This week we are joined once again by Bob Johnson for the first hour of the show to talk about his experiences in Egypt and Saudi Arabia as a geologist, this time in the context of the subject of the story of Exodus. Bob directed us to watch a short documentary detailing a possible "alternate route" to the legendary Mount Sinai, the Mountain of Moses.
That mountain is commonly thought to be in the Sinai peninsula, but the documentary shows that it may actually be in Saudi Arabia, on the eastern side of the Gulf of Aqaba. There are many features and places besides the mountain itself that seem to match up with the story told in Exodus, lending credence to this possibility.
Bob spent decades working in this area and knows the geology very well, so as we go through the evidence for this alternate possibility, he gives his own thoughts on the pros and cons of the concept.
There is a lot of map work in this part of the show, so we did record some video of Bob pointing to places on the map for the first hour, which you can see if you go to our Youtube channel. Below are links to the documentary itself and a few screenshots of the maps of the area.
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| The Red Sea |
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| Gulf of Aqaba |
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| Straits of Tiran on the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba |
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| "Split Rock" geological feature in Saudi Arabia |
First. I want to say you guys are awesome. This show was so much fun to listen to and I had a really good time pulling up maps on my phone while listening to see where he was talking about. Second. You totally suck because I was at work and basically got nothing done. Love the show!! 🐍
ReplyDeleteMy name is John, not unknown.
DeleteYahweh has long been known to be from the Midian desert. The entire book of Exodus does not need to be considered, because most of it is compiled in 6th C Babylonian captivity and is a hodgepodge of traditions. The part about Jethro the Midianite priest is written with archaic Hebrew and is a very old tradition. The Calebite or Kennite hypothesis is built around an origin of yahwists in the Midian desert, who migrate (and not millions of them, but maybe a thousand at most) into Israel and Judah during the early Iron Age, in the wake of the NK collapse. Yahweh is a son of El in early traditions. The first mention of 'yahu in the land of the shasu' is on an Egyptian inscription from a Sinai copper mine, but is near Aqqaba. The numbers are extremely inflated, or exaggerated, as in much of the bible, and that's due to the editorial agenda of the Babylonian captivity writers. Donald B Redford put a similar model out in his early 90's book "Egypt , Canaan and Israel in Ancient Times". That book is still one of the best, along with Gosta Alstrom " A History of Ancient Palestine".
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