Religion: The Lost Mountain

In the wake of Israel’s tough little army, a task force of scholars and pilgrims may invade the Sinai peninsula. Their objective: to find Mount Sinai, lost in the desert drifts of history.

Four Possibilities. Ever since the six-day blitz against Egypt, Israel’s Minister of Religion, Dr. Samuel Cahane, has been snowed in by cables and letters from would-be pilgrims hoping to see the holy mountain while Israel still held the peninsula (Jewish travelers had been discouraged by the Egyptians). “It seems as if all the Jews in the world want to go to Mount Sinai,” said Dr. Cahane. But nobody knows where Sinai is. Modern archaeologists and ancient traditions recognize four main possibilities:

¶ Oldest Christian tradition identifies Sinai with Jebel Serbal, an inaccessible 6,750-ft. peak with an oasis, well watered but perhaps too small to have supplied the Israelites.

Other scholars think Sinai is in the volcanic Mount Seir range in southern Israel, which would account for the “thunders and lightenings, and a thick cloud upon the mount” of Exodus 19:16, but the route there would not jibe with Biblical accounts.

¶ Most popular theory is that Sinai is Jebel Musa (Mount of Moses), an impressive 8,000-ft. of granite in the southern end of the Sinai peninsula. Part of the Greek monastery of St. Catherine there dates back to 330 A.D., indicating how old the tradition is. But to get to Jebel Musa, Moses would have had to lead his people through the Egyptian copper and turquoise mines in the area.

¶ Most recent theory is that in their Exodus the Israelites did not follow the southern route traced by tradition, but the sandy northern road along the Mediterranean coast (see map). In that case, Mount Sinai should be that unimpressive mound known as Jebel Hillel, 30 miles south of El Arish, and rising a mere 2,000 ft. from the alluvial plain.

Majestic Moment. Foremost supporter of Jebel Hillel is Dr. Benjamin Mazar, Archaeologist President of Tel-Aviv’s Hebrew University. To get to Jebel Hillel, he points out, the Israelites would have had to cross a marshland sometimes known as the Sea of Reeds, which might well have been that Red Sea whose waters parted to let the Children of Israel through. Dr. Cahane backs up Dr. Mazar’s theory: according to legend, he says, Sinai was not a high but a low mountain—evidence of Jehovah’s willingness to descend to man’s level.

Last week, after a conference with 100 rabbis, Minister Cahane and Scholar Mazar were planning an expedition into the Sinai peninsula to seek evidence that would back up their theory. But the Israeli army was in no mood to wait for the archaeologist’s word. Last week a jeep-borne band of soldiers barreled down from their base in the Sinai peninsula to Jebel Musa. There they climbed the 737 steps in the sheer rock to plant the Israeli flag where they were sure that Moses talked to God. At the nearby monastery of St. Catherine they picked the soldier with the best handwriting, and he wrote in the visitor’s book: “We are the first unit of the Israel Army to stand on top of our holy Mount of Moses. We have made history. This moment has majesty for us all.”