THE SINAI PROBLEM OBERHUMMER. 673 



about the site of the BibHcal Sinai are here to be followed up. In 

 this undertaking it is obviously presupposed that the BibUcal account 

 has at least in the geographical sense a real background. The question 

 of its historical credibihty does not concern me. Bernhard Stade ' 

 thought: ''What we now read about it in the Book of Exodus is 

 really an early myth disguised as history and therefore equipped with 

 historical and geographical details. To follow up the route taken by 

 the Israelites is just as important as to investigate the one made by 

 the Burgundians on their journey to King Etzel in the Nibelungen- 

 sage." The journey of the Burgundians to King Etzel is mythical, 

 but the description of the places along the Danube, where Vienna 

 emerges from the obscurity of long centuries as a flourishing and fes- 

 tive city, is real and tangible. Here, too, a remark of Moltke " on the 

 stage of the earhest Roman history holds good: "A narrative may be 

 historically untrue, and yet as regards the location perfectly accurate." 

 From the Acta Sanctorum hundreds of examples might be quoted. 



Nearly as hopeless as Stade, who does not even put the question, 

 "Where was Sinai located," but rather "Where does the sacred legend 

 of the Hebrews place Sinai," ^ the famous Bibhcal critic Juhus Well- 

 hausen * thus expresses himself: "We know not where Sinai was 

 situated, and the Bible is hardly in agreement concerning it. To 

 dispute about this question is characteristic of the dilettanti." At 

 the same time Wellhausen, considering Exodus, Chapters II seq., in- 

 clines to the view that places Sinai in Midian. Other data for the 

 various locations of Sinai are given in an excellent treatise recently 

 pubUshed, "Where was Mount Sinai located," by K. Miketta,^^ who 

 himself reverts to the traditional standpoint. 



The most recent phase of the Sinai question is introduced through 

 the more and more prevailing recognition that we have in Exodus, 

 Chapter XIX, as also in other passages, the story of a great volcanic 

 eruption. After Beke, who first broached this hy{5othesis, had aban- 

 doned it, Hermann Gunkel, the Old Testament theologian and suc- 

 cessor to Bernhard Stade at the ITniversity of Giessen, independently 

 pointed out in numerous passages of his writmgs the volcanic charac- 

 ter of the phenomena." In Exodus, Chapter XIX, we read : " A thick 

 cloud was upon the mount; the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke 

 of a furnace; there were thunders and lightnings, and the voice of 

 the trumpet exceeding loud ; the Lord descended u])on the mountain 

 in fire, and the whole mountain quaked greatly." In another pas- 



> Geschichte des Volkes Israel, I (1887), 129, Anm 2. 



3 Wandorbiich, p. 21. 



» Op. cit., pp. 13211. 



* ProlCKomena zur Oeschichto Israels, 5th cd. (ISM), p. 349. 



» Weidenauer Studien, III (1909), 77-123; IV (1911), 117-145. 



' First in Deutsche Literatur-Zeltung, 1903, p. 30u.H. Similarly Ausgewiihite Psalmcn, p. 160 (2d ed., p. 

 117), and in " Bcitriigc zur VVeitcrcrentwicklung dor ohristlichcn Religion'' (Miinchen, 1905), p. 09, where 

 also the supposed location in northwestern Arabia is referred to. 



