MOUNT SINAI

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 68, 17 September 1927, Page 20

MOUNT SINAI

MISCONCEPTIONS AS TO ITS „ LOCATION. .

The ordinary man suffers. some surprise at the news that a Danish traveller has discovered Mount Sinai. It is on all the maps. The Boyal Engineers have been there and made their own survey of it. At its foot stands the ancient monastery of St. Catherine, ■wherein long ago Tischendorf found that priceless manuscript of the Bible written-in the fourth century which scholars have agreed to call the Codex Sinaiticns. ". fourteen hundred years ago the legate whom the monks sent to the Council of Constantinople was enrolled as from "Holy Mount Sinai." This is evidence of substance. But thbugh the weight of authority is in favour of accepting the tradition that thiij; mountain, the Jebel Musa, Mount of "Moses, or: the other .point of its ridge called EasSufsaft,.is the Sinai of the Bible, there-is, no unanimity among the learned. Some want to have their Sinai in Arabia, some argue that the name means; nowhere in particular, but is a"cosmological conception.." Dr. Ditlef Nielsen'sjdiscovery that the real Sinai was far away to -the north, in the"" red mountains of Edom, can be examined without any prejudice. But thejordinary iran will wonder in what histpvidence can consist (says London "iSaily: > Telegraph"). The usual means: of identifying the uncertain site ofvita. event are three: tradition,' agreemgnit of the topography with the reeo'ra,'and excavation. The last is in thia case ruled out. As for the first, it isSwholly. in favour of the mass of grwoite rock in.'the south of the peninsula* between thejarms of the Ked Sea whijSh forms'■;.the ridge of Jebel Musa anij Siifsafa.' In. the sixth century, as ;we have seen, the Church had no doubt.this was the Sinai of the Bible.' Close by, it believed, werefother famous scenes in the history of Moses. The monastery shows in its Chapel of the Burning Bush the very place where that miracle was wrought. Beyond the walls there, is a spring where, according to the; Arabs, Moses watered the flocks of. Jeihro, his father-in-law. We have, indeed, no direct evidence that these traditions are older than Christianity, jbuf the fact that in the first centuries ofjthe Christian era this ridge was resorted to ; as a holy place is significant. Itrjs difficult to imagine that equally good traditional; support^ can be found fort-any other identification. As for the; topography, the peak of Eas Sufsafa is a defined; steep summit overlooking., a large open space, in which tribes could encamp and find, space and food for*their flocks and herds. The mountain landscape has a grandeur not unworthy of the Biblical events. Whether what the writor of the Exodus tells did indeed take place on that rock we canaofcfl°pe. to.prove. There seem to be difficulties' .about this and that point ofjietail. But we should not be.asked to*belieye that the writer was careful of ( precise minutiae of locality who had to^tell how "Mount Sinai was altogether in a smoke because the liord descended upon it in fire." ■■