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Icon of Moses and the Burning Bush
The Holy Monastery of Saint Catherine, Sinai, Egypt
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Egeria
tells us, "We made our way across the head of the valley
and approached the Mount of God. It looks like a single mountain
as you are going round it, but when you actually go into it
there are really several peaks, all of them known as ‘the
Mount of God,’ and the principal one, the summit on which
the Bible tells us that ‘God’s glory came down,’
is in the middle of them. I never thought that I had seen mountains
as high as those which stood around it, but the one in the middle
where God’s glory came down was the highest of all."[1]
Egeria continues, "It was about four o’clock by the
time we had come right down the mountain and reached the Bush.
This, as I have already said, is the Burning Bush out of which
the Lord spoke to Moses."[2] Moses’ theophanies are
but a few of the many biblical events that took place on Mt.
Sinai, today known as Jebel Musa, and in the surrounding desert.
The Israelites camped in the Sinai desert (Exodus); the Prophet
Elijah took refuge from Queen Jezebel and heard the Lord coming
to him as "a still small voice" (I Kings 19:12) on
Mt. Sinai; and while fleeing from King Herod, the Holy Family
traveled through Sinai on their journey to Egypt (Matthew 2:13).
1. John Wilkinson, trans., Egeria’s Travels,
3rd edition (Warminster: Aris & Phillips Ltd, 1999), p.
108. Readers should note that the approach described by Egeria
through Wadi el Lejâ is not the one taken by visitors
coming from the Holy Monastery of St. Catherine.
2. Wilkinson, p. 112.
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