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(wind blowing)

(dramatic music)

(dramatic music)

(gentle music)

(thunder rumbling)

(gentle music)

I grew up hearing stories

from the pages of the Bible,

and now I'm searching for the places where they happened.

This question led me to the

ancient lands of the Middle East

searching for patterns of evidence

that match the biblical events.

(gentle dramatic music)

I wasn't prepared for what would be revealed.

(gentle dramatic music)

(camera beeps)

(engine humming)

(gentle music)

For almost two decades now,

I have traveled the world meeting biblical explorers.

They have been searching for evidence of the Exodus journey,

one of the most foundational accounts of the entire Bible.

Smell the coffee.

The aroma.

They've been looking for the true locations

of the miraculous sea crossing

and the mountain where God met the Israelites: Mount Sinai.

We'll break camp at 6:45 in the morning.

Break camp, we'll be on the way at about 7:15,

and that right there is our destination.

I was intrigued by the fact

that sometimes ordinary people,

frustrated by mainstream scholars' claims

that there was no evidence for these biblical events,

took it upon themselves to search for archaeological proof.

These explorers claimed to have found the remains

of coral-encrusted chariot wheels

on the bottom of the Red Sea.

(gentle music)

So, what are your thoughts

on finding proof for the Exodus?

I'm happy for the people who are trying

to quote, "prove the Exodus,"

in the sense that it's an adventure.

It's a goal that, in my opinion,

is unachievable in one's lifetime.

No one else has been able to do it

over the last 2,000 years.

(dramatic music)

However, investigating the Exodus journey

brings up an even greater challenge.

There are many miracles in the book of Exodus.

Whether the Red Sea parted is a miracle.

Whether the ten plagues happened is a miracle.

Archaeology cannot prove or disprove a miracle.

When I look at the Exodus story

through the eyes of a scientist,

then it contains a lot of observations,

which just make sense to modern science.

Why is it important to think about these things?

At the end of the day, we're really talking about

a miraculous event of unprecedented proportion.

It isn't any wonder that the prophets

constantly hark back to the land of Egypt,

and to the Exodus event as it becomes a paradigm

of God's miraculous saving power.

Over the last few decades Dr. Barry Beitzel

has been one of the most respected biblical geographers.

He has published numerous books

and articles on biblical geography,

including "The New Moody Atlas of the Bible".

To be able to flesh out

some of the details of the miracle, and it allows

an event to be placed onto the Earth so to speak.

It's not just in our minds.

It's not just a myth.

It happened in time and space,

and we're just trying to flesh out

a little bit more what that space might look like.

(gentle music)

(engines revving)

(horn honks)

This story of the Exodus sea crossing

is where it all began for me over 18 years ago.

I can't explain exactly

why I've been so taken with this account

that I would risk my own business

and personal life to explore these questions.

I just knew it was something I had to pursue.

And after all those years,

I did find a pattern of evidence

showing that the Exodus and conquest happened,

and that Moses really could have written

about these events as an eyewitness account.

(gentle music)

However, there are still major questions

about where the Israelites traveled,

what sea they crossed,

and where Mount Sinai really is.

(thunder rumbling)

In fact, after Israel gained control

of the Sinai Peninsula in 1967,

they searched extensively for evidence of their history.

But no trace of the Exodus journey

was found at the traditional locations.

But have we been looking in the right places?

If we can determine which sea was crossed,

it could give clues about where to look for Mount Sinai.

So now for me the first issue in the Exodus journey,

is the Red Sea miracle.

What sea was really parted

and could there still be evidence?

(birds chirping)

One thing I've discovered in this investigation

is that there are two main approaches

that explain this event in very different ways.

The first I call the Egyptian approach.

It sees the events of the Exodus happening on a small scale

and puts the sea crossing at one of

the swampy lakes near Egypt's border.

Those using this Egyptian approach tend to explain

the parting of the waters by natural forces, such as wind.

This is by far the majority view among scholars today.

The second view I call the Hebrew approach.

It sees the events of the Exodus on a much larger scale

and places the miraculous sea crossing far from Egypt

at the Red Sea's Gulf of Aqaba.

