Epiphanius (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Epiphanius is known only as a deacon who corresponded with Isidore of Pelusium in the early-to-mid 5th-century milieu of Pelusium and the eastern Nile Delta. Repeatedly addressed in the letters as "deacon," he appears chiefly as an inquirer who wrote to Isidore asking the meaning of difficult passages of Scripture, and the surviving letters are Isidore's replies: an explanation of "You dried up the rivers of Etham" in Psalm 73, the etymology and sense of the word "pardon" (syngnome), and reflections on whether the interpreters of Scripture should themselves keep silent under reproof. Other letters to him develop moral and consolatory themes that recur in his exchanges with Isidore, the transience of wealth against the permanence of almsgiving, and the difference between one who suffers justly for vice and one who suffers unjustly for virtue and so earns a crown. The tone is warm and instructional, with Isidore once addressing him as "most beloved friend"; beyond this role as Isidore's correspondent he is otherwise unattested.