Philip the Arab and Christianity that appear—save for one reference to Ishmael—figure in the political history of the first three centuries of the Christian era. To Eusebius, the Saracens of the 4th century are direct-line descendants of the biblical Ishmaelites, descendants of the handmaid, Hagar, and the patriarch, Abraham. They are thus outcasts, beyond God's Covenant with the favored son of Abraham, Isaac. The twin images of the Ishmaelite and the Saracen—outcasts and "latrones", raiders of the frontiers—reinforce each other and give Eusebius' portrait of the Arab nation an unhappy color. He may have been reluctant to associate the first Christian emperor with a people
Ishmael son of Nethaniah earlier treatment of the royal household (Jeremiah 39:6). Robert Carroll describes the assassination as ‘armed revolt against Babylonian authority and the execution of a collaborationist’, noting also, however, that the tale hints at a residual factionalism that had bedevilled Judah in the period before the Babylonian invasion. However, wider political machinations also seem to have played a part. Jeremiah (though not II Kings) makes clear that Ishmael has been sent by king Baalis of the neighbouring kingdom of Ammon to kill Gedaliah. The full name of the Ammonite king Baalis (Ba‘alyiša‘, ‘Baal is salvation’) has been attested for the first