In the sixth-century Coptic Life of Aaron, the monk and
bishop-elect Mark asks how he should treat the Nubians who live
south of Philae. According to Mark, these people represent a unique
problem because they “regularly ask for bread,” but “they are a people that does not believe in God” (Life of Aaron 61). What follows is a debate grounded in biblical exempla over how much foreignity, especially represented by different religious belief, disqualifies one from Christian charity. The text employs several texts that advocate for the universality of Christianity and everyone as God’s people, such as Romans 3:29-30 and Genesis 17:5. However and, perhaps, most surprisingly, the text also includes the story of the Canaanite woman from Matthew 15, in which Jesus likens the Canaanites to dogs and eventually grants that even dogs should receive scraps from the table. Here, the ideal of Christian universalism runs into biblical rhetoric embracing language that dehumanizes certain groups of people and is decidedly less positivist. It is this contradiction that Professor Buckner will explore. By examining the depictions of Nubians throughout the narrative and broader discussions of foreign people in early Christian texts, Professor Buckner, argue that the Life of Aaron represents how early Christian monastic texts continued to negotiate Christian identity and display, at times, discriminatory logics that appear eerily similar to our own.