This is because they emphasize

the entire narrative of the Bible,

which they believe geographically points to this location

and describes a big miracle

that could only be explained by the power of God.

And some people I interviewed

had a combination of both views.

The difference between these two approaches is dramatic.

One interprets the Exodus as very small

and the other as very large.

This also applies to the question of miracles.

Was it a big miracle or was it a small miracle?

Because where you put the sea crossing

determines the scale of the miracle required.

(film projector rolling)

(gentle music)

No one has done more

to influence how I envisioned the Exodus

and the miraculous parting of the sea,

than legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille.

He created Hollywood's biggest biblical epic,

"The Ten Commandments",

and he made it twice, the first time in 1923.

The Bible says that a family of people

called the Israelites spent centuries living in Egypt

where they were enslaved.

(dramatic music)

After ten great plagues

and the death of his firstborn son,

Pharaoh finally agreed to let the Israelites

leave Egypt under the leadership of a man named Moses.

(dramatic theatrical music)

Moses is one of the world's greatest human beings,

and human he was, to the point of sin,

and holy to the point of seeing God,

and receiving from him the law

by which men may live in peace and freedom:

"The Ten Commandments".

(dramatic theatrical music)

In 1956, DeMille remade "The Ten Commandments"

into a three-and-a-half-hour epic which became a sensation.

For the last 50 years,

it has aired nationally on television

during the Easter and Passover season.

I traveled to Hollywood

to meet Demille's granddaughter, Cece,

and I asked her about her grandfather's work.

Why did he spend so much of his career

making those types of films?

Because he loved the Bible.

He thought the greatest stories were in the Bible.

Because it's fascinating.

You don't have to make them up, they're there.

DeMille's research influenced the depiction

of these biblical events that shaped the culture's

understanding of the Exodus for generations.

The wind opened the sea!

With its miraculous parting of the sea

where the Israelites walked between walls of water to safety

and God destroying Egypt's army.

No, no!

To Moses receiving

the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai,

I can see why DeMille was attracted to this story,

and it's why I'm attracted to it as well.

Behold his mighty hand!

Interestingly, DeMille's spectacular

deep sea parting was in line with the Hebrew approach.

But was this biblical event

really as miraculous as DeMille depicted?

Or was that just a Hollywood invention?

(lively rock music)

Dr. Glen Fritz has been a competitive triathlete

for more than 40 years.

He is also an environmental geographer who has studied

the question of the Red Sea location for over two decades.

He takes the Hebrew approach,

and over the years I've interviewed him multiple times.

The interesting thing about the parting of the sea

is that it had to be one of the greatest miracles

that one could imagine.
Yeah.

Because the Bible says that the countries around them

had heard about their deliverance through the sea.

Dr. Fritz published his thesis in a book,

"The Lost Sea of the Exodus".

He believes that for centuries

scholars have misplaced key locations

for the Israelites' journey out of Egypt.

Tim, the first question most people ask is,

"Where is Mount Sinai?

"We wanna know where this mountain was."

My first question as a geographer is

where was the sea of the Exodus?

Where was this sea that was parted and crossed?

And the reason I want to know that is because

it gives me the direction of the route from Egypt,

and it also gives me a big hint

about the location of Mount Sinai.

(gentle music)

Dr. Fritz has built a case

that the sea crossed in the Exodus

was far from Egypt, at the Gulf of Aqaba,

and not one of the border lakes near Egypt.

However, traditionally there was a third option.

(wind blowing)

Examining maps that were centuries old,

I could see that they all put the Exodus sea crossing

at the Gulf of Suez.

This highlights the fact that for 2,000 years,

the traditional understanding was that the north end

of Suez was where the miracle at the sea took place.

(gentle dramatic music)

(wind blowing)

In the mid 1800s,

the famed explorers Edward Robinson and Eli Smith

searched for the route of the Exodus journey

and believed they found sites

that matched the Bible's account

all oriented, again, to a sea crossing at the Gulf of Suez.

However, none of the Exodus locations mentioned in the Bible

have ever been established with certainty.

In fact, many maps of the Exodus route found in Bibles

and atlases show question marks

next to all the proposed sites.

As time went on,

scholars started to propose that the Gulf of Suez shoreline

once extended much further northward.

