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 Photo from the summit of Mount Sinai,
taken by Ian Sewell in
December 2004
(larger image) ], also known as "Gebel Musa" or "Jabal Musa" by the Bedouins, is the name of a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula. It is 2,629 m metres high[3] and is located in a mountain range in the southern part of the peninsula. It is near a protruding lower bluff known as the Ras Sasafeh (Sufsafeh), and rises almost perpendicularly from the plain, the tallest peak on the Sinai peninsula[4].[2]
The Biblical Mount Sinai is an ambiguously located mountain at which the Hebrew Bible states that the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. In certain biblical passages these events are described as having transpired at Horeb, but though there is a small body of opinion that Sinai and Horeb were different locations, they are generally considered to have been different names for the same place.
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Judaism teaches that as soon as the Jewish people received the Bible at Mt. Sinai, they would be hated by the rest of the world for having been the ones to receive divine word (a state of affairs presented as a pun: Sinai as Seen-ah, which means hatred). The area was reached by the Hebrews in the third month after the Exodus. Here they remained encamped for about a year. The last twenty-two chapters of Exodus, together with the whole of Leviticus and Numbers ch. 1-11, contain a record of all the transactions which occurred while they were at Mount Sinai. |
 A Greek Orthodox Chapel at the
top of Mount Sinai
(larger image)
From Rephidim (Hebrew רפידים Rĕphiydiym), "rests" or "stays" or "resting places", a station of Israel in the wilderness between Egypt and Sinai
(Ex. 17:8-13) the Israelites journeyed to "the desert of Sinai," and encamped there "before the mountain."In the Bible, Mt. Sinai is also called Mt. Horeb and the "Mount of God".
Jewish scholars have long asserted that the exact location of Mount Sinai was unknown, the reason being that its location was purposefully terra incognita.
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“taking his station at the mountain called Sinai, he drove his flocks thither to feed them. Now this is the highest of all the mountains thereabout, and the best for pasturage, the herbage being there good; and it had not been before fed upon, because of the opinion men had that God dwelt there, the shepherds not daring to ascend up to it”.
-Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book II, Chapter 12. |
 Sinai Peninsula,
showing location
of Jabal MusaThe location was also known in the days of Ahab, King of Israel, as is recounted in the story of Elijah's journey:
8 And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God.
1 Kings 19:8.
The location of the mountain was evidently later forgotten. |
 Moses Smashing the Tablets of
the Law, 1659, Oil on canvas,
169 x 137 cm, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin. Artist: REMBRANDT
Harmenszoon van Rijn
(larger image)Since a passage earlier in the narrative than the Israelite encounter with Sinai indicates that the ground of the mountain was considered holy, biblical scholars regard it as having been a sacred place dedicated to one of the Semitic deities, long before the Israelites had ever encountered it. Additionally, biblical scholars regards these laws as having originated in different time periods from one another, with the later ones mainly being the result of natural evolution over the centuries of the earlier ones, rather than all originating from a single moment in time.
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In Classical rabbinical literature, Mount Sinai became synonymous with holiness; indeed, it was said that when the Messiah arrived, God would bring Sinai together with Mount Carmel and Mount Tabor, build the temple upon the combined mountain, and the peaks would sing a chorus of praise to God. According to early aggadic Midrash, Tabor and Carmel had previously been jealous of Sinai having been chosen as the place that the laws were delivered, but were told by God that they had not been chosen because only Sinai had not had idols placed upon it; according to the Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, God had chosen Sinai after discovering that it was the lowest mountain.
Names
According to Hasidic tradition, the name of Sinai derives from sin-ah, meaning hatred, in reference to the other nations hating the Jews out of jealousy, due to the Jews being the ones to receive the divine laws. However, according to biblical scholars, Sinai is most likely to derive from the name of Sin, the semitic lunar deity. Horeb is thought to mean Glowing/Heat; this seems to be a reference to the sun, and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountain of the moon and sun, respectively. According to textual scholars, the name Sinai is only used in the Torah by the Jahwist and Priestly Source, wheras Horeb is only used by the Elohist and Deuteronomist.
Classical rabbinical literature mentions that the mountain had other names:
- Har ha-Elohim, meaning the mountain of God or the mountain of the gods
- Har Bashan, meaning the mountain of Bashan; however, Bashan is interpreted in rabbinical literature as here being a corruption of beshen, meaning with the teeth, and argued to refer to the sustenance of mankind through the virtue of the mountain
- Har Gebnunim, meaning the mountain as pure as cheese
Biblical description
According to the Biblical account of the law-giving, Sinai was enveloped in a cloud, it quaked and was filled with smoke, while lightning-flashes shot forth, and the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet; the account later adds that fire was seen burning at the summit of the mountain. Several scholars have indicated that it seems to suggest that Sinai was a volcano, although there is no mention of ash; other scholars have suggested that the description fits a storm, especially as the Song of Deborah seems to allude to rain having occurred at the time, with the fire possibly being some natural plasma effect.
