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Is Mt. Sinai the Mountain of YEHOVAH? 7

the full text of his reports to the king of Prussia, under whose patronage he traveled. In this work
Lepsius VOICED DOUBTS regarding Jebel Musa almost as soon as he reached the area: “The re-
moteness of that district, its distance from frequented roads of communication and its position in the
lofty range,” he wrote, “rendered it peculiarly applicable for individual hermits, but for the same
reason INAPPLICABLE FOR A LARGE PEOPLE.” He felt certain that the hundreds of thousands
of Israelites could not have subsisted among the desolate granite peaks of Jebel Musa for the long
(almost a year) stay at Mt. Sinai. The monastic traditions, he confirmed, DATED TO THE 6TH
CENTURY A.D. AT THE EARLIEST. Therefore, they could not serve as a guide in this quest.

The true Mt. Sinai, Lepsius stressed, was in a desert plain; and it was also called in the Bible
Mt. Horeb, the Mount of the Dryness. MUSA WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF OTHER MOUNTAINS
AND NOT IN A DESERT AREA. There was no fertile place capable of sustaining the Israelite
multitudes near Jebel Musa. Moses first came to the
Mountain of God in search of grazing for his flock
of sheep; this he could not find at the desolate Jebel
Musa in the Sinai Peninsula.

When the conclusions of the prestigious
Lepsius were published, they shook tradition in two
ways -- he EMPHATICALLY DENIED the identifi-
cation of Mt. Sinai with Jebel Musa, voting for
Serbal; and he challenged the Exodus route previ-
ously taken for granted.

The debate that followed raged for almost a
quarter of a century and produced discoveries by
other researchers -- notably Charles Foster (The
Historical Geography of Arabia; Israel in the Wil-
derness) and William H. Bartlett (Forty Days in the
Desert on the Track of the Israelites). They added Traditional Mt. Sinai -- Jebel Musa
suggestions, confirmations and lingering doubts.

The Palmer Expedition

In 1868 the British government joined the Palestine Exploration Fund in sending a full-scale
expedition to the Sinai. Its main mission, in addition to extensive geodesic and mapping work, was
to establish once and for all the route of the Exodus and the location of Mt. Sinai. The group was led
by Captains Charles W. Wilson and Henry Spencer Palmer of the Royal Engineers. It also included
Professor Edward Henry Palmer -- a noted Orientalist and Arabist. The expedition’s official report
(Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai) was enlarged upon by the two Palmers in separate
works.

Previous expeditions went into the Sinai for brief tours -- mostly in springtime. The Wil-
son-Palmer expedition, however, departed from Suez on November 11, 1868, and returned to Egypt
on April 24, 1869 -- staying in the peninsula from the beginning of winter until the following spring.
As a result, one of its first discoveries was that the mountainous south GETS VERY COLD in the

The Berean Voice September-October 2002