Following Moses

By Frank de Ruyter

The story of the Passover is pivotal to biblical history, and Judaism is really defined by what transpired between God and Moses at Mount Sinai. Yet modern Egypt still shrugs its shoulders at the Exodus narrative, and archaeologists like to point out that physical evidence for up to three million Israelites camped for forty years in the Sinai Peninsula is lacking. Christians and Jews still argue about where the Red Sea crossing actually took place.
Following Moses attempts to revisit the Exodus question without predisposition. It rationalizes the numbers led by Moses, rebuilds and recalibrates the histories of Israel and Egypt, locates the dynasty and political situation of the time, and traces Moses wanderings with the grumbling Israelites not in Sinai - but in Arabia allowing both Moses and Israel to see off the forty years ban in a place Moses knew intimately, before Joshua finally stepped up to carry Israel forward into its Canaanite promise.

The Gulf of Aqaba formed through a massive tectonic movement that brought about the ten plagues in Egypt and sunk ancient Thera. The same rupture formed the Dead Sea basin, tipped Israel eastward and reversed the flow of the Jordan. The desperate Israelites crossed the Red Sea where the modern Strait of Tiran still extends, but at a time when sea levels were one hundred and twenty feet lower than today. The Hand of God lowered the sea still further, allowing Israel to use this submarine land-bridge while it lasted. Mount Sinai finally appears to be modern Jebel Al Lawz, at the western extremity of the Sinai Wilderness, where Moses also originally met God and learned his Name at the burning bush.

With these revisions, the Story of Moses is historically reborn..

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Jul 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781493135073

Frank de Ruyter

The author, Frank de Ruyter, is a married man who enjoys sports, the outdoors and day-to-day life with his wife and three children. De Ruyter holds honors and masters degrees in astronomy and astrophysics, a divinity degree, and diplomas in teaching. War in Heaven was first written over thirty years ago, but de Ruyter brought it to publication after years of concern about what he continued to see published on the subject of prophecy.

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Copyright © 2014 by Frank de Ruyter.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Rev. date: 06/25/2014

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1:   How Many Left Egypt?

Chapter 2:   Repairing The Bible Chronology

Chapter 3:   Repairing The Egyptian Dynastic History

Chapter 4:   Tectonic And Climatic History Of The Sinai

Chapter 5:   Exodus From Egypt To Sinai

Chapter 6:   Finding The Mountain Of God

Chapter 7:   Waiting In Midian

Chapter 8:   Conclusion

Appendix

End Notes

Figures

Figure 1 Population of Israel—10000s Digit

Figure 2 Population of Israel—1000s Digit

Figure 3 Population of Israel—100s Digit

Figure 4 Early Topography of Sinai

Figure 5 Path of Israel’s Travels

Tables

Table 1 Comparative Census Figures (Numbers 1, 26)

Table 2 Chronologies of the Houses of Israel and Judah

Table 3 Biblical and Ptolemaic Chronologies

Table 4 History of Egypt—Reconstructed

Table 5 Example: Stewart’s Reassignment of Egyptian Dynasty XII

Table 6 Appendix 1: Egypt’s Dynasties in Parallel

INTRODUCTION

Some time ago I stumbled across an Internet article on the Red Sea crossing, which I saved away for a good read at some later date. It was an article about a Ron Wyatt expedition, featuring the claim that physical evidence had been found to substantiate a Red Sea crossing at Nuweiba in the Gulf of Aqaba. Moses had subsequently led the Children of Israel on to the Mountain of God, which Wyatt (and subsequently a few others) claimed was modern-day Jebel Al Lawz.

While quite willing to accept the findings, I had a few reservations, not least being the relative lack of physical evidence on the ocean floor at Nuweiba (the underwater remains of a few chariots might also have arisen from an overturned barge in the normal course of trade in the Eighteenth Egyptian dynasty or later). Wyatt’s article sets the reader at ease with a claim that pillars, placed on either side of the crossing by no less a personage than the wise Solomon himself, commemorate the crossing of the Red Sea at this point. The pillar on the Sinai side has unfortunately had its glyphs chiseled off, but that situated on the Arabian side is said to still contain an account of the crossing. Unfortunately, the Arabian authorities have since removed the pillar, so Wyatt’s claim cannot be verified. Would that Wyatt had taken some photographs of the glyphs!

That aside, the nearby Jebel Al Lawz does certainly seem to present several proofs that could be connected to the Exodus account, such as twelve pillars (representing the tribes of Israel), a herding area and platform where animal sacrifices could have taken place, a split rock with evidence of water action near the base of its split, and therefore possibly the Rock of Horeb that Moses struck to bring forth water for a thirsty Israel, a large pile of boulders which might have formed a platform upon which a golden calf could have been erected and been visible at a distance (with several of its stones still showing drawings of bulls, wrought in a style similar to Egyptian religious art), and a blackened mountain-top that could be that area where the fire of God burnt when God descended on Mount Sinai. One cannot help but be impressed by the number of proofs that all seem to be present at one location.

Something else that allows this scenario to be possible (a Nuweiba crossing, with Mount Sinai at Jebel Al Lawz) is the clear uncertainty that otherwise attends any investigation of the Exodus. Of the forty-two sites which represent the camps of the Exodus, only two are positively identified today. Even one of these is still questioned. Jebel Musa—the traditional site of Mount Sinai, which I visited in 2003 during a month spent in Egypt—is not one of the confirmed sites. Indeed, so scanty is the archaeological evidence anywhere in the Sinai region that archaeologists (who look for evidence before they believe the tale) are generally inclined to write the Exodus story off as a myth. Yet Wyatt explains away the paucity of evidence by saying that the archaeologists have simply been looking in all the wrong places so far, based on a prevailing misconception that the Red Sea crossing took place in the northern half of the Gulf of Suez, and not in the Gulf of Aqaba.

