Cosmas Indicopleustes, finally, who travelled in the peninsula about the year 535, just before the building of the church by Justinian, goes from Raithu, i. e. Tor, which he takes for Elim, although he finds but _few palms_ there (the plantations at that place are therefore younger) by the present Wadi Hebrân to Raphidîm, which is now called Pharan. Here he was at the end of his Sinai journey. Hence Moses went with the elders “to the Mountain Choreb,” i.e. Sinai, which was distant from Pharan about 6,000 paces (one and a half miles), and struck the water from the rock; here was the ark of the covenant built and the law given, by which the Israelites obtained writing, and had time to learn it at their leisure, from which the numerous rock inscriptions come which are still found in that wilderness, particularly at Serbâl. (Εἵτα κάλιν παρενέβαλον εἰς Ῥαφιδίν, εἰς τὴν νὔν καλουμένην Φαράν καὶ διψευσάντων αὐτῶν, πορεύεται κατὰ πρόσταξιν Θεοϋ ὁ Μωϋσῆς μετὰ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων καὶ ἡ ῥαβδὸς ἐν τῇ χειρὶ αὐτοϋ, εἰς Χωρὴβ τὸ ὄρος, τουτέστιν ἐν τῷ Σιναΐῳ, ἐγγὺς ὄντι τῆς Φαρὰν ὡς ἀκὸ μιλίων ἔξ.) (Barckhardt [_Trav. in Syr._ p. 611] required when he descended Serbâl, from its foot to west Faran, 2½ hours,) καὶ ἑκεϊ πατάξαντος τὴν πέτραν, ἐῤῥύησεν ὔδατα πολλὰ καὶ ἔπιεν ὁ λαὸς. Λοιπὸν κατεληλυθότος αὐτοϋ ἐκ τοϋ ὄους προστάττεται ὑπὸ τοϋ θεοϋ ποιεϊν τὴν σκηνήν, etc. _Topograph. Christ. lib. V._ in the _Coll. nova patr. ed. B. de Montfaucon tom. ii. p. 195 sqq._ This testimony of the unpretending traveller is just as clear as it is certain and unsuspicious. In the beginning of the sixth century there was thus the belief after this eye-witness that the law was given on Serbâl. Cosmas is in so little doubt about it, that he does not mention the southern mountain at all. We must also conclude that the monks had extended themselves over the whole mountain, and particularly over the guarded region about the Gebel Mûsa. That among the monks of the place another opinion arose, according to which Moses turned southward, instead of northward, from the height of Wadi Hebrân (for, to take Elim for Raithu remained the decided opinion, as preserved by the convent there) is not at all to be wondered; such confusions are very frequent in Christian topography. But how narrowly Horeb and Sinai, Raphidîm and the Mount of the Law, are connected together, is again shown in the fact, that with Sinai the rock of water went southward. The monks did not allow themselves to be hindered, by the verses in the beginning of the nineteenth chapter, from transporting that rock of Raphidîm, and consequently Raphidîm itself, as also the thorn-bush of Horeb, to Gebel Mûsa, their new Sinai; there it is yet shown, for the astonishment of travellers in Wadi Lega (Robinson, vol. i. p. 184). Thus in this point the unlearned monkish notion that Raphidîm was near Sinai came closer to the truth than the new criticism.