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Where
Is The Real Mount Sinai?
by George
Potter
Map
of Arabian Candidate for Mount Sinai
The
fear of God and a score of other emotions filled my heart as I started
climbing the mountain. It was a hot Arabian afternoon in May 1995.
Our destination was the alleged cave where Elijah heard the still
small voice of God. The question kept crossing my mind, “Are we
the first LDS to step onto the real Mount Sinai?” If so, Craig Thorsted,
Tom Culler and I were ascending the mountain where Moses received
his great vision (Moses 1:1, see footnote b), where the prophet
received his endowment (Moses 1), where Moses received his calling
to return to Egypt and free the children of Israel (Moses 3), and
the mountain from whence the Ten Commandments were hewn by the finger
of God. I could not help but wonder if we were playing some small,
but significant role, in identifying the mountain that some Latter-day
Saints believe will play a part in the announcement of the Second
Coming (D&C 29:13), while Muslims hold that it is the actual
site where Jesus Christ will take the faith when He returns in the
Last Days[i].
We
were not the first Latter-day Saints to attempt to locate the Arabian
candidate for Mount Sinai. Other parties had used the instructions
found on Ron Wyatt’s Internet site (http://www.anchorstone.com)
and Larry Williams’ & Cornuke’s book, The Mount Sinai Myth,
but were unsuccessful in locating the mountain. Indeed the Wyatt,
Williams and Cornuke clues were of little help to us either. Using
information gleaned from earlier attempts to find the mountain,
we were finally able to locate the mountain that today seems to
be a better candidate for Mount Sinai than the traditional candidate
on the Sinai Peninsula. Although the Arabian Mount Sinai’s existence
has been rumored for nearly 200 years, my companions and I have
now visited the mountain on several occasions and have what is probably
the most detailed photographic survey of the archaeological monuments
on the mountain.
Why
is locating the real Mount Sinai important to the LDS community?
First, Mount Sinai is the most ancient of all known temples. Given
its role in the Latter-days, it appears that it is still a dedicated
temple site a “House of the Lord”. The LDS Bible dictionary states
of Temples: “In case of extreme poverty or emergency, these
(temple) ordinances may sometimes be done on a mountain top (see
D&C 37:55). This may be the case with Mount Sinai”. Second,
it provides the faithful with an actual Biblical site, one that
has remained nearly untouched since the time of the Exodus. And
third, our exploration of Mount Sinai led to the discovery of several
possible Book of Mormon sites, including the Valley of Lemuel and
the River of Laman (see our web site http://www.nephiproject.com).
Altar
of Moses at Arabian Sinai Candidate
What
Are The Characteristics of Mount Sinai?
Before
exploring the “out back” of the Arabian wilderness for the mountain,
we listed what the scriptures said about it:
1.)
It was said to be located in Arabia (not the Sinai Peninsula) (Galatians
4:25), and not in Egypt, (Exodus 2:15,19, 3:8.10,12 the Sinai
Peninsula is part of Egypt, and was so at the time of Moses).
2.)
It was said to be located in the furthest northwest corner of Arabia
called Midian (Exodus 4:19-25 to locate Midian, see your LDS Bible
Maps).
3.)
The burning bush and subsequently the camp of Israel was said to
be on the backside of the mountain, the side away from the homeland
of Moses and Jethro (Exodus 3:1-2).
4.)
There was an altar built of unhewn stones (Exodus 20:24-26),
5.)
Sinai had a brook (Deuteronomy 9:21).
6.)
An altar of the Golden Calf was made within sight of the Mount Sinai
(Exodus 32:17-19).
7.)
Boundary markers were erected to prevent the children of Israel
from coming up the mountain (Exodus 19:23).
8.)
Twelve pillars were set up for each tribe (Exodus 24:4).
9.)
Sinai had a habitable cave that was used by Elijah (1 Kings 19:8-9).
10.)
The mountain was “exceedingly high” (Moses 1:1).
11.)
There was room for approximately 3,000,000 Israelites to camp next
to the mountain (Exodus 12:37).
12.)
From the campsite at the foot of the mountain, the children of Israel
could see the presence of God (Exodus 19:17-18).
13.)
There was ample grazing for their animals for an extended period
of time.
Golden
Calf Altar at Arabian Sinai Candidate
The
Traditional Site for the Mountain of Moses
There
seems to have been no rational reason why the St. Catherine’s mountain
on the Sinai Peninsula was labeled Mount Sinai. All we know is that
a psychic had convinced Constantine that this remote mountain near
the southern end of the Sinai peninsula was the sacred mountain.
Tim Sedor and I visited St. Catherine’s and found it a poor candidate.
Williams and Conuke also visited St. Catherine’s and outlined these
reasons why it could not be Mount Sinai. 1) Moses would not have
driven Jethro’s flocks nearly two hundred miles to a land that is
almost entirely void of fodder for sheep. 2) There is not enough
room for large encampment at the St. Catherine’s site. Indeed the
nearest campsite would have been what is referred to as the wadi
of the Rest. This wadi could not have been where the children of
Israel camped because the mountain is not visible from the campsite,
and we know that the children of Israel were able to see the presence
of God on the mountain. 3) The terrain is extremely barren, the
flocks of the children of Israel would have starved. 4) Moses, a
man of eighty years of age, would have needed to climb a mountain
that requires mountaineering equipment, 5) The mountain has no source
of drinking water. Why would Moses have led more than 2.5 million
people to a place with no water? 6) There is no archeological evidence
that there was an encampment of nearly 3,000,000 people. 7) None
of the other features described in the Bible are found there (i.e.
cave, creek, etc.)
We
concluded that the traditional view of Mount Sinai, as found on
the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula, is a myth that is promoted
mainly by the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism. After visiting the mountain
in 2001, I now understand why its credibility has been discounted
away over the last hundred years.
Remains
of Marble Columns at Arabian Sinai Candidate
So
Where is the Mountain of God?
One
modern commentary to the Torah contains a map showing eight possible
candidates for Mount Sinai. Indeed, the quest to find Mount Sinai
has baffled explorers and scholars for millennia, and the scriptures
seem to suggest that the mountain’s real location might never be
revealed (Moses 1:42). However, the Apostle Paul seems to have known
Sinai’s location. He placed the Mountain of Moses in Arabia (Galatians
4:25), not in the Sinai Peninsula. Paul’s testimony of where the
sacred mountain was located seems to have been based on what he
saw in that desert land. Paul wrote that, “Neither went I up to
Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into
Arabia….” (Galatians 1:17) Since Paul spent time in Arabia, it is
possible that he actually visited the mountain himself. Regardless,
if we are to trust this great Apostle the seven of the eight proposed
sites of Mount Sinai should be dismissed. They are not even found
in Arabia.
What
is most impressive about the only Arabian Mount Sinai candidate
are the many archeological artifacts that are found at its base.
The mountain is found in a remote place, yet there are man made
artifacts that suggest it is Mount Sinai. These include what Williams
and Cornuke believed to be the altar of Moses, eleven piles of stones
that are found next to the mountain these seem to form “boundary
markers, a natural rock formation which has had a Petra style high-place-altar
cut in its top and which is surrounded with petroglyphs of Egyptian
stylized calves (the altar of the golden calve), and semi-buried
marble pillars which have been broken in pieces. There is also a
dried brook bed that runs next to the altar and a habitable cave
that overlooks the archeological monuments.
What
The Scriptures Say:
The
record of the Jews, the Torah, meaning the Instruction and
the Hebrew Old Testament point to Arabia as the land of Mount Sinai.
Although 55% of the modern locations of Biblical place-names are
still lost to us, there are several key place-names that have been
carried down from antiquity[ii].
One of these is Midian were Mount Sinai was located.
The
account of Moses reads:
Moses
fled from the face of pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian:
and he sat down by a well.
Now
the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew
water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock.
And
the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped
them, and watered their flock. (Exodus 2:15-17)
There
is ample scholarly evidence that Midian was both a town and also
a “land” in northwest Arabia. Its western border is the eastern
shore of the Gulf of Aqaba. Its capital city, Madyan (Midian),
was a major halt of the ancient frankincense trade route from southern
Arabia to Egypt, and would have been a good place for Moses to have
come upon as he fled along the trail from Egypt to the great desert.[iii] The official name of the town
is now al-Bada’a. However, modern Arabic maps of northwest Arabia
still show the name of the town as Shu’ayb, the Arabic spelling
of Jethro.
The
LDS Bible (1979 Edition), Map #6, The Ancient World at the Time
of the Patriarchs, agrees with the early Islamic geographers,
i.e. Midian, was located in Arabia next to the Gulf of Aqaba. The
first Western explorers in the area agreed that the northwest corner
of Arabia was Midian (Beke (1834), Burton (1878)[iv], Wallhausen (1886), Sayce (1894), Moore (1895),
Shede (1897), Gall (1898), Gunket (1903), Meyer (1906), Schmidt
(1908), Gressmann (1913), Haupt (1914) and Musil (1911).[v]
Over
a thousand years ago, the early Islamic geographer Al-Hauqal wrote
that there was a well in Midian from which Moses watered the flocks
of Jethro (Shu’aib). He explained, even then, that the name of the
town was derived from the tribe of Jethro.[vi]
Writing in the same period, Al-Muqqaddasi wrote “Here may be seen
the stone which Moses removed when he gave water to the flocks of
Shu’aib. Water here is abundant.”[vii]
Arab
geographers place the land of Midian west of the city of Tabuk[viii], which infers that the land
Midian only reached a short distance into the interior of Arabia.
Tabuk is less than 150 miles east of the Gulf of Aqaba. Abdulla
Al-Wohaibi who compiled the writing of the Arab geographers between
900-1100 A.D. noted, “The attention that Madyan [Midian] has always
attracted from the Arab geographers is due to the fact that it is
mentioned in the Qur’an in connection with the story of the prophet
Shu’aib [Jethro].[ix]”
Some
try to justify the myth that Mount Sinai was in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula
by suggesting that Midian might have included the Sinai Peninsula
during the time of Moses. Biblical scholar James Montgomery dismisses
this: “the land west of a line from the Wady of Egypt to the Elanitic
Gulf [the Gulf of Aqaba] has always belonged to the Egyptian political
sphere, and actually that is the present boundary of Egypt…the South-Arabians
called the same region, Msr, i.e. Misraim, Egypt”[x].
The remains of the ancient Egyptian copper mines near St. Catherine’s
support the idea that Egypt controlled the Sinai.
Although
local traditions can be misleading, the local habitants of Midian
(al-Bada’a) have a rich tradition of Moses and his father-in-law
Jethro. Besides the traditional name of the town being Jethro, the
locals will ready show you the caves of Moses, the wells of Jethro,
the wadi Horeb, the wadi Moses, and the Waters of Moses. The renowned
Arabia explorer H. St. John Philby wrote on his visit to Midian:
“From here my guide and I climbed up the cliffs to visit the ‘circles’
of Jethro on the summit of Musalla ridge, from which we climbed
down quite easily to our camp on the far side…A cairn marked the
spot where Jethro is supposed to have prayed, and all around it
are numerous circles,…from here I had a magnificent view of the
whole of Midian mountain range, with Lauz [Jebel al-Lawz] and its
sister peaks in the northeast….”[xi]
In
Exodus we read of the place where Moses saw the burning bush:
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest
of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and
came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.(Exodus 3:1)
Boundary
Markers at Arabian Sinai Candidate
As
Philby described, the Mount al-Lawz is visible from al-Bada’a (town
of Midian) and is to its northeast. The Bible seems to suggest that
this is the location of Mount Sinai. First, Moses took Jethro’s
flocks there, which implies that the mountain is in the vicinity
of Al-Bada’a. Second, since Arabia has long been known as “the desert”
or “the wilderness”, its backside would be the interior or east
not the shoreline. This would further imply that the burning bush
was on the eastside of the mountains, the opposite side of the mountain
from the town of al-Bada’a (Midian). Since Jethro’s home in the
valley where the major settlements existed was on the west side
of the mountain, the backside would be the side of the mountain
away from Jethro’s home and the town of Midian.
This
describes exactly the location where we found the monuments and
petroglyphs. Not only is the mountain northeast of Al-Bada’a, the
monuments we found are on the east side of the mountain. The exodus
story in the Qur’an appears to supports the notion that the backside
of Sinai was indeed the eastward side. Facing the mountain from
Jethro’s home, the mount is on the northeast, or one’s right side.
The Qur’an states that the Lord appeared to Moses on the “right
side” of the mountain. (Qur’an 19:52, see Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s translation,
footnote 2601 which implies that the right side was the east side.)
Although
these arguments are straight-forward and consistent with the Biblical
account, there are still those who hold that Mount Sinai was on
the Sinai Peninsula. They argue that there are Biblical accounts
of herdsmen taking the flocks to far off lands. “Perhaps”, they
argue “Moses took Jethro’s flocks on a long search for food and
ended up in the southern region of the Sinai Peninsula.
This
seems very unlikely, especially if one realizes that the entire
region around the St. Catherine site is unsuitable for grazing.
Britain’s governor of the Sinai after World War I, became acquainted
with the peninsula during this long tenure there as perhaps no other
westerner before him. Writing in ‘Yesterday and Today in Sinai’,
C.S. Jarvis asserted that there was no way the Israelite multitudes
and their livestock could have traveled through-much less sustained
themselves for more than a year-in the “tumbled mass of pure granite”
of the southern Sinai. Besides, what would Moses’s reason be for
taking Jethro’s flocks out of Arabia and into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula
where the pasture is inferior and Moses was a wanted man? It should
be remembered that Egyptian garrisons protected the copper mines
near St. Catherine’s mountain.
In
distance, Wadi of the Rest (campsite) at St. Catherine’s
n contrast,
we have observed large Bedouin camps in and around the mountains
of Midian. Historian Abdulla Al-Wohaibi indicates that Midian was
“a flourishing ancient town with numerous wells and permanently
flowing springs whose water had a good taste. There are farms, gardens
and groves of palm trees.[xii]” In ancient times there appears to have been more than enough
fodder for sheep in Midian. The Greek Agatharkides of Cnidos wrote
of Midian “the country is full of wild camels, as well as of flocks
of deer, gazelles, sheep, mules, and oxen”. As a result he also
noted that the game “attracts numerous lions, wolves, and panthers”.[1]
If Mount Sinai
is in Midian, then where is it? A bluntly naïve thing to do is to
just pick up a modern road map and follow it. The most widely used
road maps in Arabia are published by Eng. Zaki M.A. Farsi. His map
guide to Tabuk[xiii] covers the land of Midian. The modern roadmap shows a trail
leading east from the wadi I’fal, about ten miles north of Al-Bada’a.
The trail heads directly towards a towering V shaped mountain that
towers into the sky. The name of the valley is “wadi Musa”, meaning
the valley of Moses. The wadi Moses ends at the western base of
the V shaped mountain. On the “backside” or “eastside” of this very
peak is where we found the monuments that suggest that it is the
real Mount Sinai.
There are many
other reasons for believing that the peak nine miles south of Jebel
al-Lawz is the best candidate for Mount Sinai. My companions and
I have discovered more information concerning this candidate for
the Mountain of Moses. Richard Wellington and I plan to author a
book that discusses the mountain, the trail of the children of Israel
to it, the place where they crossed the Red Sea, and the campsites
they stayed in prior to reaching Mount Sinai.
[1]
Burton, 108.
[i]
Hadith, Riyadh-US-Saleheen, Imam Adu Zakariya Yahya Bin Sharaf An-Nawawi,
Vol. II (Riyadh, International Islamic Publishing House), p. 873.
[ii]
Yohanan Aharoni, The Land of the Bible: A Historical Geography,
trans. A. F. Rainey, 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1979), 129.
[iii]
Abdulla Al-Wohabi, The Northern Hijaz In The Writings of The Arab
Geographers 800-1150 B.C. p. 142
[iv]
Burton, Richard, Sir, The Gold-Mines of Midian, and the ruined
Midianite cities (1878) (Cambridge, England: Oleander, 1979).
[v]
www.anchorstone.com
[vi]
Abdulla Al-Wohabi, The Northern Hijaz In The Writings of The Arab
Geographers 800-1150 B.C. p. 142.
[vii]
Al-Wohabi, p. 142.
[viii]
Burton, p. 169.
[ix]
Al-Wohaibi, 140.
[x]
Montgomery, James A, (University of Pennsylvania, 1934), p. 31.
[xi]
Philby, H. St. John, The Land of Midian (London: Ernest Bean Limited),
p. 222.
[xii]
Al-Wohaibi, p. 141.
[xiii]
Farsi, Eng. Zaki M.A., Map and Guide of Tabuk, (Jeddah: Farsi).
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