116
Testament. The missing half of the Old Testament from the Codex has never been
found; the portions surviving include “2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith 1 and 4 Maccabees,
Wisdom and Sirach.”
4
Configurative ideals, nostalgic quadrants, ideas of exile, reunion, and the sheer
scope of human drama that is portrayed by the epic tale of Moses, the Israelites, and the
Christ Passion all figure in our myriad Biblical ideals of paradise. And as David Hume
once expressed, if there is an ideal, it must exist, somewhere, in the universe. This
interpretation, despite the rigorous formalities imposed by numbers and equations, in
human truth suggests a presumed human capacity in touch with the Cosmos, even if
it is only our cosmos, the little one confined to our brains. It may be framed in ancient
languages, pictograms, idioms, and cultural mores long buried in our subconscious.
But, mathematically speaking, those same frames of narrative remain undimmed. A
murky translation over time does not alter or diminish the purity or exactitude that
was embodied the day the words were conceived and written thousands of years ago.
Therein exists the ideal, no less demonstrative and instructive than our ideas of
carbon neutrality, minimum standards, the value of a living organism, or value in
general. A setting, purpose, and compulsion that comport with that very compelling
urge to find a sacred resting place that is both sublime and personal. The romance of
an ideal precludes nearby oil refineries, train tracks, sawmills and city views, and
the acoustical cacophonies of crowds: a site like Mount Sinai or the Flemish
Brigadoons of Jan Breughel and family—isolated to the extent that our conceptual
drift engages in an ideal that is as geographical as it is spiritual.
5
In the case of the Plain of Er-Raha (in the Sinai),
6
the neo-Platonist philosopher
Plotinus (ca. AD 205–70) had been asked by Emperor Gallienus to venture out to
just such a remote region (in this instance, somewhere in the Roman Campania
whose creative center was Naples) and to found something akin to Plato’s Utopia.
It was to be called Platonopolis, an Arcadia—no mere thought experiment—that
should comport with Plato’s highest “form” in a real place: an ideal juxtaposition
Plotinus named spiritual nature.
7
Within a century of Plotinus’ death, several major
changes in northeastern Egyptian culture had rendered Er-Raha and the entire southern Sinai, ripe for an ascetic Renaissance. It would be championed by such anchorites as St. Anthony the Great beneath a mountain at the Gulf of Akaba, not far
from Mount Sinai. Others involved in this resurgence included St. Basil and St.
Ambrose, both of whom celebrated that spiritual nature in demonstrative and lyrical calls of the wild involving the immersion and subsequent transcendence of Self;
St. Augustine, whose own Confessions (ca. AD 399) relayed visions of intoxication
4 http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/content.aspx, Accessed March 11, 2019.
5 See “Jan Brueghel Complete Catalogue,” https://www.janbrueghel.net/page/about-us, Accessed
July 8, 2020.
6 For example, see Frances Frith’s famous, albeit desolate photograph in the Library of Congress,
depicting Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the upper heart of the rocky valley, ca. 1862; https://
www.loc.gov/item/00652982. Accessed March 1, 2019.
7 See “A Night Out In The Sinai,” Chapter One, from A Vision of Nature – Traces of the Original
World, by Michael Tobias, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995, pp. 12–14.
13 Codex Sinaiticus
Testament. The missing half of the Old Testament from the Codex has never been
found; the portions surviving include “2 Esdras, Tobit, Judith 1 and 4 Maccabees,
Wisdom and Sirach.”
4
Configurative ideals, nostalgic quadrants, ideas of exile, reunion, and the sheer
scope of human drama that is portrayed by the epic tale of Moses, the Israelites, and the
Christ Passion all figure in our myriad Biblical ideals of paradise. And as David Hume
once expressed, if there is an ideal, it must exist, somewhere, in the universe. This
interpretation, despite the rigorous formalities imposed by numbers and equations, in
human truth suggests a presumed human capacity in touch with the Cosmos, even if
it is only our cosmos, the little one confined to our brains. It may be framed in ancient
languages, pictograms, idioms, and cultural mores long buried in our subconscious.
But, mathematically speaking, those same frames of narrative remain undimmed. A
murky translation over time does not alter or diminish the purity or exactitude that
was embodied the day the words were conceived and written thousands of years ago.
Therein exists the ideal, no less demonstrative and instructive than our ideas of
carbon neutrality, minimum standards, the value of a living organism, or value in
general. A setting, purpose, and compulsion that comport with that very compelling
urge to find a sacred resting place that is both sublime and personal. The romance of
an ideal precludes nearby oil refineries, train tracks, sawmills and city views, and
the acoustical cacophonies of crowds: a site like Mount Sinai or the Flemish
Brigadoons of Jan Breughel and family—isolated to the extent that our conceptual
drift engages in an ideal that is as geographical as it is spiritual.
5
In the case of the Plain of Er-Raha (in the Sinai),
6
the neo-Platonist philosopher
Plotinus (ca. AD 205–70) had been asked by Emperor Gallienus to venture out to
just such a remote region (in this instance, somewhere in the Roman Campania
whose creative center was Naples) and to found something akin to Plato’s Utopia.
It was to be called Platonopolis, an Arcadia—no mere thought experiment—that
should comport with Plato’s highest “form” in a real place: an ideal juxtaposition
Plotinus named spiritual nature.
7
Within a century of Plotinus’ death, several major
changes in northeastern Egyptian culture had rendered Er-Raha and the entire southern Sinai, ripe for an ascetic Renaissance. It would be championed by such anchorites as St. Anthony the Great beneath a mountain at the Gulf of Akaba, not far
from Mount Sinai. Others involved in this resurgence included St. Basil and St.
Ambrose, both of whom celebrated that spiritual nature in demonstrative and lyrical calls of the wild involving the immersion and subsequent transcendence of Self;
St. Augustine, whose own Confessions (ca. AD 399) relayed visions of intoxication
4 http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/content.aspx, Accessed March 11, 2019.
5 See “Jan Brueghel Complete Catalogue,” https://www.janbrueghel.net/page/about-us, Accessed
July 8, 2020.
6 For example, see Frances Frith’s famous, albeit desolate photograph in the Library of Congress,
depicting Saint Catherine’s Monastery in the upper heart of the rocky valley, ca. 1862; https://
www.loc.gov/item/00652982. Accessed March 1, 2019.
7 See “A Night Out In The Sinai,” Chapter One, from A Vision of Nature – Traces of the Original
World, by Michael Tobias, Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio, 1995, pp. 12–14.
13 Codex Sinaiticus