By Greg Kellner and Dr. Kathryn Murdock
Shavuot is coming up soon, which commemorates when the Israelites received the 10 Commandments. It is often called the dairy holiday, so on Shavuot, enjoy a slice of cheesecake. It gets this nickname because we are told not to eat meat on Shavuot. Another tradition of the holiday is tikkun leil Shavuot, staying up all night to study Torah. People do this because when the Israelites were at Mt. Sinai, it is said they overslept when Moses descended from the mountain and rushed to get ready to receive the Torah. Some Jewish people stay up all night so they don’t miss their morning holiday prayers.
We did a bit of research about Mt. Sinai and the 10 Commandments, and here's what we found. The mountain, thought to be Mt. Sinai is a granitic peak in South Sinai, part of an ancient volcanic complex. Igneous rocks, both intrusive (like granite, coarse-grained crystal rocks most people associate with countertops, and come from ancient huge volcanoes) and extrusive (like basalt, a black fine crystalline rock most associated with volcanoes in Hawaii or Iceland) can be found around Mt Sinai. Mt Sinai was formed as part of the Arabian-Nubian shield, ancient continental crust formed from volcanic arcs like Japan being forced together over millions of years nearly 875 million years ago, predating the Appalachian mountains, Pangea, and even complex multicellular creatures.
In the book of Exodus (Ex 24:10), there is a reference to sapphire, so a few scholars have suggested that The Ten Commandments may have been written on "sapphire tablets.", However, for a sapphire to grow large enough to make tablets if would require a slightly different geologic environment, one that works produce a very large grained rock called a pegmatite. Pegmatites are not found around Mt Sinai, so it's unlikely modern day sapphires were the stone used.
Egyptian scholars have noted that what was called sapphire in ancient Egypt is what we now call lapis lazuli, a beautiful blue and white rock with pyrite veins. Lapis lazuli is a metamorphic rock, formed by the contact of volcanic magma with limestone or marble. Although this appears to be possible, and there is some debate on whether Egypt had lapis mines, the closest lapis mines were in modern day Afghanistan, but Sinai was a known trade hub in ancient times for lapis lazuli.
Dr. Kathryn Murdock is a geologist at an engineering and scientific consulting firm. “Dr. Kate” earned a PhD in Geology from UMass Amherst. She has served as faculty at multiple colleges in Massachusetts and was the inaugural instructor for the environmental science program at the URJ 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy.
Greg Kellner is the Founder of Meshugena STEAM and the inaugural director of URJ 6 Points Sci-Tech Academy.
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