Q&A: The Revelation at Mount Sinai
The Revelation at Mount Sinai
Question
Hello and blessings, Rabbi.
I saw what Yigal Ben-Nun wrote regarding the apparent contradictions about who exactly went up to receive the Torah at Mount Sinai.
He presents 5 versions based on the verses:
- Moses goes up the mountain with Aaron, his sons, and seventy of the elders of Israel; they see God, He does not harm them, and they eat and drink (Exodus 24:9–11).
- Moses goes up the mountain entirely alone; the elders and the people do not join him (Exodus 24:2).
- Moses goes up the mountain accompanied by Joshua, and asks the elders to remain in the camp and consult Aaron and Hur if necessary (Exodus 24:11–15).
- Moses goes up the mountain alone, and after seven days God calls to him from within the cloud (Exodus 24:15–17).
- At the beginning of the chapter there appears the end of another version, describing Moses coming down from the mountain and telling the people the words of the Lord and all the ordinances (Exodus 24:3–8).
Ben-Nun adds that the name “Mount Sinai” does not appear in the passages that are dated as the most ancient in the Bible, such as the revelation to Moses at Mount Horeb, the Song of Deborah, and others, where Horeb, Seir, the field of Edom, Teman, and Paran are mentioned as places of the Lord’s revelation; and that in four out of the five versions in Exodus 24, the mountain is mentioned without stating its name. Ben-Nun concludes from this that the story of the Lord’s revelation at Mount Sinai is a relatively late tradition.
The scholar Eilon Gilad believes that the name Sinai originates in the Aramaic belief in the moon-god Sin, whom the Israelites came to know during the Babylonian exile. In his view, it is possible that the revelation at Mount Sinai in the Torah is a borrowing from an account of the revelation of the god Sin to the Babylonian king Nabonidus, whose name was transformed in the Bible into Nadab and Abihu.
My question is: do you think these claims have the power to undermine the tradition we have regarding the revelation at Mount Sinai? If not, why not?
Answer
I suggest you direct these questions to people who deal with the Bible. I don’t deal with this, also because I don’t have much confidence in that field.
Discussion on Answer
Where did I say that? It’s worth reading before raising such dumb objections.
On the one hand, you say that all the discussions around what is written in the Hebrew Bible and the like are not relevant; on the other hand, there are things written there that affect the Jewish religious way of life, like male homosexual relations for example, so what then? Will you still say that all the discussions around that verse that speaks about it are not relevant? That it’s written in that Hebrew Bible that doesn’t interest you all that much and that you have no confidence in, or in those who study it?
As far as I’m concerned, any text that affects religion in one way or another is relevant, and all discussion around it ought to interest anyone who believes in that text.