Sinai Peninsula
Mount Sinai is the name of the mountain where, according to the Bible, God gave the Ten Commandments to Moses. Since the time of Saint Helena it has been identified with Jabal Musa (or Gebel Musa), a mountain 2,285 meters high in the southern Sinai Peninsula. The Arabic name means Mount Moses.
Biblical Mount Sinai
Mt. Sinai is most famous for its importance in the Biblical book of Exodus. Whether modern-day Gebel Musa is the same as the biblical Mount Sinai, however, is the subject of much religious and scholarly contention.
In the Bible, Mt. Sinai is also called Mt. Horeb and the Mount of God.
Jewish scholars have long asserted that the exact location of Mount Sinai was unknown, the reason being that its location was purposefully terra incognita. This is unsurprising since it is one of the holiest places in their religion, most famous for being the place where Moses was said in the Bible to have received the Ten Commandments from God.
In Biblical times, the location of the mountain was apparently well-known, as seen in the description of Josephus: “taking his station at the mountain called Sinai, he drove his flocks thither to feed them. Now this is the highest of all the mountains thereabout, and the best for pasturage, the herbage being there good; and it had not been before fed upon, because of the opinion men had that God dwelt there, the shepherds not daring to ascend up to it”. Josephus Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, Book II, CHAPTER 12. it was known in the days of Ahab, king of Israel, as is recounted in the story of Elijah's journey: "And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God." 1Ki:19:8:
The last Biblical mention of the place is in the New Testament, in Galatians 4:25: "For this Agar is mount Sinai in Arabia." From this quotation it follows that identification of Biblical Mount Sinai with a mountain in the vicinity of Petra, former Nabatean Kingdom capital, in present day Jordany, is sustainable on grounds of christian theology, moreover because apostle Paul probably had been personally in such place, since he wrote that he had travelled to Arabia after his stay in Damascus following conversion to christianity, as we can read in Galatians, 1:17.
The location of the mountain was evidently later forgotten. The present location in Jebel Musa was made by two monks who claimed they found the Burning Bush of Moses, circa 300 C.E. This bush is today located in the monastery of Santa Catarina, Egypt. The belief of Mount Sinai's location here has survived almost 1700 years and has become part of tradition. The real Biblical location, though, is still uncertain.
The name Sinai comes probably from "Moon God Sin," same as the Desert of Sin. Judaism teaches that as soon as the Jewish people received the Bible at Mt. Sinai they would be hated by the rest of the world for having been the ones to receive divine word (a state of affairs presented as a pun: Sinai as Seen-ah, which means hatred). The area was reached by the Hebrews in the third month after the Exodus. Here they remained encamped for about a whole year. The last twenty-two chapters of Exodus, together with the whole of Leviticus and Numbers ch. 1-11, contain a record of all the transactions which occurred while they were at Mount Sinai. From Rephidim (Ex. 17:8-13) the Israelites journeyed to "the desert of Sinai," and encamped there "before the mountain."
Jabal Musa
The part of the mountain range, a protruding lower bluff, known as the Ras Sasafeh (Sufsafeh), rises almost perpendicularly from the plain, and is identified by some as the Sinai of history. Local tour groups and local religious groups advertise this mountain as the same Mount Sinai described in the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible, Old Testament). Historians and archaeologists point out that there is no one accepted tradition as to which mountain is the "real" Mount Sinai, and in fact there are several other small mountains in the area that some groups hold to be the real one.
Other sites
There is a considerable weight of historical counter-evidence to support the view that Jabal Musa and the Biblical Mount Sinai are not colocated. Other sites have been suggested. The book The Gold of Exodus by Howard Blum opts for Jabal al-Lawz in Saudi Arabia. Prof. Colin Humphreys has argued in favor of the volcano Hala-'l Badr further south in Arabia in his book The Miracles of Exodus, claiming that an erupting volcano would explain many of the phenomena described in Exodus.One of the most important suggestions was made by Nielsen, Ditlef,who,in 1927, visiting Petra,old nabatean kingdom capital, in present day Jordany,considered Jebel-al-Madhbah (the high place)a strong candidate.This mountain, in the vicinity of Petra, is over a thousand meters high,presents millenia-old rockexcavated ceremonial structures such as a square altar and a round one,an open court able to receive multitudes,a cerimonial pool and an uphill rockstaircase, among other details. Furthermore,it fits well in apostle's Paul previously referred location of Mount Sinai in Arabia, effected with the geographical authority of one who had been travelling through Arabia following his stay in Damascus after conversion (see Wikipedia,Paul of Tarsus, Th.Bawden amendment)
Nielsen's proposal has been recently adopted by Collins and Herald in Mercy.
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