This article was first published in the June 2007 ABR
E-Newsletter. The site favored by most scholars is Gebel Musa
(Mountain of Moses), or one of several nearby mountains, in the
high-mountain region of southern Sinai. This problem is of
utmost importance, since finding the correct location of Mt.
Sinai is at the heart of the question of the historicity of the
Exodus account. Scholars today largely discount the Biblical
account of the sojourn in Egypt, Exodus and wilderness
wanderings as fictional. They reach this conclusion because they
say there is no concrete evidence that Israel ever was in Egypt
or the Sinai. The identification of Gebel Musa as Mt. Sinai is a
Christian tradition originating in the fourth century. We have
no preserved Jewish tradition for the location of Mt. Sinai.
Thus, there is a gap of 1800 years between the receiving of the
law on Mt. Sinai (1446 BC) and the beginning of the Christian
tradition. What is more, there is no documentation in any
Christian source as to why this particular