Sinai

“ It was not like the scene at Sinai, where the bare and desolate mountains towered up to heaven, their summits lost among the clouds. This was a more homely landscape, amid the fields and dwellings where the people were to spend their daily life. If the proclamation of the law from Sinai had something of an abstract and distant character, Ebal and Gerizim brought it home to the business and bosoms of men. It was now to be the rule for every day, and for every transaction of every day ”

“ A history of Sinai deals with the people who visited the peninsula at different times, rather than with its permanent inhabitants, who, in the course of centuries, seem to have undergone little change. They still live the life of the huntsman and the herdsman as in the days of Ishmael, sleeping in the open, and adding to their meagre resources by carrying dates and charcoal to the nearest centres of intercourse, in return for which they receive corn. ”

“ So they arrived at Sinai, the sacred mountain of the wilderness of Sin. Between the two bays with which the sea encloses this peninsula, that mountain rises, a naked granite ridge, with five steep peaks, united into a mighty crown, above the plateau of sandstone which occupies the whole peninsula. The height is 8,000 feet, and the wild and rugged mass overlooks in sublime solitude the broad and desert flats in the north, and the waves of the sea in the south. The beautiful oasis at the foot of the mountain (Wadi Firan) affords nourishment for a large number of men and beasts. ”

“ The dwellers on Sinai and in the oasis took an eager part in them at a later date.
That Mount Sinai to which I desire to transport the reader must not be confounded with the mountain which lies at a long day's journey to the south of it. It is this that has borne the name, at any rate since the time of Justinian; the celebrated convent of the Transfiguration lies at its foot, and it has been commonly accepted as the Sinai of Scripture. ”

“ I saw the Red Sea and I climbed the height of Mount Sinai (jugum Sina Montis) , the summit of which almost touches heaven and cannot be reached by human effort. A hermit was said to live somewhere in its recesses, and I sought long and much to see him, but was unable to do so. ”

“ CHAPTER X THE HERMITS IN SINAI
A NEW era in the history of Sinai began with the advent of the Christian hermit. The desert has ever been the home of liberty. The desire to follow the New Way, coupled with the need of escaping the Roman governor, drove many Christians into the wilderness, where, remote from the claims and the unrest of citizen life, they embraced life in a form which meant reducing physical needs to a minimum. ”

“ If amid this scene, the grandest and most awful that Nature ever presents, a voice were heard issuing out of the cloud and rolling down the breast of the mountain, we might form some faint conception of the mingled majesty and terror of the sight when the Lord descended upon Sinai. From the top we observed what we had noticed in the plain, that the ground is lowest nearest the mountain, and that it rises as it recedes, like the seats of an amphitheatre, so that all converge to one point, which is the centre of the scene. ”

“ Etheria and her party entered and left Sinai from Egypt.
“Before you reach the holy Mount Syna, stands the fort Clesma on the Red Sea which the Israelites passed dryshod. The marks (vestigia) of the chariot of the Pharaoh are visible in the ground to this day. But the wheels are farther apart than those of the chariots (currus) of our days as they are seen in the Roman empire, for between wheel and wheel is a space of twenty-four feet or more, and the wheelruts (orbitæ) are two feet wide. ”

“ Thus, the writer Antoninus Martyr, who, about the year 530, entered Sinai from Gaza, journeyed by way of Elath (Elusa) , “at the beginning of the desert that goes to Sinai,” and mentioned a festival that was about to take place. The people who entered the greater desert were in number twelve thousand (c. 36) . On the eighth day after leaving Gaza, he reached the place where Moses brought forth water from the rock, and came to Horeb, which, in his estimation, was distinct from Sinai. ”

“ AFTER the close of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Egyptians ceased for centuries to come to Sinai. The reason was that foreigners, for over a hundred years, ruled in the Nile valley whom the Alexandrian writers called Arabians or Phœnicians. The Egyptians themselves called them Hyksos. To this period probably belong the inscriptions in Semitic script that were set up in some mines in the Wadi Dhabah near Serabit, and the offerings of a squat figure and of a sphinx inscribed in the same Semitic script which were presented before the shrine of the goddess. ”

