Sayings of the Desert Fathers

The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Latin: Apophthegmata Patrum Aegyptiorum; Greek: ἀποφθέγματα τῶν πατέρων, romanized: Apophthégmata tōn Patérōn[1][2]) is the name given to various textual collections consisting of stories and sayings attributed to the Desert Fathers from approximately the 5th century AD.

[3][4] The collections consist of wisdom stories describing the spiritual practices and experiences of early Christian hermits living in the desert of Egypt.

[11] In the 17th century, the Dutch Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde compiled and translated all the available sources on the Desert Fathers and published them in Latin as the Vitae patrum.

10th to 11th century AD), originating from or still housed at the Monastery of St Catherine, Mount Sinai[13][14][15] There are also Armenian translations of both the Alphabetical and Systematic collections.

[5] In the period 867–872, Methodius of Thessaloniki translated the text into Old Church Slavonic, of which the original was lost in the 14th century, but several dozen copies of the Paterik' (Патерікъ) survived.

[17] Helen Waddell translated a selection of elements from the Vitae patrum into English in the early 20th century.

The earliest Greek manuscript of the Systematic Sayings is MS Athos Lavra B 37 (copied in 970 AD).