Benjamin of Sinai

Holy Venerable Martyr Benjamin of Sinai is remembered among the fathers slain in Sinai and Raithu, ascetics of the cells and caves of the mountain where God gave Moses the ten commandments.

The fathers lived in the monasteries and caves of Mount Sinai and of the nearby desert of Raithu, on the shore of the Red Sea, and they suffered at the hands of the Saracens and the Blemmyes, nomadic Arab tribes. The first slaughter took place about the year 312 and was described by the Egyptian monk Ammonius, a witness to the death of forty fathers of Sinai. At that time the Arabs also killed thirty-⁠nine fathers at Raithu. The second slaughter came more than a hundred years later and was described by a witness who escaped by a miracle, Venerable Nilus the Faster (commemorated on 12 November).

The ascetics of Sinai and Raithu led an especially strict life. All week they stayed in their cells in silence, on Saturday they gathered for the vigil, and on Sunday they received the Holy Mysteries. They ate only dates and water. Many were known for the gift of working miracles, among them the elders Moses and Joseph. The service names Isaiah, Sabbas, Moses, his disciple Moses, Jeremiah, Paul, Adam, Sergius, Domnus, Proclus, Hypatius, Isaac, Macarius, Mark, Benjamin, Eusebius and Elijah.

Saint Benjamin is commemorated on 27 January, in the new style, and on 5 May (movable) in the Synaxis of the Venerable Fathers of Sinai.