Please join the BAS Library or become an All Access member of BAS to gain full access to this article and so much more.
Already a library member? Log in here.
Institution user? Log in with your IP address or Username
Footnotes
Emmanuel Anati, “Has Mt. Sinai Been Found?” BAR 11:04.
Israel Finkelstein, “Raider of the Lost Mountain—An Israeli Archaeologist Looks at the Most Recent Attempt to Locate Mt. Sinai,” BAR 14:04.
See Davida Eisenberg-Degen, “Archaeological Views: The Archaeology of Scribbles,” BAR 38:04.
See Abraham Malamat, “Let My People Go and Go and Go and Go,” BAR 24:01.
Itzhaq Beit-Arieh, “Fifteen Years in Sinai,” BAR 10:04.
There was little or no discussion at the colloquium as to whether the traditional Mt. Sinai (adjacent to St. Catherine’s Monastery) was in fact Mt. Sinai. It was simply not considered a candidate. As Cross notes, evidence of its identification as Mt. Sinai is no earlier than the Byzantine period, when it was identified to Egeria, a Christian pilgrim who was searching for the site in the late fourth century C.E., at which time monks were living there.
Endnotes
See Ronald S. Hendel’s review of Harold Blum, The Gold of Exodus, in ReViews, BAR 25:04.
See Allen Kerkeslager, “Mt. Sinai—In Arabia?” BR 16:02.
According to the documentary hypothesis, these various sources were woven together to create the Pentateuch.
On the geographical indications in these prose texts, see Graham I. Davies, The Way of the Wilderness: A Geographical Study of the Wilderness Itineraries in the Old Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 63–69.
Anati is no exception: “Har Karkom is the only locality, among those proposed for Mount Sinai, which fits without any effort into all these co-ordinates.” Anati, Har Karkom, p. 59.
See Frank Moore Cross: “A mountain of paper has been expended in attempting to locate the stations of the Exodus in Numbers 33. There are almost as many opinions as there are scholars.” Hershel Shanks, Frank Moore Cross—Conversations With a Bible Scholar (Washington, D.C.: Biblical Archaeology Society, 1994), p. 17.
Davida Eisenberg-Degen, “Har Karkom in Context, Rock Art Sites of the Negev” (paper presented at the Mount Sinai: Mount Karkom? colloquium, Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, May 12–13, 2013).
Emmanuel Anati, “Har Karkom: Archaeological Discoveries on a Holy Mountain in the Desert of Exodus” (paper presented at the Out of Egypt conference, UC San Diego, June 2013), p. 3.
James B. Pritchard, ed., Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1969), p. 119.
George E. Mendenhall, “Midian,” in David Noel Freedman, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary, vol. 4 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), p. 816.
Eduard Meyer, Geschichte des Altertums (Stuttgart and Berlin: J.G. Cottasche Buchhandlung Nachfolger, 1921).
Parr, “Further Reflections,” p. 213. See also Peter J. Parr, “Midian,” in Eric M. Meyers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeology in the Near East, vol. 4 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1997), p. 25.
The painted ware at Timna was found to be petrographically identical to the painted ware at Qurayyah. See Beno Rothenberg and Jonathan Glass, “The Midianite Pottery,” in John F.A. Sawyer and David J.A. Clines, eds., Midian, Moab and Edom, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series No. 24 (Sheffield: Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, 1983), pp. 65–124. The Timna pottery was “probably imported from Midian.” See Caroline Grigson, “Camels, Copper and Donkeys in the Early Iron Age of the Southern Levant: Timna Revisited,” Levant 44 (April 2012), p. 83. Other Hejazi sites include Tayma and Al-Ula (Dedan).
Shimon Ilani, “The Location of Mount Horeb According to Exodus, Deuteronomy and 1 Kings: Geographical and Geological Implications” (paper presented at the Mount Sinai: Mount Karkom? colloquium, Mitzpe Ramon, Israel, May 12–13, 2013).
Ilani cites Victor E. Camp, Peter R. Hooper, M. John Roobol and D.L. White, “The Madinah Eruption, Saudi Arabia: Magma Mixing and Simultaneous Extrusion of Three Basaltic Chemical Types,” Bulletin of Volcanology 49 (April 1987), pp. 489–508.