Once Holy Mountain

A Biblical and Geographical Analysis of Where Mt. Sinai Is Located

Mark H. Sweberg

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725277595
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Religión antigua

This book is about the location of biblical Mount Sinai. It differs from all previous works about Mount Sinai in that the research and methodology is wholly focused on the Bible text, what the Bible has to say about Mount Sinai, the physical realities that would have impacted on the Israelites that followed Moses, and what archaeology has revealed to date. Those realities influenced: the rate of travel from Egypt to Mount Sinai, route of travel, the distance traveled, the impact of the physical condition of the people and the animals that went with them, and the logistics involved. Most written works about Mount Sinai do not offer evidence from the biblical text supporting their conclusions and those that do often only cite the Bible in passing. This book holds that the historical accuracy, inerrancy, and authority of the Bible are without question. The Exodus happened and the Israelite people were freed from bondage and followed the leadership of Moses to Mount Sinai and beyond.This book focuses on the evidence and physical realities without the introduction of personal agendas or biases. The book pieces together the three-dimensional puzzle recognized as Mount Sinai in the Exodus and identifies where Mount Sinai is located based on the evidence presented throughout.

1

Boots on the Ground

The people quarreled with Moses. “Give us water to drink,” they said; and Moses replied to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you try the Lord?”

—Exodus 17:2

This chapter is intended to provide a sense of what the Sinai Peninsula is like today. Geologically and atmospherically, it has not changed significantly since the time of the Bible. The people who live there have the benefit of modern conveniences; nevertheless, they live lives not as different than their ancestors as would be expected.

The Sinai Peninsula is a harsh and desolate environment to those who do not live there. Although there is water to be found, it is sparse and rare and much of the Sinai is lacking. In the ancient past travelers used only a handful of routes to navigate the desert and those were the routes where early travelers found water. Travelers, especially the Bedouin tribes that make the Sinai their home, simply do not travel along areas lacking in water.

The former Israelite slaves would not have known about the oases outside of Egypt. Moses as a learned shepherd would not lead the Israelites in a straight path to Mt. Sinai when water sources were problematic; he would travel from a known water source to another. As it is, according to the Bible, they still found it difficult to find water and Moses had to appeal to God on several occasions for help.

The Bedouin who inhabit the Sinai Peninsula live not much differently from their ancestors. In the course of my duties from 1988 to 1989, I came in contact with many Bedouin and became friends with three chieftains. The chiefs and their people were as gracious to guests as I had read and heard about. None of the Sinai tribes are wealthy; in fact, the tribes are among the poorest of Bedouins in the Middle East today.

Nevertheless, when I visited I was always invited to a meal and if I did not have time for that I always made time to stay for tea and talk. When I accepted an offer to stay for a meal I was treated as royally as their means allowed and I knew that the simple meal I was served was the very best they had. It was both touching and humbling. I was very interested in how they lived and how they traveled from pasturage to pasturage. Lives of desert dwellers have not changed much over the centuries.

The biggest difference is that ownership of small pickup trucks such as those offered by Toyota, Nissan, and British Bedford now enhances Bedouin lives. These vehicles are simple to operate, hardy, and can be maintained between the family and mechanics in the towns that sprinkle the peninsula. The tribes I became familiar with were small—a few dozen families and their animals, which represented most of their combined wealth. Goats and donkeys are the most important animals, especially the goats that the Bedouin rely on for fur, meat, milk, cheese, and their hides, all of which are used. They travel in family groups at distances entirely based on the needs of the animals. An average travel day starts early in the morning with prayers followed by breakfast, which includes tea and coffee. Bedouin care for the animals while the camp is taken down and loaded into the pickup truck. The truck leaves and arrives at the next stop-over site many hours before the family arrives.

When I asked about the distances traveled, each of the chiefs I came to know gave me pretty much the same answer, around four to seven miles, or six to eleven kilometers. The animals are rarely pushed, as nothing is done to potentially impact their health. One main exception to this is when a sandstorm is imminent. In these cases the family will seek out whatever cover or protection is available and herd the animals into this location to wait out the storm. A long sandstorm can upset the time frame for a day’s travels, causing the tribe to seek another, closer, overnight location. If one is available, the chief will use another modern convenience, his cell phone, to call his people with the truck to relocate to the new campsite.

After I visited the Mt. Sinai location in the southern region of the peninsula, I started questioning its legitimacy as the Holy Mountain. At the time I was an active-duty Army officer and my interest was passing. When I next returned to Egypt and the Sinai in the mid-1990s, I had retired from the Army and my interest was greater as I read many books and articles about Mt. Sinai in anticipation of my return to the region. By this time I had discovered that the biblical text played almost no role in other claims for Mt. Sinai. During this second time working in the Sinai Peninsula, I spent much of my off-time exploring the other locations advocated by scholars as the site of Mt. Sinai and started to develop my own theories. A few years ago I determined to pool my research and present my own work on the location of Mt. Sinai and this book is the result of that effort.

2

Defining an Approach to Mt. Sinai

“Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the Wilderness.” But pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.” They [Moses and Aaron] answered, “The God of the Hebrews has manifested Himself to us. Let us go, we pray, a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest He strike us with pestilence or sword.” But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you distract the people from their tasks? Get to your labors!”

