Exodus 19:18 'And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in
fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole
mount quaked greatly.'
I have several times seen on forums the argument that this verse disproves the volcano god theory. However, I believe it helps to prove it. The argument is that if the Lord descended upon the mountain that it proves he was a separate entity to the mountain; he was not the volcano or the magma. This is not correct because it does not take into account the ignorance of the ancient Hebrews who did not understand what volcanoes were. They did not know volcanoes were a vessel with a liquid rising up them; they thought they were solid mountains and that the fiery liquid had been put onto the top. The fiery liquid was flowing downwards and it would therefore have appeared to be coming from above. The 'pillar of smoke' was rising and they say it looked like the smoke coming out of a furnace despite not realising it was actually coming out of a type of furnace.
Their knowledge will have increased as time passed to the point at which they realised to their horror how silly it was to anthropomorphise such a natural phenomena, which may have been the cause of the name banning and wiping from memory. Discovering 'lakes of fire' obviously did not dampen their beliefs but added to the awe and wonder at the glory of their god. At this point in Exodus, however, they only knew what they could see from a distance.
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