At War in Prayer: The History of the Practice of the Arrow Prayer [Hardcover]

The practice of continuous prayer has been known in the Christian church as early as the second century CE, well before the beginning of Christian monasticism. One of the ways early Christians practiced continuous prayer was through the repetition of short bible verses throughout the day. While this mode of prayer did not have any specific name until the twentieth century, its practice has always been characterized by the imagery of warfare and, more specifically, the use of arrows. It was probably this that gave rise to its name, the Arrow Prayer, on account of its brevity and its use to attack evil thoughts. However, most research on continuous prayer only focuses on the Jesus Prayer. In this book, Fr. Anthony St. Shenouda scrutinizes this conclusion by examining the sources that attest to any practice of continuous prayer, and the cultural backdrop that gave rise to these practices. Ultimately, he argues that the tradition of the Arrow Prayer is much older than the Jesus Prayer, and that it is the parent tradition out of which the Jesus Prayer arose.Fr. Anthony St. Shenouda is a Coptic Orthodox monk from St Shenouda Monastery, Australia. He holds a PhD from Macquarie University and currently teaches on the topic of early monasticism at St Cyrils Coptic Orthodox Theological College (Sydney College of Divinity).

This monograph At War in Prayer: The History of the Practice of the Arrow Prayer traces the late antique roots of a key tradition of Eastern Christian pietycontinuous prayer and makes these roots accessible to both scholars and an interested general public, thus providing an important contribution to both Coptic Studies and the wider history of Christian worship. Heike Behlmer, University of G?ttingen

Fr. Anthony St. Shenouda puts forward a convincing argument that the Coptic Arrow Prayer and the Athonite Jesus Prayer have a common source in the early Christian theme of ceaseless prayer. The two traditions developed differently, but withl³>