Mount Sinai (Ṭūr Sīnāʼ)
Saturday, April 11, 2015 Category : Sacred Places Off
| Mount Sinai (Ṭūr Sīnāʼ) | |
|---|---|
Summit of Mount Sinai
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| Elevation | 2,285 m (7,497 ft) |
| Location | |
 
Mount Sinai (Ṭūr Sīnāʼ)
| |
| Location | Sinai, Egypt |
| Coordinates | 28°32′23″N 33°58′24″ECoordinates: 28°32′23″N 33°58′24″E |
Mount Sinai (Arabic: طُور سِينَاء, translit.: Ṭūr Sīnāʼ ; Egyptian Arabic: جَبَل مُوسَى, translit.: Jabal Mūsā or Gabal Mūsā; literally "Moses' Mountain" or "Mount Moses"; Hebrew: הר סיני translit. Har Sinai), also known as Mount Horeb, is a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt that is a possible location of the biblical Mount Sinai. The latter is mentioned many times in the Book of Exodus in the Torah, the Bible,[1] and the Quran.[2] According to Jewish, Christian, and Islamic tradition, the biblical Mount Sinai was the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
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[hide]Geography[edit]
Mount Sinai is a 2,285-metre (7,497 ft) moderately high mountain near the city of Saint Catherine in the Sinai region. It is next to Mount Catherine (at 2,629 m or 8,625 ft, the highest peak in Egypt).[3] It is surrounded on all sides by higher peaks of the mountain range.
Geology[edit]
Mount Sinai's rocks were formed in the late stage of the Arabian-Nubian Shield's (ANS) evolution. Mount Sinai displays a ring complex[4] that consists of alkaline granites intruded into diverse rock types, including volcanics. The granites range in composition from syenogranite to alkali feldspar granite. The volcanic rocks are alkaline to peralkaline and they are represented by subaerial flows and eruptions and subvolcanic porphyry. Generally, the nature of the exposed rocks in Mount Sinai indicates that they originated from different depths.
Religious significance[edit]
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Main articles: Biblical Mount Sinai and Saint Catherine's Monastery
The biblical Mount Sinai was one of the most important sacred places in the Abrahamic religions.
According to Bedouin tradition, it was the mountain where God gave laws to the Israelites. However, 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's earlier claim that Sinai was the highest mountain in the area.
Orthodox Christians settled upon this mountain in the third century AD. Georgians from the Caucasus moved to the Sinai Peninsula in the Fifth Century, and a Georgian colony was formed there in the Ninth Century. Georgians erected their own churches in the area of the modern Mount Sinai. The construction of one such church was connected with the name of David The Builder, who contributed to the erecting of churches in Georgia and abroad as well. There were political, cultural, & religious motives for locating the church on Mount Sinai. Georgian monks living there were deeply connected with their motherland. The church had its own plots[clarification needed] in Kartli. Some of the Georgian manuscripts of Sinai remain there, but others are kept in Tbilisi, St. Petersburg, Prague, New York, Paris, or in private collections.
Some modern biblical scholars now believe that the Israelites would have crossed the Sinai peninsula in a direct route, rather than detouring to the southern tip (assuming that they did not cross the eastern branch of the Red Sea/Reed Sea in boats or on a sandbar), and therefore look for the biblical Mount Sinai elsewhere.
The Song of Deborah, which some textual scholars consider to be one of the oldest parts of the bible, suggests that Yahweh dwelt at Mount Seir, so many scholars favour a location in Nabatea (modern Arabia). Alternatively, the biblical descriptions of Sinai can be interpreted as describing a volcano, and so a small number of scholars have considered equating Sinai with locations in northwestern Saudi Arabia; there are no volcanoes in the Sinai Peninsula.
| Saint Catherine Area | |
|---|---|
| Name as inscribed on the World Heritage List | |
 | |
| Type | Cultural |
| Criteria | i, iii, iv, vi |
| Reference | 954 |
| UNESCO region | Arab States |
| Inscription history | |
| Inscription | 2002 (26th Session) |
Saint Catherine's Monastery[edit]
Main article: Saint Catherine's Monastery
(Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης) lies on the Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of an inaccessible gorge at the foot of modern Mount Sinai in Saint Catherine at an elevation of 1550 meters. The monastery is Greek Orthodox and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. According to the UNESCO report (60100 ha / Ref: 954) and website hereunder, this monastery has been called 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.
