Mount Sinai (Bible)
Mount Sinai is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to the Hebrew prophet Moses by God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. "Sinai" and "Horeb" are generally considered by biblical scholars to refer to the same place. Mount Sinai is considered one of the most sacred locations by the three major Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The exact geographical position of Mount Sinai described in the Hebrew Bible remains disputed. The high point of the dispute was in the mid-19th century. Biblical texts describe the theophany at Mount Sinai, in terms which a minority of scholars, following Charles Beke, have suggested may literally describe the mountain as a volcano.
Biblical description
The biblical account of the giving of the instructions and teachings of the Ten Commandments was given in the Book of Exodus, primarily between chapters and, during which Sinai is mentioned by name twice, in ; . In the story 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. In the biblical account, the fire and clouds are a direct consequence of the arrival of God upon the mountain. According to the biblical story, Moses departed to the mountain and stayed there for 40 days and nights in order to receive the Ten Commandments, and he did so twice because he broke the first set of the Tablets of Stone after returning from the mountain for the first time.The biblical description of God's descent seems to be in conflict with the statement shortly after that God spoke to the Israelites from Heaven. While biblical scholars argue that these passages are 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. "The heavens" could be a metaphor for clouds and the "lake of fire" could be a metaphor for the lava-filled crater. Several bible critics have indicated that the smoke and fire reference from the Bible suggests that Mount Sinai was a volcano; despite the absence of ash. Other bible 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. According to the biblical account, God spoke directly to the Israelite nation as a whole.
Sinai is mentioned by name in ten other locations in the Torah:,, and. Sinai was also mentioned once by name in the rest of the Hebrew Bible in. In the New Testament, Paul the Apostle referred directly to Sinai in ; 4:25.
Etymology and other names
The oldest reference to Sinai is found on a stele of the 11th Dynasty Egyptian official Khety, who mentions an area called Ṯnht, probably an early transliteration of Sinai.Scholars suggested that Ḥōrēḇ meant "glowing/heat," which seems to be a reference to the sun, while סיני Sinay may have derived from the name of Sin, the Mesopotamian deity of the moon, and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountains of the moon and sun, respectively. However, William F. Albright, an American biblical scholar, has argued:
According to the documentary hypothesis, the name "Sinai" is only used in the Torah by the Jahwist and the Priestly source, whereas Horeb is only used by the Elohist and Deuteronomist. The incongruity between the two names would be resolved, however, if Sinai and Horeb refer to two peaks of the same mountain formation.
In his book Sinai and Zion, American Hebrew Bible scholar Jon D. Levenson discusses the link between Sinai and the burning bush that Moses encountered at Mount Horeb in verses of Exodus. He asserts that the similarity of Sinay and səne is not coincidental; the wordplay might derive "from the notion that the emblem of the Sinai deity was a tree of some sort." identifies YHWH with "the one who dwells in the bush." Consequently, Levenson argues that if the use of "bush" is not a scribal error for "Sinai," Deuteronomy might support the connection between the origins of the word Sinai and tree.
Classical rabbinic literature mentions the mountain having other names:
- Har HaElohim, meaning "the mountain of God" or "the mountain of the gods"
- Har Horeb, see Mount Horeb.
- ṭūr Sīnāʾ and ṭūr Sīnīn are terms that appear in the Quran; they mean "the mount of Sinay".
