Athanasius (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Athanasius is known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium, who addressed at least 22 surviving letters to him within the Pelusium and eastern Nile Delta milieu of early-to-mid 5th-century Egypt. In the letters' address lines he is repeatedly called "the presbyter" and once "the archimandrite," marking him as a priest and apparently the head of a monastic community, and the contents are overwhelmingly exegetical and pastoral: Isidore answers his questions on disputed scriptural texts (Philippians 2:6, Galatians 1:8, and Christ's professed ignorance of "that day and hour" in Matthew 24:36), arms him against a Jewish disputant by citing allegorical readings, and advises him on the discipline that monastic superiors owe their subordinates. One letter (151) is a funeral oration consoling Athanasius on the death of his brother Timothy, praised as a man conspicuous in virtue. Beyond what Isidore's letters reveal he is otherwise unattested.