Our Daily News Letter

The war which is going on now among the Arabs around Mecca has, aside from its political interest, also a cultural-historical interest for the Jews, because there is reason to believe that Mount Sinai was situated in the region where Ibn Saud is battling with the followers of Hussein.

It has generally been believed that the Israelites after fleeing from Egypt wandered in the deserts of the Sinaitic Peninsula, which lies in the direction between Egypt and Palestine and many scientists have assumed that Jabal Musa (Mount of Moses) as it is called by the Arabs, situated on that Peninsula, was the historical Sinai, where Moses handed down the Ten Commandments to the Jews.

This theory is comparatively new, dating from the 2nd to 4th century, A. D. During that period both the Arabs and Christians developed an interest in Moses and his story. The Christians in their search for Mount Sinai came upon the desert Sim, located on the Sinaitic Peninsula, and they took it for granted that Sinai, the mountain where the Israelites encamped, must have been here.

This however, does not agree with the Jewish version contained in the Bible, according to which Mount Sinai stood behind the desert bordering on Midian, which certainly is not on the Sinaitic Peninsula. There are a number of passages in the Bible substantiating the theory that Mount Sinai is not to be found here which has led many Bible students to doubt the story handed down by the Arabs and Christian monks. This doubt was strengthened when the geological character of the Sinaitic Peninsula was studied and it was learned that, whereas the Bibe describes Mount Sinai as volcanic, there is not even a trace of a volcano on the Peninsula, nor even the shadow of a lava stratum.

In consequence of the numerous evidence showing that Mount Sinai could not have been in this region, scientists turned to the spot mentioned in the Bible, in the neighborhood of Midian, which leads to Palestine by way of Seir and where there are lava fields indicating the activities of volcanos in former times. In fact one of the supposedly dead volcanos in this region broke forth in a terrific eruption as late as the 13th century.

In 1911 a Chech explorer, the Catholic priest Alois Mussil, travelled in these regions and found one of the dead volcanoes called Hal-1-Beder, which he believes to be the original Mount Sinai mentioned in the Bible. This mountain a held to be sacred by the Arabs, so much so that Mussil’s Arab guides refused to allow him to walk on it, threatening to leave him alone in the desert if he did. They only allowed him to walk around at the foot of the mountain. Mussil could not later resume his explorations in connection with Hal-1 Beder, as the World War interfered.

It is very possible that inscriptions made in the days of Moses could be found on this mountain or in its vicinity, and possibly the Ten Commandments are to be found there too, for in those times it was customary to make inscriptions on rocks. We can imagine what a sensation would be created throughout the world by such a discovery of the original Ten Commandments. Tut Ankhamen would hide back in his grave again!

We suggest that the new Hebrew University in Jerusalem undertake the task of exploring thoroughly the Hal-1-Beder mountain and the surrounding territory.