Article

1. The Volcano Hypothesis: Revisited
2. The hypothesis that Mount Sinai-Horeb was a volcanic mountain is not new. Early on, biblical scholars and even laypeople noticed that the language and imagery deployed by the biblical authors to describe the revelation at the ‘mountain of God’ was very reminiscent of a volcanic eruption. These investigators realized further that this volcanic mountain could not be located on the Sinai Peninsula, since volcanic activity occurred there aeons before the biblical period (Ibrahim, H.H. Oday, N.L. El Agami, M. Abu El Enen, ‘Paleomagnetic and Geological Investigation into Southern Sinai Volcanic Rocks and the Rifting of the Gulf of Suez’, Tectonophysics 321 (2000), pp. 343-58). Moreover, the attention given by the biblical author(s) to the Midianite tradition in the Pentateuch––the fact that Moses marries a Midianite woman, Zipporah, whose father is the Midianite priest, and that Moses encounters Yahweh at a sacred mountain near Midian––led these researchers to search for this mountain on the eastern shores of the Gulf of Aqabah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, in Midian (J. Blenkinsopp, ‘The Midianite–Kenite Hypothesis Revisited and the Origins of Judah’, JSOT 33 (2008), pp. 131-53).

In his commentary on the book of Genesis, Gunkel opines that the ‘smoking fire pot and flaming torch’ of Gen. 15.17 is a unique divine revelation found in the Patriarchal narratives, and that this story about Yahweh––a fire demon––is based originally on the Moses legends at Sinai. In addition, Gunkel was one of the first to point out volcanic imagery in the Psalms (H. Gunkel and J. Begrich, Introduction to Psalms: The Genres of the Religious Lyric of Israel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1998 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1933]), pp. 69, 77, 80). If Sinai were a volcanic mountain, then for Meyer Yahweh was an unapproachable fire demon who ‘broke out’ on people from the Ark of the Covenant (Meyer, Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstämme, p. 70; Oberhummer, ‘The Sinai Problem’, p. 674). Along similar lines, the volcano hypothesis provided Meyer with a new basis for an explanation of the catastrophe that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah; he hypothesized that this story origi nated in the harrat (‘scorched land’, i.e. volcanic) region of northwest Arabia, but at some point it was transferred from Arabia to the Dead Sea region of Palestine.

Jean Kœnig also proposed a location in northwest Saudi Arabia for Mount Sinai (Jean Kœnig, Le site de Al-Jaw dans l’ancien pays de Madian (Paris: Geuthner, 1971); Silvertsen, Parting of the Sea, p. 58). Similar to Musil and Noth, Kœnig discovered that the place names in Numbers 33 near the ‘wilderness of Sinai’ correspond to place names in Arabia near Harrat ar-Rahah (Kœnig, ‘Itinéraires Sinaitiques en Arabie’, Révue de l’Histoire des Religions 166 (1964), pp. 121-41; Noth, ‘Der Wallfahrtsweg zum Sinai’; Silvertsen, The Parting of the Sea, p. 66), south of Tebuk, and that this was a pilgrimage route to the mountain of God. Kœnig even went as far as drawing this so-called pilgrimage route on a map, following an ancient trail to the same volcano proposed by Musil, Hala’l-Bedr (Hallat al Badr) (J. Kœnig, ‘La localisation du Sinai et les traditions des scribes’, Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses 44 (1964), pp. 200-35). In the Catalog of the Active Volcanoes of the World (1963), Neumann van Padang speculated that the Israelite account in Exodus 19–20 might be referring to a volcanic eruption of Harrat ar-Rahah,26 the lava-field adjacent to the cinder cone volcano, Hallat al Badr, and within the reach of Midian.

