The Life of Bishoi: The Gr rabic, Syriac, and Ethiopic Lives

Four translations of major accounts of the life of the fourth-century Egyptian desert father St.Bishoi, in one volume Saint Bishoi of Scetis (d. ca. 417) enjoys tremendous popularity throughout the Christian east, particularly among the Copts.He lived during a remarkable era in which a litany of larger-than-life monastics lived and interacted with one another.Even then, Bishoi stood out as the founder of one of the four great monasteries of Scetis (Wadi al-Natrun): those of Macarius, John the Little, Bishoi, and the Baramus.Yet in spite of Bishoi’s prominence, the various recensions of his hagio-biography have received sporadic, scattered attention. The Life of Bishoi joins other Lives of eminent monastics of early-Egyptian monasticism: the Lives of Antony, Daniel, John the Little, Macarius, Paphnutius, Shenoute, and Syncletica.These Lives are vital for what they tell us about monastic politeia (way of life), spirituality, and theology, both of the early monastics and of those who late