Hierax (correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium)

Hierax is known only as a correspondent of Isidore of Pelusium (d. c. 450), to whom Isidore addressed some thirty-five surviving letters in the early-to-mid-5th-century milieu of Pelusium and the eastern Nile Delta. The letters consistently address him as a presbyter (priest), and once as "most illustrious," and their content reveals a man who repeatedly posed exegetical and moral questions that Isidore answers in turn: the meaning of "do not give what is holy to the dogs," why the boasting Pharisee was condemned while Job was approved, the symbolism of Elijah being fed by a raven, the saying "not all can receive this word" on virginity, and Isaiah's scarlet-and-crimson imagery of penitence. Isidore treats him as an earnest, theologically engaged inquirer, at one point gently chiding the "excessive humility" of a letter in which Hierax called himself "the last of all" while seeking instruction, and elsewhere offering him counsel on guarding chastity and on the disgrace of a teacher whose own faults convict him. Beyond his role as Isidore's pupil-correspondent and a local presbyter, Hierax is otherwise unattested.