In the Biblical account, the fire and clouds are a direct consequence of the arrival of God upon the mountain. In a midrash it is argued that God was accompanied by 22000 archangels, and 22000 divine chariots, and in order for all these to fit these onto the mountain, God made the mountain expand from its earlier size. The biblical description of God's descent superficially seems to be in conflict with the statement shortly after that God spoke to the Israelites from heaven; while textual scholars argue that these passages simply have come from different sources, the Mekhilta argues that God had lowered the heavens and spread them over Sinai, and the Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer argues that a hole was torn in the heavens, and Sinai was torn away from the earth and the summit pushed through the hole.
Biblical References
Sinai
- Exd 16:1 They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.
- Exd 19:1 On the third new moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt, on that day they came into the wilderness of Sinai.
- Exd 19:2 They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain,
- Exd 19:11 "and be ready for the third day. For on the third day the Lord will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
- Exd 19:18 Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because the Lord had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly.
- Exd 19:20 The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.
- Exd 19:23 And Moses said to the Lord , "The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for you yourself warned us, saying, 'Set limits around the mountain and consecrate it.'"
- Exd 24:16 The glory of the Lord dwelt on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day he called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.
- Exd 31:18 And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.
- Exd 34:2 "Be ready by the morning, and come up in the morning to Mount Sinai, and present yourself there to me on the top of the mountain.
- Exd 34:4 So Moses cut two tablets of stone like the first. And he rose early in the morning and went up on Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand two tablets of stone.
- Exd 34:29 When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.
- Exd 34:32 Afterward all the people of Israel came near, and he commanded them all that the Lord had spoken with him in Mount Sinai.
- Lev 7:38 which the Lord commanded Moses on Mount Sinai, on the day that he commanded the people of Israel to bring their offerings to the Lord , in the wilderness of Sinai.
- Lev 25:1 The Lord spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, saying,
- Lev 26:46 These are the statutes and rules and laws that the Lord made between him and the people of Israel through Moses on Mount Sinai.
- Lev 27:34 These are the commandments that the Lord commanded Moses for the people of Israel on Mount Sinai.
- Num 1:1 The Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tent of meeting, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,
- Num 1:19 as the Lord commanded Moses. So he listed them in the wilderness of Sinai.
- Num 3:1 These are the generations of Aaron and Moses at the time when the Lord spoke with Moses on Mount Sinai.
- Num 3:4 But Nadab and Abihu died before the Lord when they offered unauthorized fire before the Lord in the wilderness of Sinai, and they had no children. So Eleazar and Ithamar served as priests in the lifetime of Aaron their father.
- Num 3:14 And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, saying,
- Num 9:1 And the Lord spoke to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the first month of the second year after they had come out of the land of Egypt, saying,
- Num 9:5 And they kept the Passover in the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, at twilight, in the wilderness of Sinai; according to all that the Lord commanded Moses, so the people of Israel did.
- Num 10:12 and the people of Israel set out by stages from the wilderness of Sinai. And the cloud settled down in the wilderness of Paran.
- Num 26:64 But among these there was not one of those listed by Moses and Aaron the priest, who had listed the people of Israel in the wilderness of Sinai.
- Num 28:6 "It is a regular burnt offering, which was ordained at Mount Sinai for a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord .
- Num 33:15 And they set out from Rephidim and camped in the wilderness of Sinai.
- Num 33:16 And they set out from the wilderness of Sinai and camped at Kibroth-hattaavah.
- Deu 33:2 He said, "The Lord came from Sinai and dawned from Seir upon us; he shone forth from Mount Paran; he came from the ten thousands of holy ones, with flaming fire at his right hand.
- Jdg 5:5 "The mountains quaked before the Lord , even Sinai before the Lord , the God of Israel.
- Neh 9:13 "You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments,
- Psa 68:8 the earth quaked, the heavens poured down rain, before God, the One of Sinai, before God, the God of Israel.
- Psa 68:17 The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, thousands upon thousands; the Lord is among them; Sinai is now in the sanctuary.
- Act 7:30 "Now when forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in a flame of fire in a bush.
- Act 7:38 "This is the one who was in the congregation in the wilderness with the angel who spoke to him at Mount Sinai, and with our fathers. He received living oracles to give to us.
- Gal 4:24 Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar.
- Gal 4:25 Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
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Location
Modern scholars differ as to the exact geographical position of Mount Sinai, and the same has long been true of scholars of Judaism. The location intended would obviously have been known at some point, and the Elijah narrative appears to suggest that when it was written, the location of Mount Horeb was still known with some certainty, as Elijah is described as travelling to Horeb on one occasion, but there are no later biblical references to it that suggest the location remained known; Josephus only specifies that it was within Arabia Petraea, and the Pauline Epistles are even more vague, specifying only that it was in Arabia, which covers most of the south-western Middle east.
