1909.] HAUPT— THE BURNING BUSH ^55 



think, is the great sight (Exodus, iii., 3) which Moses observed on 

 the Mountain of God about 1200 b. c. 



Mount Sinai is generally supposed to be a mountain on the so-called 

 Sinaitic Peninsula between the Gulf of Suez and the Gulf of Akaba. 

 The majority of scholars believe that the Mountain of the Law was 

 the present Jahal Miisa (the Mountain of Moses) which is the 

 highest point of this barren peninsula in the south, rising to a height 

 of 7,362 feet ; but the two famous Egyptologists Richard Lepsius 

 and Georg Ebers claimed this distinction for the Jabal Serhdl in 

 the northwest, which is 6,731 feet high. 



Mount Sinai, however, cannot be located on the Sinaitic Penin- 

 sula; it was a volcano in the land of Midian on the northeastern 

 shore of the Red Sea. Midian is not the name of an Arabian tribe ; 

 it denotes the Sinaitic amphictyony, i. e., the league of worshipers of 

 Jhvh- in the neighborhood of Elath, the Edomite port at the north- 

 eastern end of the Red Sea. 



Midian is derived from the old Sumerian word dm which means 

 in Arabic not only judgment, but also religion. Law and religion 

 are intimately connected in the East. The Jewish religion is known 

 as the Mosaic Law. In the New Testament the Jewish theologians 

 are called lazvyers.^ The Arabic term fakih denotes a scholar versed 

 both in jurisprudence and theology. 



Midianite is not a name like Arabic, but a term like Islamic. 

 Priest of Midian means a priest of the Sinaitic amphictyony. The 

 name of Moses's father-in-law was Jethro, which may be connected 

 with the name of the Egyptian sun-god, Ra, which we find also in 

 Potiphera' and Potiphar (for Petiphro; compare Jether for Jethro). 

 In the original tradition, Moses was the son-in-law of a priest of 

 On or HeliopoHs, the city of the sun-god. Moses's Egyptian wife is 

 contemptuously referred to (in Numbers, xii., i) as the Ethiopian 



"For Jhvh (i. e., Jahveh or Yahwdy, not Jehovah) see the notes on the 

 translation of the Psalms, in the Polychrome Bible, page 164, line 4. The 

 first syllable of Janven should be pronounced like the jah in Hallelujah. 



^Compare Matthew, xxii., 35; Luke, vii., 30; x., 25; xi., 45. 52; xiv., 3. 

 It might be well to add that publican means toll-gatherer. Sinner = unor the - 

 do.v; compare John, vii., 49. 