Davies draws attention to the distinct volcanic flavor of the imagery used to describe Yahweh, as well as hinting that the volcanic religion of Yahweh was brought north by the Midianites into Palestine via the caravan trading routes. If Yahweh has Arabian roots, then perhaps this deity was brought north on the caravan trading routes from Arabia. The Midianites were known spice traders. In fact, the name of Abraham’s wife, Keturah (hrw+q), who may be a personification of the incense trade, means ‘frankincense’; see E.A. Knauf, ‘Keturah’, in ABD, IV, p. 31. It is possible that Abraham came to know Yahweh (or El Shaddai, see Exod. 6.3) through the agency of a Midianite wife (Keturah?), just as Moses learns of Yahweh after marrying a Midianite woman (Zipporah). For Yahwism coming north from Midian along the trade routes (van der Toorn, ‘Yahweh’, p. 1717; Mark Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (Michigan: Eerdmans, 2nd edn, 2002), pp. 32-33). More recently, in 2003 the British physicist Colin Humphreys pub lished The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordi nary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories.29 Humphreys concludes that Mount Sinai was a volcanic mountain in northwest Saudi Arabia and argues for the plagues’ naturalistic explanation––the aftermath of a powerful volcanic eruption. He identifies Sinai-Horeb with Hallat al Badr, the same volcano both Kœnig and Musil identified previously as the ‘mountain of God’.

1. John Collins writes: It appears that YHWH was associated with a mountain in Midian even before the exodus, and this tradition is also reflected in the story of the burning bush in Exodus 3–4… The context of the stories in Exodus would seem to require a location close to Egypt, so in the Sinai Peninsula rather than further east, but the association of Sinai with Midian and Edom requires the location east of Aqaba. It may be that the confusion arises from the combination of traditions that were originally independent, and that the theophanies at Sinai were not originally part of the exodus story (John J. Collins, Introduction to the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), p. 111).
2. George E. Mendenhall vehemently opposed the Arabian location for the mountain. He believed that theophanies associated with Yahweh were simply thunderstorms writ large. Mendenhall claims that the idea that Mount Sinai was located somewhere in the deep south of Transjordan or in the northwest region of the Arabian peninsula ‘was based on the erroneous assumption that the description in Exod. 19.16-25…derived from a volcanic eruption’ (George E. Mendenhall, ‘Midian’, in ABD, IV, pp. 815-18). In the above statement, Mendenhall appears to ignore the Midianite tradition associated with Sinai-Horeb, perhaps since he preferred to see Midian as an ethnic or political entity (i.e. a tribal league), rather than a definite land east of the Arabah. Surprisingly, Frank Moore Cross, a huge proponent of the Midianite Kenite hypothesis and an Arabian location for Mount Sinai, did not support the volcano hypothesis (‘Israelite Origins’, an interview with Frank Moore Cross, Bible Review (Aug. 1992); F.M. Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 101-102).

1. Finally, although Roland de Vaux contested that the volcanic mountain was Hallat al Badr because its location was ‘quite arbitrary’, he was willing to admit the volcanic character of Sinai: It cannot be denied that the Yahwist’s account of the theophany on Mount Sinai has volcanic aspects, but it is possible that they were borrowed [from the Arabs]… It is possible to go even further and say that some Israelites may also have experienced a volcanic eruption, although it is very unlikely that they camped at the foot of an erupting volcano––the natural reaction would have been to go as far away from it as possible (De Vaux, The Early History Of Israel, I, pp. 438-39).
2. Midian: A Volcanic Wasteland
3. Midian is the most probable general geographical location for the original volcanic mountain abode of the god Yahweh, especially if one considers the following: (1) Moses first learns of the deity amidst a flaming bush at Horeb while tending his father-in-law’s flock in the wilderness outside of Midian (Exod. 3.1); (2) there are no historically active volcanoes located on the Sinai Peninsula, whereas there are numerous volcanoes located on the Arabian Peninsula, and several are in close proximity to the land of Midian; (3) Midian’s prominent role in the text is an important clue as to the roots of Yahwism, and may also be an indicator that Sinai-Horeb was a Midianite sanctuary (New Oxford Annotated Bible, RSV, p. 69, n. 3.1-6). Midian is an extremely active geological region. Geologically speak ing, Midian sits on the boundary of two tectonic plates: the African plate and the Arabian plate (including a sub-plate that constitutes the Sinai peninsula) (Silvertsen, The Parting of the Sea, pp. 2-54).

