Desert Monasticism in the Judean Wilderness
By Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin
From the fourth through the seventh centuries AD, a form of Christian religious devotion known as desert monasticism flourished in Palestine. Inspired by biblical stories of Elijah, John the Baptist, and Jesus, thousands departed into the wilderness to seek salvation through solitude as hermits.
Paradoxically, this exodus began just as Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire. Whereas earlier Christians had been required to struggle daily for their faith against not only temptations but official persecution, Christianity now offered prestige and social advancement. Many believers felt increasingly “stifled by the mediocrity of an official, politicized religion” (Jerome Murphy-O’Connor). Seeking alternatives to the shallow religiosity of the newly converted urban masses, they believed that hermitic monasticism offered the true imitatio Christi-the imitation of the life of Christ. Based upon a very literal understanding of some of Christ’s teachings, these monks abandoned their possessions and families (Mark 10:17-31) to live lives of chastity, fasting, and asceticism in the desert. (Our word “asceticism,” which indicates self-denial, derives from the Greek term askesis, originally meaning “practice,” “training,” “exercise.”) There they devoted themselves to prayer and meditation, to the liturgy. and to study, as well as to eking out a sparse existence in the desolate wasteland.
At the height of Christian asceticism in the Near East, thousands of monks lived in seventy-three monastic centers in Byzantine Judea. Some lived in true seclusion, as hermits in small isolated caves, rarely seeing other people. Others, the coenobitic monks, gathered to form communities and build large fortress-like monasteries. Although many sought total isolation, most desert monks did not completely sever all ties with civilization. Some became great scholars and theologians, actively debating important religious and political issues of their day. Other monasteries focused on service, becoming hospices for pilgrims and hospitals for the sick.
The Arab Muslim conquest of Palestine in the seventh century initiated the decline of desert monasticism; as the region slowly converted to Islam, the popular foundations of monasticism were undermined. But they never completely vanished. Even today, a small number of monastic communities in Israel continue this ancient hermitic tradition, two of which can be visited near Jericho. Both are maintained by the Greek Orthodox Church.
The monastery of St. George of Koziba was founded in the fifth century, in a splendid canyon or wadi in the Judean wilderness between Jerusalem and Jericho. The stark desert terrain that surrounds it is reminiscent of Utah‘s canyon lands. The wadi is graced by patches of green where waterfalls spring from cracks in an ancient Roman aqueduct and cascade down the sheer walls of the cliffs. The monastery is nestled in the side of one of those cliffs, with several precarious hermitic caves higher up and practically inaccessible. Hermits living there get food and water by lowering a basket by a rope down to those who supply them. Of the original monastery, only a few foundation stones and a fine mosaic survive; the Persians destroyed it in 614. The modern structure was built by the Greek Orthodox Church in the late nineteenth century. Three silver reliquaries, which house the remains of local martyrs and saints, rest in a small chapel. Within the monastery enclosure is the traditional location of the cave where Elijah-whom the monks regard as their biblical archetype or pattern-was fed by ravens (1 Kings 17:3). The walls of the canyon are peppered with the ruins of 1500-year-old hermitic caves.
The Monastery of Temptation, commemorating the traditional location where Christ fasted for forty days and was tempted by the Devil (Matthew 4:1-11)-another archetypal deed for monastic emulation-sits in the cliffs to the west of Jericho. The entire structure is about 100 feet long and about 15 feet wide, all of it clinging precariously to the crags in the cliffs. A decrepit balcony juts out from one building, overlooking rocky ground 200 yards below. The view of the Jericho valley from the balcony is spectacular. There are only two monks left in the monastery, down from three dozen a century ago. One of them is the abbot. Here can be found the stone they say that Satan tempted Jesus to turn into bread, now rubbed completely smooth by countless touches from countless pious visitors.
These and other similar monasteries, like Mar Saba near Bethlehem and St. Catherine’s at Mt. Sinai, are precious survivors of a system of religious worship whose practitioners could once bring emperors to their knees, and changed the theological course of Christianity.
Derwas James Chitty, The Desert a City: An Introduction to the Study of Egyptian and Palestinian Monasticism Under the Christian Empire (reprint, 1997)