The tabernacle is a larger theme than that of ‘darkness on Sinai’ in Nyssa's Life of Moses, yet it is often relegated from treatments of that work. In Conway-Jones's endeavour to redress this, Gregory the exegete is first introduced in fairly basic terms. There then follows a paraphrase of Exodus xxv–xxviii, and a very short account of Ezekiel i and 2 Corinthians xii.2-5 is offered. The Alexandrian ‘contexts’ (an odd usage) get pretty short shrift.

There is a useful run-through of cognate Jewish interpretations, thus allowing each chapter to have its ‘heavenly ascent context’, which comes after the ‘theological context’ each time, although surprisingly little space is given to introduce, even contextualise them. Chapter vi gives an account of the biblical and patristic theme of darkness, with Gregory presented as emphasising divine presence in darkness, then balancing this with his mysticism of light. The Jewish ‘contexts’ are similarly apophatic. The advantage of the cursory nature of these early chapters is that of making space for what follows on the theme of tabernacle specifically.

So what kind of edifice might ‘ascent’ lead to? Origen seems fairly agnostic about whether there will be anything much to be seen, but Gregory seemed to place the angels there, whereas 1 Enoch xiv had a complicated topography (various rooms and vestibules). An important moment comes in chapter viii on the basis of ii.174: ‘the tabernacle which encloses everything …This would be Christ … both unfashioned and fashioned: uncreated in pre-existence but becoming created in accordance with this material composition’. From this the author argues that ‘The heavenly tabernacle is a type of the pre-existent Christ’ (p. 98). Just how one heavenly thing could be a type of another heavenly thing is not answered. At this crucial point it would help to have some Greek quotations from Gregory, and not just the otherwise helpful gobbets in English translation that appear at the head of each chapter. Where Gregory does speak of the Eternal Wisdom as agent of creation, the only scriptural text that refers to a tabernacle is Sirach xxiv.10 (‘In a holy tent I [wisdom] ministered before him’). But the reader has to work quite hard to see that Christ is the tabernacle that holds all of creation together. More and closer exegesis by Gregory as well as of Gregory needs to be presented.

Philo had the idea of the Word as the tabernacle for God as Mind (Migr 4). Analogous, since Christ participated in the infinity of God, he encompasses everything. Gregory's account of the Incarnation might seem ontologically Nestorian (‘tent dwelling’) and finally or functionally Monophysite (one nature through his resurrection). The author agrees with Douglass on ‘Christian appropriation of Jewish conceptions of sacred space’ (Theology of the Gap, 26, quoted at p. 114). Again, where we need a word or two from Gregory we find Mosshammer: the distinction is the Creator-creation one and Christ has overcome this only by intervening into creation. In chapter ix there follows a discussion of epinoiai – for Gregory these are fallible yet helpful in designating God's energies. For Eunomius there was real multiplicity in the Only-Begotten, while not in the Unbegotten. For Gregory, Christ was fully divine and would not have approved of any attempt, Jewish or Neoplatonist, to reach him through his names. Here one feels that there is a danger of wandering away from the topic without doing justice to the connectedness of Gregory's train of thought. The point of it being a temple that Gregory imagines is alluded to on p. 136: ‘He has thus made the passion part of the eternal, heavenly Christ.’ However if this is the case, then it is not clear from the bits of text quoted (2.182–3). Despite the Creator-creature divide, Gregory shows ‘inconsistencies’ by allowing angels to take the place of the Platonic kosmos noétos.

In turn Moses's earthly tabernacle signifies the earthly Church, drawing on a long tradition of Christianising the Old Testament sacrifices. It is noteworthy that it takes until p.161 for the question to arise: ‘For whom did Gregory write Life of Moses?’ The short answer is: non-specialists, even the earthly worshipping community, which will one day join up with the heavenly one. The point is made that it is only with the Christian Epistle to the Hebrews that the idea of sacrifice within the heavenly places becomes plausible. But the point is, which the author seems to imply if not spell out, that heavenly ascent does not give one direct access to God, since the angels are already filling that space. One might like to know whether, in terms of vision, those denizens do any better in Gregory's account than the ascetic specialists who grope in the dark cloud of contemplation. Here Gregory is close to Origen, although there is less on suffering (and little from the Book of Revelation) and more on everyday virtues.

Certainly the comparative method should allow the reader to move beyond texts and their contexts of traditions to the realm of ideas and realities. One might want to show how various metaphors intertwine. If Gregory shares anything with the core Jewish texts adduced (for example Bavli) then it is the eschatological reservation of the unio liturgica. Yet the chapter on the value of Heuristic Comparison is rather short and cautious. The final chapter (‘Conclusions’) lists summaries of the preceding chapters in ‘bullet-point’ format and then gets rather side-tracked by the ‘introductory’ question of whether mystical authors write out of personal experience. The main issue that remains however is the extent to which the conclusion, ‘A vision of a tabernacle – pillars, curtains, lampstands, altars … is somehow also a vision of the pre-existent Christ.’ One wishes for a bit more exegesis of Nyssa, a probing into Origenism (and not just Origen, helpful though that is), and perhaps a bit less on ‘parallels’ which do not always illuminate.