Ḥalā-'l Badr (or Hala-'l Bedr / Hallat al Badr, in ar, حلا البدر) is a

volcano A volcano is a rupture in the Crust (geology), crust of a Planet#Planetary-mass objects, planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and volcanic gas, gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Ear ...

in northwestern

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...

at 27.25° N, 37.235° E. The volcano is of the cinder cone (or scoria-cone) type, and is on the northeast corner of the Thadra table mountain in the al-Jaww (الجاوّ) basin, an erosional divide between Harrat ar-Rahah (حرة الراحة ''ḥarratu ’r-raḥah'') and Harrat al-'Uwayrid (حرة العويد ''ḥarratu ’r-‘ūwayrid''). Its eruption history is currently unknown, but geological studies have shown that Hallat al Badr erupted some time during the

Holocene The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togeth ...

period, and the most recent lava flows were in the al Jaww basin. Badr has a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of at least 2, so it is capable of producing an eruption column at least high. Writers including Charles Beke,

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts ...

Immanuel Velikovsky Immanuel Velikovsky (; rus, Иммануи́л Велико́вский, p=ɪmənʊˈil vʲɪlʲɪˈkofskʲɪj; 17 November 1979) was a Jewish, Russian-American psychoanalyst, writer, and catastrophist. He is the author of several books offering ...

Colin Humphreys Sir Colin John Humphreys, (born 24 May 1941) is a British physicist. He is the Professor of Materials Science at Queen Mary University of London. He is the former Goldsmiths' Professor of Materials Science at the University of Cambridge and the ...

Eduard Meyer Eduard Meyer (25 January 1855 – 31 August 1930) was a German historian. He was the brother of Celticist Kuno Meyer (1858–1919). Biography Meyer was born in Hamburg and educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums and later at the univer ...

Martin Noth Martin Noth (3 August 1902 – 30 May 1968) was a German scholar of the Hebrew Bible who specialized in the pre-Exilic history of the Hebrews and promoted the hypothesis that the Israelite tribes in the immediate period after the settlement in Can ...

, and

Hermann Gunkel Hermann Gunkel (23 May 1862 – 11 March 1932), a German Old Testament scholar, founded form criticism. He also became a leading representative of the history of religions school. His major works cover Genesis and the Psalms, and his major in ...

have proposed that the biblical description of ''devouring fire'' on

Mount Sinai Mount Sinai ( he , הר סיני ''Har Sinai''; Aramaic: ܛܘܪܐ ܕܣܝܢܝ ''Ṭūrāʾ Dsyny''), traditionally known as Jabal Musa ( ar, جَبَل مُوسَىٰ, translation: Mount Moses), is a mountain on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt. It is ...

refers to an erupting

in the land of biblical

Midian Midian (; he, מִדְיָן ''Mīḏyān'' ; ar, مَدْيَن, Madyan; grc-gre, Μαδιάμ, ''Madiam'') is a geographical place mentioned in the Hebrew Bible and Quran. William G. Dever states that biblical Midian was in the "northwest Ar ...

. Gunkel writes, "The characteristic Israelite narratives of Yahweh's appearance in the burning thorn bush (Exod. 3:2), in the burning and smoking Sinai (Exod. 19:9, 20:18; Deut. 4:11), and especially in the pillars of smoke and fire (Exod. 13:21)... can be explained originally from the fact that, in Israel's earliest belief, Yahweh was the god of the Sinai volcano." This possibility would exclude all the peaks on the

Sinai Peninsula The Sinai Peninsula, or simply Sinai (now usually ) (, , cop, Ⲥⲓⲛⲁ), is a peninsula in Egypt, and the only part of the country located in Asia. It is between the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Red Sea to the south, and is ...

and

Mount Seir Mount Seir ( he, הַר-שֵׂעִיר, ''Har Sēʿīr'') is the ancient and biblical name for a mountainous region stretching between the Dead Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba in the northwestern region of Edom and southeast of the Kingdom of Judah. I ...

, but would match a number of places in northwestern

, of which Hala-'l Badr is the most prominent. Beke renounced his theory that Sinai was a volcano when he learned that Mount Baghir (also "Mountain of Light"), his volcanic Mount Sinai which was just northeast of the

Gulf of Aqaba The Gulf of Aqaba ( ar, خَلِيجُ ٱلْعَقَبَةِ, Khalīj al-ʿAqabah) or Gulf of Eilat ( he, מפרץ אילת, Mifrátz Eilát) is a large gulf at the northern tip of the Red Sea, east of the Sinai Peninsula and west of the Arabian ...

, was not a volcanic mountain after all. In part, Humphreys' argument that Hallat al Badr is Mount Sinai rests on Alois Musils' argument that the itinerary stations given in Numbers 33 lead directly to Badr; he also reports that a volcano in the region erupted in 640 AD, but it is not known exactly which volcano this was. James K. Hoffmeier argues that the route suggested by Humphreys would have put the supposed volcano behind the Israelites at times, not in front. He also notes that the words for "cloud" and "pillar of cloud" appear frequently in

Numbers A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can ...

- it covers the mountain, the temple built on top of the mountain, "it occupies the holy of holies in Solomon's temple" and "Numbers 12:5 specifically refers to God coming down in a pillar of cloud to denounce Miriam's charges against Moses after departing the mountain of God." Thus "fire and cloud are understood to be vessels of

theophany Theophany (from Ancient Greek , meaning "appearance of a deity") is a personal encounter with a deity, that is an event where the manifestation of a deity occurs in an observable way. Specifically, it "refers to the temporal and spatial manifest ...

Citations and notes

External links

Google Maps satellite view
* Graphs showing volcanic eruptions of the time, based on ice cores *
Image of Hala 'l-Badr
{{coord, 27, 15, N, 37, 14, E, region:SA_type:mountain, display=title Volcanoes of Saudi Arabia

See also

Citations and notes

External links