Mount Sinai (Bible)
Mount Sinai (Hebrew: הַר סִינַי, Har Sīnay) is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible.[1] In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. "Sinai" and "Horeb" are generally considered by scholars to refer to the same place.[2]
For other uses of Mount Sinai, see Mount Sinai (disambiguation).
The location of the Mount Sinai described in the Bible remains disputed. The high point of the dispute was in the mid-nineteenth century.[a] 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.[b]
Mount Sinai is one of the most sacred locations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam.[5][6]
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.[18]
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 ancient Mesopotamian religion deity of the moon,[19][20] and thus Sinai and Horeb would be the mountains of the moon and sun, respectively.
Regarding the Sin deity assumption, William F. Albright, an American biblical scholar, had stated:[21]
Similarly, in his book Sinai & Zion, American Hebrew Bible scholar Jon D. Levenson discusses the link between Sinai and the burning bush (סנה səneh) that Moses encountered at Mount Horeb in verses 3:1–6 of Exodus. He asserts that the similarity of Sînay (Sinai) and seneh (bush) is not coincidental; rather, the wordplay might derive "from the notion that the emblem of the Sinai deity was a tree of some sort."[22] Deuteronomy 33:16 identifies YHWH with "the one who dwells in the bush."[23] Consequently, Levenson argues that if the use of "bush" is not a scribal error for "Sinai," Deuteronomy might support the connection between the origins of the word Sinai and tree.[22]
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.[24] Classical rabbinic literature mentions the mountain having other names:
Also mentioned in most Islamic sources:
1723
Mass-revelation at Mount Sinai in an illustration from a Bible card published by the Providence Lithograph Company, 1907
Media related to Mount Sinai (Bible) at Wikimedia Commons