'Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society, from January 1847 to May 1849. Edited by the Secretary. Volume VIII.' [‎344] (453/496)

declares^ in inspired language—“ Then shall the Lord go forth, and
fight against those nations as when he fought in the day of battle. And
his feet shall stand in that day upon the Mount of Olives ( TO dpos TCOV
eXaiQjv), which is before Jerusalem on the east, and the Mount of Olives
shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east, and toward the west,
and there shall be a very great valley; and half of the mountain shall
remove toward the north, and half of it toward the south.” “ And it
shall be in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half
of them toward the former sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea :
in summer and in winter shall it be.” u All the land shall be turned as
a plain from Oeba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem; and it shall be lifted
up and inhabited in her place.” These remarkable changes in the
physical geography of this part of Palestine have not as yet taken place.
Some commentators have assumed that the prophet’s expressions are
figurative : but I would rather take them in their literal sense, and con
sider them as a prediction of events that remain still to be fulfilled in the
second advent of the Messiah.
The sacred events connected with the history of this remarkable
point in the ridge, as detailed in the New Testament, are too well
known to be touched on here, more especially as they bear no light to
the subject under discussion. The mount is generally styled through
out the New Testament “ opbs tw iXaicbT,” equivalent to the Hebrew
O'nrn nn of the Old Testament, which is literally translated into
Arabic by the Syrian Christians, Gebel Zeitun. j i ^ ra ^ )
author, Edrisi, has also written it thus : but, among the Arab common
people it is generally called at the present day j ^ Gebel
Tur, or with the article a Gebel-et~Tur,” Tur is a name given to
the whole of the mountains forming the peninsula of Sinai. Ibn Hau
kel however writes it Tur Sina: a name which I heard occasionally
used by the Monks and Arabs in the neighbourhood of the Convent o
Mount Sinai. Mounts Tabor and Grerizim, in Samaria, are also called by
the natives Gebd Tur. The word Tur literally signifies a mountain :
though the term is almost confined by the Arabs to sacred or remarka
ble elevations.
That part of the ridge where Solomon built his idol temples, as before
stated, was called the “ Mount of Corruption.”^ According to Biocar
* II. Kings, xxiii. 13. “And the high places that were before Je
rusalem, which were on the right hand of the Mount of Corruption, w i