{"id":19360,"date":"2025-09-07T13:34:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=19360"},"modified":"2025-09-07T13:34:49","modified_gmt":"2025-09-07T13:34:49","slug":"egypts-land-grab-threatens-the-worlds-oldest-christian-monastery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=19360","title":{"rendered":"Egypt’s Land Grab Threatens the World’s Oldest Christian Monastery"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“In the sixth century, Christian monks built St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The monastery is believed to be located at the very place where God appeared to Moses via a burning bush. Valuable Christian relics are stored at St. Catherine’s, among them parts of the Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since its inception, the monastery has never been destroyed, but recent efforts by the Egyptian government could effectively end St. Catherine’s independence and inhibit the religious freedom of its monks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In May, a legal ruling by an Egyptian appeals court “affirmed government ownership of land beneath the centuries-old Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai,” although the government stressed that it would not interfere with the monastery’s long-standing autonomy, reports Egyptian Streets. Despite these assurances, the monks of St. Catherine’s protested against the ruling and closed the site to all visitors on June 6.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/08\/22\/egypts-land-grab-threatens-the-worlds-oldest-christian-monastery<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“In the sixth century, Christian monks built St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. The monastery is believed to be located at the very place where God appeared to Moses via a burning bush. Valuable Christian relics are stored at St. Catherine’s, among them parts of the Codex Sinaiticus, which contains the oldest complete copy of the New Testament. <\/p>\n

Since its inception, the monastery has never been destroyed, but recent efforts by the Egyptian government could effectively end St. Catherine’s independence and inhibit the religious freedom of its monks.<\/p>\n

In May, a legal ruling by an Egyptian appeals court “affirmed government ownership of land beneath the centuries-old Saint Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai,” although the government stressed that it would not interfere with the monastery’s long-standing autonomy, reports Egyptian Streets. Despite these assurances, the monks of St. Catherine’s protested against the ruling and closed the site to all visitors on June 6.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/reason.com\/2025\/08\/22\/egypts-land-grab-threatens-the-worlds-oldest-christian-monastery\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[60,1435,1047],"class_list":["post-19360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-christianity","tag-egypt","tag-islam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19363,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19360\/revisions\/19363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}