Is That a Burning Bush? Is This Mount Sinai? Solstice Bolsters a Claim

The mountain stored its secrets and techniques for hundreds of years, its air of sacred thriller enhanced by a distant location within the Negev desert in southern Israel.
But sooner or later final week, lots of of Israeli adventurers headed deep into the wilderness to succeed in Mount Karkom, decided to get nearer to answering a query as intriguing as it’s controversial: Is this the Mount Sinai of the Bible, the place God is believed to have communicated with Moses?
Mount Sinai’s location has lengthy been disputed by students each non secular and educational, and there are a dozen extra conventional contenders, most of them within the mountainous expanses of the Sinai Peninsula throughout the border in Egypt.

But Mount Karkom’s declare has gained some fashionable help due to an annual pure phenomenon that an intrepid group of archaeology and nature fans had come to witness for themselves.
In 2003, an area Israeli information and ecologist occurred to be atop Karkom’s huge plateau sooner or later in late December across the time of the winter solstice when he stumbled on a marvel.
Scores of individuals fanned throughout the sting of a ravine to see the “Burning Bush” phenomenon for themselves within the Negev Desert in southern Israel, Dec. 21, 2021. On the 12 months’s shortest day, lots of of Israelis ventured deep into the desert to witness a wierd pure phenomenon atop an historic pilgrimage web site that some argue is the place God spoke to Moses. (Amit Elkayam/The New York Times)
At noon, with the solar low within the sky on one of many shortest days of the 12 months, he peered throughout a deep ravine and noticed a wierd aura of sunshine, flickering like flames, emanating from a spot on a sheer rock face.
It was daylight mirrored at a specific angle off the perimeters of a cave, however the discovery quickly made its technique to Israeli tv and was fancifully named “the burning bush.” Perhaps this, some mentioned, was the supernatural hearth that, in accordance with the Book of Exodus, Moses noticed on the holy mountain when God first spoke to him, and the place he would later obtain the Ten Commandments as he led the Israelites out of Egypt.

The burning bush, by no means consumed by the fireplace, is symbolic in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and different faiths, together with Baha’i.
But many years earlier than this unintended astronomical discovery, Mount Karkom was already fascinating some archaeologists with hints that the positioning had performed an necessary non secular position hundreds of years in the past.
More than a half-century in the past, Emmanuel Anati, a younger Italian archaeologist, discovered a rare focus of hundreds of rock carvings and rock circles as he surveyed the plateau of Mount Karkom, about 2,500 ft above sea degree. Among the rock drawings are lots of ibexes, but additionally some which were interpreted as depicting the tablets of the commandments or different references from the Bible.
At the bottom of Mount Karkom, named in Hebrew for a desert crocus, there may be proof that historic migration trails converged right here and that cultic rituals befell within the space. Anati recognized what he thought was a sacrificial altar with the stays of 12 pillars of stone that would conceivably correspond to the one described in Exodus 24 that Moses constructed, representing the 12 tribes of Israel.
The Negev Desert, with Mount Karkom within the distance, in southern Israel, Dec. 21, 2021. On the 12 months’s shortest day, lots of of Israelis ventured deep into the desert to witness a wierd pure phenomenon atop an historic pilgrimage web site that some argue is the place God spoke to Moses. (Amit Elkayam/The New York Times)
In his writings, Anati mentioned he had not got down to search for Mount Sinai. But after years of fieldwork and exploration, he proposed within the early Nineteen Eighties that, on the idea of topographical and archaeological proof, Mount Karkom “should be identified with the sacred mountain of the biblical narrations.”
But apart from normal difficulties of desert archaeology — nomads have a tendency to depart few everlasting traces — and the entire query of whether or not any archaeology could possibly be tied to the biblical story of the Exodus in any respect, Anati’s principle posed an issue of chronology.
Israel Finkelstein, a professor emeritus of archaeology at Tel Aviv University in Israel and an early critic of Anati’s principle, mentioned that the majority, if not all, of the datable websites round Mount Karkom are from the third millennium B.C.
The Exodus, if it occurred, is mostly dated to round 1600 to 1200 B.C.
“So there is more than one millennium gap between the reality at Karkom and the biblical tradition,” Finkelstein mentioned, including that because the proof is obscure, and figuring out such websites as cultic is a matter of interpretation, “It is perhaps safer not to speculate.”
However heated the tutorial debate, the air was chilly when a convoy of sturdy jeeps with four-wheel drive set out for the mountain by way of jagged terrain at daybreak on the day of the winter solstice.
Access to Mount Karkom is often restricted to weekends and sure holidays as a result of it requires passing by way of a army firing and coaching zone. A paved highway that helps shorten the hourslong journey, a lot of which takes place on grime tracks, has largely been closed to civilian site visitors lately due to the concern of cross-border assaults by Islamic militants from Sinai.
This 12 months, in a midweek first, the army opened the paved highway and allowed passage by way of the firing zone for the burning-bush seekers.
As the group arrived within the parking zone on the foot of Mount Karkom, there was an sudden bonus: Anati, now in his early 90s, was sitting in a deck chair, holding court docket and selling his books.
In the seek for Mount Sinai, Anati mentioned, some insist for political or nationalistic causes that the positioning have to be inside the borders of Israel, not in Egypt. Others, for non secular causes, say it have to be exterior the borders, to adjust to the custom of the Israelites wandering within the desert for 40 years earlier than reaching the Promised Land.
An historic burial web site constructed by nomads within the Negev Desert in southern Israel, Dec. 21, 2021. On the 12 months’s shortest day, lots of of Israelis ventured deep into the desert to witness a wierd pure phenomenon atop an historic pilgrimage web site that some argue is the place God spoke to Moses. (Amit Elkayam/The New York Times)
“None of these approaches is correct; one must seek the truth,” Anati mentioned. “I bring all the opinions and evidence and let the reader decide for themselves,” he mentioned, including of the mountain’s treasures, “This is the story of the history of humankind.”
After a steep climb up the aspect of Karkom to its windy plateau, scores of individuals fanned alongside the ridge and peered throughout the ravine on the distant window within the cliff to spy the “burning bush.”
Without binoculars or biblical imaginative and prescient, it was potential to make out a wierd, if faint, glow, though some guests expressed disappointment that the aura across the cave mouth was no more fiery.
But stumbling throughout the rocky plateau, it was thrilling to return throughout items of historic rock artwork, the pictures chipped into the darkish brown patina of stones, exposing the sunshine limestone beneath.
Shahar Shilo, a researcher who manages the Negev Highlands Tourism cooperative, spoke of the significance for historic peoples of having the ability to measure the seasons for agricultural functions, and the holiness imbued in those that might establish with precision the shortest day of the calendar.
Shilo additionally had a extra prosaic clarification for why Mount Karkom had drawn folks there within the distant previous: the prepared provide of high quality flint that was essential for something from looking to family instruments. Even after a lot of humanity had superior into the Bronze and Iron ages, he mentioned, the desert dwellers right here nonetheless relied on stone.
Whether that is Mount Sinai and the winter solstice phenomenon the burning bush “is in the eye of the beholder,” Shilo mentioned.
“But,” he added, “it’s a great myth, you have to admit.”