The American poet Walt Whitman famously declares, “I am large, I contain multitudes.”1 Saint Antony of Egypt (c. 251–356) is often called “the father of monasticism,” and numerous articles and books discuss his life, teaching, and influence.2 This volume wishes to parley with (as Whitman would say) the Antony who contains multitudes: the Antony of the Life of Antony and the Letters, and the Antony of the apophthegmata (sayings) in Greek, Coptic, and Copto-Arabic.3 Five Antonys, but especially the last three, the Antony(s) of the Greek, Coptic, and Copto-Arabic sayings. Regarding the apophthegmata, Samuel Rubenson counts 119 sayings in Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic, and Ethiopic,4 but his table does not include the many unattested Arabic sayings. What strikes one immediately when he or she looks at Rubenson’s table is that of the thirty-two Bohairic Coptic sayings that Rubenson numbers 88–119 (included in this volume), only two have clear parallels. Of the Copto-Arabic sayings in this volume, as Lisa Agaiby notes, “Thirty-one sayings are unattested in any of the Greek, Syriac, or Coptic collections.”5
Before Whitman in his “Song of Myself” proclaims his multitudinous self, though, he asks, “Do I contradict myself?” And immediately replies, “Very well then I contradict myself.”6 Does Antony contradict himself? The historian, I suspect, may be inclined to say “Yes”—or, at least, conclude that the later, expanded, Antony is very far from the “Greek” Antony, that is, the Antony of the alphabetical and systematic collections of the Apophthegmata Patrum, the sayings and stories of the desert fathers and mothers.7 But the Antony of the Greek sayings is already the Antony of tradition—and study of the alphabetical sayings vis-à-vis the systematic sayings shows a changing of tradition. Given all these (re)sources, who—or what—is the real Antony?
By “what” we mean tradition. Perhaps we should say “which.” But then we are back to picking and choosing between traditions.8 As David Brakke has so thoroughly shown, the Antony of Athanasius’ Life of Antony is—to some degree—an Athanasian construct.9 And then the interested reader should compare the Life by Athanasius with that by Pseudo-Serapion, as Dr. Agaiby has done; the latter is a redacted Life composed within the monastic environment in Egypt in the thirteenth century that testifies to the way monks reinterpreted religious memory to make it more relevant to the taste and mentality of the time and place, thus having it function as a “legitimizing narrative”10 for Antony’s monastic community.11 What we have of Antony, then, is the saint of tradition(s): we need to remember that the Jesus of the Gospels is the Jesus of tradition(s), the four Gospels we have, and we should often emphasize that final syllable—traditions—drawing out the plural “s.”12
One can readily compare the Jesus of the Gospels with the Christ of Paul. For example, in the Epistle to the Romans Paul uses “Jesus Christ” or “Christ Jesus” twenty-two times, 88 % of the time, and “Jesus” only three times, or 12 % of the time; Paul’s main understanding of Jesus is as “Christ,” “Messiah.” Not only Paul and the modern biblical scholar (re)interpret Jesus and Christ, every person studying the Bible, ancient or modern, does so; and, the Jesus of an Episcopalian is often different from the Jesus of a Copt, or of a Roman Catholic, or Pentecostal. Of Antony, then, of all the Antonys,13 we focus in this volume on the Greek, Coptic, and Arabic monastic and saint. Each tradition “reads” Antony differently. For example, in Coptic, with its fifty-four sayings, hēt (pronounced “heat”) means both “heart” and “mind.”14 Thus, Coptic does not share the Western dualism between intellect and emotion, as if each existed independent of the other.
This book, then, presents a multitude of Antonys. Each part title summarizes, in part, what its author finds there:
Part 1 The Sayings of St. Antony the Great in the Greek Alphabetical Apophthegmata PatrumPart 2 The Sayings of St. Antony the Great in the Coptic Apophthegmata PatrumPart 3 (Copto-Arabic): The Harbor and Salvation for MonksPart 4 (Copto-Arabic): The Sayings of St. Antony the Great in the Bustān al-Ruhbān
For Parts 1 and 2, Prof. Vivian offers extensive Introductions, as does Dr. Agaiby for Part 3. The goal we seek is to understand each Antony of tradition in and of itself (and/or: himself), and then make comparisons between the traditions. So, we’re looking at equivalences, or close equivalences, similitudes, differences, deletions, and augmentations. Who is the Antony of each tradition? (Not that we can answer this unequivocally or absolutely). More importantly, what does Antony say, what does he teach in each tradition, what does he live? In her introduction to the Copto-Arabic Antony (Part 3), Dr. Agaiby sums up the matter well for all three traditions:
a surprising number of sayings attributed to Antony in Arabic are unattested in either the Greek or Coptic recensions and, based on the dating of the Arabic manuscripts, it appears the “additional” sayings were gradually incorporated into the Arabic Apophthegmata … These additional sayings, together with the embellishment of some of the already-attested sayings, affirm how the tradition introduced, reinvented, or simply excluded stories and instructions to make the collection relevant to the taste and mentality of the time and place.
Because of the still-inconclusive state of research on the textual history (indeed, histories) of the Greek alphabetical Apophthegmata (AlphAP) or Sayings, Prof. Vivian has used the traditional text in Patrologia Graeca 65 (see AlphAP in the sources), with numerous references to parallel sayings in the systematic Apophthegmata (SysAP).15 For the Coptic text, Prof. Vivian has re-edited the text published in 1894 by Émile Amélineau (see Amélineau in the Sources) vis-à-vis an online copy of manuscript Vatican Copt 64.16 For the Arabic, Dr. Agaiby has used and translated from twenty-five dated Copto-Arabic manuscripts housed at the Monastery of St. Antony at the Red Sea that contain sayings attributed to St. Antony and date between the early-fourteenth to the mid-twentieth century (see the list of MSS. in Part 3 and Appendix 2). The Arabic sayings translated here in Part 4 are the first published in English.