Ascent[edit]
There are two principal routes to the summit. The longer and shallower route, Siket El Bashait, takes about 2.5 hours on foot, though camels can be used. The steeper, more direct route (Siket Sayidna Musa) is up the 3,750 "steps of penitence" in the ravine behind the monastery.[5]
Summit[edit]
The summit of the mountain has a mosque that is still used by Muslims. It also has a Greek Orthodox chapel, constructed in 1934 on the ruins of a 16th-century church, that is not open to the public. The chapel encloses the rock which is considered to be the source for the biblical Tablets of Stone.[6] At the summit also is "Moses' cave", where Moses was said to have waited to receive the Ten Commandments. There is no Jewish place of worship or memorial associated with Mount Sinai.
See also[edit]
- Biblical Mount Sinai
- Hashem el-Tarif
- Jabal al-Lawz
- Archaeology
- Mount Gerizim
- Jebel Musa, Morocco, a similarly named mountain in Morocco
Notes[edit]
- ^ Joseph J. Hobbs, Mount Sinai (University of Texas Press) 1995, discusses Mount Sinai as geography, history, ethnology and religion.
- ^ "Tafsir Ibn Kathir". qtafsir.com. 2002-10-26. Retrieved 2015-01-30.
- ^ "Sinai Geology". AllSinai.info.
- ^ Hanaa M. Salem and A. A. ElFouly, Minerals Reconnaissance at Saint Catherine Area, Southern Central Sinai, Egypt and their Environmental Impacts on Human Health,ICEHM2000, Cairo University, Egypt, September, 2000, page 586- 598
- ^ "Mount Sinai". AllSinai.info.
- ^ "Mount Sinai, Egypt". Places of Peace and Power.
External links[edit]
 | Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sinai. |
Mount Sinai travel guide from Wikivoyage
- Caucasian Albanian Alphabet Discovered and Deciphered, Azerbaijan International, Vol. 11:3 (Autumn 2003). Six articles.
- View OF Mount Sinai (as opposed to the view FROM Mount Sinai)
- Information about the town of St. Katherine and the Sinai mountains
- Photo album from Mount Sinai and St Catherine's
- Contains many photos of two alleged sites, and some research.
- A Report on Mount Sinai
According to the Book of Exodus, Mount Sinai (Hebrew: הר סיני, Har Sinai) is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God. In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired atMount Horeb. The name "Sinai" is only used in the Torah by the Jahwist and Priestly source, whereas Horeb is only used by the Elohist and Deuteronomist.[1] "Sinai" and "Horeb" are generally considered to refer to the same place, although there is a small body of opinion that the two names may refer to different locations.
Hebrew Bible 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 and have led to a search for alternative locations.[2]
[Mount: Meeting places of heaven and earth.
Volcano is the heat/eruption - Ejuculation -Fertility (5th element).
Sin is the heat/Daak/Sexula Desire.]
[Mount: Meeting places of heaven and earth.
Volcano is the heat/eruption - Ejuculation -Fertility (5th element).
Sin is the heat/Daak/Sexula Desire.]
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[hide]Etymology[edit]
According to the Documentary hypothesis, the name "Sinai" is only used in the Torah by the Jahwist and Priestly source, whereas Horeb is only used by the Elohist and Deuteronomist.[1]
According to some biblical scholars[who?], Horeb is thought to mean "glowing/heat", which seems to be a reference to the sun, while Sinai may have derived from the name of Sin, the Sumerian deity of the moon,[3][4] and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountains of the moon and sun, respectively.
