The great merit of Charles Stang is to have filled a gap in Dionysian studies. Stang owes much to Louth (London 1989) and Shäfer (2006) but he develops their intuitions. In fact, Stang confirms that the pseudonym of the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum reveals that he had the same task as the Apostle Paul at the Areopagus, namely to show the agreement between pagan wisdom and Christian faith. But Stang furthers this interpretation, demonstrating – very convincingly – that the author of the Corpus ‘assumes the identity’ of Dionysius, the converted of Paul. This means that the writer feels both like a sixth-century Syrian and a first-century Athenian. This happens because the practice of pseudonymous writing is considered an ecstatic devotional exercise that splits the self in two. In order to prove his point, Stang divides his book into two parts. In the first part (chs i–iii), he surveys ancient and medieval scholarship on the Corpus, then he analyses the practice of pseudonymous writing in the late Christian East, showing that those authors believed that the distance between past and present could be eliminated by their writings. He is the first to consider the pseudonymity of the Corpus in that context and he admits that a deeper work has to be done. In the second part (chs iv–v), Stang demonstrates how Paul animates the whole Corpus. In particular, Stang shows the Pauline background to the notion of hierarchy; the mystical union and the dialectic of affirmation and negation of divine names; finally the ‘apophatic anthropology’. This last concept is the most original part of the book. As Stang himself points out, this is not just one theme among many, but it is what binds together the entire work. God created the world as a hierarchy and Christ goes through this order appearing to creatures as light and love. To reach union with God we are called to a regimen that demands contemplation of the divine names, then negates them, and negates those negations in turn. The regimen also demands that we strip completely as we remove God, shedding our faculties as Paul, the ecstatic lover, did. In this way the four treatises of the Corpus are gathered around the idea of a double apophasis of God and of self. Less convincing seems the answer to the age-old question: was Dionysius a Christian or was he a Neoplatonist? Stang is able to find similarities between pagan wisdom and Christian faith in Dionysius, especially in the couple eros/agape. However this is not an exhaustive solution. There is a huge literature on this problem that is cited in the bibliography but not analysed in the text. That it is difficult to discover Dionysius' creed – whether Christian or pagan – does not prevent scholars from searching for it; likewise the task of identifying Dionysius cannot be stopped but, on the contrary, is spurred on by this excellent work.