Writing Rules and Quoting Scripture in Early Coptic Monastic Texts

In his book on Pachomius, Philip Rousseau remarked: “it is surprising in the face of such general allusions that there is so little quotation from scripture in the Rules.”¹ Occasionally, in the Coptic texts of the Pachomian Rules, there are statements such as “Everything contrary to the standard of the scriptures, all these, the steward (OIKONOHOC) shall judge.”² The Pachomian Rules, as they survive in both Coptic and Latin, do not include explicit quotations from scripture in the rule itself, which is usually brief and specific:³ “no man shall take shoes or anything else to oil [them], except the housemasters