Mount Sinai

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University of Texas Press, 1995 - Social Science - 363 pages
Amid the high mountains of Egypt's southern Sinai Peninsula stands Jebel Musa, "Mount Moses, " revered by most Christians and Muslims as Mount Sinai, the place where God made the covenant with His people. In this study, Joseph Hobbs draws on geography and archaeology, biblical and Quranic accounts, and the experiences of people ranging from Christian monks to Bedouin shepherds to casual tourists to explore why this mountain came to be revered as a sacred place and how that very perception now threatens its fragile ecology and its sense of holy solitude. Hobbs concludes his account with the recent international debate over whether to build a cable car on Mount Sinai and with a description of the negative impact of tourism on the delicate desert environment.

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Contents

INTRODUCTION
1
YOU WILL WORSHIP GOD ON THIS MOUNTAIN
32
Three
40
THE HEAVENLY CITIZENSHIP
58
Four
93
Mount
96
Seven
175
Eight
228
THE TRAVELER
234
Eleven
273
THE NEW GOLDEN CALF
289
CONCLUSION
305
NOTES
360
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About the author (1995)

Joseph J. Hobbs is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the author of Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness (UT Press 1989).

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