Mount Sinai (Bible)

In the story Sinai was enveloped in a cloud,[7] it quaked and was filled with smoke,[8] while lightning-flashes shot forth, and the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet;[7] the account later adds that fire was seen burning at the summit of the mountain.

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.

[23] Classical rabbinic literature mentions the mountain having other names:[citation needed] Also mentioned in most Islamic sources: The earliest Christian traditions place this event at the nearby Mount Serbal, at the foot of which a monastery was founded in the 4th century; it was only in the 6th century that the monastery moved to the foot of Mount Catherine, following the guidance of Josephus' earlier claim that Sinai was the highest mountain in the area.

Graham Davies of the University of Cambridge argues that early Jewish pilgrimages identified Jabal Musa as Mount Sinai so Christian pilgrims adopted this identification.

[29][30] R.K. Harrison states that "Jebel Musa ... seems to have enjoyed special sanctity long before Christian times, culminating in its identification with Mt. Sinai.

Some of the Georgian manuscripts of Sinai remain there, but others are kept in Tbilisi, Saint Petersburg, Prague, New York City, Paris, or in private collections.

[36] As for the adjacent Wādī Ṭuwā, it is considered muqaddas "sacred",[37][38][39][40] and a part of it is called al-Buqʿa al-Mubāraka (Arabic: ٱلْبُقْعَة ٱلْمُبَارَكَة, "The Blessed Place").

[35] Some modern biblical scholars explain Mount Sinai as having been a sacred place dedicated to one of the Canaanitic deities even before the Israelites encountered it.

There is evidence that prior to 100 CE, well before the Christian monastic period, Jewish sages equated Jabal Musa with Mount Sinai.

Graham Davies of Cambridge University argues that early Jewish pilgrimages identified Jabal Musa as Mount Sinai and this identification was later adopted by the Christian pilgrims.

[29][30] R. K. Harrison states that, “Jabal Musa ... seems to have enjoyed special sanctity long before Christian times, culminating in its identification with Mt. Sinai.

[57][full citation needed] 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.

[57] 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.

"[58] 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.

[58] 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.

[60][full citation needed][61] Groups of nawamis have been discovered in southern Sinai, creating a kind of ring around Jabal Musa.

Etheria, c. the 4th/5th century CE, 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.

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.

[30] F. W. Holland stated[70][full citation needed] "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.

"[55] 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.

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.

[72][73][74] 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 (c. 2150–1990 BCE).

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.

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 base.

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 Sinai;[85] since then other scholars[who?]

[87] 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.

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.

[95][96] A. Kerkeslager believes that the archaeological evidence is too tenuous to draw conclusions, but has stated that "Jabal al Lawz may also be the most convincing option for identifying the Mt.

Halfway between Kadesh Barnea and Petra, in the southwest Negev desert in Israel, is Har Karkom, 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 BCE, the exodus is dated 15 Nisan 2448 (Hebrew calendar; 1313 BCE),[102] and the mountain appears to have been abandoned between 1950 and 1000 BCE, Anati proposed that Jabal Ideid was equatable with biblical Sinai.