Once Holy Mountain: A Biblical and Geographical Analysis of Where Mt. Sinai Is Located

By Mark H. Sweberg

This book is about the location of biblical Mount Sinai. It differs from all previous works about Mount Sinai in that the research and methodology is wholly focused on the Bible text, what the Bible has to say about Mount Sinai, the physical realities that would have impacted on the Israelites that followed Moses, and what archaeology has revealed to date. Those realities influenced: the rate of travel from Egypt to Mount Sinai, route of travel, the distance traveled, the impact of the physical condition of the people and the animals that went with them, and the logistics involved. Most written works about Mount Sinai do not offer evidence from the biblical text supporting their conclusions and those that do often only cite the Bible in passing. This book holds that the historical accuracy, inerrancy, and authority of the Bible are without question. The Exodus happened and the Israelite people were freed from bondage and followed the leadership of Moses to Mount Sinai and beyond.
This book focuses on the evidence and physical realities without the introduction of personal agendas or biases. The book pieces together the three-dimensional puzzle recognized as Mount Sinai in the Exodus and identifies where Mount Sinai is located based on the evidence presented throughout.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Jul 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781725277595

Mark H. Sweberg

Mark Sweberg is currently in the final stages of acquiring his PhD in Biblical Archaeology. He has participated in the Tal el-Hammam Archaeological Excavation in Jordan uncovering the ancient biblical city of Sodom. In 2017 Mark served as one of the deputy dig directors for that season. This is Mark’s first book. He has written numerous articles on metal detecting, which have appeared in a number of magazines including Western and Eastern Treasures and Lost Treasure. Mark also has a Bible background in the Tanakh (Old Testament) and served as a community Jewish Lay Leader for a military installation in Arizona that did not have an assigned rabbi. Mark’s prior life included twelve years with the US Department of State and a full career as an officer in the US Army. Mark is married to his beloved wife Nancy and is blessed with four children and six grandchildren.

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Introduction

More than three thousand years ago, ten plagues and the exodus redefined the relationship between God and the children of Israel. At a time when the empire of Egypt was near its height, a fugitive prince named Moses was chosen by God to free the Israelite slaves from bondage. These freed slaves then followed Moses as he returned to a nondescript mountain in the vast Sinai desert. At Mt. Sinai, Moses had first been directed by God to return to Israel to free his people and later received from God the Ten Commandments with affirmation that the Israelites were God’s chosen people. Moses told the freed slaves they had been chosen to serve as God’s messengers, affirming to the world the one true God and the moral and ethical codes God expected all his children to obey, not just the Israelites. This mountain was identified as Mt. Sinai.

The Old Testament provides four of the elements of a story that are identified as basic to information gathering or problem solving: who, what, when, and why. The missing element in the biblical story of the exodus is where this occurred. Where is Mt. Sinai? For centuries, scholars and Bible experts postulated Mt. Sinai’s location as well as the route of the exodus. Over the past one hundred or so years, both scholars and lay people have raised questions about the location of Mt. Sinai and challenged the long-standing postulation of the location of Mt. Sinai in the southern Sinai Peninsula mountains.

Many books and articles propose alternative locations for the Holy Mountain’s site, including some that are not even in the Sinai Peninsula. My research from exploring the region and literature reviews led me to ponder why there is an absence of the Bible descriptions in so many of the discussions of location. Most written works about Mt. Sinai do not offer evidence from the biblical text supporting their conclusions, and those that do often only cite the Bible in passing.

This text holds that the historical accuracy, inerrancy, and authority of the Bible are without question. People inspired by God wrote the Bible. While the book itself is accurate and without error as God is without error, authors who wrote the Bible were influenced by their times, cultures, and understandings during their interpretations of God’s inspirations. The Bible was written when knowledge of the world, priorities, and perceptions were much different from those of modern scholars and readers of the Bible. One challenge of understanding the Bible is understanding the circumstances that surrounded its writing.

The Bible is the only ancient record of the existence of Mt. Sinai. The Jewish historian who wrote during the Roman era, Josephus, wrote about Mt. Sinai but this was centuries after events of the book of Exodus took place. Josephus’ writings about Mt. Sinai were based on his understanding of the Bible and that of other ancient writers. References in the New Testament are even more distanced in centuries from the events and do not offer definitive evidence one way or the other. The Bible provides information and guidance relative to how ancient people and scribes perceived what was important for future readers. Locations are named; that many have not been archaeologically identified and thus remain unknown is a challenge for any scholar’s understanding of what the text is telling us.

This book offers an alternative location where we might find the Holy Mountain based on a number of assessment criteria identified tin Table 1: distance from Egypt and Kadesh-Barnea, support by biblical text and nonbiblical references, archaeology, geography and logistics considerations, and other scholarly research.

The first criterion is the Bible. The Bible offer insights and evidence on where the ancient Israelites found Mt. Sinai. We know from the book of Exodus that once freed by Pharaoh the former slaves of Egypt followed Moses to the mountain, where Moses received the Ten Commandments and reaffirmation of God’s covenant with the children of the patriarch Abraham. The Bible helps us to follow the Israelites from Egypt to the mountain, which is the first leg of the exodus.

The second criterion is the physical requirements placed on the Israelites as they traveled from Egypt to Mt. Sinai. Based on the time frame of the exodus, during the Middle Bronze Age, this book addresses how fast and how far the multitude of freed slaves traveled each day of the journey and how many days it took to reach the mountain. The route of the exodus to Mt. Sinai will be examined according to the biblical text and those locations identified in the Bible that can be connected to archaeologically identified places today. This is a geographical analysis of the route to and location of Mt. Sinai. As such, it will include analysis of where the Israelites started their trek from, because it is essential to know the start point in order to learn where the end point was.

Table

1

: Analysis Results for Mt. Sinai Location

My interest in the location of Mt. Sinai began in the late 1980s when I lived in Egypt and worked in the Sinai Peninsula. I returned in the mid-1990s to live and work in the Sinai Peninsula.

I grew up accepting that Mt. Sinai was to be found in the southern Sinai Peninsula. Today the long-accepted mountain is called Jebel Musa in Arabic, the Mountain of Moses. When I arrived in Egypt in 1988 I looked forward to the job I was given to do with excitement. I also looked forward to exploring the amazing Sinai Peninsula, as well as seeing for myself Mt. Sinai. I read a lot about Mt. Sinai and learned that scholars had been questioning Jebel Musa being the biblical Mt. Sinai for over a century. I also learned that a number of other sites around and outside the peninsula had been proposed as the true biblical site. I visited Mt. Sinai many times in the first six months I was there and the one thing that struck me was how long it took me to reach Mt. Sinai from Cairo driving a Jeep Grand Wagoneer on the paved roads in the desert. I knew from my Bible studies that the Israelites lead by Moses took approximately forty-five days to reach the mountain. I knew this time frame did not make sense.

After hundreds of hours of research, interviews, and boots on the ground exploration, I pieced together the three-dimensional puzzle recognized as Mt. Sinai in the book of Exodus. What I learned offers an alternative location of where more than four billion people of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) can find the origin of the Ten Commandments. The focus of my research uses Jewish Bible text.

1

Boots on the Ground

The people quarreled with Moses. Give us water to drink, they said; and Moses replied to them, Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you try the Lord?

—Exodus

17

:

2

This chapter is intended to provide a sense of what the Sinai Peninsula is like today. Geologically and atmospherically, it has not changed significantly since the time of the Bible. The people who live there have the benefit of modern conveniences; nevertheless, they live lives not as different than their ancestors as would be expected.

The Sinai Peninsula is a harsh and desolate environment to those who do not live there. Although there is water to be found, it is sparse and rare and much of the Sinai is lacking. In the ancient past travelers used only a handful of routes to navigate the desert and those were the routes where early travelers found water. Travelers, especially the Bedouin tribes that make the Sinai their home, simply do not travel along areas lacking in water.

The former Israelite slaves would not have known about the oases outside of Egypt. Moses as a learned shepherd would not lead the Israelites in a straight path to Mt. Sinai when water sources were problematic; he would travel from a known water source to another. As it is, according to the Bible, they still found it difficult to find water and Moses had to appeal to God on several occasions for help.

The Bedouin who inhabit the Sinai Peninsula live not much differently from their ancestors. In the course of my duties from 1988 to 1989, I came in contact with many Bedouin and became friends with three chieftains. The chiefs and their people were as gracious to guests as I had read and heard about. None of the Sinai tribes are wealthy; in fact, the tribes are among the poorest of Bedouins in the Middle East today.

Nevertheless, when I visited I was always invited to a meal and if I did not have time for that I always made time to stay for tea and talk. When I accepted an offer to stay for a meal I was treated as royally as their means allowed and I knew that the simple meal I was served was the very best they had. It was both touching and humbling. I was very interested in how they lived and how they traveled from pasturage to pasturage. Lives of desert dwellers have not changed much over the centuries.

The biggest difference is that ownership of small pickup trucks such as those offered by Toyota, Nissan, and British Bedford now enhances Bedouin lives. These vehicles are simple to operate, hardy, and can be maintained between the family and mechanics in the towns that sprinkle the peninsula. The tribes I became familiar with were small—a few dozen families and their animals, which represented most of their combined wealth. Goats and donkeys are the most important animals, especially the goats that the Bedouin rely on for fur, meat, milk, cheese, and their hides, all of which are used. They travel in family groups at distances entirely based on the needs of the animals. An average travel day starts early in the morning with prayers followed by breakfast, which includes tea and coffee. Bedouin care for the animals while the camp is taken down and loaded into the pickup truck. The truck leaves and arrives at the next stop-over site many hours before the family arrives.

When I asked about the distances traveled, each of the chiefs I came to know gave me pretty much the same answer, around four to seven miles, or six to eleven kilometers. The animals are rarely pushed, as nothing is done to potentially impact their health. One main exception to this is when a sandstorm is imminent. In these cases the family will seek out whatever cover or protection is available and herd the animals into this location to wait out the storm. A long sandstorm can upset the time frame for a day’s travels, causing the tribe to seek another, closer, overnight location. If one is available, the chief will use another modern convenience, his cell phone, to call his people with the truck to relocate to the new campsite.

After I visited the Mt. Sinai location in the southern region of the peninsula, I started questioning its legitimacy as the Holy Mountain. At the time I was an active-duty Army officer and my interest was passing. When I next returned to Egypt and the Sinai in the mid-1990s, I had retired from the Army and my interest was greater as I read many books and articles about Mt. Sinai in anticipation of my return to the region. By this time I had discovered that the biblical text played almost no role in other claims for Mt. Sinai. During this second time working in the Sinai Peninsula, I spent much of my off-time exploring the other locations advocated by scholars as the site of Mt. Sinai and started to develop my own theories. A few years ago I determined to pool my research and present my own work on the location of Mt. Sinai and this book is the result of that effort.

2

Defining an Approach to Mt. Sinai

Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Let My people go that they may celebrate a festival for Me in the Wilderness. But pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should heed Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go. They [Moses and Aaron] answered, The God of the Hebrews has manifested Himself to us. Let us go, we pray, a distance of three days into the wilderness to sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest He strike us with pestilence or sword. But the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you distract the people from their tasks? Get to your labors!

—Exodus

5

:

1–4

(emphasis added)

Mt. Sinai evokes powerful images to anyone of the Jewish or Christian faith. Although Mt. Sinai appears in the Islamic faith’s Qur’an, it does not have the impact it does on Christians and Jews. For many people the exodus and Mt. Sinai evoke images influenced by the wonderful motion picture produced by Cecil B. Demille, The Ten Commandments. Even though Demille did not accurately portray the exodus according to the Bible, the visual images of Mt. Sinai portrayed in the movie are forever burned in our memory. Christians and Jews who went to Sunday school, read the Bible, or studied the Bible are familiar with the story.

As the second book of the Old Testament (the Tanakh),