Alexander explicitly claims the legacy of Athanasius and Cyril and expounds the Christology of Severan/Theodosian “orthodoxy” over “the Chalcedonian perversion”. The “misfortunes” that Patriarch Alexander saw the church was experiencing “one on top of another” were varied in nature. An apocalypse was written at the end of the seventh century, but attributed to the fourth- and fifth-century monastic leader Shenoute, “predicts” that the “children of Ishmael” will “rebuild the Temple that is in Jerusalem” after which the Antichrist will appear. Earlier Egyptian Christians had been tempted to see...

Alexander explicitly claims the legacy of Athanasius and Cyril and expounds the Christology of Severan/Theodosian “orthodoxy” over “the Chalcedonian perversion”. The “misfortunes” that Patriarch Alexander saw the church was experiencing “one on top of another” were varied in nature. An apocalypse was written at the end of the seventh century, but attributed to the fourth- and fifth-century monastic leader Shenoute, “predicts” that the “children of Ishmael” will “rebuild the Temple that is in Jerusalem” after which the Antichrist will appear. Earlier Egyptian Christians had been tempted to see Islamic rule as a passing phenomenon, like that of the Persians at the beginning of the seventh century, which was no longer possible after the reign of 'Abd al-Malik.