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Is Mt. Sinai the Mountain of YEHOVAH? 3

Is Mt. Sinai Really the

Mountain of YEHOVAH?

When Queen Helena, mother of Constantine the “Great,” chose
Jebel Musa in the Sinai peninsula as the site of the biblical Mt. Si-
nai, the Christian world blindly assumed this to be true. Every year
excited tourists climb the slopes of the so-called Mountain of God,
photographing Elijah’s cave and the monastery of St. Katherine --
totally unaware that the REAL Mt. Sinai lies across the Gulf of
Aqaba in what is now Saudi Arabia. How could this be?

John D. Keyser

T he exodus of the Israelites from the land of Egypt has been commemorated each year for the
past 33 centuries by the celebration of Passover. The historical and religious records of the He-
brews are replete with references to the Exodus, the forty years in the Wilderness and the Cove-
nant at Mt. Sinai. The people of Israel have been constantly reminded of the Shekinah Glory of
YEHOVAH God descending upon the mount in front of all the people; yet its exact location was
de-emphasized lest attempts be made to make the place a cult center. There is, in fact, no recorded
instance in the Bible of anyone even trying to pay a return visit to Mt. Sinai, with two possible ex-
ceptions: the Prophet Elijah and the Apostle Paul. Some four centuries after the Exodus, Elijah es-
caped for his life after having slain the priests of Ba’al on Mt. Carmel. Setting his course to the
mountain in Sinai, he lost his way in the desert and had to be revived by the angel of YEHOVAH --
who placed him in a cave in the mountain. Paul, after his conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts
9:1-9), went to Arabia -- and possibly Mt. Sinai -- to be taught by YEHOVAH.

Nowadays, it seems, one doesn’t need a guiding angel to find Mt. Sinai. It has become cus-
tomary, since the time of Constantine the Great, for the majority of the Christian world to accept the
area of the Sinai peninsula for the location of the biblical Mt. Sinai. The modern pilgrim, as pilgrims
have done for centuries past, sets his sights on the monastery of Santa Katarina -- so named after the
martyred Katherine of Egypt whose body angels supposedly carried to the nearby peak bearing her
name. After an overnight stay, at daybreak, the pilgrims begin the climb to Jebel Musa (”Mount
Moses” in Arabic). It is the southern peak of a two mile massif rising south of the monastery -- the
“traditional” Mt. Sinai with which the descent of the Shekinah Glory and the Lawgiving are associ-
ated.

The climb to that peak is long and arduous, involving an ascent of some 2,500 feet. One path
is by way of some 4,000 steps laid out by the monks along the western slopes of the massif. An eas-
ier route -- one that takes several hours longer -- begins in the valley between the massif and a

The Berean Voice September-October 2002