St. Catherine’s Monastery isn’t always open to visit but it was today. It is Greek Orthodox and a UNESCO World Heritage Site built on what is reputed to be the site of the Old Testament Burning Bush. St. St. Catherine’s Monastery was constructed in 330 AD and has very rare manuscripts and icons within. UNESCO calles it …the oldest working Christian monastery in the world.

The monastery encloses the Chapel of the Burning Bush, …that burned with fire, and was not consumed…, and the living bush on the grounds is “supposed” to be the original. (That…is very difficult to believe.) There is a very long story about St. Catherine who the Chapel is named after, but the pithy part is what I like best (I have a sick sense of humor). St. Catherine was initially sentenced to death on the wheel for conversions. However, when this failed to kill her, she was beheaded. If that had failed to kill her (think…nearly headless Nick in “Harry Potter”),  what would they have tried next? There is a monastery in Rouen that claims to house Catherine’s fingers and wouldn’t you like to know exactly how many churches, temples and monasteries around the world claim to have “relics” (fingers, toes, hair…) from different saints… Shall we ask “Yahoo”?

St. Catherine’s Monastery seen from trails above in the Sinai Desert
St. Catherine’s library has the second largest collection of early manuscripts in the world, outnumbered only by the Vatican Library, and art. The group looked at the large icon collections with a few daing to 5-6th centuries and mosaics.

learning about St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai 

St. Catherine’s Monastery important center in the Sinai Desert
There was (and I think, still is…) a campground in the area of St. Catherine’s Monastery that we called the “Sinai Hilton”, light years away from what a real Hilton looked like, just rows of cots under a huge tent.