Regarding the Sumerian Sin deity assumption, William F. Albright, an American biblical scholar, had stated:[5]
According to Rabbinic tradition, the name "Sinai" derives from sin-ah (שִׂנְאָה), meaning hatred, in reference to the other nations hating the Jews out of jealousy, due to the Jews being the ones to receive the word of God.[6]
Other names[edit]
Classical rabbinic literature mentions the mountain having other names:
- Har HaElohim (הר האלהים), meaning "the mountain of God" or "the mountain of the gods"[7]
- Har Bashan (הר בשן), meaning "the mountain of Bashan"; however, Bashan is interpreted in rabbinical literature as here being a corruption of beshen, meaning "with the teeth", and argued to refer to the sustenance of mankind through the virtue of the mountain[7]
- Har Gebnunim (הר גבנונים), meaning "the mountain as pure as cheese"[7]
- Har Horeb (הר חורב), see Mount Horeb
Also:
- Tūr Sīnāʾ /(Sheena --In bengali-Courage, Teeth like perseverance) Tūr Sīnīn (طور سيناء / سينين), is the term that appears in most Islamic sources, including the Quran, and it means, "The mount of Sinai".[8][9][10]
- Jabal Mūsa (جبل موسى), is another term that appears in Islamic sources, and it means, "The Mountain of Moses".[7]
Biblical description[edit]
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According to the biblical account of the giving of the instructions and teachings of both the Written and the Oral Torah, Sinai was enveloped in a cloud,[11] it quaked and was filled with smoke,[12] while lightning-flashes shot forth, and the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet;[11] the account later adds that fire was seen burning at the summit of the mountain.[13] In the biblical account, the fire and clouds are a direct consequence of the arrival of God upon the mountain.[14] 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, the Written and the Oral Torah, 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[14] seems to be in conflict with the statement shortly after that God spoke to the Israelites from Heaven.[15] 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,[16] 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.[17] Several bible criticsWho? have indicated that the smoke and fire reference from the Bible suggests that Mt Sinai was a volcano;[18] despite the absence of ash.[19] Other bible scholars have suggested that the description fits a storm[19] especially as the Song of Deborah seems to allude to rain having occurred at the time.[20] The biblical record notes the uniqueness of the event by stating that God spoke directly to the Israelite nation as a whole.[21][22]
Critical views[edit]
Some modern biblical scholars explain Mount Sinai as having been a sacred place dedicated to one of the Semitic deities, even before the Israelites encountered it.[7] Others regard the set of laws given on the mountain to have originated in different time 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.[23]
Suggested locations[edit]
Modern scholars differ as to the exact geographical position of Mount Sinai,[7] and the same has long been true of scholars of Judaism. 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,[24] but there are no later biblical references to it that suggest the location remained known; Josephus only specifies that it was within Arabia Petraea (a Roman Province encompassing modern Jordan, southern modern Syria, the Sinai Peninsula and northwestern Saudi Arabia with its capital in Petra), and the Pauline Epistles are even more vague, specifying only that it was in Arabia, which covers most of the south-western Middle east.
The Sinai Peninsula[edit]
The earliest references to Jebel Musa as Mount Sinai or Mount Sinai being located in the present day Sinai Peninsula are inconclusive. There is evidence that prior to 100 CE, well before the Christian monastic period, Jewish sages had already identified Jebel Musa as Mount Sinai. Graham Davies of Cambridge University offers evidence that early Jewish pilgrimages had already identified Jebel Musa as Mount Sinai and this identification was later adopted by the Christian pilgrims.[25][26] R. K. Harrison states that, “Jebel Musa . . . seems to have enjoyed special sanctity long before Christian times, culminating in its identification with Mt. Sinai."[27] In the second and third centuries BCE Nabataeans were making pilgrimages there, which is indicated in part by inscriptions discovered in the area.[28]
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".[29] 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 [30][31] which consist of Jebel Musa, Mount Catherine and Ras Sufsafeh. Etheria (circa 4th century AD) wrote, "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."[32] The highest mountain peak is Mount Catherine, rising 8,550 ft. above the sea and its sister peak, Jebel Musa (7, 370 ft.), is not much further behind in height, but is more conspicuous because of the open plain called er Rachah ("the wide"). Mount Catherine and Jebel 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 4,000 ft. Those in Midian, East of Elath, rise only to 4,200 ft. Even Jebel Serbal, 20 miles West of Sinai, is at its highest only 6,730 ft. above the sea.[33]
Some scholars[34] believe that Mount Sinai was of ancient sanctity prior to the ascent of Moses described in the Bible.[35] Scholars have theorized that Sinai in part derived its name from the word for moon which was "sin" (meaning "the moon" or "to shine").[36] Antoninus Martyr provides some support for the ancient sanctity of Jebel Musa by writing that Arabian heathens were still celebrating moon feasts there in the 6th century.[36] 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."[37] 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.[37] Robinson says that inscriptions with pictures of moon worship objects are found all over the southern peninsula but are missing on Jebel Musa and Mount Catherine [38] which oddity may suggest religious cleansing.[39][40]
Groups of nawamis have been discovered in southern Sinai, creating a kind of ring around Jebel Musa.[41] The nawamis were used over and over throughout the centuries for various purposes. Etheria, circa the 4th/5th century AD, 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.[42]
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 so widely. The Exodus has been dated from the Early Bronze Age to the Late Iron Age II [43][44] with most fundamentalists pointing toward the late Bronze Age.
Egyptian pottery in the southern Sinai during the Late Bronze and Early Iron I (Ramesside) 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.[45] These encampments provide evidence of miners from southern Canaan.[46] 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.[47] 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.[48]
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