Red Sea Crossing

Description

When I was a teenager, I looked the maps of the Sinai peninsula and decided for myself that there was no way that the 1 million plus Jews ever wandered around that small area without once re-crossing their path. They had to have been in the Arabian Desert at some point during those travels

Since all the Bibles in the 1980s show the exodus routes traveling around the Sinai peninsula, there was nothing I could say about my thinking, because 1 - Arabia was muslim and Islam is an "enemy of christianity", and 2 - the bible maps, done by learned scholars, clearly showed that the Jews stayed in the Sinai peninsula.

Noone in the church even stopped to think that Islam is only 1400 years old (Christianity is older) and Islam was clearly NOT around during the time of the Exodus.

That was 40 years ago. (early 1980s)

Scholarly research appears to have changed so that now Bible maps call the Mountain at the southern tip of Mt Sinai as Mt Musa and the new Mt Sinai is now in the NW region of what is now Saudi Arabia. The mountain there is known as Jebel el Lawz. (The mountain of the laws or commandments)

When I first found like minded people who thought the same as I did about the Exodus, (after I left home in 1987) they introduced me to an American named Ron Wyatt who explored the area in 1984, and claimed that the Red Sea Crossing happened at a place called Nuweiba on the Sinai coast, crossing the Gulf of Aqaba into what is now Saudi Arabia. He later went on to investigate the location of the real Mt Sinai, now called Jebel el Lawz.

There is still NO REAL proof of where the Children of Israel crossed the Red Sea. Some people still say it was the Bitter Sea of Reeds (back where the Suez Canal runs today), while others say it was at Nuweiba.

A new and more recent theory of the Red Sea Crossing, has now emerged. This new theory says that the Israelites travelled all the way down to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The Strait of Tiran is the entrance from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aqaba and there are several islands and corals reefs located across the strait. Some of those reefs are less than 100m below the water surface with very deep drop offs on both sides.

The theory says that with a lower water level from what we have at the present time, it would have been fairly easy to walk from reef to island to reef and thus cross the entire straits (16 km / 9 miles) from Sinai to Arabia and thus walk to safety.

If the Egyptian army and their wagons were pushed off the narrow reefs (by the returning waves) into the deep drop off zones, they would sink for hundreds of feet and drown on the way down.

Keep in mind that when the Bible (or scholars) say that the Jews walked across dry land, IMO, they do not literally mean bone dry land. That would not be possible. The land bridge would have been pretty much wet sand or mud and the legs and the bottom of their clothes would have gotten dirty. They may also have had to dig wagon wheels out of the sand, several times as they crossed this land bridge. That would have slowed them down. But it was solid enough to walk on. It's not like they were walking on water!! (pun intended).

I found a Bathymetric map dated 1978 that shows the depths of the Gulf of Aqaba, and there is pretty much NO land bridge at Nuweiba. The depth between Nuweiba and the Arabian coast is around 900 feet below sea level. The depths at the Strait of Tiran is only 50 feet deep. But there are deep drop offs on both side of this land bridge at Tiran.

This map has pretty much sold me on where the Red Sea Crossing took place. At the Strait of Tiran.

The following is my argument against Nuweiba as the crossing point. If one thinks logically about the feasibility of a 900 foot deep "land bridge" one has to think of the following scenario. It is highly unlikely for 1 million plus people with wagons and animals, to have been slipping and sliding for 900 feet down a steep bank, dragging their wagons and animals across the bottom and then struggling to push said wagons and animals for 900 feet up the other side. That is just not logical.

SUPPLIES

White base paper - Chicory lane bundle - Jess Dunn
https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/jessica-dunn/kits/chicory-lane-bundle-country-road-friendship-wildflowers-nature-bramble-weeds

Wood Veneer Frame by Sharon Dewi Stolp from the Picnic Day Collab bundle
https://www.digitalscrapbook.com/sharon-dewi-stolp/kits/picnic-day-wood-veneer-frames-kit-park-nature-frame-collage-window-brown

Images - top left and top right - Land bridge & Drop off - Dots at the Strait of Tiran on Google Maps Street View
A scuba diver clearly took this 360 view with the Land bridge covered with coral reefs in one direction and the deep drop off in the other.

Image - lower left - Google Earth map with a yellow line showing the land bridge - crossing from lower left to upper right.

Image - lower right - Pharaoh army drowning in the red sea - image found online - not linked to a website

Bathymetric map 1978 - shows depths of the water in the Gulf of Aqaba.
https://big-seas.blogspot.com/2013/09/moses-crossing-red-sea-map.html

Font - Papyrus