“ The hills rising from the east and south of Sebaiyeh, in front of Sinai, are of gentle ascent, upon which flocks might feed, and the people stand in full view of Sinai. For many miles, perhaps six or more, on the eastern border of this plain, are seen many small plains high up among the hills, from all of which Sinai is plainly visible. Near where we stood, a high, rocky platform of granite arose from the plain, upon which I seated myself, and took a sketch of the valley to its junction with Wady esh-Sheikh on the north, where stands Jebel Fureia, a very conspicuous and singular mountain. ”

“ A stele of the same Pharaoh stood in a knoll of hæmatite on the plateau, the exposed position of which caused it to fall and crumble long ago; its remains strew the ground.
The reign of the next Pharaoh, Amen-em-hat III (XII 6) , marked a climax in the intercourse of Egypt and Sinai. Of the forty-four years of his reign, at least fourteen witnessed expeditions to Sinai, which were commemorated by inscriptions set up in Wadi Maghara, in Wadi Nasb, and at Serabit. ”

“ Mount Sinai stands about 120 miles south from Jerusalem, and nearly 260 eastward from Grand Cairo in Egypt. The mountain is of no great extent, but extremely high, and has two tops; the western of which is called Horeb, and the eastern, which is about a third higher, Sinai. There are several springs and fruit-trees on Horeb, but nothing except rainwater [261] on the top of Sinai. The ascent of both is very steep, and can only be effected by steps, now much effaced, which the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, caused to be cut in the marble rock. ”

“ It is this mingling of the moral sublime with the sublime in nature which makes the great interest of the Peninsula of Sinai. Beyond all the stupendous altitudes of the mountains, beyond the Alpine heights and fathomless abysses, in power to stir the soul with awe, is the human history that has been enacted amid these great forms of nature. Serbal is clothed with such associations as with a garment. ”

“ THE ancient peoples and place names of Sinai claim separate attention.
The earliest Egyptian rock inscription at Maghara represents the Pharaoh as a smiter, and describes him as such with the signs of a hand, an eagle, and the determinative of hills. The term is held to apply to no people in particular, and is therefore rendered as “barbarians.”
King Khufu (IV 2) , in addition, is described as a smiter of the Anu; the word is written with the pillar sign. The word Anu was applied in Egypt to cave-dwellers generally, more especially to those of Nubia. ”

“ THE DOOM OF AL ZAMERI.
NOTHING is known in nature which, in awful impressiveness, compares with the overpowering scenery forever associated with God’s revelation to man. That arm of the Indian Ocean called the Red Sea bifurcates into the westerly gulf of Suez and the easterly one of Akabah, and the triangular peninsula thus formed embraces the region that bears the name of the sky-consecrated Mount Sinai. ”

“ SINAI is the peninsula, triangular in form, which projects into the Red Sea between Egypt and Arabia. The name used to be applied to the mountainous region of the south, now it is made to comprise the land as far north as the Mediterranean. ”

“ Coming to such a height of vision, one feels as if he had come to a point in his own life, and a personal feeling mingles with that inspired by the scene, so that one flows into the other. As I looked down from the top of Sinai, I saw not only the deep passes winding away into the mountains, I saw the winding course of a lifetime that had at last brought me to this spot ”

“ VARIOUS circumstances combined to raise the convent of Sinai to great prosperity during the early Middle Ages. On the one side it received regular contributions in money from Europe; on the other it attracted the attention of the pilgrims owing to the increasing fame of St. Katherine. Further it secured the direct protection of the Moslim rulers of Egypt owing to a development in trade.
When the Arabs conquered Egypt, the desire arose for a direct communication by water to Arabia, and the fresh-water canal which connected the Nile with the Red Sea was cleared. ”

“ There are some horsemen and some nondescript animals. Among the signs that are used are the Egyptian ankh, the Greek alpha and omega, and the Christian cross, showing that a great variety of persons passed there. The words are written without regularity, the animals and men are drawn with poor skill. They are, for the most part, unattractive scrawls, the interest of which lies in the information which they indirectly convey.
The inscriptions in the wadis of southern Sinai were first noted by the lady Etheria who visited the peninsula about the year 450. ”

