The devotion and practice of early Christianity was centred in small communities of converts living in Rome and on the outposts of the Roman Empire in Greece and the Near East. These were the sorts of communities to which the Apostle Paul wrote the letters of advice and exhortation that are now part of the Christian Scriptures. Another form of early Christianity, however, focused more intensively on the individual believer, leading the devotee to embrace a solitary ascetic life involving the renunciation of the body through fasting, self-control, and celibacy. This form of Christianity tended to be practised in the deserts of North Africa, which was still part of the Roman Empire for the first few centuries of the Common Era. Here believers would spend their days alone in prayer, meditation, and contemplation, struggling against the difficulty of pursuing such a life and the temptations it brought.

It was in this context that the figure of the heroic Christian warrior and the ideal of Christian spiritual combat against the Devil developed. This ascetic desert ethos proved a fertile field for Christian writings that would remain highly influential for centuries to come, long after Christianity had transferred its frontier from the deserts of North Africa to the monastic houses of Western Europe. The figure of the warrior or “athlete” Christian was taken most immediately from the writings of Paul (such as at 1 Cor. 9:24–25; Phil. 2:16; 2 Tim. 2:5 and 4:7), but had its origins in the tradition of the “combat myth,” common to a number of ancient cultures, in which forces of good and evil were eternally locked in a battle for supremacy.

We should not be surprised to find demons associated with the desert as they had long been identified with harsh, remote places inhospitable to human habitation. We see this in the Gospel stories of the temptation of Jesus when he goes into the desert, fasts for forty days and nights, and is tempted three times by the Devil (Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:1). The Devil tempts Jesus to reveal his divine nature by contravening the laws of the natural world. In doing so, the Devil reveals his origins as a former angel and his knowledge of Christian truth by quoting the Scriptures at Jesus. Jesus in turn refutes the Devil's exhortations by quoting other Scriptures against him until the Devil departs defeated.