Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 27 January 1913 — Where Moses Read the Ten Commandments [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Where Moses Read the Ten Commandments

ORE than 5,000 years ago there were gathered at the command of Moses, ffipKllllWli on the- plains of Assemblage in the /IhUilHm valley of Mount Sinai, all of the children of Israel to listen to the reading of the laws that were reiJWu vealed to Moses during the “forty B( mO? days and forty nights” he spent in the midst of a cloud communing with tlie God of the “chosen people.” ** Since that momentous and epochmaking event nations have risen to mighty power, only to go down to

decay and oblivion. Unpeopled plains have been converted into hives of industry, and hives of . industry have reverted back to unpeopled plains. New lands have been discovered and peopled and new seas have been navigated and charted. Everywhere progress has the" physical conditionof the people. Everywhere progress has changed the historical and geographical importance of nations and ‘countries. Here, alone, in the Mount Sinai Valley, where the nation that gave us the Savior first sprang into prominence, progress has stood still. Surrounded by the peaks of the “Forty Martyrs,” all is hushed and still on the plain where once the hum of thousands of voices was heard, and where the valley rang with the resounding march of the hosts of Israel. On the peak of Ras-es-Safsafeh, the cross, the symbol of Christianity, has been planted on the very spot upon which Moses, the great law giver and leader of the Jews, stood and gave to his people the ten commandments, the basis of all religious beliefs and the foundation of all law, moral and

civil. Now unpeopled and deserted, the very lonesomeness of the place is awe-inspiring, and the “silence of the tomb” is not more impressive than the “veil of silence” that envelops Ras-es-Safsafeh and its surroundings. The mount on which God is said to have revealed himself to Moses is situated in ,the southern half of the so-called peninsula of Sinai, projecting into the northern extremity of the Red sea, between the Gulf of Suez on the west and the Gulf of Akabah on the east. This park of the peninsula consists of a mass of granite and porphyry mountains which may be divided into three groups, a northwestern, reaching in Jebel Serbal a height of 6,712 feet; a central, includ-. ing Jebel Musa (Mount of Moses), 7,363 feet, and Jebel Katerin, 8.537 feet; and an eastern and southern, whose highest peak is Jebel Umm Shomer, 8,449 feet. Whether the Biblical Sinai was Jebel Umm Shomer of Jebel Musa was long disputed by leading authorities. The former was advocated by Eusebius, Jerome, Cosmas Indicopleustes, and in more modern times by Lepsius and Ebers. Jebel Musa, however, is preferred by most authorities, and is favored by tradition (which dates, however, only from Christian times), indicated by the name “Mountain of and the erection of a monastery upon it which goes back to the days of Justinian. The northern peak of Jebel Musa, known as Ras-es-Safsafeh (6,540 feet), meets the conditions required, since there is an open space at its base sufficient to accommodate a large encampment. Standing on the lofty summit of Mount Sinai, what thoughts and visions are conjured up as one contemplates that there on the vast plain of Assemblage that stretches before the eye hundreds of feet below, fifty centuries ago, the commandments were deliverd to the assembled children of Israel. Excepting for the Mount Sinai monastery, which from these heights looks like a little toy fort built of blocks, the region is still and hushed, and almost deserted. The massive walls of the monastery raised by the peace-loving and God-fearing monks under Justinian in 527 A. D. —as a protection against the marauding bands of Bedouins that infested that part of the country when the wealth of an empire was possessed by the builders and occupants of the monastery —are in the same condition as when built 1.500 years ago. Today, however, the Christian world keeps a watchful eye over this mountain monastery and its contents, and the Bedouins, knowing this to be the fact, keep on friendly as well as visiting terms with the monks. In the monasteiy are stored the priceless books narrating the history of Christianity in the tongue of every Christian nation. Slowly the brotherhood of Mount Sinai monks are dying out, there being but twenty or twenty-five at the present time. The life and the pay—not enough to buy tobacco—are not sufficient inducement for young recruits to join the forces that year by year are growing smaller. In the course of a few years the terasurer of tapemonastery will remain but a memory to remind one of the greatness of Its founder, Justinian. Looking northwest from Jebel Musa to Wadi el

Loja the traveler who for days has been wearied by the sight of nothing else but the monotonous blue of the burning sky and the dreary desert all about him is exhilarated, pleased and rested by the sight of those beautiful cypress trees with their cool, dark foliage down in the wadi—the Arabic name for hollow or valley. One can scarcely Imagine anything more dreary than the valley where these trees raise their heads above the rock-bound hollow in the desert. They stand in all their majesty in the gardens of the monastery of the Sinaltlc monks on St. Catherine, one of the mountains of the range called the "Forty Martyrs,” and great pride is taken by these men of God in these trees, which for a thousand years have broken the monotony of the desert waste and have cast their welcome shade wherein the weary traveler and the travel-stained caravan may test arid take shelter. For more than a year the Israelites were encamped in the valley of Stnat when they again took up their wanderings in search of the promised land. Through Asia Minor they proceeded to the land of Canaan, their great leader, Moses, dying as they came in sight of the country which' God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. One of the most important places in Asia Minor, on the road from Constantinople to Konla, is the ancient town of Afium Kara-Hlssar, whose extraordinary citadel, rising 800 feet in its very center, was the Byzantine fortress of Aeroenus, where in 730 A. D. the Arabs, under the leadership of Sid el Battel el Ghazi, were defeated by the Turks in its very shadow. To get a view of this most picturesque town a climb up the stairway cut in the rock of the citadel brings one to the very summit where there still remain the mediaeval Turkish fortlflcatlone. Like all other towns in Asia Minor, Afium Kara-Hissar is built of mud bricks. Its streets run in every direction of the compass. Although the language spoken there is Turkish, there is a large Armenian population. It is as dirty a place as one can Imagine. Overrun with halfstarved. howling dogs in the day, the night Is made hideous by their mad attempts to clean up the refuse thrown in the streets. It is a good place to be avoided by the fastidious. The town’ boasts of a fine bazaar, churches for the Armenians and mosques for the Turks, as well as schools for both classes. The Armenians have made a commendable effort to make their part of the town inhabitable and sanitary. The story of the birth and Infancy of the founder and first legislator of the Israelite nation is one of the treasured gems of Hebrew literature. He was ot the tribe of Levi, and his mother. Jochebed (his father’s name was Amram), hid him three months in defiance of the edict of Pharaoh, who, to prevent the growth of his Hebrew slave population, had ord red all their male children to be put to death at birth. As the danger of discovery became great, the infant was placed in an ark on the Nile, was found and adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh, and was brought up as an Egyptian prince. But his heart was with his enslaved brethren, and

his slaying of their oppressors necessitated his flight to Midian, where he received the divine call to be the deliverer of his people from Egypt. After considerable trouble he led them forth, crossed the Red sea, in which the pursuing Egyptians were drowned, and then, during a forty years’ residence in the desert, organized the religious and social polity of the nation. Moses stands out as a sublime and unique figure, without whom neither Judaism, Mohammedanism, nor Christianity could have been what they are.