- Jabal Mūsa, is another term that means "Mountain of Moses"
Religious traditions
Christianity
The earliest references to Mount Sinai in Egypt, or Mount Sinai being located in the present-day Sinai Peninsula, are inconclusive. There is evidence that before 100 CE, well before the Christian monastic period, Jewish sages equated Jabal Musa with Mount Sinai. Graham Davies of the University of Cambridge argues that early Jewish pilgrimages identified Jabal Musa as Mount Sinai so Christian pilgrims adopted this identification. R.K. Harrison states that "Jebel Musa... seems to have enjoyed special sanctity long before Christian times, culminating in its identification with Mt. Sinai." In the 2nd and 3rd centuries BCE, Nabataeans were making pilgrimages there, which is indicated in part by inscriptions discovered in the area. In the 6th century CE, Saint Catherine's Monastery was constructed at the base of this mountain at a site which is believed to be the location of the biblical burning bush.Saint Catherine's Monastery lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of an inaccessible gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai at. The monastery is an autonomous Eastern Orthodox church called the Church of Sinai and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the UNESCO report, Saint Catherine's Monastery is considered to be the oldest working Christian monastery in the world, although the Monastery of Saint Anthony, situated across the Red Sea in the desert south of Cairo, also lays claim to that title.
Christian monks settled upon this mountain in the 3rd century CE. Georgians from the Caucasus moved to the Sinai Peninsula in the 5th century CE, and a Georgian colony was formed there in the 9th century CE. Georgians erected Orthodox churches in the area of Mount Sinai. The construction of one such church was connected with the name of King David IV, who contributed to the erection of Orthodox churches in the Kingdom of Georgia as well as abroad. There were political, cultural, and religious motives for locating the church on Mount Sinai.
Islam
The Sinai Peninsula is associated with Aaron and Moses, who are also regarded as prophets in Islam. In particular, Mount Sinai is mentioned several times in the Quran, where it is called Ṭūr Sīnā’, Ṭūr Sīnīn, and aṭ-Ṭūr and al-Jabal. As for the adjacent Wādī Ṭuwā, it is considered muqaddas "sacred", and a part of it is called al-Buqʿa al-Mubāraka.Some modern biblical scholars explain Mount Sinai as having been a sacred place dedicated to one of the Canaanite deities even before the Israelites encountered it. Others regard the set of divine laws given to Moses on the mountain to have originated in different 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.
Suggested locations
Modern scholars differ as to the exact geographical position of biblical Mount Sinai. 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, but there are no later biblical references to it that suggest the location remained known; Roman–Jewish historian Flavius Josephus specifies that it was "between Egypt and Arabia", and within Arabia Petraea, a Roman province encompassing modern Jordan, southern Syria, the Sinai Peninsula, and northwestern Arabia, with its capital in Petra. The Pauline Epistles are even more vague, specifying only that it was in northern Arabia, which at the time referred to Arabia Petraea. The Sinai Peninsula has traditionally been considered the location of biblical Mount Sinai by Christians, although the peninsula gained its name from this tradition, and was not called that in Josephus' time or earlier.Jabal Musa
historian Flavius Josephus wrote that "Moses went up to a mountain that lay between Egypt and Arabia, which was called Sinai." Josephus says that Sinai is "the highest of all the mountains thereabout", and is "the highest of all the mountains that are in that country, and is not only very difficult to be ascended by men, on account of its vast altitude but because of the sharpness of its precipices". The traditional Mount Sinai, located in the Sinai Peninsula, is actually the name of a collection of peaks, sometimes referred to as the Holy Mountain peaks, which consist of Jabal Musa, Mount Catherine, and Ras Sufsafeh. In the 4th century, a Christian pilgrim woman named Etheria wrote that "the whole mountain group looks as if it were a single peak, but, as you enter the group, there are more than one." The highest mountain peak is Mount Catherine, rising above the sea and its sister peak, Jabal Musa, is not much further behind in height, but is more conspicuous because of the open plain called er Rachah. Mount Catherine and Jabal Musa are both much higher than any mountains in the Sinaitic desert, or in all of Midian. The highest tops in the Tih desert to the north are not much over. Those in Midian, East of Elath, rise only to. Even Jabal Serbal, west of Sinai, is at its highest only above the sea.Some scholars believe that Mount Sinai was of ancient sanctity prior to the ascent of Moses described in the Bible. Scholars have theorized that Sinai in part derived its name from the word for Moon which was "sin". Antoninus Martyr provides some support for the ancient sanctity of Jabal Musa by writing that Arabian heathens were still celebrating moon feasts there in the 6th century. Lina Eckenstien states that some of the artifacts discovered indicate that "the establishment of the moon-cult in the peninsula dates back to the pre-dynastic days of Egypt." She says the main center of Moon worship seems to have been concentrated in the southern Sinai peninsula which the Egyptians seized from the Semitic people who had built shrines and mining camps there. Robinson says that inscriptions with pictures of Moon worship objects are found all over the southern peninsula but are missing on Jabal Musa and Mount Catherine. This oddity may suggest religious cleansing.
