ABSTRACT
This book discusses hagiographic, historiographical, hymnological, and theological sources that contributed to the formation of the sacred picture of the physical as well as metaphysical Jerusalem in the literature of two Eastern Christian denominations, East and West Syrians.
Popa analyses the question of Syrian beliefs about the Holy City, their interaction with holy places, and how they travelled in the Holy Land. He also explores how they imagined and reflected the theology of this itinerary through literature in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, set alongside a well-defined local tradition that was at times at odds with Jerusalem. Even though the image of Jerusalem as a land of sacred spaces is unanimously accepted in the history of Christianity, there were also various competing positions and attitudes. This often promoted the attempt at mitigating and replacing Jerusalem’s sacred centrality to the Christian experience with local sacred heritage, which is also explored in this study. Popa argues that despite this rhetoric of artificial boundaries, the general picture epitomises a fluid and animated intersection of Syriac Christians with the Holy City especially in the medieval era and the subsequent period, through a standardised process of pilgrimage, well-integrated in the custom of advanced Christian life and monastic canon.
The Making of Syriac Jerusalem is suitable for students and scholars working on the history, literature, and theology of Syriac Christianity in the late antique and medieval periods.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|116 pages
The Beginnings of Syriac Christian Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
chapter 3|10 pages
Rabbula of Edessa and Benjamin of Nehardea
chapter 4|11 pages
The Ideal of aksenoyutho
chapter 5|14 pages
Against the Pilgrimage to Jerusalem
part II|56 pages
Syriac Christians and the Tradition of the Holy Places of Palestine following the Islamic Conquest of Jerusalem (638–639)
chapter 1|8 pages
Syriac Sources and the Muslim Conquest of Jerusalem
chapter 5|20 pages
A Brief Attempt at a Patristic Perspective
part III|89 pages
The Portrayal of Jerusalem in Syriac Chronicles and Poems on the Second Islamic Conquest and Subsequent Period, and the Presence of Syriac Pilgrims in Palestine in the Late Medieval Period