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Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Aryeh Kofsky The Monastic School of Gaza Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 78 Boston: Brill, 2006 Pp. 249. [euro]95/$129.
In eleven chapters this study offers a discussion of highlights of ascetic spirituality and practices in the region of Gaza in Palestine from the fourth through the end of the sixth century. The core of the book consists of chapters 3 through 10, which deal with matters of the life of the monk in mind and body. Chapter 1 offers a chronological overview of important figures while chapters 2 and 11 attempt to provide an anti-Chalcedonian or "Monophysite" historical framework for Gazan monasticism.
In chapter 1 the authors revisit their earlier discussion of the stages of the development of monastic life in the region (see Proche-Orient Chrétien 50 [2000]: 14-62). Two maps of monasteries in the Gaza and the Negev are a helpful addition to this material (figs. 1 and 2, following 46). Chapter 2 presents a discussion of the Life of Peter the Iberian and his role in the anti-Chalcedonian movement in Palestine. Chapter 3 combines a discussion of Peter the Iberian as a pilgrim to the Holy Land with the characterization his biographer John Rufus offers of him as a "Second Moses." The chapter's quite exclusive emphasis on the Old Testament characterization of Peter as the new Moses misses Rufus's more comprehensive and all-pervasive use of biblical typology across the board of Old and New Testament...