Sinai (Bible)

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Moses smashes the tablets of the law by Rembrandt van Rijn (1659)

The biblical Mount Sinai is the mountain on which, according to biblical tradition, the entire people of Israel witnessed God's revelation and Moses received the Ten Commandments from God . The location of the mountain is unclear, but sometimes it is equated with the so-called Mount Sinai on the peninsula of the same name . But there are also different assumptions about the location of the mountain.

"YHWH - that of Sinai"

In the Debora song, which many exegetes consider to be particularly archaic, there is the formulation: Hebrew זֶה סִינַי zeh sinay ( Ri 4.5  EU , as a quote from the Debora song: Ps 68.9  EU ). Normally, this would translate: “that (is) Sinai” and this formulation should be judged as a scholarly gloss. In Protocanaanite, attested in Ugarit, the translation as a genitive construction “that of Sinai” would also be possible. However, this would also be the case if the Debora song was written earlier in the 10th / 9th Century BC Was already archaic and is therefore philologically improbable according to Wolfgang Oswald's assessment .

Sinai and Horeb

The Horeb ( Hebrew חֹרֶב ḥorev ) is also named in the Pentateuch, especially in the book of Deuteronomy, as the place of divine revelation and legislation, but only once (Ex 33.6) as "Mount Horeb". Since Hebrew חֹרֶב ḥorev otherwise means "wasteland", an appellative may subsequently have been understood as a place name. In any case, the authors of the Septuagint understood Horeb as a place name, and therefore did not translate, but transcribed the Hebrew: ancient Greek Χωρηβ Chōrēb .

Theological significance of the mountain in Judaism

Jewish tradition emphasizes that both the oral and the written doctrine ( Torah ) were given to Moses by God on Sinai . Mount Sinai is considered to be the site of the event of the mass revelation of God to the Jewish people , especially the gift of the Ten Commandments, e.g. B. 2 Mos 34  LUT .

The exact location of the biblical Mount Sinai was not handed down in Judaism and there is no evidence of a cultic complex near the place of Revelation comparable to the various shrines of Israel mentioned in the Torah.

Ancient localizations and pilgrimage traditions

The oldest localization, which dates back to Hellenistic Judaism, localized Mount Sinai east of the Gulf of Aqaba in what is now Saudi Arabia. So the Jewish historian Demetrios, who wrote in Ptolemaic Alexandria . Although he did not mention the mountain directly, it appears from his description of Moses' stay in Midian that he suspected Mount Sinai to be east of the Gulf of Aqaba. Pompey Trogus and Flavius ​​Josephus also located the area of ​​Midian in this region, but had only vague ideas about where Mount Sinai should be (according to Josephus, the highest mountain in the area). This localization is also assumed in Gal 4,25  EU .

When this area was lost to the Roman Empire, the Christian Sinai tradition shifted to the area west of the Gulf of Aqaba, i. H. to the south of the Sinai Peninsula. Christian pilgrimage traditions can be traced here since the 4th century, first with Evagrius Ponticus and Nilus .

Egeria traveled to the Sinai massif on an already established pilgrimage route that led through Wadi Mukattab , Wadi Feran and Wadi Sulaf . In Wadi ar-Raha the pilgrims were shown the "pleasure graves" ( Num 11,31-35  EU ), probably Nawamis near Naqb al-Hawa , and a little further on some ruins as the "camp of the Israelites." Their goal was the Ǧabal Mūsā ( "Moseberg").

Egeria wrote: “The mountain itself appears to be one from the outside, but inside, when you go in (that is, when you come closer) there are several - but the whole is called the mountain of God. That particular (mountain), however, on the top of which is the place where the glory of God descended, ... lies in the middle of all. ”Their night quarters were the monastic settlement of Der al-Arbaʿin in the Wadi al-Laǧa . From there she undertook the ascent of the Moseberg early in the morning. At the top there was a church and a cave, which was shown to her as the abode of Moses. After the service, Egeria and her companions climbed down from the Moseberg again and climbed a neighboring mountain (probably Ǧabal Safsāfa ), which she called Horeb, where Elijah was in a cave ( 1 Kings 19.9  EU ). There was also a church here. At the end of the one-day mountain hike, Egeria reached the previous building of St. Catherine's Monastery in the evening , where she saw the thorn bush mentioned in Ex 3 : "But this thorn bush lives and branches to this day." It was in a "very graceful garden with the best water in abundance" , next to a church.

Modern attempts at identification

The missionary Ludwig Schneller said in 1910 that Mount Serbal had the best agreement with the biblical tradition. This concerns both the travel route described in the Pentateuch, the travel speed possible at that time, as well as the surroundings of this mountain, the Pharan oasis . Likewise, numerous inscriptions carved into the rock indicate that this mountain was viewed by Christian pilgrims as Mount Sinai in the first centuries.

