Extracanonical Traditions and the Holy Land: Texts, Rituals, and Material Culture in Late Antique Palestine

The Holy Land is more than a sanctified geographical space that roughly corresponds to the Roman province that has been known as Palaestina since the end of the Bar Kochba War. Instead, it is primarily an idea and imaginative space created by a complex interaction of texts, rituals, and material culture. The authors of this volume's contributions highlight the major role that extracanonical traditions - often misleadingly called apocryphal - which were written and read, celebrated and performed, and embodied in places, buildings, and material culture, have played in the construction of the Holy Land.