Here's a map from 1891

showing the sea encroaching over the isthmus of Suez.

Here it says, "Ancient shore of the Red Sea,"

showing it inland, and this map shows an Exodus route

crossing this ancient shore of the inland sea.

Yeah, why would they have thought that?

The first purpose was to bring

the crossing closer to the land of Goshen.

Then there was also the strong drive

to have a non-miraculous shallow water

explanation for using winds and tides,

so that you didn't have to have

the miraculous parting of the sea.

However, the geological history shows

that at the time of the Exodus 3500 years ago

the sea level was about a meter lower than it is now,

and the land levels have not changed geologically

in that particular area of the isthmus.

So there couldn't have been that theory.

These theories of crossing an inland sea

literally don't hold water.

(birds chirping)

Was there a naturalistic way

to explain this miraculous event?

At the same time these shallow water

Exodus views were becoming vogue,

naturalistic thinking was also taking hold in other fields.

(dramatic music)

In the early days, many archaeologists

wanted to find evidence to prove the Bible.

In part, this was in response to threats

from a new theory with evolutionary ideas.

(dramatic music)

I went to the Petrie Museum at University College, London.

Egyptologist Chris Naunton is the former director

of the Egypt Exploration Society

and the current president of the

International Association of Egyptologists.

I know that biblical archaeology was one thing

that people were looking for in Egypt.

Yes, the very earliest archaeologists working in Egypt,

some of them at least, were particularly interested

in identifying sites which could be connected

with the Old Testament narrative.

You have to remember, I think, that many of those people

came from the Western tradition.

They came from Christian societies

and were also set in the second half of the 19th century

in the period when there was a reaction among

some elements in the scholarly community against Darwinism,

which was seen as a kind of threat to Christian beliefs,

and so there was a counter reaction

to that to try to establish evidence

that the Old Testament narrative was real.

(dramatic music)

Over time, attitudes in the scholarly community

became more skeptical toward the Bible.

(birds chirping)

In the late 1800s,

the prominent German egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch

popularized a new theory that was a major development

in the Egyptian approach.

He proposed that the crossing

was not through the Red Sea's Gulf of Suez at all,

but at a shallow lake north of Suez.

(gentle dramatic music)

However, not all scholars at the time

were persuaded by this thinking,

including Charles Beke,

one of England's preeminent geographers.

(gentle dramatic music)

After meeting with Brugsch,

Beke was not impressed with his use of Egyptian inscriptions

to determine the location of the Exodus sea crossing.

Beke believed that the Bible clearly

put the crossing at the Gulf of Aqaba,

and it was in the deep waters of Aqaba

that the Exodus explorers were searching

for the remains of Pharaoh's army on the seafloor.

(gentle dramatic music)

Yet over time,

an Exodus crossing site at one of the shallow border lakes

became the standard view of biblical studies.

(gentle music)

In 2002, I traveled with Exodus explorer Dr. Lennart Möller.

Even this lake is suggested.

I don't understand that, but that is also a suggestion.

He's a Swedish DNA research scientist,

who wrote the book "The Exodus Case".

He takes the Hebrew approach.

We were investigating lakes on the border of Egypt

that have been proposed as potential crossing sites.

It's a very shallow lake,

and it's filled with many, many small islands.

A question that comes to mind

is how a crossing at one of these shallow lakes

fits the Bible's claim that it happened at the Red Sea?

In the original biblical Hebrew used by Moses,

the name of this sea was Yam Suph.

Yam does mean sea,

but scholars agree that the word Suph

in Hebrew does not actually mean red.

The miracle of the deliverance

of Israel occurred at the Red Sea.

That's what our English Bibles say,

and we get that understanding, Red Sea,

comes directly from the Greek translation

of the Hebrew Bible.

Look, the word for red,

ironically, the word for the color red,

occurs more frequently in the book of Exodus,

than in any other Old Testament book.

Oh, really?
If Moses had wanted

to say the Red Sea, he had a Hebrew word right there.

The same word that he uses

for some of the dye in the tabernacle

and some of the dye in the high priest's clothing

and so forth.

But, he doesn't use the word.