Alois Musil was the first to describe the Hala-'l Badr volcano , which he initially identified with Mount Sinai (but no longer when his research trip was published in 1926). William John Pythian-Adams also represented this location in 1930. An important argument was for that older research stated in Dtn 1,2 that the Horeb was 11 days' journey from Kadesch-Barnea . The daily workload for a trip in the northern Hejaz could be estimated at 45–55 km, and that would bring you to the area of ​​Hala-'l Badr. The isolated location in a relatively fertile plain, the unusual shape (black volcanic cone on a gray table mountain) and its taboo status or its tradition as a place of worship for the local population spoke in favor of this volcano.

Other mountains are also identified with Mount Sinai:

The plausibility of such identifications depends on the interpretation of the Exodus event and the 40-year desert wandering of the people of Israel, which is handed down in the Bible.

literature

  • Hartmut Gese : Τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ (Gal 4,25) . In: Fritz Maass (Ed.): The near and the distant word . Festschrift for Leonard Rost (BZAW 105), Berlin 1967, pp. 81–94.
  • Stephen C. Carlson, “For Sinai is a Mountain in Arabia”: A Note on the Text of Gal 4,25 . In: Journal for New Testament Science and the News of the Older Church 1/2014, pp. 80-101. ( PDF )
  • Paul Maiberger: Topographical and historical studies on the Sinai problem (= Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis . Volume 54). University Press Freiburg and Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Freiburg / CH and Göttingen 1984. ( PDF )

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “If you ask: What was it like when the people stood at Sinai and heard the voice of God? - then the answer must be: Like no other event in human history. There are countless legends , myths , reports - but nowhere else is there any news that an entire people witnessed an event like that of Sinai. ”From: Abraham Joshua Heschel : God seeks man. A Philosophy of Judaism ; in: Zehuda Aschkenasy, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich and Heinz Kremers (eds.): Information Judentum , Volume 2; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1992; P. 146
    “ According to rabbinical legend, the Lord came to every tribe and nation and offered them the Torah before giving it to Israel. The miracle of acceptance by Israel was just as crucial as the miracle of God's gift. God was alone in the world before Israel made a pledge to Him. In Sinai God revealed his word, and Israel revealed his power to answer. ”From: Abraham Joshua Heschel : God seeks man. A Philosophy of Judaism ; in: Zehuda Aschkenasy, Ernst Ludwig Ehrlich and Heinz Kremers (eds.): Information Judentum , Volume 2; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1992, pp. 199ff
  2. ↑ Hartmut Gese: Τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ (Gal 4,25) , Berlin 1967, p. 88 f.
  3. ↑ Hartmut Gese: Τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ (Gal 4,25) , Berlin 1967, pp. 88-91.
  4. ↑ Hartmut Gese: Τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ (Gal 4,25) , Berlin 1967, p. 93.
  5. ^ Egeria: Itinerarium / travel report . With excerpts from Petrus Diaconus : De Locis sanctis / The holy places . Translated and explained by Georg Röwekamp (= Fontes Christiani . Volume 20). 3rd, revised edition Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2017, p. 113 f. 334.
  6. ^ Egeria: Itinerarium / travel report . With excerpts from Petrus Diaconus : De Locis sanctis / The holy places . Translated and explained by Georg Röwekamp (= Fontes Christiani. Volume 20). 3rd, revised edition Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2017, p. 117.
  7. ^ Egeria: Itinerarium / travel report . With excerpts from Petrus Diaconus : De Locis sanctis / The holy places . Translated and explained by Georg Röwekamp (= Fontes Christiani. Volume 20). 3rd, revised edition Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2017, p. 121.
  8. ^ Egeria: Itinerarium / travel report . With excerpts from Petrus Diaconus : De Locis sanctis / The holy places . Translated and explained by Georg Röwekamp (= Fontes Christiani. Volume 20). 3rd, revised edition Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2017, p. 125.
  9. ^ Egeria: Itinerarium / travel report . With excerpts from Petrus Diaconus : De Locis sanctis / The holy places . Translated and explained by Georg Röwekamp (= Fontes Christiani. Volume 20). 3rd, revised edition Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 2017, p. 129.
  10. ↑ D. Ludwig Schneller: Through the desert to Sinai. Commission publisher by HG Wallmann, Leipzig 1910, p. 189
  11. ↑ D. Ludwig Schneller: Through the desert to Sinai. Commission publisher by HG Wallmann, Leipzig 1910, p. 148
  12. ↑ Hartmut Gese: Τὸ δὲ Ἁγὰρ Σινᾶ ὄρος ἐστὶν ἐν τῇ Ἀραβίᾳ (Gal 4,25) , Berlin 1967, pp. 81–84.