As with our recent work, The Arabic Life of Antony Attributed to Serapion of Thmuis: Cultural Memory Reinterpreted (Agaiby) and The Sayings and Stories of the Desert Fathers and Mothers (Vivian), we have provided numerous notes to help interested readers; the notes here focus mostly on (1) information on parallels in the other two, and sometimes three, languages and (2) on scriptural quotations and allusions. To help the reader further, we have provided with the volume’s front material A Comparative Table of Sayings Attributed to Antony and A Synoptic Table of Sayings Attributed to Antony that offer the texts.17 At the end of the book are four valuable appendices: a definition of Synaxis in monastic literature, an Inventory of Copto-Arabic Manuscripts cited for translating the Sayings of Antony, a Table of Copto-Arabic Sayings contained in unpublished manuscripts with dates, and sample images of the Copto-Arabic manuscript texts containing some of the Sayings. Our hope is that this volume will appeal to a variety of readers: scholars, students, and all those interested in Antony; Greek, Coptic, and/or Arabic traditions; Late Antique Christianity; Coptic Christianity; early Christian monasticism; and eremitic and monastic spirituality.18
The dedication of this volume offers our thanks to Hany N. Takla, the president of the St. Shenouda the Archimandrite Coptic Society, for his many years of service to Coptic scholarship and to the Coptic community. We offer great thanks to Hans Christoffersen, Publisher, and Cistercian Publications/Liturgical Press for permission to include in Part 1 the Greek sayings and many notes from Tim Vivian, The Sayings and Stories of the Desert Fathers and Mothers, vol. 1 (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2021). In addition, we offer thanks to numerous others, some of whom we have identified in the notes, and others who have preferred to remain anonymous. We especially want to thank Carol McDonough for her assistance with proof-reading, for her numerous comments and suggestions, and for helping with the index. We are also grateful to our colleagues at Brill, Ken Parry, Marjolein van Zuylen, and Dirk Bakker, who smoothly brought the volume through the publication process with their careful oversight. Finally, we thank Maged S.A. Mikhail for answering numerous questions, and for reading parts of the manuscript and offering corrections and many suggestions.
Lisa Agaiby and Tim Vivian
lagaiby@sac.edu.au / tvivian@csub.edu
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” 51, The Poetry Foundation:
For three, see Bartelink, Life of Antony; Life of Antony; and Brakke, Athanasius. Full information on abbreviated sources is in Frequently Cited Primary and Secondary Sources in the front matter of the present volume.
A “Copto-Arabic” text is “an Arabic text that was copied by a Copt or was circulating within the Coptic Church …. and was read and used widely in the Coptic community (monasteries, churches, etc).” See Khalil, 85.
Antony, Letters, 193–195; Rubenson’s table does not include the Arabic sayings. On the whole in this volume, we focus specifically on the Sayings traditions associated with St. Antony of Egypt and his Greek- and Coptic-speaking disciples; those who first spoke Greek, then Coptic, then Arabic. We do not deal with the other Antonys: Latin, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Syrian; Dr. Agaiby, however, does offer a number of comparisons with Syriac sayings.
Based only on the MSS. at St. Antony’s Monastery in Egypt, there are thirty-one unattested sayings in Arabic. This number, however, does not include sayings in other holdings of Copto-Arabic MSS.
Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself” 51.
For a further “contradiction,” see Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit; Lisa Agaiby and Tim Vivian, eds., The Lives of Paul the Hermit, forthcoming.
For a recent discussion of the origins and traditions of early monasticism, see Vivian, “Origins.”
Brakke, Athanasius.
Mikhail, 175.
See Agaiby, Life.
Compare, for example, the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke, and the passion-resurrection narratives of all four Gospels. For a fascinating look at evolving tradition, compare the Paul of, say, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Romans, Galatians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians with the Paul of the Acts of Paul and Thecla (2nd c.). Or, as many scholars argue, the Paul of the aforementioned letters with the Paul of the Pastoral Epistles (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus).
And, with the Letters, Syriac, Georgian, and Latin. See Antony, Letters.
Crum 714a–718a. A good discussion of “purity of heart,” especially via-à-vis Evagrius, is Mary Forman, O.S.B., “Purity of Heart in the Life and Words of Amma Syncletica,” in Harriet Luckman and Linda Kalzer, eds., Purity of Heart in Early Ascetic and Monastic Literature (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical, 1999), 161–174. She points out that Syncletica uses “heart” whereas Evagrius uses “soul.” “Purity of heart” does not occur in the Coptic or Greek sayings of Antony.
For a recent discussion, see Samuel Rubenson, “The Formation and Re-formation of the Sayings of the Desert Fathers,” Studia Patristica LV (2013): 5–22.
The re-edited text, with translation, is in Vivian, “Bohairic Sayings.” He wishes to thank the Vatican for making the text available online:
The Synoptic Table contains only sayings that have parallels. Unique sayings are not included.
For the influence of the AlphAP on contemporary spiritual theology and the continued use of the sayings in recent publications, see, for example, Bondi, Jones, Leech, Merton, Ramfos, Sommerfeldt, and Vivian, Becoming Fire.