He doesn't.

He doesn't use the word red that's right.

The term Yam Suph,

which was the sea or the body of water

that was crossed by the Israelites,

has never been translated into English.

The first time that Yam Suph was translated,

was in the Septuagint, which was the translation

of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek in 250 BC.

The Septuagint work was done in Alexandria

by a group of about 70 Hebrew scholars.

But they were Hellenized Hebrews,

and they also had Greek geography

as the basis of their understanding of the world.

Now these scholars,

when they came to the term Yam Suph

instead of delving into it or transliterating it,

they translated it as Red Sea.

The Red Sea was basically the only body of water

that was thought to exist adjacent to Egypt.

Since Red Sea was just a geographical interpretation

by the Septuagint translation,

I needed to know more about the original term.

If the Hebrew Yam means sea,

the question remains what does the word Suph really mean?

This would become one of the key questions

of the entire investigation.

Because how one defines suph

can determine where one locates the crossing

and what type of miracle that would require.

(upbeat music)

In 2002, after my first trip to Egypt,

our film crew stopped in England

to conduct a series of interviews.

The first was in Liverpool with Professor Alan Millard.

He is one of the leading experts

on the languages of the ancient Near East,

and he has authored many books

including "Discoveries From Bible Times".

He takes the Egyptian approach.

Let's talk a little bit about the word Yam Suph.

Tell me what is the definition,

in your opinion, of that word?

This is a Hebrew expression, Yam Suph.

The word yam is the Hebrew word for sea,

as a body of water, not necessarily an ocean,

and, suph is a Hebrew word,

probably borrowed from Egyptian, meaning reeds.

So the Sea of Reeds,

is the proper translation of that expression.

Everyone in the Egyptian approach

accepts this Sea of Reeds definition for Yam Suph.

This highlights the fact that there are

three main terms used for the sea of the Exodus

that have developed over the centuries.

Placing them on the wall of time,

I could see that first came the Hebrew word Yam Suph.

It shows up in the book of Exodus around 1450 BC,

and it has always been called

Yam Suph in Hebrew to this day.

Then this location name was identified

as the Red Sea in the Septuagint,

the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible.

Finally, some scholars began to translate

the Hebrew term Yam Suph as Sea of Reeds.

For a long time it was thought that this Sea of Reeds

was the same place as the Red Sea at the Gulf of Suez.

But a significant change came

with the birth of modern Egyptology,

which in time would be incorporated

into the Egyptian approach to the Exodus.

(gentle music)

The Egyptian group started to look at connections

between Egyptian and biblical words,

especially the name Yam Suph, which they connected

with an Egyptian location named Pa Tufy,

which means the place of reeds in Egyptian

and was in the Nile Delta.

They believed this fit well

with a Sea of Reeds definition for Yam Suph,

and it also lined up with the fact

that the Red Sea has no reeds.

(gentle music)

A spectacular miracle at a deep sea

is what I learned about growing up

and it appears to be what DeMille

was demonstrating in "The Ten Commandments".

(people shouting)

But if the common view today is that

the Red Sea miracle was through a shallow lake

that could be explained by natural causes,

it makes me question what God's role

would have been in this scenario.

Or do I need to change my understanding

of how God works in the world?

(camera shutters)

I grew up in a family that for generations

believed that these biblical accounts were true.

Now, my own grandchildren will be asking questions

about the Bible and these miracles

because the Exodus is filled with them,

and I want to give them a confident response.

As in my past films,

I decided to take a closer look at the Bible

to see what it was actually saying.

Was there a pattern of evidence

that fit either of the two main approaches?

Looking at the text,

I could see that this question is about time and distance.

I identified six primary steps of the Exodus journey.

Zooming into the wall of time

during the year of the Exodus,

I can place the six steps of the journey

during a period of around seven weeks

from the time when the Israelites left Egypt,

crossed a sea, and arrived at Mount Sinai.

The text reveals:

A Departure Point in Egypt that the Israelites left from.

A direction that was taken toward their initial goal.

A Desert that was crossed before they arrived at the sea.

A Detour that was taken off the main road

that ended at a Dead End.

A Deep Sea that the Israelites passed through.

