Where is Mount Sinai located?
What people believe has a lot to do with where they live. For western scholars, the very existence as well as the location of Mount Sinai is a question. For people who live near Jabal Maqla [Burnt Mountain] in Saudia Arabia, the reality and location have always been well known, apparently since the times of Moses.
The Urantia Book specifies numerous times that Mount Sinai was an active volcano during the times of Moses and even that it erupted while he was there. This position is obviously odds with the trend that looks at the story as more mythical than historical.
Western scholars have long placed the location of Mount Sinai on the Sinai peninsula of Egypt. See Wikipedia’s Biblical Mount Sinai page and Wikipedia’s Mount Horeb page.
From Wikipedia’s Mount Sinai page:
Alternatively, the biblical descriptions of Sinai can be interpreted as describing a volcano, and so a small number of scholars have considered equating Sinai with locations in northwestern Saudi Arabia, such as Jabal al-Lawz, as there are no volcanoes on the Sinai peninsula.
Mount Sinai = Mount Horeb = Jabal Maqla
The Doubting Thomas Research Foundation website is a great place to get started and features an excellent documentary on their home page, which states:
“There is a long-standing academic consensus that the story of the Exodus is entirely, or almost entirely, a myth.
“This conclusion is partially based on research that assumes the traditional candidate for Mount Sinai in the southern part of Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula is legitimate. Although some experts believe in the credibility of that tradition, many have come away disappointed with the evidence (or lack thereof) after a great deal of archaeological excavation in the area.
“The result has been a widespread rejection of the historicity of the Exodus story and proposals for over a dozen other mountains as possible candidates for Mount Sinai. Some of these candidates are in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, but others are further east in Saudi Arabia.
“The Doubting Thomas Research Foundation was established to document the history of the theory and to provide our contributions to the historiography. Based on our research, we believe that Jabal Maqla in Saudi Arabia is the best candidate for Mount Sinai.
“Research regarding Jabal Maqla’s candidacy has been severely limited due to a lack of access to outsiders, with aspiring visitors being arrested, threatened, harassed and blocked by Saudi security or hostile locals. Doubting Thomas Research Foundation staff are among a tiny group of Westerners who have successfully visited the sites in question.”
See also the Revealing God’s Treasures website page on this subject.
The Split Rock
Split Rock Research Foundation was founded by Jim and Penny Caldwell. Living for twelve years in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, their extensive desert travels have unearthed an amazing trail of ancient Biblical evidence buried beneath the sands or locked behind barbed wire fences. Much of this deals with the subject of relocating the real Mount Sinai to the northern Hejaz mountain range of northwest Arabia.
Their covert exploratory trips in and around these regions have amassed a tremendous volume of photographic and video evidence that the Bible has indeed recorded actual events, not allegories, relating to Moses and the Exodus of the children of Israel from Egypt. Split Rock Research was established to be a central hub for these incredible finds, as well as their preservation and educational distribution.
Over the years, the Caldwell’s have shared their discoveries, film, and photographs with many who are also connected to this research, quite literally around the world. Split Rock Research serves not only as an avenue by which their research data on specific related topics is collected and analyzed, but also that of others. In this manner, these great discoveries are being preserved and catalogued for future generations.
Biblical passages related to the Split Rock
Exodus 17:1-8
17:1 And all the congregation of the children of Israel journeyed from the wilderness of Sin, after their journeys, according to the commandment of the LORD, and pitched in Rephidim: and there was no water for the people to drink.
2 Wherefore the people did chide with Moses, and said, Give us water that we may drink. And Moses said unto them, Why chide ye with me? wherefore do ye tempt the LORD?
3 And the people thirsted there for water; and the people murmured against Moses, and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?
4 And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me.
5 And the LORD said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel; and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take in thine hand, and go.
6 Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock in Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.
7 And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?
15 He clave the rocks in the wilderness, and gave them drink as out of the great depths.
16 He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused waters to run down like rivers.
Urantia Book teachings about the Mount Sinai volcano:
80:6.3 When the last exodus from the Euphrates valley occurred, Egypt was fortunate in gaining so many of the most skillful artists and artisans. These Andite artisans found themselves quite at home in that they were thoroughly familiar with river life, its floods, irrigations, and dry seasons. They enjoyed the sheltered position of the Nile valley; they were there much less subject to hostile raids and attacks than along the Euphrates. And they added greatly to the metalworking skill of the Egyptians. Here they worked iron ores coming from Mount Sinai instead of from the Black Sea regions.
96:1.3 1. Yahweh was the god of the southern Palestinian tribes, who associated this concept of deity with Mount Horeb, the Sinai volcano. Yahweh was merely one of the hundreds and thousands of nature gods which held the attention and claimed the worship of the Semitic tribes and peoples.
