Invading in/from the 'Holy Land'. Apocalyptic Metatext(s) and Sacred and/or Imagined Geography, 950-1200

      Аннотация: Terms such as ‘Holy Land’ and ‘fear of the invaders’ before the ‘End of Time’ have common literary base and, probably, common - historical and “mental” - roots, the latter being also connected with Apocalypse. With all this in mind, this book aims at posing one very important question, namely that of the connection between one’s ‘own’ Holy Land and the geographic locations of the invading ‘Gog and Magog people’. Who were all those invaders in reality; and were they always entering the ‘Holy Land’ following the archetypical direction of the approaching ‘punishment’ mentioned in the Bible? Such questions are directly connected to the notion of the sacred (real or imagined) geography of the ‘chosen people’ and the location of the ‘evil forces’. The study therefore aims at exploring areas that so far have not been clarified enough. Research of this kind could show that one and the same cultural matrix, namely the ‘Big Tradition’ of the three Abrahamic religions, is the source for similar ideas and notions about ‘invading from/in the Holy Land’. Hopefully a book of this kind will help some of the characteristics of the ‘mental’ map of the Early Medieval Europe to be better understood.

Ключевые слова: Apocalypse, Holy Land, Gog and Magog, Ishmaelites