The Mirage of the Saracen. Christians and Nomads in the Sinai Peninsula in Late Antiquity by Walter D. Ward (review)

• Autores: Jitse H F Dijkstra
• Localización: Journal of early Christian studies: Journal of the North American Patristic Society, ISSN 1067-6341, Nº. 3, 2017, págs. 492-493
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In the fifth and sixth centuries, Christianity expanded on the peninsula, culminating in the fortified monastery that Justinian built around the Burning Bush, known today as St Catherine's.Most importantly, even though Ward in other cases makes some illuminating comparisons across space and time, the comparison between the situation in the Sinai and that after 9/11 is off the mark, as too many different factors are at stake in each case.[...]it remains doubtful, or in any case unproven, why a perceived threat of nomads would so directly have effected imperial measures in the Sinai (114).[...]similar stories are known from another liminal area, the southern Egyptian frontier, and the common appearance of the Blemmyes as raiders in Christian literature from the fifth century onwards (see J. H. F. Dijkstra, Philae and the End of Ancient Egyptian Religion [Leuven: Peeters, 2008], 158-59, missed by Ward, 29-30) might even explain why they ended up in Ammonius's Report.