674 ANNUAL REPOKT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1912. 



sage is read that "the mount burned with fire" (Deuteronomy, IX, 

 15), and that ''the mountain burned with fire into the midst of heaven, 

 with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness" (Deuteronomy, IV, 11). 

 Furthermore, the Moses legend tells of a cloud (pillar) of smoke and 

 fire which advanced through the land, and in which Jehovah's glo- 

 rious manifestation was beheld (Exodus, XIII, 21). The poetical 

 recensions vary the same theme in the form of prophecy; they tell 

 of glowing coals; of the breath of Jehovah, which resembles a burn- 

 ing stream of sulphur, of mountains which melt like wax, etc. Tak- 

 ing all tliis together, it can not be doubted that observations of nature 

 are here the basis of the account, and that the usual explanation of 

 the question that it was a thunderstorm is not conclusive. Sinai must 

 have been a volcano. Moses led his people to a volcano, and in the 

 terrible volcanic eruption the awful and majestic manifestation of 

 Jehovah was experienced. 



Gunkel's treatise, which later on he supplemented with the view 

 that since there were no volcanoes on the Sinaitic Peninsula the Sinai 

 of the Bible was to be sought for in the volcanic regions of northwest 

 Arabia, received much approval, especially from Eduard Meyer,^ who 

 says, ''Gunkel has recognized that we have here the description of a 

 volcanic eruption. It is true that there never was a volcano on the 

 Smaitic Peninsula, but that, as is well known, there were numerous 

 volcanic regions (Ilarras) in western Arabia; the entire Hauran ter- 

 ritory, including Trachonitis, is made up of them, and numerous ex- 

 tensive Ilarras are located in southeast Midian, on the road from 

 Tebuk through Medina as far as Mecca. There is nothing to oppose 

 the assumption that one or several of these volcanoes may have been 

 still active even in historic times. One of them was the authentic 

 Sinai." Meyer remarks that already in 1872 the thought forced itself 

 upon him that Sinai must have been a volcano, but that he abandoned 

 it because it did not then occur to him to seek Sinai outside of the 

 Sinaitic Peninsula. The recognition that the Sinai of the Jahvist (the 

 Elohist calls the mountain of God "Horeb") must have been situated 

 in Midian, Meyer ascribes (pp. 60, 67) to Wellhausen (see above). In 

 connection with Gunkel's explanation of Sinai as a volcano, Meyer 

 assumes that Jehovah was originally a volcanic fire god and that he 

 was indigenous in Midian. He says, "We have often recognized 

 Jahve as a fire demon who in the darkness of night manifests liis ma- 

 jesty. The awful nature of the unapproachable fire god, who causes 

 destruction to friend and foe, is also here (I Samuel, VI, 19) clearly 

 recognizable, for instance, in the story of the ark (p. 70f.)." In con- 

 nection with this Meyer would also ascribe the origin of the story of 

 Sodom and Gomorrah to the volcanic Ilarras of Arabia, "in Palestine 

 it was then transferred by the Israelites to the Dead Sea." This view 



> Die Israeliten und ihre Nachbarstamme (Halle, 1906), p. 69. 



