|
The
Area proclaimed by the
mother of Constantine to
be Mt. Sinai
The
traditional location in
the Sinai Peninsula
didn't "come into
being" until almost
2,000 years after the
Exodus:
"The
origin of the present
Monastery of Saint
Catherine on the NW
slope of Jebel Musa is
traced back to A.D. 527,
when Emperor Justinian
established it on the
site where Helena,
mother of Constantine
the Great, had erected a
small church two
centuries earlier."
(The Interpreter's
Dictionary of the Bible,
1962, p. 376.)
"There
is no Jewish tradition
of the geographical
location of Mt. Sinai;
it seems that its exact
location was obscure
already in the time of
the monarchy....The
Christian hermits and
monks, mostly from
Egypt, who settled in
Southern Sinai from the
second century C.E. on,
made repeated efforts to
identify the locality of
the Exodus with actual
places to which the
believers could make
their way as pilgrims.
The identification of
Mt. Sinai either with
Jebel Sirbal near the
oasis of Firan...,or
with Jebel Musa, can be
traced back as far as
the fourth century C.E.".
(The Jewish
Encyclopedia, Vol. 14,
p. 1599.)
In
1761-1767, Von Haven,
the member of a Danish
expedition to the
traditional site wrote,
as reported in
"Arabia Felix: The
Danish Expedition of
1971-1767, by Thorkild
Hansen:
"I
have observed earlier
that we could not
possibly be at Mount
Sinai. The monastery [of
St. Catherine] was
situated in a narrow
valley, which was not
even large enough for a
medium-sized army to be
able to camp in, let
alone the 600,000 men
that Moses had with him,
who, together with their
wives and children, must
have come to over
3,000,000."
The
Sinai Peninsula =
Egyptian Territory
The
fact is clear that the
Sinai Peninsula was
always considered to be
Egyptian territory.
There is an abundance of
evidence that the
Egyptians controlled the
Sinai Peninsula during
the time of the Exodus
because of their mining
operations there. This
archaeological evidence
is still present and
evident today. The
peninsula today doesn't
even have any population
to speak of except those
who live around the few
oases, many of which
today contain the
gasoline stations for
travelers.
In
"Arabia and the
Bible" by James
Montgomery, we read on
p. 31: "...the land
west of a line from the
Wady of Egypt to the
Elanitic Gulf [Gulf of
Aqaba] has always
belonged to the Egyptian
political sphere, and
actually that is the
present boundary of
Egypt....the
South-Arabians called
the same region Msr,
i.e. Misraim,
Egypt." |