And a Destination for the journey, a mountain called Sinai.

(gentle music)

The first step of the pattern

is the Departure Point in the land of Egypt.

The book of Genesis records that the Israelites

were a family that descended from Abraham.

God had promised Abraham

that his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land,

but they would multiply like the stars of heaven

and God would bring them out to inherit the land of Canaan.

(gentle dramatic music)
(insects chattering)

Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham,

was enslaved in Egypt before rising to power,

allowing him to settle his father Jacob

and their entire family into the best part of Egypt,

a place called Goshen, where they multiplied greatly.

In 2002, I traveled to Egypt,

into the ancient land of Goshen,

to meet with one of the world's

foremost egyptologists, Manfred Bietak.

(camera shutters)

He had uncovered archaeological evidence

of Semites underneath the city of Rameses

mentioned in the Bible at an older city called Avaris.

But, the first time I interviewed Bietak,

I was startled when he told me that there was

no evidence for the Israelites in Egypt.

It shook my faith.

Now, however, I had just learned Bietak had found

new evidence related to the Israelites' Departure Point.

I was meeting him in Jerusalem at the courtyard

of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research.

I admit, I was a little bit nervous.

It's so good to see you again.

You probably don't remember,

but in 2002 I was sending you emails.

But, I think, I was sending them

to the institute in Austria.

And you didn't get answers?

No.

And so, I came unannounced.

I surprised you.

At the time, you were very gracious to me,

and so we did a five-minute interview.

I said, "Is there any evidence of the Israelites?"

Is there any physical evidence

of a Hebrew population that you can?

So far, not.

"So far, not."

(chuckling softly)

And it was like I was hit by a two-by-four.

But to connect this

with the proto-Israelites is a very weak affair.

Does any of that come back to you?

It's shrouded by mist I'd have to say.

Eventually I came home,

and I had a crisis of faith.

That experience with you started me on a 12-year journey,

and I started looking for

what would be called a pattern of evidence.

Here we are again,

and I wanna ask you a few more questions.

I wanted to ask Manfred about the region around Avaris,

where the Israelites first came to live,

and where their departure out of Egypt

in the exodus would eventually take place.

What was his new evidence?

Do you see a place where the Israelites could've lived?

A very exciting evidence

comes from the region of the Wadi Tumilat.

The Wadi Tumilat is a very old connection

between the eastern Nile delta and to the Sinai.

I was able to prove that the western half

of Wadi Tumilat was an enormous overflow lake

because it was fed by a Nile branch,

and it was a kind of basin, an enormous basin,

18 kilometers long, 1.8 kilometer width.

What is most interesting,

and Sarah Groll pointed it out,

there is a lake in one of the

Ramesside texts called Geshem, Gesem.

Bietak was referencing research done

by the late egyptologist, Sarah Groll,

and her work with Semitic toponyms.

A toponym is a technical term for the name of a place.

The Israelites spoke a Semitic language: Hebrew.

Sarah Groll had identified the name Gesem

in ancient Egyptian documents that she believed

were connected to this area and to the Bible.

And indeed in the Septuagint version,

Goshen is written as Gesem.

So here was another clue.

The name Goshen was called Gesem in the Septuagint

the Greek version of the Old Testament.

Gesem is a Semitic name tied to a big lake.

It can only be this lake,

and from Ramesside times,

you have several more Semitic toponyms there.

So, this is very interesting.

Because what you're suggesting is that

there's Semitic toponyms in Egypt.

Yes.
Why would they be there?

Why did Egyptian scribes, for heaven's sake,

use Semitic toponyms for an area which belongs to Egypt?

Yeah.
It can only mean

that there were people living there,

the majority, who spoke a Semitic language.

In an earlier film,

I was told that Avaris had over 30,000 inhabitants,

and there were at least 20 other Semitic settlements

in Goshen that haven't been excavated yet.

This fits the Bible's claim that the Israelites

had multiplied and spread throughout the land.

A new pharaoh arises,

and he doesn't remember Joseph.

He enslaves the people

because they're becoming too numerous and becoming a threat.

So, he puts them to work

and embitters their lives

building store cities of Pithom and Ramesses,

and makes them create bricks out of mud and straw.

