Provides an introduction to early Christian monastic literature from Egypt and beyond. This book serves as a text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on early Christianity, the Desert Fathers, and Christian asceticism. It includes chronologies, maps, outlines, illustrations, and bibliographies.

In this book, William Harmless provides an accessible introduction to early Christian monastic literature from Egypt and beyond. He introduces the reader to the major figures and literary texts, as well as offering an up-to-date survey of current questions and scholarship in the field. The text is enhanced by the inclusion of chronologies, maps, outlines, illustrations, and bibliographies. The book will not only serve as a text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses on early Christianity, the Desert Fathers, and Christian asceticism, but it should stimulate further research by making the fruits of recent scholarship more readily and widely available.

There is no other volume on the desert Christians that is so generous with the facts and so reliable a key to modern debate on so many topics, great and small.