This is John from Bible Project and today we begin a new theme study on mountains.

Mountains mean different things to different people, maybe a place to explore,

place to recreate, but in the ancient world, the top of the highest mountains

were a sacred place, a meeting place between God and humanity. This is the idea of the cosmic mountain.

Mountains become where the boundary between heaven and earth becomes very thin, between God's realm and the human realm

the human realm on top of the highest mountains.

One way to think of the story of the Bible

is the quest up the Cosmic Mountain, the search for the divine.

And it's why so many stories in the Bible take place on various hilly areas,

Mount Moriah, Mount Sinai, Mount Zion, Mount Carmel.

Well, there's lots of different mountains that are really important in the story of the Bible,

but in a way, they're also just one mountain, because the same thing keeps happening on all these mountains.

Mountains are by nature and accessible like the top of Mount Sinai where only Moses can ascend.

When Moses ascends up into the clouds,

all of a sudden he's in heaven and earth at the same time,

because he's seeing visions,

but something crucially important happens.

Moses is to make a copy of what he sees and experiences up on top of

the mountain which is the cosmic overlap of heaven and earth and he is to make an

image of it down on the land in the form of the tent.

What did Moses see on the mountain?

Why do so many stories occur on mountains again and again?

...