The anthropomorphite controversy that disturbed Egyptian monastic life at the close of the fourth century is the less familiar counterpart to the Origenist controversy that came to a head in Egypt in the same year. In his annual paschal letter of 399 Archbishop Theophilus of Alexandria condemned the spiritual practices of monks whom he described as ‘anthropomorphites’. The letters does not survive but we have a resumé in Latin by Gennadius of Marseille and three accounts of the hostile reaction of a number of monks transmitted to us in Latin by John Cassian, in Greek by the historian Socrates and in Coptic by the author of the Life of Apa Aphou of Pemdje. The three accounts all agree that Theophilus' letter caused widespread dismay in monastic circles and that pressure was brought on the archbishop (successfully as it happened) to withdraw his condemnation. Until the second half of the twentieth century the partisan accounts of the main witnesses – apart from that of Theophilus, who never recovered from the adverse estimation of his character occasioned by his overthrow of John Chrysostom – were taken at face value: the anthropomorphites were considered to be uneducated monks who thought of God in crudely anthropomorphic terms. A revised approach began with Georges Florovsky and Graham Gould, who saw ‘anthropomorphism’ as the Origenists' codeword for those who opposed their Evagrian imageless spirituality. According to Florovsky and Gould, anthropomorphism was none other than mainstream monasticism. This position has since been considerably undermined by Alexander Golitzin, who has explored some of the esoteric traditions current in fourth-century monasticism and shown how they could be characterised as ‘anthropomorphism’. Now Paul Patterson has added a fine monograph, which, building principally on Golitzin, has taken these discussions a good deal further. Patterson's thesis is that the anthropomorphites were drawing on ancient traditions rooted in Jewish interpretations of Genesis i.26–7 (the creation of man in the image and likeness of God) in search of a vision of the eternal, rather than the incarnate, body of Christ, that is, of the primordial anthropos on whose model humanity had been created. An apodiactic demonstration of anthropomorphite beliefs is not possible because, with the possible exception of the Life of Aphou, anthropomorphite monks have not left us any texts. Nevertheless, Patterson presents us with a large body of converging evidence that convincingly supports his thesis. His discussion has the great merit of dealing with all the difficulties raised by the evidence in a way that does justice to its complexity. Moreover, he takes seriously Theophilus' claim to occupy a third position between Origenism and anthropomorphism, making good sense of it. Cyril of Alexandria, Augustine, Philo and the Nag Hammadi texts are also examined exhaustively for the light that they can shed on the issues. Future work on the anthropomorphite controversy of 399 is bound to treat this persuasive study as a benchmark.