He spent his entire life in Upper Mesopotamia, alternating between coenobitic (community-based) and eremitic (solitary) monasticism, with a preference for the latter.
Translated into several languages in the centuries after his death, they were rarely read within the Church of the East (even being banned between the 780s and the 820s) but circulated widely in other Christian traditions throughout Asia, Africa and Europe.
The 14th-century Syriac writer ʿAbdishoʿ bar Brikha, in his Catalogue of Books, mistakenly dated John of Dalyatha's life to the first half of the 6th century.
[1] John was born around 690 in the village of Ardamut, northeast of Mosul in the Syriac-speaking region of Beth Nuhadra, part of the Syrian province of the Umayyad Caliphate.
[3] As a youth, he paid regular visits to the monastery of Mar Aphnimaran to read ascetic literature, and he practised fasting and keeping vigils.
[3] Because John belonged to a monastic circle accused, probably incorrectly, of the heresies of Messalianism and Sabellianism,[7] his works were banned after his death by the Patriarch Timothy I at a synod held in 786/787 or 790.
[3] Modern scholars are in general agreement that the first identification is correct, although Brian Colless has suggested that the two Johns are one and the same person.