Here we have the name Pithom tied to a Ramesside document.

So this would be Ramesses.

Ramesses.
And this is?

Pithom.
Pithom, okay.

I think that one should not mistrust the story

of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt.

I think there is packed inside,

a story which may have an historical background.

After years of thinking that Bietak

couldn't find evidence for the biblical account,

I was surprised that he was pointing to powerful connections

that confirmed the Bible's historical record

for the presence of the early Israelites.

(sheep bleating)
(wheels creaking)

The Bible states the Israelites

left from the city of Ramesses.

This establishes the specific

Departure Point of the Exodus journey.

However, this verse also touches

on another important and controversial issue

that affects every aspect of the Exodus journey,

including the size of the miracles involved.

The text says that the 12 sons of Jacob,

who became the 12 tribes of Israel,

had grown to a tremendous population of about 600,000 men.

If this were true when you add in women and children,

it would likely mean a total population of over two million.

Many find it hard to imagine

this many people crossing the wilderness.

This is why most in the Egyptian group

favor much smaller numbers for the Israelites.

It has to do with the Hebrew word 'Elef.

(dramatic music)

Associates for Biblical Research, ABR,

have been searching for evidence matching

the Bible in Israel for over four decades.

Currently, they're excavating the location of Shiloh

where the Bible says the tabernacle

and the Ark of the Covenant were located for centuries.

Dr. Bryant Wood is the former director of ABR,

and he favors the Egyptian approach.

This matter of numbers,

large numbers in the Old Testament,

is a very, very thorny issue.

But, I think, clearly it has to do

with our understanding of the Hebrew word 'elef,

which is translated 1,000.

So if it says 650 'elef,

then that would mean 650,000?

If you take 'elef to mean 1,000.

I believe that in these early accounts

that it must have another meaning.

We find, in fact, that there are some places

in the Old Testament where it's translated chief.

It's translated clan.

I like the translation unit better.

One scholar who looked at this recently

is Colin Humphreys in England,

and he concluded that it was about

20,000 people total that left Egypt,

and I think that's a reasonable figure.

Of course, if you use the translation of 1,000 for 'elef,

you come up with 600,000 men,

which would mean, several million Israelites leaving Egypt,

and, I think, that's an impossibly large number.

Most scholars I've interviewed in my investigation

favor much smaller numbers for the Israelites,

and I have to admit, this is part of the story

that I've struggled with the most.

(dramatic music)

How could so many have survived in the wilderness?

(dramatic music)

So I went to Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

to hear from the Hebrew approach.

Dr. Jason DeRouchie is co-author of

"A Modern Grammar For Biblical Hebrew".

We spoke in the Spurgeon library.

I know that some people would say,

"Well, there were probably 5,000.

"Maybe 10,000 Israelites.

"Maybe 20,000 Israelites."

What people are wanting to do is narrow

this language of 'elef in the census list,

which are only about the military men, 20 and over,

narrow that to mean a military company, a military grouping.

But if we do that, we end up with

very, very small Israelite population.

What's clear in the biblical text

is that there has to be enough Israelites

in order to make Pharaoh,

and the rest of Egypt scared, Exodus chapter one.

That they were multiplying in such great ways,

thus being faithful to God's promise,

and bringing fear to the Egyptian army.

If the Israelite population had grown like it's written,

then it would have been a fantastic miracle,

and it would be just what God had promised Abraham,

"That his descendants would become

"as numerous as the stars in the sky

"on their way to inheriting the promised land."

This is in line with the Hebrew approach.

What I found curious was that

I too have come from a large family

with 12 tribes like the Israelites.

(gentle music)

I have fond memories as a child spending summers

on my grandparents' farm.

Playing with my cousins, I began to realize

I was a part of a much bigger family.

My Swedish grandmother Esther was one of 10 children.

She met a Norwegian immigrant, Edward, and they married.

They went on to have 12 children, six boys and six girls,

which would eventually grow into 12 family clans.

People in the past just had larger families.

My grandparents ended up having 46 grandchildren

who've now created several hundred relatives.

Here we go!

If the Israelites multiplied like my family,

then I can see how they could easily

get to over 600,000 men while in Egypt.