—Exodus 5:1–4 (emphasis added)

Mt. Sinai evokes powerful images to anyone of the Jewish or Christian faith. Although Mt. Sinai appears in the Islamic faith’s Qur’an, it does not have the impact it does on Christians and Jews. For many people the exodus and Mt. Sinai evoke images influenced by the wonderful motion picture produced by Cecil B. Demille, The Ten Commandments. Even though Demille did not accurately portray the exodus according to the Bible, the visual images of Mt. Sinai portrayed in the movie are forever burned in our memory. Christians and Jews who went to Sunday school, read the Bible, or studied the Bible are familiar with the story.

As the second book of the Old Testament (the Tanakh), the book of Exodus recalls the most seminal event in the history of the Abrahamic religions. The story of God’s decision to use his most important prophet, Moses, to get the pharaoh of Egypt to free the Israelites and then subsequently bestow upon these people his Ten Commandments at Mt. Sinai is well known.

Jews celebrate the story annually during the second most holy day on the Jewish calendar, Passover. In our modern, “enlightened” world, the story of the exodus is, for many people, just that—a story. But for many it is much, much more. The Bible is not a book of stories and homilies. The Bible is the first book of its kind in history. It is a written history of the family of the first patriarch, Abraham, and the people who originated from him and his descendants. Until the Bible, no other written work that has been discovered was created as a factual history.

Written works from the great kingdoms of Egypt were created to help explain the gods to the people and how the gods were to be propitiated, or to glorify the reigning pharaoh. Earlier works that have been discovered among the ruins of Sumer, Assyria, Babylon, and other ancient kingdoms were written to reflect economic transactions or teach heroic stories about the ancient gods and great heroes, such as Gilgamesh. These were not histories; they had a different purpose. They were never written to reflect factual accounts of people or nations. The Bible was the first. What also makes the Bible unique is that the one true God whom the children of Israel believed in took a personal hand in the Bible’s creation. God did not write the book; he inspired the writers who did.

The location of biblical Mt. Sinai has long been held to be a specific location among the mountains located in the southern Sinai Peninsula. Today called Mt. Musa locally, this site was without question for centuries. Beginning in the nineteenth century, however, higher criticism of the Bible led to questioning the text of the Bible, the historicity of the Bible itself, and its reliability. The site of Mt. Sinai also came under fire by critics challenging its location and the basis for its historical role in the exodus, indeed if the exodus even occurred.

The Bible offers very little description of Mt. Sinai itself. What is said indicates the mountain was nondescript, leading us to believe it was not the most imposing mountain in the Sinai Peninsula or the tallest. In fact, about the only assumption that can be derived from the biblical text about Mt. Sinai is that it was important and significant only during the time in exodus when God made his presence known there. God manifested his presence on the mountain to meet with Moses and later to talk with Moses and instruct him, as well as his brother, Aaron, as they prepared to meet with the pharaoh to free the Israelite slaves.

Later in Exodus the mountain earned brief importance, and holiness, as the Israelites encamped at its base so Moses could receive the Ten Commandments, or the Aseret Hadeverim (Hebrew for “The Ten Sayings” or “The Ten Matters”), from God. Once the Israelites traveled away from the mountain on their forty-year sojourn in the desert, written references to Mt. Sinai slipped into oblivion and it lost its importance as a holy site. It reemerged only briefly in 1 Kings 19:8, when the prophet Elijah took refuge in a cave on Mt. Sinai, but 1 Kings makes no mention of the mountain being holy. It was the Once Holy Mountain and nothing more.

There has long been a belief among Jewish rabbis and ancient Jewish sages that descriptions in the Bible are intentionally scant and make it challenging to find support for the location of the Holy Mountain because it was never intended that Mt. Sinai would become a place of lasting importance.

Among the foremost of early Jewish sages, Rashi, who lived in eleventh-century France (1040–1105), and Maimonides, who lived in twelfth-century Egypt (1135–1204), wrote that God intentionally selected Mt. Sinai because it was “humble,” unprepossessing, compared to other mountains.1 The logic of this is based on the understanding that if the location of Mt. Sinai were known it would become a place of pilgrimage and the message of the exodus, the Ten Commandments, and the covenant with God would all be lost.2

Early Jews interpreted the passage in Exodus 19:12, “Beware of ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Boots on the Ground
• Chapter 3: Where Else Has Mt. Sinai Been Posited?
• Chapter 4: Starting Point for the Exodus
• Chapter 5: The Hyksos
• Chapter 6: How Long It Took the Israelites to Reach Mt. Sinai
• Chapter 7: Sinai Peninsula
• Chapter 8: How Far the People Traveled Each Day
• Chapter 9: Numbers of Israelites in the Exodus
• Chapter 10: Moses Traveling Back and Forth between Mt. Sinai and Egypt
• Chapter 11: Jebel Musa and Jebel Serbal
• Chapter 12: Rameses: City or Region
• Chapter 13: Jethro and Midian
• Chapter 14: Routes Out of Egypt
• Chapter 15: Departure from Egypt
• Chapter 16: The Sea of Reeds
• Chapter 17: Kadesh Barnea
• Chapter 18: Hashem El-Tarif
• Chapter 19: Pulling It All Together
• Epilogue: Identity of Pharaoh of Exodus
• Bibliography