Customer Reviews

Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt (The Transformation of the Classical Heritage)

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Rousseau traces the life of the man who founded the first Christian monastic community, bringing his motives and struggles down to the level of step by step, trial and error experience. He introduces an Egyptian man who served as a soldier in the Roman occupation army, and was moved to see local Christians offering food to the troops. Rousseau is concerned with practical details. Like how Pachomius and his followers started out working as field labourers by day, and experimented with prayer and meditation by night. The book explores each issue in managing a community or its spiritual trials, as those issues appeared and as the monks chose to deal with them. Later the very success of the experiment generated growing controversy, as when Archbishop Athanasius came down from Alexandria to the desert, seeking Pachomius' support in a church power struggle. And Pachomius "hid from the pope", taking the guise of a common monk, till Athanasius went away.

As Rousseau shows, Pachomius hoped his monks would avoid being co-opted as functionaries of the imperial church. He feared that with a rise of institutional overlords, "good men will no longer feel able to speak out for the benefit of the community, but will remain silent and still". For Pachomius, ambition for control over others was an immaturity to be overcome. He openly confessed and ridiculed his own craving for superiority, admitting that he sometimes imagined himself preceded by a voice calling "Make way for the man of God!".

I found the book very good in raising questions about how I manage my life, and how I make my own lifetime a spiritual adventure.

--author of Correcting Jesus

Distinguished Professor Philip Rousseau's book "Pachomius: The Making of a Community in Fourth-Century Egypt" is 217 pages long and has 9 chapters, 2 maps, 1 figure, and some front and back matter. Chapter headings are: 1. Egypt, 2. The Sources, 3. Forming the Community, 4. The Day's Routine, 5. Living under Rule, 6. Leadership and Responsibility, 7. The Ascetic Goal, 8. Monastery and World, and 9. Continuity.

From a scholastic viewpoint, there is a depth and breadth in the book that only a scholar can bring as evidenced by the quantity of footnotes and bibliographical material included. He is intimately familiar with the primary sources and often inserts the original Greek term or phrase, so the reader can judge it themselves. The broad sweep of the book includes assessing the sociological, economic, and religious context in which the Pachomian communities took root, through to Pachomius's life and work, and then beyond Pachomius to the next generation of leadership. Rousseau is deliberately cautious about many of his conclusions and willing to augment his views based on new research, as his preface to the paperback edition shows.

From a narrative viewpoint, I enjoyed reading this very much. I was intrigued by the ways in which Pachomius displayed doubt and fear in the midst of successfully leading his communities. I was interested in the manner in which the communities were organized internally and the way they interacted with the outside world. It was fascinating to learn about how the Pachomians may or may not have regarded the beliefs and practices of the Gnostics, Manichees, and Melitians in Egypt, and whether there was any overlap between these movements and groups. And it was interesting to read about the ebb and flow of leadership transitions of the communities after Pachomius, especially about how Theodore and Horsiesios unofficially shared leadership.

From a stylistic viewpoint, it is generally a readable book, but is not well suited to a popular audience of non-specialists. Sometimes it is tedious to read because of the frequent use of subjective clauses and unnecessary details that do not add much to the discussion at hand.

Overall, this was a very satisfying read. There are practical lessons from this book that I hope to carry over into my own current role in helping to catalyze, coach, and connect the modern-day house church movement.

RAD ZDERO, author of LETTERS TO THE HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT and THE GLOBAL HOUSE CHURCH MOVEMENT