Chapter 32 The sea is dry but the stone is not rotten

Although the Sinai Peninsula is desolate, it is an extremely important religious shrine. Desolation is a requirement for many religious disciplines.In the history of Hebrew religious culture, there is a record in "Exodus", which refers to the feat of the Hebrews who fled in Egypt during the reign of Ramses II, unwilling to be enslaved for a long time.Under the leadership of Moses, they crossed the Red Sea and left Egypt, and they came to this Sinai Peninsula, which was still outside the jurisdiction of Egypt at that time. They chose the desert for self-reliance and wandered in the desert of Sinai for forty years.Finally, they settled down at the foot of Mount Sinai, where Jehovah gave Moses the Ten Commandments, and Judaism was officially born.This should be more than three thousand years ago.

Pushing back more than a thousand years, in the second century AD, Christians from all over the world also gathered at the foot of Mount Sinai in order to escape the persecution of the imperial court, and tempered their faith in this difficult-to-survive environment. How desolate is Mount Sinai? It seems to have been washed away by a violent tsunami, and there is nothing left, including sea water, leaving nothing but rocks and rocks.Or, it wasn't a tsunami at all, it turned out to be the bottom of the sea, and the sea suddenly went somewhere. I think the scene in front of me can only be summed up in these words: the sea is dry but the stone is not rotten, the flood has receded and the red sun is approaching.

St. Catherine's Abbey is a must.It sits quietly under the cliffs of Mount Sinai, resembling a small castle made of raw stone.The doorway is small, with two layers of nail-wrapped doors.As soon as we entered, we saw a compact and exquisite small world. The high gate of the church is the original one from the sixth century AD, and it has not been touched. Turning around from the church, I saw the well platform where Moses sat and the place where he talked with Jehovah.Different from other churches and monasteries in the world, this place shows the primitiveness of more than a thousand years ago everywhere, crooked but firm, simple and smooth.In the third century A.D., a sixteen-year-old daughter of an aristocrat in Alexandria, Egypt, believed in Christ. The Roman governor at that time forced her to convert to Roman worship, and sent fifty scholars to argue with her. As a result, all fifty scholars were killed by her. Persuaded, converted to Christ, and even the governor's wife followed her.The governor was furious and killed her. The martyred girl was named Catherine.There are several churches and monasteries named after her in the world, and the one we are entering now is recognized as the oldest and most prestigious.

There is also a Christian authentic library in the monastery second only to the Vatican.It once owned a parchment "Bible" from the 4th century AD. Its preciousness can be imagined. It was borrowed by a German scholar in the 19th century. Unexpectedly, the scholar sold it to The British Museum made a profit of £100,000.I am very sensitive to cultural thieves. I think this person named scholar is really nothing. I guess he will fabricate lies to cover up his bad deeds, and even frame the monastery.The monastery was in a remote place, unable to speak, and did not want to go to court with him, so it only kept the IOU that he wrote back then, forever.

Holiness always meets baseness, and baseness is always plausible, as it has been throughout the ages. A little bit of civilization survived in a place where a drop of water and an inch of grass are difficult to survive, but through despicable hands, it has become a place for debauchery in the downtown.Cultural thieves have culture, but they are still thieves in essence. Any upright religion rejects baseness, so there must be a possibility of dialogue between them.This monastery not only has the remains of Judaism and Christianity, but also retains the dome of Islam, almost a small Jerusalem.

On October 23, 1999, in the Sinai Peninsula in the morning, went to Israel in the afternoon, and stayed overnight at the Marina club hotel in Eilat