ABSTRACT
In 1992 B. Flusin published a short text from a collection of edifying stories (the Diègèmata stèriktika) attributed to the monk Anastasius in the manuscript Vat. gr. 2592. 1 In this story Anastasius reports that thirty years earlier he lived on the Mount of Olives and that at that time Egyptians were engaged in clearing the site of the Temple in Jerusalem. 2 When on a certain night he rose three hours before the sounding of the sounding-board of the Holy Anastasis, he heard a noise coming from the Temple Mount, as if many people were working at that place. At first he believed that the Egyptians were even at that hour of night still at work there, but he changed his opinion when he noticed that a deep silence descended upon the place immediately after the man who sounds the sounding-board had started shouting the «Bless, o Lord». It was not Egyptians who were at work there, Anastasius concluded, but demons, who were rejoicing in the Egyptians’ work and co-operating with them. The next morning he met some people from the Holy Gethsemane in the town, who told him that they had had the same experience during the previous night. Anastasius concludes his account by explaining why he decided to record this experience of thirty years earlier:
