Where is Mount Sinai?

Question

Accepted Answer

The site of Mount Sinai is disputed: the traditional mountain is Jebel Musa ("Mount of Moses") in the south of the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, and that is where the map places it, but the Bible gives no location that can be fixed, and several other mountains have been proposed. Exodus says that Israel reached the mountain in the third month after leaving Egypt: they "were come to the desert of Sinai, and had pitched in the wilderness; and there Israel camped before the mount." The same mountain is called Horeb, the mountain of God, where Moses saw the burning bush, and Deuteronomy counts "eleven days' journey from Horeb by the way of mount Seir unto Kadesh-barnea". From Jebel Musa to the usual site of Kadesh-barnea is about 240 km in a straight line, about 8 days on foot at 30 km a day. The candidates on the map, beside Jebel Musa, are its neighbouring peaks Ras es-Safsafeh and Jebel Katherina, Jebel Serbal about 35 km to the west, Jebel Sin Bishar in the west of the peninsula, and Har Karkom in the Negev, about 210 km to the north-north-east; some writers also look for the mountain in north-western Arabia. Christian monks settled below Jebel Musa by the fourth century, and the monastery of St Catherine still stands at its foot. None of the proposals has been proved, so the map shows the traditional site and lists the others on the place card.