The Book of the Elders: Sayings of the Desert Fathers. The Systematic Collection by John Wortley (review)

Interest in the early desert fathers and mothers who expressed their inner spiritual experiences in the form of sayings and short stories has endured for centuries. Their sayings were written down by their disciples, possibly at first in the Coptic language in which they were uttered, but certainly in Greek by the fifth and sixth centuries. They were then translated into Latin and Syriac followed by other languages. This collection of sayings was preserved in many recensions. The West preserved a Latin translation of the systematic collection, reprinted in Patrologia Latina, volume 73. Portions of the Latin recension were translated by Owen Chadwick in Western Asceticism (Philadelphia, 1958), which was followed by Benedicata Ward's translation of the same Latin text under the title The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (New York, 2003).These translations of the systematic collection from Latin became classics to the English reader.

A Greek text of the systematic sayings, published by François Nau in Revue de l'Orient chrétien from 1907 to 1913, was translated in two separate volumes: Columba Stewart, The World of the Desert Fathers (Oxford, 1986), and Benedicta Ward, The Wisdom of the Desert Fathers (Oxford, 1986). Jean-Claude Guy began working on the Greek recensions of the systematic collection from the early 1960s, incorporating the Nau collection. The culmination of his work was published in three volumes in Sources Chrétiennes (387 [1993], 474 [2003], and 498 [2005]) under the title Les Apophthegmata des Pères: collection systématique. Wortley's translation is based on the Greek systematic collection edited by Guy. It is the first English translation of the whole corpus of the Greek systematic collection of the Apophthegmata Patrum.

The English reader is so accustomed to Ward's lucid translation that it will take some time to become accustomed to Wortley's more literal style. For example, compare the following passages:

Another old man came to see the Father, who cooked a few lentils and said to him, "Let us say a few prayers", and the first completed the whole psalter, and the brother recited the two great prophets by heart. When morning came, the visitor went away, and they forgot the food.

(Ward, Wisdom, p. 5)

Another elder visited one of the elders, who boiled a few lentils and said to [the visitor],"Let us offer the little synaxis." He recited the entire Psalter, then the other one repeated from memory the two great prophets. The visiting elder departed when dawn broke; they forgot about the food.

(Wortley, Elders, p. 51)

Wortley's translation kept the Greek technical term synaxis, whereas Ward translated the term as prayer. Both allowed the narrative to clarify the intended meaning as a prayer service composed of scripture—in this case, the Psalms and the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah. Wortley's description that the lentils were just boiled, evading the notion that they were cooked in a gourmet fashion, alerts the reader to the simplicity of the monastic lifestyle. Such interpretive nuances will clearly impact the reader's perception of the narrative. Wortley's preserving such details for the reader who does not refer to the original Greek text is helpful.

Wortley serves the interested reader by preserving Guy's references and providing marginal notes that tell the reader whether the saying can be found in the Nau collection, the alphabetical collection, the Ascetic Discourses of Abba Isaiah (which were never used in the Latin collection), or The Lausiac History of Palladius, just to mention a few possibilities. These marginal notes will become an indispensable tool for the researcher. Wortley's translation has filled a lacuna in early monastic literature and will no doubt become a classic in the field.