Note 148 — LETTER XXXIII.

Ritter (p. 31), where he mentions that Sinai appears almost simultaneously, as Serbâl, with the Egyptian Cosmas, and as Gebel Mûsa with the Byzantine Procopius, broaches another conjecture, which I shall here quote:—“Was there, perhaps,” says he, “a different tradition or party opinion prevailing in Constantinople and Alexandria on this point among the convents and the monks, which might have arisen from a jealousy to vindicate the more sacred character of one or other of the places? It is curious that at the same time such different views of the question should exist among the most learned theologians of their time.”