Surprise! Mt. Sinai Is Not Actually In The Sinai Peninsula
It may surprise you to know that researchers have proposed about 20 different locations for Mt. Sinai and there is no consensus of opinion.
It’s a topic of endless fascination. James D. Long, author of Riddle of the Exodus: Startling Parallels Between Ancient Jewish Sources and the Egyptian Archaeological Record told Breaking Israel News, “The subject of the real Mt. Sinai generates the most discussion in the Q&A that follows my lectures. For my 2006 book, Riddle of the Exodus, I did research on the mountain’s location, but consigned the available evidence to a lengthy Appendix at the back of my book.”
Long was raised as a Catholic and identifies as a Noahide today. His personal involvement goes back to childhood. “I’m fascinated by every aspect of this epic known as the Exodus and have been since I sat, as an eight-year-old, mesmerized by Cecile B. DeMille’s film The Ten Commandments, back in 1956.
“The quest is very personal to me. The Exodus experience is an epic of Spielbergian scope that established the Torah as the actual word of the Creator and it was entrusted to a nation that He created and established. If there were no Sinai experience, then there is no Torah.
“Someone is always trying to find the real Mt Sinai,” Long said. “The most active and vocal include the [Christian researcher] Bob Cornuke, as well as the quirkily-named Doubting Thomas Research Foundation, the people who produced the documentary short called Finding the Mountain of Moses.
“The process [of locating the real Mt. Sinai] consists of doing exhaustive research then presenting criteria and matching it to a favored mountain. The hardier and more adventurous actually travel to said mountain.
“But the criteria is often faulty.
“Most researchers, even competent, honest ones, stumble on their way to their favorite mountain because they don’t understand the text of the Torah. They also seriously err by ignoring the wealth of information from vital Jewish sources available, literally for centuries,” asserted Long.
“The research offered for many [possible locations] displayed complete ignorance of, or disregard for, the Biblical sources. The situation was so bad that I once gave a lecture called Where the Real Mt Sinai Is Not.”
Long further explained that, “Scholars fall into two camps. Those who suggest sites found in the modern Sinai Peninsula and those who favor locations in Saudi Arabia.”
Saudi Arabia lies southeast of Israel, below Jordan, which is directly to Israel’s east and the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt is southwest of Israel.
“Researchers who hold with the Sinai Peninsula generally do so because they mistakenly believe that the real Mt. Sinai has to be limited to a three-day trek from Egypt. They base this theory on several Biblical verses.”
So we must go a distance of three days into the wilderness and sacrifice to Hashem our God as He may command us. Exodus 8:23
“At first blush, this would seem a viable clue, except for the fact that the actual journey to Sinai took 45 days.
“The Torah tells us in Exodus 19:1 that Israel arrived in the Sinai wilderness on the first day of the third month. Compare that with Numbers 33:3, which reveals that Israel departed from Egypt on the 15th day of the first month. Now do the math. That’s a 45-day trek.”
Of the five proposed locations in the Sinai Peninsula, Jebel Musa, the site of St Catherine’s monastery, is the most popular. Nevertheless, according to Long, there is “growing consensus that the real Mt Sinai is located in present-day Saudi Arabia. The prime candidates are Mt. Badr, Jebel al-Lawz, Jebel Hurab and Jebel Harb.”
Jebel is the Arabic word for mountain.
In order to be a credible contender, Long asserted that a site must possess six essential characteristics. The first two are that there needed to be “an expanse of land large enough to accommodate millions of people and a water supply to sustain that multitude,” Long explained.
There also needs to be a “cave at or near the summit where Moses stayed.”
and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand until I have passed by. Exodus 33:22
The fourth characteristic necessary for a potential site to be taken seriously as a contender, according to Long, is evidence of the twelve pillars, upon which Moses established a mizbayach (altar).
Moshe then wrote down all the commands of Hashem. Early in the morning, he set up a mizbayach at the foot of the mountain, with twelve pillars for the twelve tribes of Yisrael. Exodus 24:4
The final two bits of evidence Long argued are required, are inscriptions or petroglyphs (images carved into rocks) and that some of the names of the site and the surrounding areas are related to events that transpired during the exodus from Egypt. On the basis of these six characteristics alone, Long has debunked a number of possible sites.
He also explained that evidence that purports to be remains of Egyptian chariot wheels are not credible. Long emphasized to Breaking Israel News that, “The whole chariot wheel controversy will not go away, despite the fact that, to this day no one has ever retrieved an actual chariot wheel anywhere in the Red Sea.
https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/119248/real-mt-sinai/
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