Thus there were many high places in Palestine, and there was much disputing as to which should have the pre-eminence, the jealousy reaching its height in the later centuries in the rival claims of Gerizim and Jerusalem. No final solution was possible excepting that which Jesus Christ gave to the woman of Samaria. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and truth: for such doth the Father seek to be his worshippers. God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John iv. 23). Local centres lose their special sanctity because “every place is holy ground.” The Temple at Jerusalem might be destroyed--probably soon would be--but within a marvellously short period the spiritual temple would take form. For such true teaching Jesus Christ was crucified and Stephen stoned.
It was a matter of much interest to Major Conder to find out if possible where the mountain of the scape-goat was situated. According to the Law of Moses the scape-goat was led to the wilderness, and there set free. “This was not, however, the practice of the later Jews. A scape-goat had once come back to Jerusalem, and the omen was thought so bad that the ordinary custom was modified, to prevent the recurrence of such a calamity. The man who led the goat arrived at a high mountain called Sook, and there was at this place a rolling slope, down which he pushed the unhappy animal, which was shattered to atoms in the fall.” The district where this was done was called Hidoodim, and the high mountain Sook. Sook was 6½ English miles from Jerusalem, as reckoned by the ten tabernacles which divided the messenger’s path into stages of 2000 cubits. Conder identifies the place in the neighbourhood of the convent of St Saba. At the required distance from Jerusalem is the great hill of _El Muntâr_, the highest point of a ridge of mountains running north and south. The rest of the ridge is called _El Hadeidûn_; and beside the ancient road from Jerusalem is a well called _Sûk_. From this high ridge the victim was yearly rolled down into the narrow valley beneath, at the entrance of the great desert, which first unfolded itself before the eyes of the messenger as he gained the summit half a mile beyond the well of Sûk.