedict of Nursia, The Rule of St. Benedict Notice the final chapter, in which Benedict recommends the Conferences, the Institutes and the Lives of the Fathers.
- Proverbs 1:5 A wise man will hear and increase learning.
- Matthew 7:1 Judge not.
- Luke 6:41 The mote and the beam.