Mount Sinai (Bible)

Mount Sinai (הַר סִינַי, Har Sīnay) is the mountain at which the Ten Commandments were given to Moses by God, according to the Book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. In the Book of Deuteronomy, these events are described as having transpired at Mount Horeb. "Sinai" and "Horeb" are generally considered by scholars to refer to the same place. The location of the Mount Sinai described in the Bible remains disputed. The high point of the dispute was in the mid-nineteenth century. Hebrew Bible texts describe the theophany at Mount Sinai in terms which a minority of scholars, following Charles Beke (1873), have suggested may literally describe the mountain as a volcano. Mount Sinai is one of the most sacred locations in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The biblical account of the giving of the instructions and teachings of the Ten Commandments was given in the Book of Exodus, primarily between chapters 19–24, during which Sinai is mentioned by name twice, in . In the story Sinai was enveloped in a cloud, it quaked and was filled with smoke, while lightning-flashes shot forth, and the roar of thunder mingled with the blasts of a trumpet; the account later adds that fire was seen burning at the summit of the mountain. In the biblical account, the fire and clouds are a direct consequence of the arrival of God upon the mountain. According to the biblical story, Moses departed to the mountain and stayed there for 40 days and nights in order to receive the Ten Commandments and he did so twice because he broke the first set of the tablets of stone after returning from the mountain for the first time. The biblical description of God's descent seems to be in conflict with the statement shortly after that God spoke to the Israelites from Heaven. While biblical scholars argue that these passages are from different sources, the Mekhilta argues that God had lowered the heavens and spread them over Sinai, and the Pirke De-Rabbi Eliezer argues that a hole was torn in the heavens, and Sinai was torn away from the earth and the summit pushed through the hole.