At the age of eighteen, he and an elder brother, moved to the desert of Scetes[3] where he became a disciple of Pambo and a good friend of Pishoy.

[4] After the departure of Pambo, John was ordained a priest by Pope Theophilus and became abbot of the monastery he founded around the Tree of Obedience.

When the Mazices invaded Scetes in 395, John fled the Nitrian Desert and went to live on Mount Colzim, near the present city of Suez, where he died.

The most famous story about his obedience is that one day Pambo gave John a piece of dry wood and ordered him to plant and water it.

[6] Ababius, a monk of Scetes and a saint of the Coptic Church, is the subject of a long biography attributed in manuscript form to John the Dwarf.