Ark of the Wilderness Prepares to Share Treasures Online -St Catherine's Mt Sinai Enters Digital Age

The Reluctant Sinner ^ | 5/30/12 | Dylan Parry

[marshmallow]

One of the world’s oldest Christian monasteries, commonly known as St Catherine’s Mount Sinai, is about to enter the twenty-first century by allowing scholars to read its digitalised manuscripts online.

More properly known as the Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai, its world-famous library is home to the second largest collection of early codices and manuscripts after the Vatican Library. St Catherine’s has also been in continuous use as a monastery for seventeen centuries, making it as ancient, if not more so, as the equally famous Monastery of St Antony, founded by the father of monasticism himself.

According to James Purtill, writing for the Egypt Independent, St Catherine’s Texan-born Librarian, Father Justin Sinaites, is currently in the process of digitalising all the monastery’s extremely important manuscripts, ‘which up until now have been kept under lock and key.’ These texts will soon be available on the internet for any scholar wishing to study them – quite a change from the days when it took academics, pilgrims, and relic hunters, over ten days to reach St Catherine’s from Suez. These digitalised copies of the monastery's manuscripts will also be kept in a technically advanced and specially constructed library, which should be fully operational in about five years’ time.

Purtill went on to write that the monastery’s present Archbishop, called Damianos, who was elected 39 years ago, is fully supportive of Father Justin’s efforts to use digital technology and the internet in furthering the community’s ‘ancient goals to study and preserve the manuscripts’. The article also mentioned Father Justin’s observation that ‘the monastery stuck deep in the Sinai mountains was once considered one of the safer places in the Holy Roman Empire. In internet terms, it was a backup server, and they sent their most..........

[marshmallow]

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[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

The only reason St Catherine’s is still standing in the sea of Moslem radicalism is that they have a small mosque built on the wall and I have read that they got a special dispensation from Mohammed or some calif which they have mounted on the wall.

One would think that if this Christian Monastery was given such a dispensation there must be something right with Christianity that Islam does not have, but critical thinking is not known among the ragheads.