Mount Sinai (Bible)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 65.199.223.34 (talk) at 16:00, 19 March 2007 (→‎Nabatea). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

For other uses of the name Mount Sinai, see Mount Sinai (disambiguation).
Moses with the Ten Commandments by Rembrandt (1659)

Biblical Mount Sinai refers to the place where in the Hebrew Bible (Exod. 19-20), the Hebrew God, Yaweh, gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. There are many divergent theories of exactly where this may have occurred.

Origin of the Name

The name Sinai may originate from the name of Sin, the lunar deity, as does the Desert of Sin.

Judaism teaches that as soon as the Hebrew people received the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai, they would be hated by the rest of the world for having been the ones to receive the divine word (based on the similarity between the words Sinai and Sin-ah, which means "hatred" in Hebrew).[1]

In the Hebrew Bible, Mount Sinai is also called Mount Horeb and the "Mount of God"; according to the documentary hypothesis, "Sinai" and "Horeb" are the names used by the Jahwist and the Elohist, respectively.

Location

Jewish scholars have long asserted that the exact location of Mount Sinai was unknown.

In the past, the location of the mountain was apparently well-known, as suggested by this description:

“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”. Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, II:12.

The location was also known in the days of King Ahab of Israel, as recounted in the story of Elijah's journey:

"And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God." 1 Kings 19:8.

The location of the mountain was evidently forgotten in later times.

Egypt (Sinai Peninsula)

Musa

Saint Catherine's Monastery

Local tour and religious groups presently advertise Jabal Musa (Arabic: "Mountain of Moses") as the Biblical Mount Sinai described in the Hebrew Bible. This claim goes back to the time of Helena of Constantinople. Two monks claimed to have found the Burning Bush of Moses circa CE 300. This plant can be found today on the grounds of Saint Catherine's Monastery at the base of Musa. 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.

Hashem el-Tarif

The James Cameron-produced History Channel special, The Exodus Decoded, suggests that this location, now in a military zone, is the best candidate for the Biblical Mount Sinai. Not only does it correspond to Biblical geographical clues, but it possesses three important traits described in Exodus:

  1. a cleft that overlooks a natural amphitheatre
  2. evidence of an ancient spring
  3. a plateau below large enough to hold several hundred thousand people and containing enough foliage to sustain large flocks.

If Hashem el Tarif is the "Mount of God", artifacts of the great Israelite encampment may be found in the plateau. (Permission for archaeological excavation must be granted by the Egyptian government, which closely guards and often denies access to any of the locations which may be related to Biblical history.)

Sin Bishar

Located in west-central Sinai, this mountain was proposed to be the biblical Mount Sinai by Menashe Har-El, a biblical geographer at Tel Aviv University, in his book The Sinai Journeys: The Route of the Exodus.

Helal

A mountain in northern Sinai.

Serbal

A mountain in southern Sinai.

Giza

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.

Israel

Har Karkom

Also called Jabal Ideid, this mountain is located in the south-west Negev desert in Israel, north of the Sinai peninsula. Favoured by Emmanuel Anati.[2][3]

Saudi Arabia

al-Lawz

In his book The Gold of Exodus, Howard Blum opts for Jabal al-Lawz[4] [5]. Ron Wyatt has also postulated al-Lawz as Mount Sinai.

al-Manifa

Located 20 kilometres north of Ajnuna near Wadi al-Hrob. As proposed, independently of each other, by Alois Musil and H. Philby.

Hala'l Bedr

Prof. Colin Humphreys has argued in favour of the volcano Hala-'l Badr in his book The Miracles of Exodus, claiming that an erupting volcano would explain many of the phenomena described in Exodus. Jean Koenig also espoused the theory in 1971.

See also: Edomites

Baggir

Proposed by Charles Beke in his 1878 book Sinai in Arabia and of Median, Jebel Baggir is located north-east of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Negev desert. Beke also states that nearby Jebel Ertowa is Mount Horeb. Both are located near Wady Yutm.

Jordan

Nabatea

The last Biblical mention of this place is in the Christian Bible, in Paul of Tarsus's epistle to the Galatians, 4:25: "For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia." From this quotation, it follows that identification of Biblical Mount Sinai with a mountain in the vicinity of Petra, former Nabatean Kingdom capital, in present-day Jordan, is sustainable on grounds of Christian theology, particularly because Paul claims to have been to Arabia following his conversion (Galatians, 1:17), "nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were apostles before me; but I went away to Arabia, and returned once more to Damascus.".

al-Madhbah

Suggested by Ditlef Nielsen. In 1927, he visited Petra, the old Nabatean kingdom capital, in present-day Jordan. He considered Jebel-al-Madhbah (the high place) a strong candidate. This mountain, near Petra, is over a thousand meters high, presents millennia-old rock-excavated ceremonial structures such as a square altar and a round one, an open court able to receive multitudes, a ceremonial pool, and an uphill rock staircase, among other details. Furthermore, it fits well in Apostle Paul's previously referred location of Mount Sinai in Arabia.

Nielsen's proposal has been recently adopted by Collins and Herald in Mercy.

References

  • Blum, Howard. The Gold of Exodus. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Humphreys, Colin. The Miracles of Exodus. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  • Beke, Charles. Sinai in Arabia and of Meida. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)

Further reading

External links

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Judaism.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mount_Sinai_(Bible)&oldid=116281189"