Geography Religion Gods and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean

<p><em>Geography Religion Gods and Saints in the Eastern Mediterranean</em> explores the influence of geography on religion and highlights a largely unknown story of religious history in the Eastern Mediterranean. </p><p>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-Khi?r. 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-Khi?r 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.</p><p>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. </p>