Jerusalem’s patriarch interpreted the Arab conquest as divine punishment for sin

Evidence

At the very height of the invasions, on Christmas day, 634, the Christians of Jerusalem, unable to go to recently conquered Bethlehem for the customary Christmas Mass, stayed in Jerusalem and heard a sermon by their patriarch, Sophronios. He spoke of the invasions and of the fear that they struck into the hearts of Jerusalem’s Christians: this was punishment for “countless sins and very serious faults.” Just as Adam and Eve were banished from the earthly paradise by the angel’s flaming sword (Gen. 4.24), Sophronios says, so are Christians prevented by the sword of the Saracens from approaching Bethlehem on Christmas. Just as the pagan gentile “slime” had once prevented King David from reaching Bethlehem so the “godless Saracens” now keep the Christians away. — John V. Tolan, Saracens, 294

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the whole arc of how military defeats get narrated as divine chastisement — echoes patterns in the reader’s noise/DeLillo stuff about moral frameworks imposed on catastrophe.