David Brakke is Joe R. Engle Chair in the History of Christianity and Professor of History at Ohio State University. He is the author of Athanasius and the Politics of Asceticism (1995), Demons and the Making of the Monk: Spiritual Combat in Early Christianity (2006) and The Gnostics: Myth, Ritual, and Diversity in Early Christianity (2010). He is also editor and translator of Evagrius of Pontus: Talking Back: A Monastic Handbook for Combating Demons (2009).