Geography, Religion, Gods, and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean
explores the influence of geography on religion and highlights a
largely unknown story of religious history in the Eastern
Mediterranean. In the Levant, agricultural communities of Jews,
Christians, and Muslims jointly venerated and largely shared three
important saints or holy figures: Jewish Elijah, Christian St.
George, and Muslim al-Khidr. These figures share 'peculiar'
characteristics, such as associations with rain, greenness,
fertility, and storms. Only in the Eastern Mediterranean are
Elijah, St. George, and al-Khidr shared between religious
communities, or characterized by these same agricultural attributes
- attributes that also were shared by regional religious figures
from earlier time periods, such as the ancient Near Eastern
Storm-god Baal-Hadad, and Levantine Zeus. This book tells the story
of how that came to be, and suggests that the figures share
specific characteristics, over a very long period of time, because
these motifs were shaped by the geography of the region.
Ultimately, this book suggests that regional geography has
influenced regional religion; that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
are not, historically or textually speaking, separate religious
traditions (even if Jews, Christians, and Muslims are members of
distinct religious communities); and that shared religious
practices between members of these and other local religious
communities are not unusual. Instead, shared practices arose out of
a common geographical environment and an interconnected religious
heritage, and are a natural historical feature of religion in the
Eastern Mediterranean. This volume will be of interest to students
of ancient Near Eastern religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam,
sainthood, agricultural communities in the ancient Near East,
Middle Eastern religious and cultural history, and the
relationships between geography and religion.
General
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