Q&A: Sources for the Revelation at Mount Sinai
Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.
Sources for the Revelation at Mount Sinai
Question
Hello Rabbi, when it comes to an event witnessed by a large number of people, like the Revelation at Mount Sinai, isn’t it reasonable to expect there to be additional sources mentioning the event and confirming its truth, aside from the book of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) itself?
Answer
Not necessarily.
I recommend that you look at Emmanuel Velikovsky’s book Worlds in Collision, pp. 77–81, where he refers to several ancient sources that testify to very unusual natural phenomena that took place around more or less the same time. There he connects those events to the Revelation at Mount Sinai (based in part on some midrashim).
This is not the subject of the book—its subject is not the Revelation at Mount Sinai—but on that basis he builds a broad and revolutionary theory. You can take a look there if it interests you.