96:1.11 Up to about 2000 B.C., Mount Sinai was intermittently active as a volcano, occasional eruptions occurring as late as the time of the sojourn of the Israelites in this region. The fire and smoke, together with the thunderous detonations associated with the eruptions of this volcanic mountain, all impressed and awed the Bedouins of the surrounding regions and caused them greatly to fear Yahweh. This spirit of Mount Horeb later became the god of the Hebrew Semites, and they eventually believed him to be supreme over all other gods.
96:1.12 The Canaanites had long revered Yahweh, and although many of the Kenites believed more or less in El Elyon, the supergod of the Salem religion, a majority of the Canaanites held loosely to the worship of the old tribal deities. They were hardly willing to abandon their national deities in favor of an international, not to say an interplanetary, God. They were not universal-deity minded, and therefore these tribes continued to worship their tribal deities, including Yahweh and the silver and golden calves which symbolized the Bedouin herders’ concept of the spirit of the Sinai volcano.
96:4.2 Moses had heard of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek from both his father and his mother, their commonness of religious belief being the explanation for the unusual union between a woman of royal blood and a man from a captive race. Moses’ father-in-law was a Kenite worshiper of El Elyon, but the emancipator’s parents were believers in El Shaddai. Moses thus was educated an El Shaddaist; through the influence of his father-in-law he became an El Elyonist; and by the time of the Hebrew encampment about Mount Sinai after the flight from Egypt, he had formulated a new and enlarged concept of Deity (derived from all his former beliefs), which he wisely decided to proclaim to his people as an expanded concept of their olden tribal god, Yahweh.
96:4.3 Moses had endeavored to teach these Bedouins the idea of El Elyon, but before leaving Egypt, he had become convinced they would never fully comprehend this doctrine. Therefore he deliberately determined upon the compromise adoption of their tribal god of the desert as the one and only god of his followers. Moses did not specifically teach that other peoples and nations might not have other gods, but he did resolutely maintain that Yahweh was over and above all, especially to the Hebrews. But always was he plagued by the awkward predicament of trying to present his new and higher idea of Deity to these ignorant slaves under the guise of the ancient term Yahweh, which had always been symbolized by the golden calf of the Bedouin tribes.
96:4.4 The fact that Yahweh was the god of the fleeing Hebrews explains why they tarried so long before the holy mountain of Sinai, and why they there received the ten commandments which Moses promulgated in the name of Yahweh, the god of Horeb. During this lengthy sojourn before Sinai the religious ceremonials of the newly evolving Hebrew worship were further perfected.
96:4.5 It does not appear that Moses would ever have succeeded in the establishment of his somewhat advanced ceremonial worship and in keeping his followers intact for a quarter of a century had it not been for the violent eruption of Horeb during the third week of their worshipful sojourn at its base. “The mountain of Yahweh was consumed in fire, and the smoke ascended like the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mountain quaked greatly.” In view of this cataclysm it is not surprising that Moses could impress upon his brethren the teaching that their God was “mighty, terrible, a devouring fire, fearful, and all-powerful.”
96:6.2 The spell of the extraordinary personality of Moses had kept alive in the hearts of his followers the inspiration of an increasingly enlarged concept of God; but when they once reached the fertile lands of Palestine, they quickly evolved from nomadic herders into settled and somewhat sedate farmers. And this evolution of life practices and change of religious viewpoint demanded a more or less complete change in the character of their conception of the nature of their God, Yahweh. During the times of the beginning of the transmutation of the austere, crude, exacting, and thunderous desert god of Sinai into the later appearing concept of a God of love, justice, and mercy, the Hebrews almost lost sight of Moses’ lofty teachings. They came near losing all concept of monotheism; they nearly lost their opportunity of becoming the people who would serve as a vital link in the spiritual evolution of Urantia, the group who would conserve the Melchizedek teaching of one God until the times of the incarnation of a bestowal Son of that Father of all.
97:10.8 And thus the successive teachers of Israel accomplished the greatest feat in the evolution of religion ever to be effected on Urantia: the gradual but continuous transformation of the barbaric concept of the savage demon Yahweh, the jealous and cruel spirit god of the fulminating Sinai volcano, to the later exalted and supernal concept of the supreme Yahweh, creator of all things and the loving and merciful Father of all mankind. And this Hebraic concept of God was the highest human visualization of the Universal Father up to that time when it was further enlarged and so exquisitely amplified by the personal teachings and life example of his Son, Michael of Nebadon.
142:3.21 “And then, amidst the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, Moses gave them the new ten commandments, which you will all allow are more worthy utterances to accompany the enlarging Yahweh concepts of Deity. And did you never take notice of these commandments as twice recorded in the Scriptures, that in the first case deliverance from Egypt is assigned as the reason for Sabbath keeping, while in a later record the advancing religious beliefs of our forefathers demanded that this be changed to the recognition of the fact of creation as the reason for Sabbath observance?