Egypt and Christianity in antiquity – TheTLS

Egypt and Christianity in antiquity – TheTLS:

Late antique Egyptian Christianity has left a wonderfully rich, and sometimes beguilingly strange, literary and material heritage for us to appreciate and try to interpret. There are tales of holy men who could command man-eating crocodiles and pronounce curses, and of dramatic feats of ascetic renunciation in the desert. Papyrus fragments include oracles, spells and curses; the walls of monasteries still display the paintings of saints and the graffiti of pilgrims. The two books under review offer new and complementary approaches to understanding this heritage and the world it came from. Each is strongly influenced by theoretical approaches that stress the importance of material culture, but they both remain humane and indeed sympathetic.