1. As Silvertsen has discussed, over a period of millions of years the rotation of the Arabian plate has opened up a rift in the Red Sea, in effect stretching the Earth’s crust and thinning it; consequently, molten rock from the asthenosphere—the upper area of the Earth’s mantle—has pushed its way upwards and has created a subterranean dome called the Afro-Arabian dome (Silvertsen, The Parting of the Sea, p. 54; see also D. Almond, ‘Geological Evolution of the Afro-Arabian Dome’, Tectonophysics 131 (1986), pp. 321-22, 327 (fig. 7d); H.J. Bayer et al., ‘Sedimentary and Structural Evolution of the Northwest Arabian Red Sea Margin’, Tectonophysics 153 (1988), pp. 137-51 (147); V. Camp and M. Roobol, ‘The Arabian Continental Alkali Basalt Province: Part I. Evolution of Harrat Rahat, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’, Geological Society of America Bulletin 101 (1989), pp. 71-95 (93-94), and ‘Upwelling Asthenosphere Beneath Western Arabia and Its Regional Implications’, Journal of Geophysical Research 97.15 (1992), pp. 255-71). The northern region of this dome is called the West Arabian Swell, which runs north to south through northwest Arabia and includes the Arabian harrat volcanoes (Silvertsen, The Parting of the Sea, pp. 53-54).
2. Harrat ar-Rahah and Harrat al <Uwayrid form the northern swath of the West Arabian Swell; they are the closest volcanic fields to biblical Midian. In addition, these two lava-fields are among the few Arabian harrats designated ‘anthropological/historical’ by the Global Volcanism Program, meaning that a volcano here has erupted recently (geologically speaking), and this volcanic activity was actually witnessed by passersby. Although many of the other Arabian harrat volcanoes are designated ‘Holocene’,47 because of their proximity to Midian, Harrat ar-Rahah and Harrat al <Uwayrid might serve as the best candidates thus far for the geographic region of the ‘mountain of God’
3. The Trade Routes and Lava Fields of the Arabian Peninsula:

1. We may therefore have a new typology of deity in the animistic pantheon of the ancient Near East––a volcano-god (Gunkel, Genesis, p. 181).
2. In addition to the prolific thunderstorm created by the volcanic plume, the column of smoke and fire rises from the volcano in an unprecedented fashion. According to a recent study published in the journal Nature,76 the weather inside these electrified gas clouds is very similar to another ravaging force of nature––tornadoes. Scientists are calling this phenome non a ‘volcanic mesocyclone’, in which the volcanic debris cloud rotates like a tornado system. The cyclonic rotation of the plume could have created a type of windstorm in combination with wind caused by the dirty thunderstorm. Thus, articles like these published in the journals Science and Nature add a scientific dimension to volcanic imagery in the Hebrew Bible and may demonstrate that the theophany at Sinai-Horeb was beyond a ‘Canaanite storm-theophany in mythological dress’.77 The theophany of Yahweh at Sinai (Exod. 19.16-18) not only includes lightning and thunder, but also an earthquake—the whole mountain quakes. Earthquakes and volcanic eruptions go hand in hand. In fact, seismic activity is usually a major indicator of an impending eruption. Before they erupt, volcanoes often cause shallow, localized earthquakes78 because magma is forced upwards to alleviate pressure below, in effect fracturing brittle rock underlying the volcano.79 One thing is for certain: the earthquake imagery in Exodus 19 is markedly different than Yahweh’s (or rather Baal’s) voice—thunder—shaking the wilderness in texts like Psalm 29.80 With the theophany at Sinai-Horeb, we are dealing with something much more complex than a storm theophany.Volcanic Imagery in Other Biblical Traditions
3. Transitioning now to the Prophets, imagery in the book of Isaiah corroborates the volcano hypothesis. Isaiah reads, ‘see, the name of Yahweh comes from afar, with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke; his lips are full of wrath, and his tongue is a consuming fire… He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction… The breath of Yahweh, like a stream of burning sulfur, sets it ablaze’ (Isa. 30.27-33). The author appears to be drawing from several nature motifs to describe the appear ance of Yahweh. On one hand, Isaiah portrays Yahweh using volcanic imagery; Yahweh’s breath is like a stream of burning sulfur. One of the best indicators of volcanic imagery in this passage is the use of sulfur. Elemental sulfur is extremely common in volcanic areas, often accumu lating around the rims of fumaroles, or volcanic vents. Also, Yahweh comes from afar (the South?) and here he is associated with smoke, fire, and earthquake. On the other hand, Yahweh is accompanied by rain, thunder, lightning, and hail—all phenomena typically associated with the storm theophany.101 Conversely, a ‘dirty’ thunderstorm produced by a volcanic eruption can equally be the cause of these phenomena.