Mount Sinai

80:6.3When the last ex­o­dus from the Eu­phrates val­ley oc­curred, Egypt was for­tu­nate in gain­ing so many of the most skill­ful artists and ar­ti­sans. These And­ite ar­ti­sans found them­selves quite at home in that they were thor­oughly fa­mil­iar with river life, its floods, ir­ri­ga­tions, and dry sea­sons. They en­joyed the shel­tered po­si­tion of the Nile val­ley; they were there much less sub­ject to hos­tile raids and at­tacks than along the Eu­phrates. And they added greatly to the met­al­work­ing skill of the Egyp­tians. Here they worked iron ores com­ing from Mount Sinai in­stead of from the Black Sea re­gions.

96:4.5It does not ap­pear that Moses would ever have suc­ceeded in the es­tab­lish­ment of his some­what ad­vanced cer­e­mo­nial wor­ship and in keep­ing his fol­low­ers in­tact for a quar­ter of a cen­tury had it not been for the vi­o­lent erup­tion of Ho­reb dur­ing the third week of their wor­ship­ful so­journ at its base. “The moun­tain of Yah­weh was con­sumed in fire, and the smoke as­cended like the smoke of a fur­nace, and the whole moun­tain quaked greatly.” In view of this cat­a­clysm it is not sur­pris­ing that Moses could im­press upon his breth­ren the teach­ing that their God was “mighty, ter­ri­ble, a de­vour­ing fire, fear­ful, and all-pow­er­ful.”

96:1.11Up to about 2000 B.C., Mount Sinai was in­ter­mit­tently ac­tive as a vol­cano, oc­ca­sional erup­tions oc­cur­ring as late as the time of the so­journ of the Is­raelites in this re­gion. The fire and smoke, to­gether with the thun­der­ous det­o­na­tions as­so­ci­ated with the erup­tions of this vol­canic moun­tain, all im­pressed and awed the Bed­ou­ins of the sur­round­ing re­gions and caused them greatly to fear Yah­weh. This spirit of Mount Ho­reb later be­came the god of the He­brew Semites, and they even­tu­ally be­lieved him to be su­preme over all other gods.

94:12.1The great weak­ness in the cos­mol­ogy of Bud­dhism was two­fold: its con­tam­i­na­tion with many of the su­per­sti­tions of In­dia and China and its sub­li­ma­tion of Gau­tama, first as the en­light­ened one, and then as the Eter­nal Bud­dha. Just as Chris­tian­ity has suf­fered from the ab­sorp­tion of much er­ro­neous hu­man phi­los­o­phy, so does Bud­dhism bear its hu­man birth­mark. But the teach­ings of Gau­tama have con­tin­ued to evolve dur­ing the past two and one-half mil­len­ni­ums. The con­cept of Bud­dha, to an en­light­ened Bud­dhist, is no more the hu­man per­son­al­ity of Gau­tama than the con­cept of Je­ho­vah is iden­ti­cal with the spirit de­mon of Ho­reb to an en­light­ened Chris­tian. Paucity of ter­mi­nol­ogy, to­gether with the sen­ti­men­tal re­ten­tion of olden nomen­cla­ture, is of­ten provoca­tive of the fail­ure to un­der­stand the true sig­nif­i­cance of the evo­lu­tion of re­li­gious con­cepts.

96:1.31. Yah­weh was the god of the south­ern Pales­tinian tribes, who as­so­ci­ated this con­cept of de­ity with Mount Ho­reb, the Sinai vol­cano. Yah­weh was merely one of the hun­dreds and thou­sands of na­ture gods which held the at­ten­tion and claimed the wor­ship of the Semitic tribes and peo­ples.

77:4.11Some of the early as­so­ciates of Van sub­se­quently set­tled about the shores of the lake which still bears his name, and their tra­di­tions grew up about this lo­cal­ity. Ararat be­came their sa­cred moun­tain, hav­ing much the same mean­ing to later-day Van­ites that Sinai had to the He­brews. Ten thou­sand years ago the Van­ite an­ces­tors of the As­syr­i­ans taught that their moral law of seven com­mand­ments had been given to Van by the Gods upon Mount Ararat. They firmly be­lieved that Van and his as­so­ciate Amadon were taken alive from the planet while they were up on the moun­tain en­gaged in wor­ship.

77:4.12Mount Ararat was the sa­cred moun­tain of north­ern Mes­o­po­ta­mia, and since much of your tra­di­tion of these an­cient times was ac­quired in con­nec­tion with the Baby­lo­nian story of the flood, it is not sur­pris­ing that Mount Ararat and its re­gion were wo­ven into the later Jew­ish story of Noah and the uni­ver­sal flood.

96:4.4The fact that Yah­weh was the god of the flee­ing He­brews ex­plains why they tar­ried so long be­fore the holy moun­tain of Sinai, and why they there re­ceived the ten com­mand­ments which Moses pro­mul­gated in the name of Yah­weh, the god of Ho­reb. Dur­ing this lengthy so­journ be­fore Sinai the re­li­gious cer­e­mo­ni­als of the newly evolv­ing He­brew wor­ship were fur­ther per­fected.