The Sinai Peninsula
The Sinai peninsula has traditionally been considered Sinai's location by Christians[2], although it should also be noted that the peninsula gained its name from this tradition, and was not called that in Josephus' time or earlier. In early Christian times, a number of anchorites settled on Mount Serbal, considering it to be the biblical mountain, and in the 4th century a monastery was constructed at its base[5]. Nevertheless, Flavius Josephus had stated that Mount Sinai was the highest of all the mountains thereabout, which would imply that Mount Catherine was actually the mountain in question, if Sinai was to be sited on the Sinai peninsula at all; in the 6th century, Saint Catherine's Monastery was constructed at the base of this mountain, leading to the abandonment of the monastery at Serbal, and two monks, allegedly in 300 AD, claimed that one of the bushes in the monastic grounds was the biblical Burning Bush, and according to monastic tradition this bush still survives (rather than another having grown in its place).
Unlike these Christian traditions, bedouin tradition considered Jabal Musa, which lies adjacent to Mount Catherine, to be the biblical mountain, and it is this mountain that local tour groups and religious groups presently advertise as the biblical Mount Sinai; this claim goes back to the time of Helena of Constantinople]. Evidently this view was eventually taken up by Christian groups as well, as in the 16th century a church was constructed at the peak of this mountain, which was replaced by a Greek Orthodox chapel in 1954. The chapel supposedly encloses the rock from which God made the Tablets of the Law.[6]
According to textual scholars, in the JE version of the Exodus narrative, the Israelites travel in a roughly straight line to Kadesh Barnea from the Yam Suph (literally meaning "the Reed Sea", but considered traditionally to refer to the Red Sea), and the detour via the south of the Sinai peninsula is only present in the Priestly Source. A number of scholars and commentators have therefore looked towards the more central and northern parts of the Sinai peninsula for the mountain. Sin Bishar, in the west-central part of the peninsula, was proposed to be the biblical Mount Sinai by Menashe Har-El, a biblical geographer at Tel Aviv University. Mount Helal, in the north of the peninsula has also been proposed]. On the north-east of the peninsula is a mountain named Hasham el-Tarif, which The Exodus Decoded (a James Cameron-produced History Channel special) suggested was the correct location because in addition to its geographic site, it also has certain other features that make it suitable; there is a cleft that overlooks a natural amphitheatre at which the Israelites could have been addressed by Moses; there is a nearby plateau on which the large numbers of Israelites could camp, with enough foliage for their flocks to graze; and there is evidence of an ancient spring.
All of these locations are within modern Egypt, preventing archaeological excavation for any further evidence that might be present, because the Egyptian government closely guards, and often denies access to, any of the locations which may be related to Biblical history. In the case of Hasham el-Tarif, there is the additional obstacle that it is very near the border with Israel, and thus is in a highly sensitive military zone.
Edom/Nabatea
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 A first glimpse of the Treasury (al-Khazneh) when travelling through the Siq in Petra, Jordan.
Author: David Bjorgen
(larger image)Based on a number of local names and features, in 1927 Ditlef Nielsen identified the Jebel al-Madhbah (meaning mountain of the Altar) at Petra as being identical to the biblical Mount Sinai; since then, as well as a number of scholars, a number of unqualified amateur investigators such as Graham Phillips, Andrew Collins, and Chris Ogilvie-Herald have also made the identification. The biblical description of a loud trumpet at Sinai fits the natural phenomena of the loud trumpeting sound caused by wind being funnelled down the Siq; the local Bedouins refer to the sound as the trumpet of God. The dramatic biblical descriptions of devouring fire on the summit, would fit with the fact that there have been many reports and sightings of plasma phenomona at al-Madhbah over the centuries; the pre-requisite that storm conditions exist before plasma phenomona usually occur would fit with the storm-like biblical description of thunder, lightning, and a thick cloud.
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The valley in which Petra resides is known as the Wadi Musa, meaning valley of Moses, and at the entrance to the Siq is the Ain Musa, meaning spring of Moses; the 13th century Arab chronicler Numari stated was Ain Musa was the location where Moses had brought water from the ground, by striking it with his rod. The Jebel al-Madhbah was evidently considered particularly sacred, as the well known ritual building known as The Treasury is carved into its base, the mountain top is covered with a number of different altars, and over 8 metres of the original peak were carved away to leave a flat surface with two 8 metre tall obelisks sticking out of it; these obelisks, which frame the end of the path leading up to them, and are now only 6 metres tall, have lead to the mountain being colloquially known as Zibb 'Atuf, meaning penis of love in Arabic. Archaeological artifacts discovered at the top of the mountain indicate that it was once covered by polished shiny blue slate, fitting with the biblical description of paved work of sapphire stone; biblical references to sapphire are considered by scholars to be unlikely to refer to the stone called sapphire in modern times, as sapphire had a different meaning, and wasn't even mined, before the Roman era. Unfortunately, the removal of the original peak has destroyed most other archaeological remains from the late Bronze age (the standard dating of the Exodus) that might previously have been present.