“ Elijah the Tishbite, with rough mantle and flowing locks; John the Baptist, who lived on locusts and wild honey; the Essenes in Palestine, and the Therapeutæ near Alexandria, were one and all actuated by the belief that a higher life is possible here below, provided that the amenities and the comforts of this world count as nothing.
The hermits who came to dwell in Sinai, settled in the mountains of the south where many natural springs rendered possible the cultivation of vegetables and fruit, their staple articles of diet. Here they were outside the sphere of Roman influence. ”

“ These are now of great value as a contribution to the knowledge of Grecian-Egyptian antiquity, which has been industriously cultivated on several sides. We have also made another collection of the numerous so-called “Inscriptions of Sinai” which were cut into the rocks by a Christian population who lived on the Peninsula of Sinai in the first centuries of our era. These have not yet been entirely deciphered.
We have only been able to give occasional attention to subjects pertaining to natural science. ”

“ The Arabs call Mount Sinai by the name of Tor, that is, the mountain, by way of excellence; or Gibel Mousa, “the mountain of Moses.” It is two hundred and sixty miles from Cairo, which is a journey of ten days. The wilderness of Sinai, where the Israelites continued encamped almost a year, and where Moses erected the tabernacle of the covenant, is considerably elevated above the rest of the country; the ascent to it is very craggy, the greater part cut out of the rock ”

“ CHAPTER XLII. THE THEOPHANY AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE. 1 Kings xix. 9-15.
"Who heardest the rebuke of the Lord in Sinai, and in Horeb the judgment of vengeance."—Ecclus. xlviii. 7.
Throughout the Scriptures infinite care is taken to preclude every notion that the Most High God can be represented in visible form. He manifested Himself at Sinai to the children of Israel, but though the mount burned with fire, and there were clouds and thick darkness, and the voice of a trumpet speaking long and loud, the people were reminded with the utmost solemnity that "they saw no manner of similitude." ”

“ Under any circumstances, one would have to take care, if, after the founding of Pharan, the mountain Sinai is often mentioned, to understand by it the Gebel Mûsa. As a rule, the whole range of mountains in the peninsula is intended by it. ”

“ Anthony between the Red Sea and Egypt, where he was visited by a monk of Pharan who told him that it was ten months since he had seen a human being. To which Sisoeis replied that it was eleven months since he had seen one himself.
The hermit life in Sinai was at its height when the lady Etheria visited the peninsula, intent on identifying the sites of which she had read in the Bible. Her eagerness seems to have stirred the imagination of the monks, and led to decisions as to localities which were accepted as authentic for centuries to come. ”

“ Afterwards (but not in this context) he spoke of “Mount Sinai in Arabia.” Sinai being the place where Moses received the revelation of the old Law, and where Elijah, too, received the revelation of the “still small voice,” I had assumed (at the time of reading the epistle) that Paul went to Mount Sinai in Arabia that he also might receive his revelation of the new Law of Christ. ”

“ When work was resumed in Sinai in the Eleventh Dynasty, the attitude of the Egyptians towards Serabit had undergone a marked change. In early days they had approached the sanctuary as quasi-worshippers, presenting offerings such as the baboon and the hawk. Now the sanctuary itself was drawn within the sphere of their influence, and they erected uprights or mazzeboth on the approach to the cave on which they recorded their mining expeditions.
Uprights of this kind are entirely unknown in Egypt. ”

“ The trade via Tur naturally brought the monks into contact with the Further East. Fretellus of Antioch (c. 1130) declared that the monks of Sinai, “from the confines of Ethiopia to the utmost bounds of the Persians, were venerated in every tongue, possessing their property freely and quietly among themselves. They had cells throughout Egypt and Persia, around the Red Sea and Arabia, from which all they required flowed most liberally.” [246] In addition to this, grants were made to them by the Crusaders in the lands which they conquered. ”