(wind blowing)

(dramatic music)

There are several places where Moses uses the Hebrew word

'elef that indicate it was operating

with the normal meaning of 1,000.

For instance, in the book of Exodus,

Moses tells about an offering taken at Mount Sinai.

(thunder rumbling)

Each man from 20 years old and upward

was to contribute a half shekel,

according to the sanctuary shekel.

The rich could not give more,

and the poor could not give less,

and the number of half shekels collected

came to 603,550.

Then there was the census taken at Mount Sinai.

God told Moses,

"Take a census of all the congregation

"of the people of Israel by clan,

"by fathers' houses according to the number of names,

"every male, head by head."

Each tribe listed their numbers,

and the total of the 12 tribes

was 603,550.

When the numbers for each tribe in the census

are translated with 'elef meaning thousand,

they add up as expected.

How then do those in the Egyptian approach

come up with smaller numbers for this census?

You always have a thousand figure followed by a number.

The word for thousand has more than one meaning.

In the Bible, it has more than one meaning.

If you take those groups instead of saying 54,400,

you would say 54 clans or families totaling 400 people,

62 clans, totaling 700 people and so forth.

Then instead of having 603,550,

you would have 598 groups

totaling 5,550 people.

I could see that if you add up the census numbers

using the meaning of clan for 'elef rather than thousand,

it does not match what the Bible references,

and totaling up the hundreds column does not add up either.

Is the fact that these numbers are adding up perfectly

when translating 'elef as thousand just a coincidence?

(gentle music)

A lot of people have a really difficult time

that there were millions of people going out.

They think, "Well, how could that

"many people exist in the wilderness?"

Sure, but in even raising that question

regarding their existence in the wilderness,

it fails to account for the text itself,

which says miracles were happening over and over again.

Miracles of manna from heaven, water from a rock.

God didn't let their sandals wear out.

A single pair of shoes for 40 years, good night!

It's a miracle.

Yet, Dr. Beitzel stresses that taking

'elef to mean clan rather than thousand

would not be changing the wording of the Bible.

If you were to divide up the word 'elef in that way

you're not changing one vowel point.

You're not changing one letter in the Hebrew Bible.

You're just taking 'elef in a non-numerical sense,

rather than in a numerical sense.

I'm not saying that this is an explanation

that lies beyond questions.

But I am saying to you that in my view,

this is the most cogent alternative view.

It doesn't answer all the questions.

If it answered all the questions,

we wouldn't be sitting here even discussing it.

Right, we wouldn't.

Again, if we have a view that God is big

and that Scripture is true,

it demands that we understand he's able to sustain millions

for 40 years through a wilderness.

(gentle music)

(wind blowing)

(gentle dramatic music)

I now have evidence matching

the first step of the sequence:

The Departure Point.

References to Lake Gesem.

Matching the place named Goshen in the region where

the Bible states the Israelites lived before leaving Egypt.

This name is not Egyptian, but Semitic,

matching the language family of the early Israelites.

Evidence for the biblical cities of Ramesses and Pithom,

which are also found in Egyptian documents.

And there are at least 20 additional Semitic cities

that have yet to be excavated

that would potentially increase

the Israelite population greatly.

The Bible states that the Israelites departed

on the Exodus from Ramesses, earlier known as Avaris.

A location both approaches agree on.

As hard as it is to imagine,

the Bible seems to be pointing to about

two million people departing Egypt.

If this is what the Bible is telling us,

and if I'm believing the Bible,

then I have to believe this was possible.

I thought the big miracle

was going to be the parting of the sea,

but in reality I'm learning

that the Exodus journey is full of miracles,

including how God sustained so many people.

(wind blowing)

The next step in the pattern is Direction.

It begins with Moses and a burning bush.

(gentle music)

The Bible states that Moses was born into

an Israelite family at a time when the Israelites

were enslaved by the Egyptians.

There was a decree from Pharaoh

that all the male Israelite babies

were to be killed by throwing them into the Nile River,

(somber music)

and in fear for his life,

his mother hides him in a basket

and floats it among the reeds of the river Nile.