Saudi Arabia
Instead of plasma effects, another possible naturalistic explanation of the biblical devouring fire is that Sinai Immanuel Velikovskyhave been an erupting volcano; this has been suggested by Charles Beke, Sigmund Freud, and Immanuel Velikovsky, among others. This possibility would exclude all the peaks on the Sinai peninsula and Seir, but would make a number of locations in north western Saudi Arabia reasonable candidates. In 1873, Charles Beke proposed that Sinai was the Jabal al-Nour (meaning mountain of light), a volcanic mountain at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, and which has great significance in Islam for other reasons; Beke died during the following year, but posthumously retracted this identification four years later in favour of Jebel Baggir, with Horeb being argued to be a different mountain - the nearby Jebel Ertowa. Beke's suggestions have not found as much scholarly support as the candidature of Hala-'l Badr; the equation of Sinai with Hala-'l Badr has been advocated by Alois Musil in the early 20th century, Jean Koenig in 1971, and Colin Humphreys in 2003, among others.
Assuming that Hrob is a corruption of Horeb, in the early 20th century Alois Musil and H. Philby independently proposed that Al-Manifa, near the Wadi al-Hrob in north western Saudi Arabia, was Mount Sinai]. A number of Christian apologists, including Howard Blum and Ron Wyatt, have proposed instead that another volcano adjacent to Al-Manifa named Jabal al-Lawz was the Biblical Sinai.
The Negev
While equating Sinai with Petra would indicate that the Israelites journeyed in roughly a straight line from Egypt via Kadesh Barnea, and locating Sinai in Saudi Arabia would suggest Kadesh Barnea was skirted to the south, some scholars have wondered whether Sinai was much closer to the vicinity of Kadesh Barnea itself. Half way between Kadesh Barnea and Petra is Jabal Ideid, which Emmanuel Anati excavated, and discovered to have been a major paleolithic cult centre, with the surrounding plateau covered with shrines, altars, stone circles, stone pillars, and over 40,000 rock engravings; although the peak of religious activity at the site dates to 2350-2000 BC, the exodus is usually dated between 1600-1200 BC, and the mountain appears to have been abandoned between 1950-1000 BC, Anati proposed that Jabal Idead was equatable with biblical Sinai. Other scholars have criticised this identification, as, in addition to being almost 1000 years too early, it also appears to require the wholesale relocation of the Midianites, Amalekites, and other ancient peoples, from the locations that the majority of scholars currently place them at.
Lower Egypt
Ralph Ellis, in his books Tempest and Exodus and Solomon, Falcon of Sheba, asserts that the Great Pyramid of Giza is the actual Mount Sinai, and that the Ancient Israelites, in their avoidance of anything Egyptian, re-identified it. His theory is based on the ideas that Moses was commanded into the mountain (inside the Pyramid), and that Sinai is described as being a 'mountain in the desert'.
Note: Mount Horeb, according to
(Galatians 4:25), is in Arabia and that Horeb is the same as Sinai( Agar) And Moses's father was living in Arabia close to Mount Horeb, the Holy Mountain of God, the same mountain as the burning bush.
Local tour and religious groups presently advertise Mount Jabal Musa (Arabic: "Mountain of Moses") in the Sinai Desert as the Biblical Mount Sinai described in the Tanakh
(Hebrew Bible, Old Testament). However, there is a considerable weight of historical counter-evidence to support the view that Jabal Musa and the Biblical Mount Sinai are not the same. Other sites have been suggested, with Menashe Har-El claiming that some 13 sites have been named.
Notes
- « "The affinity between the Hebrew language and the Celtic : being a comparison between Hebrew and the Gaelic language, or the Celtic of Scotland" Library of Scotland, 1872. Retrieved 10/18/2009
- « Joseph J. Hobbs, Mount Sinai (University of Texas Press) 1995, discusses Mount Sinai as geography, history, ethnology and religion.
- « "Mount Catherine" at Answers.com". Retrieved 10/18/2009
- « "Sinai Geology". AllSinai.info. Retrieved 10/18/2009
- « "Mount Sinai". AllSinai.info. Retrieved 10/18/2009
- « "Mount Sinai, Egypt". Places of Peace and Power. Retrieved 10/18/2009
- « Blue Letter Bible. Dictionary and Word Search for Sinai in the ESV. Blue Letter Bible. 1996-2009. Retrieved 10/18/2009
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