Groups of nawamis have been discovered in southern Sinai, creating a kind of ring around Jabal Musa. The nawamis were used over and over throughout the centuries for various purposes. Etheria,, noted that her guides, who were the local "holy men", pointed out these round or circular stone foundations of temporary huts, claiming the children of Israel used them during their stay there.
The southern Sinai Peninsula contains archaeological discoveries but to place them with the exodus from Egypt is a daunting task inasmuch as the proposed dates of the Exodus vary widely. The Exodus has been dated from the early Bronze Age to the late Iron Age II.
Egyptian pottery in the southern Sinai during the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age I periods has been discovered at the mining camps of Serabit el-Khadim and Timna. Objects which bore Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions, the same as those found in Canaan, were discovered at Serabit el Khadim in the Southern Sinai. Several of these were dated in the later Bronze Age. These encampments provide evidence of miners from southern Canaan. The remote site of Serabit el-Khadem was used for a few months at a time, every couple of years at best, more often once in a generation. The journey to the mines was long, difficult and dangerous. Expeditions headed by Professor Mazar examined the tell of Feiran, the principal oasis, of southern Sinai and discovered the site abounded not only in Nabatean sherds but in wheel-burnished sherds typical of the Kingdom of Judah, belonging to Iron Age II.
Edward Robinson insisted that the Plain of ar-Raaha adjacent to Jabal Musa could have accommodated the Israelites. Edward Hull stated that, "this traditional Sinai in every way meets the requirements of the narrative of the Exodus." Hull agreed with Robinson and stated he had no further doubts after studying the great amphitheater leading to the base of the granite cliff of Ras Sufsafeh, that here indeed was the location of the camp and the mount from which the laws of God was delivered to the encampment of Israelites below.
F. W. Holland stated "With regard to water-supply there is no other spot in the whole Peninsula which is nearly so well supplied as the neighborhood of Jabal Musa.... There is also no other district in the Peninsula which affords such excellent pasturage." Calculating the travels of the Israelites, the Bible Atlas states, "These distances will not, however, allow of our placing Sinai farther East than Jabal Musa."
Some point to the absence of material evidence left behind in the journey of the Israelites but Dr. Beit-Arieh wrote, "Perhaps it will be argued, by those who subscribe to the traditional account in the Bible, that the Israelite material culture was only of the flimsiest kind and left no trace. Presumably the Israelite dwellings and artifacts consisted only of perishable materials." Hoffmeier wrote, "None of the encampments of the wilderness wanderings can be meaningful if the Israelites went directly to either Kadesh or Midian... a journey of eleven days from Kadesh to Horeb can be properly understood only in relationship to the southern portion of the Sinai Peninsula."
Local Bedouins who have long inhabited the area have identified Jabal Musa as Mount Sinai. In the 4th century CE small settlements of monks set up places of worship around Jabal Musa. An Egyptian pilgrim named Ammonius, who had in past times made various visits to the area, identified Jabal Musa as the Holy Mount in the 4th century. Empress Helena,, built a church to protect monks against raids from nomads. She chose the site for the church from the identification which had been handed down through generations through the Bedouins. She also reported the site was confirmed to her in a dream.
Egyptologist Julien Cooper has suggested that the name Sinai corresponds with a toponym Ṯnht, attested in the itinerary of an Egyptian official of the 11th Dynasty. He notes that this toponymn was located in the southern parts of the Sinai Peninsula, corresponding with the geographical location of Jabal Musa.
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. 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.