Ann Conway-Jones in her new book, Gregory of Nyssa's Tabernacle Imagery in Its Jewish and Christian Contexts, draws readers' attention to the significance of the tabernacle imagery in Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Moses 2.170–201, which has been very much neglected in Gregory's scholarship. Conway-Jones argues that though the tabernacle does not sound appealing to modern readers as the concept of darkness, it carries much significance for Gregory's theological lay out. She treats the section of tabernacle imagery in Life of Moses as an example of heavenly ascents and analyzes it in the comparison with other heavenly ascent accounts in Jewish-Christian traditions up to Late Antiquity.

After giving an introduction to Gregory's life and his Life of Moses (chapter 2), Conway-Jones sources the tabernacle narrative in Exodus, Ezekiel 1, and the Pauline material adapted by Gregory into his work (chapter 3). She then outlines the use of the heavenly ascent paradigm and interpretations of the tabernacle in the philosophical-religious tradition before Gregory (Philo, Clement, Origen and Valentinian) in chapter 4, as well as the heavenly ascent texts in 1 Enoch, 2 Enoch, Testament of Levi, Ascension of Isaiah, Songs of the Sabbath, the rabbinic material from tractate Hagigah (11b-16a) of the Babylonian Talmud in chapter 5.

In the next 9 chapters, Conway-Jones analyzes the sections in Life of Moses from 2.170 to 2.201 in the heuristic comparison with philosophical and religious traditions. She accurately discerns in chapter 6 that on the one hand Gregory borrows Philo's apophaticism in interpreting the darkness of Exodus 20:21 as the symbol of divine incomprehensibility, while on the other hand he adds more contents to the theme of darkness without abandonment of the apophaticism: the darkness entails the “tabernacle not made with hands” (aduta), within which dwells the aduton of the holy of holies, and within the holy of holies dwells again the cherubim who “cover with their wings the mysteries lying in the ark of the covenant.” Then Conway-Jones demonstrates in chapter 7 that Gregory interprets Moses's epiphanic vision of the heavenly tabernacle as transmitting symbolic meanings and a theophany which gives a new name to Christ. And in chapter 8 Conway-Jones indicates that much as a response to the christological controversy at his time, Gregory interprets Christ as the whole of the tabernacle, not one element of it, and thereby creates a paradoxical picture of an infinite tent, i.e., an infinite dwelling in a finite tent at his incarnation. But she also stresses in chapter 9 that for Gregory the name tabernacle is only one name among many for Christ, and does not say anything about God's essence. In chapter 10, she discusses Gregory's interpretation of the furniture of the tabernacle in Exodus 20:21, and sharply points out that following Philo, Gregory sees the furniture as the pre-existent Christ and the angelic powers in Christ, but he tries to cooperate biblical verses such as Isaiah 11:1–3 and Romans 3:25 into his interpretation, and thus creates inconsistency. In chapter 11, Conway-Jones argues that to subvert the heavenly ascent tradition, Gregory uses the earthly tabernacle in Exodus to emphasize that only selected man as Moses can get access to the heavenly tabernacle, but most ordinary believers can only see an earthly copy of it. In the same vain, she contends that the holy of holies in the earthly tabernacle signifies the ultimate mystery of God which only bishops in authority can enter while ordinary believers must put their trust in bishops' authority. In chapter 14 she discusses Gregory's description of the priest garment in Exodus as a picture of one's ethical journal towards the angelic order.

In her heuristic comparison of Gregory's texts with the heavenly ascent texts from the Hellenistic and Late Antique worlds, Conway-Jones has revealed Gregory's debts to Christian and Jewish traditions before him and the inconsistency of his exegesis caused by the gap between traditional interpretations which he draws on and the contemporary theological polemics he addresses to. She has accurately grasped the essential significance of the tabernacle imagery by contextualizing Life of Moses in the theological polemics of the period. For example, she finds that the tabernacle imagery serves well to explain how Christ can be fully divine in the context of the christological controversy: God's divinity dwells fully in both the earthly and heavenly Christ, just as the transcendent God was somehow present in the holy of holies of the tabernacle/temple. Besides, to maintain the necessity of incarnation, Gregory refuses the possibility for ordinary believers to ascend to heaven, therefore in Life of Moses, he contrasts the heavenly and the earthly tabernacles in scripture to underscore that the divine mystery can only be granted to a few privileged people such as Moses. In general, Conway-Jones's analysis of the tabernacle imagery in Life of Moses has solved a difficulty that Daniélou tickled with unsuccessfully: why Gregory places Moses's vision of tabernacles and priestly garments after the scenery of the divine darkness, while he clearly claims Moses's journal as a constant progress. According to Conway-Jones, Gregory sees these visions as indicating Moses's gainings in the divine darkness; the divine darkness is not totally apophatic, it entails positive knowing which goes beyond the intellectual grasp of God; and the tabernacle imagery is the verbal description of the gainings.