Christopher Kelly has provided a thought-provoking study of a major monastic text, the Conferences of John Cassian. The two books, the Institutes and the Conferences were written in Latin at the beginning of the fourth century to provide a background drawn from the Christian monastic life that Cassian had seen in Egypt to help the emerging monasticism of the West in Gaul. It has remained a basic text for monastic life ever since. Kelly's first chapter introduces Cassian. The second discusses Mary and Martha as biblical examples of discretion. The third analyses Cassian's use of the biblical figure of Job as an ideal of endurance for monks. Chapter iv shows how Cassian interpreted Abraham and Moses as examples of monastic withdrawal and obedience. Chapter v presents extracts from the prophets and Psalms and proverbs as other biblical texts which continued to be used in monastic experience. An ‘afterword’ is about knowledge of and transmission of Cassian's work. An appendix of twenty-two pages provides the text of Cassian's ‘First Conference of Abba Moses on the goal and aim of the monk’, in the translation by Boniface Ramsey. There is a select bibliography, and an index. The whole is carefully produced, though there are a few misprints. The strength of this thoughtful study is the way in which the author relates themes in monastic life to the text of the Bible, which was indeed the basis for monastic life in Egypt. The desert Fathers were mostly illiterate and so held a knowledge of Scripture within themselves by the ancient art of memory; it was not for discussion but for living by. So Cassian did something new by writing down what he understood from them to be their understanding of the Bible. In the sixth century St Benedict suggested that Cassian's Conferences should be read aloud to monks each evening thus continuing the tradition of learning by ears rather than eyes in a world which used written texts more consistently than had fourth-century Egypt. This work shows how the monastic ideals of Egypt had been received by ear by Cassian, a theologian and a disciple of Origen, who reshaped them in writing. Kelly suggests that Cassian used figures from the Old Testament to illuminate the life of monks. Biblical names were used in this new context and some themes taken from the Bible were re-shaped according to monastic ideals of which Scripture has no trace. This is obvious by examining the figures he chooses, all much married men, involved in family, community and political affairs. Abraham, Moses and Job were not celibate, the fundamental condition of the monk, but certain themes from the biblical accounts of them are here extracted to illuminate and support certain monastic virtues and practices: the detachment of Abraham in leaving all at the call of God; the obedience of Moses; the long suffering of Job. This makes it a book of less direct interest to biblical scholars but it is part of the present exploration of the history of Egyptian monasticism and it will therefore be of interest to those involved in or observant of monastic life today. In relating the monastic life to the great themes of the Bible, the author underlines the basic biblical world of the early monks, where Scripture was not a text that they studied but a source by which they lived.