Mount Sinai (, Har Sīnay) 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.Coogan, Michael David. The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures. Oxford University Press, USA, 2017: p. 108. 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; it has never been located. 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 (1873), 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.Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer, p. 41. Several bible critics have indicated that the smoke and fire reference from the Bible suggests that Mount Sinai was a volcano;Peake's commentary on the Bible. 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 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. Also mentioned in most Islamic sources: 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"Jewish Encyclopedia.
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 (60 100 ha / Ref: 954), 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 (d. January 1125), 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 (both meaning "the Mount").. As for the adjacent Wādī Ṭuwā, it is considered muqaddas "sacred",.. and a part of it is called al-Buqʿa al-Mubāraka (, "The Blessed Place").
Other
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.Cheyne and Black, Encyclopedia Biblica.
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 there 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.
Location Original identification Name Region Height (m) Coordinates Year Author Jabal Maqla Tabuk Region, Saudi Arabia 2,326 Jabal al-Lawz Tabuk Region, Saudi Arabia 2,580 1984 Ron Wyatt Hala-'l Badr (volcano) Al Madinah Region, Saudi Arabia 1,692 1911 Alois Musil Mount Serbal South Sinai, Egypt 2,070 Mount Catherine South Sinai, Egypt2,629 Mount Sinai (Jabal Musa) South Sinai, Egypt 2,285 Jabal Ahmad al Baqir Aqaba Governorate, Jordan 1,076 1878 Charles Beke Jebel al-Madhbah Petra, Jordan 1,070 1927 Mount Sin Bishar North Sinai, Egypt 1983 Menashe Har-ElMenashe Har-El, The Sinai Journeys: The Route of the Exodus Mount Helal North Sinai, Egypt 910 Hashem el-Tarif North Sinai, Egypt881 Mount Hermon Anti-Lebanon, Lebanon 2,814 2010 Israel Knohl
Jabal Musa Roman–Jewish 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, [you see that] 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 ("the wide"). 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.