So with this as a starting point, I decided to carry out my own research into the question of the Red Sea crossing, and this book is an account of my thinking and conclusions after considerable deliberation. Crossing the Red Sea is almost a metaphor for what it has taken to finally come to terms with the whole issue, and the waters that needed crossing are the somewhat convincing yet nevertheless incorrect arguments of many who have blazed the trail before.

I hope the study I set forth here will be of more help than hindrance to those who follow me on this question. The key issues at the end of the search are four: when did the Red Sea crossing take place, where did it take place, where was the Mountain of God (Mount Sinai) situated, and where exactly did Moses take the people of Israel for the next thirty-eight years, before the beginning of the conquest of Canaan?

Clearly no discussion of the route taken by Moses can begin without a clear idea about a number of things. The first consideration must be of Moses’ ability to provide the basic necessities of abundant grassland for flocks, water for man and beast alike, and ample space to camp with all of the animals after leaving Egypt. This becomes the focus for Chapter 1, which will deal with the question of exactly how many Israelites actually left Egypt in the Exodus. This, in turn, will give an indication of exactly what sort of resources would be needed to sustain this number of people. It will also give an idea of the kind of speed the Israelite camp could have hoped to make on a daily basis. I am indebted, for much of the argument in this chapter, to an article I found by Edward Morris, while I was searching to verify a long-held notion of my own that the word thousands, in the text of the Book of Numbers and elsewhere, very probably started life as the Hebrew word clans or tents. Among several websites I visited on this enquiry, I would recommend Morris’s article on The Population of Israel in the Exodus as particularly useful.¹

The second consideration would normally relate to exactly what sort of areas in the Sinai region Moses would have had to avoid, given the various enmities in the region. God did not allow Moses to lead Israel by the way of the Philistines, lest Israel be attacked and then lose the courage to go in and possess the land promised to Abraham. To lay out Israel’s permitted zone, an initial study will be needed in order to lay out the boundaries of Midian, Edom, the Amorites and Amalekites, as well as to locate the Egyptian military encampments in and around the Sinai Peninsula at the time of Moses. Moses would need to avoid and circumnavigate these safely. However, given that some of these boundaries also had a habit of changing with time, it is necessary to go back a step further to get a clear notion of exactly when in history the Exodus took place. This will require accurate Egyptian and biblical chronologies to be established, along with the relationship between these chronologies and standard received chronologies. Chapter 2 therefore concerns itself with finding the proper biblical date for the Exodus (Hint: It is not 1446BC).

Once a biblical date is at hand, and an idea of how that biblical date relates to parallel secular dates, the claim that Egyptian history makes to extend unbroken to well before the Flood of Noah needs to be addressed. From a biblical bias, this simply cannot be so. This becomes the subject of Chapter 3. It is lately becoming clear (and many are now independently coming to this conclusion) that Egypt’s dynastic history has been constructed incorrectly, with the possibility that several consecutive dynasties were actually partially or wholly in parallel to one another. Even the sequential order of some of these dynasties is now in question. Additionally, the question of whether specific dynasties need chronological compression is considered. Once completed, the revised history of Egypt can then be set against biblical and secular chronologies in an attempt to re-identify both the dynasty and Pharaoh of the Exodus with greater accuracy. With a good idea of the dynasty and probable Pharaoh of the Exodus, a better picture of the military and commercial presence of the Egyptians and others in the Sinai Peninsula can be drawn.

Chapter 4 will take the period finally identified as being that of the Exodus and look at the geo-political environment of the time. This will involve both population and physical geography. These are crucial issues to consider before a decision about the probable path taken by Israel can be made. Geophysical disruptions (which probably occurred at the time of the Exodus) may also have acted to change some of the earlier borders of the peoples who surrounded Canaan and inhabited the Sinai region. Pathways along the coasts of the Red Sea will also have been affected by the sea levels of the time, and the availability of a high water table and reasonably good wells at regular intervals will be critical to Israel’s survival. Trade routes will naturally have followed lines of wells or will deliberately have passed along the shores of any inland lakes or seas. Pastures will have been located near most of these same routes, as Bedouins also frequented the trade routes in order to trade their handicrafts, yet still needed to maintain their flocks as they went. Areas with both wells and pastures will have become the small wilderness towns of this era.

Questions of geography multiply. Did inland seas exist near the Dead Sea and Midian at that time? Did the Dead Sea have the same shape and elevation as observed today? Did the Jordan always flow into the Dead Sea? Did Israel actually wander in Arabia for those missing thirty-eight years, and not in Canaan? What exactly was the extent of Arabia at the time of the Exodus (which—to be consistent with Paul’s argument in Galatians 4—must have been the same as the Arabia of his own day)?

In Chapter 5, an attempt will be made to trace the path of the Israelites through the wilderness, with particular emphasis on the first few steps. The logistics of Israel’s march will be considered, and reasonable travel expectations calculated. A short-list of possible routes will be created, and limits on the width of the Red Sea at the crossing point. A most probable scenario will be recreated. With the Red Sea crossing point established to a high degree of certainty, the location of Mount Sinai should follow.

Chapter 6 will try and locate the Mountain of God, using strict biblical criteria to eliminate many of the popular contenders for Mount Sinai. This, in turn, should allow us to finally sort out a correct map for the Sinai region. One of the issues clouding this study is indeed the number of map errors published in various dictionaries and appendices of the Bible, and this becomes more confusing when these errors are then carried as fact into the arguments made in dissertations on the subject. We should, if we are on the right track, end up being able to accurately locate the Wildernesses of Paran, Sin, Zin, Sinai, Etham, Shur, the Way of Mount Seir, the one or more Kadesh(es), the one or more Mount Hors, and