Spirituality, Illness, and the Bible in Late Antique Gaza

Abstract

The spiritual implications of illness were a significant interest for monks of late antiquity, whose concerns reflect common experiences in illness and ways of speaking about illness observable yet today. At the root of the many letters from the sixth-century Gazan monastery of Thavatha is a concern about the meaning of illness, not so much a diagnosis of a medical problem as a discernment of how natural and demonic influences intertwine, and how bodily and mental afflictions make sense within the spiritual “progress” of the monk. For Barsanuphius and John, the great old men of Gaza, the Bible offered models to reframe suffering in line with their ascetic spirituality.