WikiPortallus: Biblical Mount Sinai.html

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.¹ In certain biblical passages these events are described as having transpired at Horeb. Sinai and Horeb are generally considered to refer to the same place although there is a small body of opinion that they refer to different locations².

Passages earlier in the narrative text than the Israelite encounter with Sinai indicate that the ground of the mountain was considered holy,³ but according to the rule of Ein mukdam u'meuchar baTorah (אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה) -- "[There is] not 'earlier' and 'later' in [the] Torah," that is, the Torah is not authored in a chronological fashion, classical biblical commentators regard this as insignificant.⁴ Some modern day scholars, however, who do not recognize the authority of the Oral Law, explain it as having been a sacred place dedicated to one of the Semitic deities, long before the Israelites had ever encountered it.⁵ Some modern biblical scholars regard these laws to have 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.⁶²

In Classical rabbinical literature, Mount Sinai became synonymous with holiness;⁷ indeed, it was said that when the Messiah arrives, God will bring Sinai together with Mount Carmel and Mount Tabor, rebuild the Temple upon the combined mountain, and the peaks would sing a chorus of praise to God.⁸ 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 it⁵; according to the Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, God had chosen Sinai after discovering that it was the lowest mountain.⁹

Etymology

According to Hasidic tradition, the name of Sinai derives from sin-ah (שִׂנְאָה), 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 laws¹⁰. However, according to biblical scholars, Sinai is most likely to derive from the name of Sin, the semitic lunar deity.²⁵⁶ Horeb is thought to mean Glowing/Heat;² this could be a reference to the sun, and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountain of the moon and sun, respectively.⁵²

Other names

Biblical description

According to the Biblical account of the law-giving, Sinai was enveloped in a cloud,¹² it quaked and was filled with smoke,¹³ while lightning-flashes shot forth, and the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet;¹² the account later adds that fire was seen burning at the summit of the mountain¹⁴. Several scholars have indicated that it seems to suggest that Sinai was a volcano⁶, although there is no mention of ash¹⁵; other scholars have suggested that the description fits a storm¹⁵, especially as the Song of Deborah seems to allude to rain having occurred at the time.¹⁶

In the Biblical account, the fire and clouds are a direct consequence of the arrival of God upon the mountain.¹⁷ In a midrash^{citation needed} it is argued that God was accompanied by 22,000 archangels, and 22,000 divine chariots, and in order for all these to fit these onto the mountain, God made the mountain expand from its earlier size¹⁸. The biblical description of God's descent¹⁷ superficially seems to be in conflict with the statement shortly after that God spoke to the Israelites from heaven¹⁹; 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 Sinai²⁰, 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.²¹

Location

Modern scholars differ as to the exact geographical position of Mount Sinai,⁵ 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 Horeb was still known with some certainty, as Elijah is described as travelling to Horeb on one occasion,²² 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, although it should also be noted that the peninsula gained its name from this tradition, and was not called that in Josephus' time or earlier⁵. (The Sinai was earlier inhabited by the Monitu and was called Mafkat or Country of Turquoise.) 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 base²³. Nevertheless, Josephus had stated that Mount Sinai was the highest of all the mountains thereabout,²⁴ which would imply that Mount Catherine was actually the mountain in question, if Sinai was to be sited on the Sinai peninsula at all;⁵ 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^{citation needed}, 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,⁵ 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^{citation needed}. 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.

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 Source⁶²⁵. A number of scholars and commentators have therefore looked towards the more central and northern parts of the Sinai peninsula for the mountain. Mount 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 University²⁶. Mount Helal, in the north of the peninsula has also been proposed^{citation needed}. On the north-east of the peninsula is a mountain named Hashem 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 at the top of the mountain.

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^{citation needed}. 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

Since Moses is described by the Bible as encountering Jethro, a Kenite who was a Midianite priest, shortly before encountering Sinai, this suggests that Sinai would be somewhere near their territory;²⁶ the Kenites and Midianites appear to have resided east of the Gulf of Aqaba²⁶. Additionally, the Song of Deborah, which textual scholars consider one of the oldest parts of the Bible⁶, portrays God as having dwelt at Mount Seir, and seems to suggest that this equates with Mount Sinai¹⁶⁵; Mount Seir designates the mountain range in the centre of Edom.

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 Sinai²⁷; since then, as well as a number of scholars⁶, a number of amateur investigators such as Graham Phillips, Andrew Collins, and Chris Ogilvie-Herald²⁸ have also made the identification. The biblical description of a loud trumpet at Sinai¹² fits the natural phenomena of the loud trumpeting sound caused by wind being funnelled down the Siq^{citation needed}; the local Bedouins refer to the sound as the trumpet of God.^{citation needed} The dramatic biblical descriptions of devouring fire on the summit¹⁴, would fit with the fact that there have been many reports and sightings of plasma phenomena at al-Madhbah over the centuries^{citation needed}; the pre-requisite that storm conditions exist before plasma phenomena usually occur would fit with the storm-like biblical description of thunder, lightning¹², and a thick cloud.²⁹

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 stone³⁰; 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 era³¹. 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 could have been an erupting volcano; this has been suggested by Charles Beke³², Sigmund Freud³³, 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 reasons³²; 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 Ertowa³⁴. 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 1971³⁵, and Colin Humphreys in 2003³⁶, 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^{citation needed}. A number of fundamentalist Christian apologists and untrained pseudoarchaeologists, including Howard Blum³⁷³⁸ and Ron Wyatt, have proposed instead that another volcano adjacent to Al-Manifa named Jabal al-Lawz was the Biblical Sinai. This claim has not been supported by any academically qualified biblical scholars or archaeologists, and indeed one member of the Israel Antiquities Authority described Wyatt's claims as being within the category of trash which one finds in tabloids such as the National Enquirer.³⁹

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 dated 15 Iyar 2448 (Hebrew calendar; 1313 BC)⁴⁰, and the mountain appears to have been abandoned between 1950-1000 BC, Anati proposed that Jabal Idead was equatable with biblical Sinai⁴¹⁴². 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 where the majority of scholars currently place them.

Biblical Mount Sinai.html

Contents

Etymology

Other names

Biblical description

Location

The Sinai Peninsula

Edom/Nabatea

Saudi Arabia

The Negev

See also

References

Sources

Online sources