Biblical Mount Sinai
Early Old Testament text describes Mount Sinai in terms which some scholars believe may describe the mountain as a volcano, although the word is omitted.
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,
[4][5] and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountains of the moon and sun, respectively. Alternatively, "glowing heat" could be a reference to a volcano.
According to the Biblical account of the law-giving, Sinai was enveloped in a cloud,
[12] it quaked and was filled with smoke,
[13] while lightning-flashes shot forth, and the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet;
[12] the account later adds that fire was seen burning at the summit of the mountain.
[14] Several scholars have indicated that it seems to suggest that Sinai was a
volcano,
[15] although there is no mention of ash although not all volcanos generate ash;
[16] other scholars have suggested that the description fits a storm,
[16] especially as the
Song of Deborah seems to allude to rain having occurred at the time, although volcanic activity can cause storms.
[17]
In the Biblical account, the fire and clouds are a direct consequence of the arrival of
God upon the mountain.
the
Mekhilta argues that God had lowered the heavens and spread them over Sinai,
[20] 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.
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.
Since Moses is described by the Bible as encountering
Jethro, a Kenite who was a Midianite priest, shortly before encountering Sinai, this suggests that Sinai would be somewhere near their territory in Saudi Arabia;
[3][15] the Kenites and Midianites appear to have resided east of the
Gulf of Aqaba.
The biblical description of a loud trumpet at Sinai
[12] fits the natural phenomenon of the sound of a volcano erupting or the loud trumpeting sound caused by wind being funnelled down the
Siq[
citation needed]; the local Bedouins refer to the sound as the
trumpet of God.[
citation needed] The dramatic biblical descriptions of
devouring fire on the summit
Instead of plasma effects, another possible naturalistic explanation of the biblical
devouring fire is that Sinai could have been an erupting
volcano; this has been suggested by
Charles Beke,
[32] Sigmund Freud,
[33] and
Immanuel Velikovsky, among others. 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. In 1873, Charles Beke proposed that Sinai was the
Jabal al-Nour (meaning
mountain of light), a volcanic mountain at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba, and which has great significance in
Islam for other reasons
I just posted these in another thread and had this one confused.