Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/34

 SINAITICUS

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SINALOA

origin of the name Sinai is disputed. It seems to be Jabal Mdsa, which has been known since the ninth

an adjective from 'J'D, "the desert" (Ewald and Ebers) or "the moon-god" (E. Schrader and others). The mount was called Sinai, or "the mount of God" probably before the time of Moses (Josephus, " Antiq. Jud.", II, xii.) The name is now given to the tri-

century as St. Catherine's. Its small library con- tains about 500 volumes of valuable manuscripts in Greek, Arabic, Syriac, Ethiopic, etc. It was here that Tischendorf, during his researches in 1844, 1853, and 1859, found a very- ancient Greek MS. (since

angular peninsula lying between the desert of .Southern known as the "Codex Sinaiticus") containing most Palestine, the Red Sea, and the gulfs of .\kabah and of the Septuagint, all the new Testament, the "Epistle

Suez, with an area of about 10,000 sq. miles, which was the scene of the forty years' wandering of the Israehtes after the Exodus from Egypt.

The principal topographical features are two. North of the Jabal et-Tih (3200 to 3950 feet) stretches an arid plateau, the flesert of Tih, marked by numer- ous Wadis, notably El-.\rish, the "River of Egypt".

of Barnabas", and the first part of the "Shepherd' of Hermas. Forty-three MS. pages found by him are preserved at the University of Leipzig and kno^\Ti aa the "Codex Friderico-.\ugustanus". In 1892 Mrs. Smith Lewis found at Sinai a fourth-century palimp- sest Syriac text of St. Luke's Gospel. Sinai is rich in valuable inscriptions. M. de \'ogiie gives 3200

which formed the southern boundary of the Promised Egyptian and Semitic inscriptions found in the Wadi

Land (Gen., x\', 18; Num., xxxiv, 5). South of Jabal Mukatteb, the ruins of the temple of Ischta, or

et-Tih rises a mountainous mass of granite streaked .^staroth-Carmain, and the iron and turquoise mines

with porphyry, divicUng into three principal groups: anil granite and marble quarries, which were ex-

the western, Jabal Serbal (6750 feet); the central, Jabal Miisa (7380 feet), Jabal Catherine (8560 feet), and Ja- bal Um Schomer (8470 feet) ; the east- ern, Jabal Thebt (7906 feet) and Ja- bal Tarfa, which terminates in Ras Mohammed. It is among these moun- tains that Jewish and Christian tradition places the Sinai of the Bible, but the precise location is uncertain. It is Ja- bal Mtisa, according to a tradition trace- able back to the fourth century, when St. Silvia of Acjui- taine was there

Identified by St. Je

Jabal Mftsa is defended by E. H. and H. S. Palmer, Vigouroux, Lagrange, and others. However, the difficulty of applying Ex., xix, 12, to Jabal Mdsa and the inscriptions found near Jabal Serbal have led some to favour Serbal. This was the opinion of St. Jerome (P. L., XXIII, 916, 933) and Cosmiis (P. G., LXXXVIII, 217), and more recently of Burkhard and Lcpsius, and it has of late been very stronglj' defended by G. Ebers, not to mention Beke, Gressmann, and others, who consider the whole story about Sinai (Ex., xix) only a mythical interpretation of some volcanic eruption. The more liberal critics, while agreeing generally that the Jewish traditions represented by the "Priest-codex" and "Elohistic documents" place Sinai among the moun- tains in the south-central part of the peninsula, yet disagree as to its location by the older "Jahvistic" tradition (Ex., ii, 15, 16, 21; xviii, 1, 5). A. von Gall, whose opinion Welhausen thinks the best sustained, contends that Meribar (D. V. Temptation. — Ex., xvii, 7) is identical with Cades (Num., xxxiii, 36; xxvii, 14), that the Israelites never went so far south as Jabal Klftsa, and hence that Sinai must be looked for in Madian, on the cast coa.st of Akabar. Others (cf. Winckler, II, p. 29; Smend, p. 35, n. 2; and Weill, opp. cit. infra in biblios;raphy) look for Sinai in the near neighbourhood of Cades (.•'^yn Q4dis) in Southern Palestine.

Sinai was the refuge of many Christian anchorites during the third-century persecutions of the Church. There are traces of a foiu'th-century monjisterj' near Mount Serbal. In .527 the lMiii)eror Justinian built the famous convent of Mt. Sinai on the north foot of

tensively worked un- der the twelfth and eighteenth Egj'ptian dynasties.

The present popu- lation of Sinai is 4000 to 6000 semi- nomadic .Arabs, Mo- hammedans. gov- erned by their tribal sheikhs and imme- diately subject to the commandant of the garrison at Qal' at un-Xakhl, under the Intelligence De- ]3artment of the Egyptian War Office at Cairo.

Ordnance Survey of the Pen. of Sinai, published hv the EK>'ptian Explor. Fund (London, 1869-72): Barrow, Weslern Portion. and Hume. Eastern Por- tion, in The Topog. and (lent, of Sinai (Cairo, mOO): Hart, Fauna and Flora of Sinai (London, 1891); Pktrie, Researches in Sinai (London. 1906): DE VoGc£. Comptea rendus de I'Acad. des Inscriptions (Paris, 1907) ; Me19TERM.\nn, Guide du Nil au Jourdain (Paris, 1909); Commentaries on Ex. xi.\, 1 sqq,. by HuMMEUiUER (Paris, 1897), Dii-lman (Leipzig, 1897), and other.s; Palmer, The Desert of the Exodus iCamhridge, 1871); .Sargenton-Galichon, Sinai Ma'an. Pilra (Paris, 1904), 1-145; Garmcrrini, S. SiUim AquitaruB Peregrinatio (Rome, ISSS); Lep3 us, Reise von Theben nach. . . Sinai (Berlin, 1845); Winckler, Gesch. Isr. (Leipzig, 1895); von Gall, Alti.ir. Ku'tur- stdlten (Giessen, 1898); Smend, Lehrb. der AUtest. Retigionsgesck. (Freiburg im Br.. 1899): Welhausen, Prol. rur Gesch. Isr. (Berlin, 1905); Weill, Le s^jour des Israelites au disert et te Sinai (Paris. 1909); ViaouHOUX. Did. de la Bible, a. v. Sinai; LAGRANfiE, Le Sinai biblique, in Rev. Biblique (1899), 369-89.

Nicholas Reagan.

Sinaiticus Codex. See Codex Sinaiticus.

Sinaloa, Diocese of (Sinaloensis), in the Re- public of Mexico, suffragan of the Archdiocese of Durango. Its area is that of the State of Sinaloa, 27,.552 sq. miles, and its population (1910) 323,499. CuUacan, the capital of the state and residence of the bishop and governor, counts a population (1910) of 13,578. The present territory of Sinaloa was dis- covered in 1.530 bv the ill-reputed D. Nmio de Guzman who founded the'city of S:in Miguel de Culiacan. A few Spaniards estabjislu^d a colony there. The prov- ince of Culiacan was soon obliged to face the terrors of w:ir brousht upon it by the barbarous cruelties of Nufio and his favourite, Diego Hernandez de Pro- ano. So frightened was Xuno by the terrible insur- rection that he removed Pro:in, placing in his stead Cristobal de Tapia, whose humanitarian measures slowlv restored confidence, .\lthoiigh colonized from the beginning of the sixteenth century, most of the territory, e.\cepting a few strong places, was inhabited