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Document Details : Title: 'Synoptic Perception' and the Holy Land in Christianity Author(s): HEYDEN, Katharina Journal: Studies in Interreligious Dialogue Volume: 36 Issue: 1 Date: 2026 Pages: 5-26 DOI: 10.2143/SID.36.1.3295554 Abstract : This paper investigates the emergence and significance of what it terms synoptic perception in Christian engagements with the Holy Land from Late Antiquity to the modern period. Although the New Testament largely relativizes sacred geography, Christians from the second century onward increasingly invested Palestine with theological, memorial, and eschatological meaning. The study defines synoptic perception as the capacity to perceive heaven and earth, past and present, memory and hope simultaneously without collapsing them into one another. Through analyses of pilgrimage practices, visual culture (notably the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome), medieval texts, Crusader literature, and modern Christian Zionism, the paper demonstrates how the Christian faithful sight generated both creative religious imagination and problematic blind spots toward Jews and Muslims. Synoptic perception is proposed as a critical tool that can both illuminate and discipline contemporary Christian theologies of the Holy Land. |
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