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Is Mt. Sinai the Mountain of YEHOVAH? 15

The strange thing is that almost all of the spots that Helena "identified" as holy sites were
previously occupied by some sort of PAGAN structure! "The very place where Jesus himself was
believed [according to Constantine's "dreams"] to have met his death and to have received the
burial that preceded his Resurrection: the Church of the Anastasis or the Holy Sepulchre on Mount
Golgotha, [was built] upon the site of a Jewish burial chamber and beneath A TEMPLE OF
APHRODITE" (Constantine the Great: The Man and His Times, by Michael Grant. P. 202).

Not only that, but while Helena was in Palestine she ordered a church to be built on the spot
where the "cross of Christ" supposedly had been buried! In order to find the "cross," "she had made
inquiries among the local people, who advised her to proceed to a place where 'ancient persecutors'
had built a shrine of the PAGAN GODDESS Aphrodite. STIMULATED BY VISIONS, she or-
dered that the site should be excavated, whereupon, according to St. Ambrose's work On the Death
of Theodosius (De Obitu Theodosii, 395), three crosses were disinterred..." (Ibid., p. 203). One of
these three "crosses" was taken to be the "true" cross on which Christ had met his death and, records
Michael Grant, "in consequence, Helena built a church on the spot."

In the town of Bethlehem a further great ecclesiastical building was constructed on
Constantine's orders. "Its focal point," states Grant, "was the rock-cut grotto, which was supposed
to be the birthplace of Jesus (and PAGAN WOMEN had come there on a fixed date every year to
mourn for the death of Adonis). Over this revered spot, surrounded by a railing, was constructed an
octagonal martyrium" (Ibid., p. 206).

Grant goes on to show that "at Mambre, too (Ramath-el-Khalil, two miles north of Hebron),
where Jesus had taught the disciples, a small church was built at the order of Constantine, shortly
before 330. It adjoined the terebinth or oak tree (known as OGYGES), venerated from very ancient
times..." (Ibid., p. 206).

Helena's flurry of activity in Palestine was soon engulfed in myth; however, the essential
truths of her building campaign have come down to us today. The local Jews, ever open to monetary
rewards for their "service," helped Helena locate, to her own satisfaction, "all the spots where every
important event in the recorded career of Jesus at Jerusalem [and outside the city] supposedly took
place" (Ibid., p. 204). "She arranged," notes Grant, "for each of these places to be dug up, and
promptly identified what was found there to her own satisfaction. The authenticity of these finds,
dating back, as was alleged, to a so much earlier time -- the tomb, Golgotha, the True Cross and the
locations where Jesus was born and ascended to heaven -- has AROUSED SKEPTICISM, which is
hardly surprising."

S. Runciman, in Byzantine Civilisation (1933) critically notes that Helena's thrilling dis-
coveries were made "with miraculous aid seldom now vouchsafed to archaeologists" (p. 26).

The Sinai peninsula was one such place she visited. "The origin of the present Monastery of
Saint Catherine on the NW slope of Jebel Musa is traced back to A.D. 527, when Emperor Justinian
established it on the site where Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, had erected a small church
two centuries earlier." (The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible. Abingdon Press, N.Y. 1962.
P.376).

The Berean Voice September-October 2002