This book, whose main argument can be found in condensed form in S.'s article, ‘Dionysius, Paul and the Significance of the Pseudonym’ (in S. Coakley and C.M. Stang [ed.], Re-Thinking Dionysius the Areopagite [2009], pp. 11–25), offers a fresh and compelling treatment of the Corpus Dionysiacum (CD).

S. argues that we might see and understand more of this fascinating and ever-elusive work by adopting as our reading lens the very pseudonym chosen by its author. Indeed, if ‘Dionysius’ is the author's interpretatio sui, why not pursue the link between his theology and that of the Apostle Paul, and perhaps speculate on possible similarities between the author's own setting and agenda, and the biblical Dionysius' conversion in Athens, upon hearing Paul's sermon at the Areopagus (Acts 17)?

There is, of course, nothing new to this suggestion. S. sets out to ‘corroborate, extend, and deepen’ the observations made by earlier scholars, ‘by tracing in great detail the influence of Paul on the CD and the many senses of the pseudonym’ (p. 37). He argues convincingly that the influence of Paul – meaning, for the ancients, all Epistles and speeches in the Acts of the Apostles that were ascribed to the Apostle – can be discerned in the ‘baptizing’ of such central ps.-Dionysian notions as hierarchy, theurgy (read in light of the Pauline use of the divine ergon in the believers), deification, the procession–abiding–return sequence (read in light of Rom 11:36), or the language of ‘unknowing’. S. sees in the latter a creative re-reading of Acts 17:23, which allows one to imagine that the Athenians were worshipping God ‘through unknowing’.

S. sees his study as a continuation of what he calls ‘three promising leads’ in Dionysian scholarship. He refers, first, to A. Golitzin's study of the CD, which showed that, as a late New Testament pseudepigraphon, the CD deliberately takes on the esoteric language and the air of an adept communicating privileged data to a chosen disciple in order subtly but no less effectively to ‘de-gauss’ the apparatus and appeal of competing apocryphal and esoteric works composed by contemporary and competing ascetic groups on the fringes of the mainstream Church. A second lead is the suggestion (made by several scholars, i.e., A. Louth, A. Golitzin, C. Schäfer) that Paul's speech before the Athenian students of philosophy provided our early sixth-century author with the template for engaging the Neoplatonism of his day – by absorbing the wisdom of the Greeks and enfolding it into the all-encompassing revelation of Christ. Finally, the most important influence on his views, as S. explicitly tell us, is Hans Urs von Balthasar's attempt to explain the pseudonymity of the CD by a ‘mystical relationship’ between the anonymous writer and the Dionysius of the apostolic era.

S. argues that the CD should be read against the background of the ‘peculiar understanding of temporality’ characteristic of the late-antique Christian East. In that worldview, the distance between the historical past and the present could be ‘telescoped’ by means of hagiography and pseudonymous writing, ‘so that the scriptural past and the late antique spoke to each other and formed a sort of double helix of divine providence’ (p. 54). After reviewing the various scholarly theories on pseudonymous writing in the Greek philosophical tradition, in Jewish apocalypticism of the Second Temple era and in early Christianity, S. retains the ‘religious/psychological approach’ which, essentially, suggests that writing under pseudonym constitutes an ascetical, devotional practice aimed at refashioning the writer's self in relation to the self he impersonates. As parallels he offers Chrysostom's summoning and ‘channeling’ the Apostle Paul in the very act of composing his homilies, and the fifth-century Life and Miracles of Saint Thecla, which shows hagiography to be itself an ascetic exercise, supervised by the saint, and aiming at refashioning the hagiographer into a disciple of his spiritual hero.

In the very act of writing as Dionysius the Areopagite, the author of the CD is mystically refashioning himself into Dionysius, that is, into an ‘imitator of Paul’ (Gal 4:16), and is seeking, like the Apostle, to share his own self with Christ (Gal 2:20). This brings us to perhaps the most interesting point of the book. S. views the pseudonymity of the CD as illustrating the very topic of divine inhabitation of which ps.-Dionysius is writing. Like the Apostle Paul (Gal 2:20, ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’) and like Moses on Sinai, the writer is ‘neither oneself nor someone else’ (MT 1.3 1001 A). Understood in this manner, the pseudonymous character of the CD is pointing to ‘apophatic anthropology’ – defined as the phenomenon of being ‘cleft open, split, doubled’, and stretching, as it were, one's own identity to the point of self-effacement and displacement by that of another.

In a scholarly landscape of distinct studies of the many facets of the CD (Neoplatonism, Christianity, asceticism, liturgical setting, biblical exegesis, etc.), S.'s proposal to view pseudonymity as ‘integral to the aims and purposes of the CD at large’ (p. 30) has the merit of bringing together ‘form (pseudonymous writing) and content (mystical theology), theory (theology) and practice (asceticism)’ (p. 10). It is remarkable that this major accomplishment is achieved in a book of relatively small proportions, free of excessive footnoting, and structured, written and argued with great clarity.

Aside from its primary audience – students of ps.-Dionysius and specialists in Byzantine studies – this book will also be of interest to graduate students and scholars interested in the question of fictive authorship in Jewish pseudepigrapha and later Christian apocrypha.