The "mountain of God" where Israel encamped for nearly a year after their exodus from Egypt—from "the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt" (Exo 19:1) to "the twentieth day of the second month of the second year" when "the Israelites set out from the Desert of Sinai" (Num. 10:11-12)." Here they met with God and were constituted by Him a nation and given the torah by which they were to live as a nation. Knowledge of the mountain's location was lost soon after Elijah's visit (1 Ki 19:8); the mountain cannot be identified with certainty today. The site recognized by most scholars is Jebel Musa, a mountain near St Catherine's Monastary in the southern massif of the Sinai Peninsula.
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Jebel Musa, Mount Sinai?
Jebel Musa was identified as Sinai sometime in the 3rd Cent AD. It was reckoned that any mountain that would fit the bill has to have two things going for it: 1) its location must fit fairly with the itinerary of the exodus given in the book of Exodus, and 2) it must have a plain at its foot large enough to accommodate the crowd that came out of the exodus for nearly a year. Jebel Musa seemed (still does) the best candidate.
Theologically, Mount Sinai was important for ancient Israel; it was where she was officially recognized and constituted as "a kingdom of priest and a holy nation," where the "laws of Moses" were revealed. The covenant made there would rule how Israel lived and shaped her priorities and loyalties. At the same time—however glorious may be the idea of living amidst the glorious presence of God that Sinai represented—it was not God's chosen site of domicile for Israel. After a year there, God said, "You have stayed long enough at this mountain" (Deut 1:6). God's chosen place for them would be "the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighbouring peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains, in the western foothills, in the Negev and along the coast, to the land of the Canaanites" (v7). The true life of faith is never lived out in the isolation of temptations, but in the midst of them. But the Israelite orgy with the golden calf at Sinai was already a clear indication that the worst temptations do not come from without but from within.
Mount Sinai is also known as Horeb, and is the name used most frequently used in Deuteronomy (where it appears 9x, while Sinai is used only once; Sinai is found a total of 35x in the OT and 2x in Gal). J. G. McConville raises the tantalizing question whether Deuteronomy's preference for the name Horeb instead of Sinai has to do with the fact that "in itself it [Horeb] seems to be non-specific about location, a 'waste-place', possibly intending thus to detract from the idea that even the 'mountain of God' par excellence had any intrinsic significance."*
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*See "Time, Place and the Deuteronomic Altar-Law," in J. G. McConville and J. G. Millar, Time and Place in Deuteronomy (JSOTS 179; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 138 n.128.
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