apologetiks

07/05/2008 In Archaeology, History, Reliability, The Bible by johnfoxe

There has always been a controversy over where the real Mt. Sinai is. The traditional site is a mountain called Jabal Musa, or literally “Moses’ Mountain” (See above Google map). However, access to other Mt. Sinai “Candidates” has become more available in recent times. So how do these other candidates stand up? Let’s examine the Biblical criterion for Mt. Sinai.

1 Note: Horeb & Sinai are the same according to Acts 7:30 and many church fathers.
2 Origen, Eusebius and Jerome all locate Mt. Sinai in Arabia as well

So now we have our list, we can compare candidates.

Problems With Jabal Musa

• Egyptian control. At the time, Egypt controlled much of the Sinai area. However, Mt. Sinai must be outside of Egypt (Map). According to the map, Jabal Musa was probably in Egyptian control.
• Not ’sheep friendly’. According to Exodus as well as Jewish Historian Josephus, Sinai was near where Moses tended the flocks of Jethro (Jewish Antiquities 2.12). Jabal Musa is not friendly for grazing flocks. .
  
• Not Near Midian. The Red Sea splits into two. Midian is due east of the 2nd division of the Red Sea (see map). How could Moses tend Jethro’s flocks near of Mt. Sinai, if Jabal Musa was that far west? Josephus said that Sinai was close to where Moses ‘had obtained the favor of Jethro’ and ‘fed his flock.’ (In the same reference above Josephus shows that Sinai was in Midian as well). Jabal Musa was not in Midian.
  
• Cave for Elijah. According to 1 Kings 19, Sinai needs to have a habitable cave, seeing as Elijah stayed there. If there was a cave at Jabal Musa, it is unknown to us. It’s possible that it could’ve been destroyed, or it’s location unknown, but there is no visible cave at the mountain’s peak.
• Probably not in Arabia. At the time, it doesn’t seem that ‘Arabia’ included the traditional Sinai area.

So what about the other candidates? How do they stand up? One Israeli archaeologist claimed up to 20 different possibilities, all with various evidences. There’s probably not more than a handful, however, that have decent evidence. For the sake of our study, I’ll tackle the one that I’ve found to have the best compelling evidence.

(For a better possibility of Mt. Sinai, see Part 2)