(somber music)

(insects chattering)

(birds chirping)

But God is watching over baby Moses,

and Pharaoh's daughter comes down to bathe in the Nile.

She finds him, adopts him, and names him Moses,

which means "drawn from the water."

(gentle music)

(gentle music)
(birds chirping)

He was raised in the household of Pharaoh

and educated in the Egyptian court.

Moses went out one day to his people

and looked on their burdens.

He saw an Egyptian beating an Israelite.

He looked this way and that,

and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian

and killed him and hid him in the sand.

When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses,

but Moses fled from Pharaoh

and stayed in the land of Midian,

where for 40 years he tended sheep,

(sheep bleating)

and then one day God revealed himself to Moses

and spoke to him out of a burning bush.

God told Moses to return to Egypt

and tell Pharaoh to release the Israelite slaves

and bring them back to this mountain

that he was standing on to worship God.

(gentle music)

This gives us a clue to the Direction step.

The initial Destination of the Exodus journey

was not the Promised Land,

but rather a mountain where Moses encountered God

during his 40-year stay in the land of Midian

prior to the Exodus.

The traditional view is that Moses encountered

the burning bush at a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula,

but was this the land of Midian?

One of the questions that people have always asked is,

that if you look at the biblical story of the Exodus,

you see that Moses went to the land of Midian.

Now the land of Midian, where is Midian?

Midian is actually in Saudi Arabia.

It's not in Sinai.

It's not in what is today Transjordan,

and it's not in Israel or Palestine.

It's in Saudi Arabia.

One thing that scholars are pretty much agreed upon

is that Midian is in southern Jordan

and in northwest Saudi Arabia.

They have found distinctive pottery.

Whereas in Sinai,

you really don't have anything from this period.

(plane engine roaring)

In 2003, I traveled to northwest Saudi Arabia,

the ancient land of Midian,

with a small group of Exodus explorers,

including Dr. Lennart Möller and Dr. Glen Fritz.

At that time few had been allowed into this area,

and many felt it was dangerous.

There I had the opportunity

to see a mountain called Jabal Al Lawz,

that some suggest might be the true location

for Mount Sinai.

So was Moses in the land of Midian

when he encountered the burning bush?

Some think so and believe there's still evidence

that can be found there today.

But many scholars maintain that Moses traveled

outside of Midian to the traditional Mount Sinai.

Either way, this gives the general direction

the Israelites would head when leaving Egypt,

southeast toward the mountain where Moses had met God.

(dramatic music)

Back in Egypt, Moses confronts Pharaoh

and gives him God's command to let the people go.

But Pharaoh refuses,

and Egypt experienced a series of devastating plagues.

(dramatic music)
(thunder rumbling)

Moses is the agent of God in the story,

who will wreak havoc against the gods of Egypt.

Dr. DeRouchie then told me something startling

concerning the character of Pharaoh that Moses was facing.

It goes back to the Garden of Eden.

That serpent in the garden we're told

will have offspring who will look like him,

who will act like him, who will be murderous

and liars like their father was - the devil.

Pharaoh is being portrayed as an offspring of the serpent

who embodies all the characteristics of the serpent himself,

and, therefore, he is a portrait of the devil in the story,

the evil one who is working once again hostility against God

and seeking to defeat God's people.

Only after the 10th plague,

Pharaoh relented,

and thrust the Israelites out of his country.

(dramatic music)

Moses said to the people,

"Never forget what Yahweh your God has done for you

"in delivering you out of the clutches of Egypt."

God was being faithful to the promise he made way back

400 years earlier to Abraham, that this day would come.

That after four centuries of affliction,

God would deliver them and bring them out with great glory.

(dramatic music)

In 1923, Cecil B. DeMille was the first to portray

the Exodus departure in a spectacular way.

They left Egypt with their flocks and herds

and headed east across the wilderness

toward the mountain of God.

A pillar of cloud and fire led them day and night.

When Pharaoh let the people go,

God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines

although it was close.

For God said, "Lest the people change their minds

"when they see war and want to go back to Egypt."

But God led the people around

by the way of the wilderness toward Yam Suph.

Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 says,

"When you leave, do not take the way

"to the land of the Philistines."

Well, we know that the Egyptians

had a whole series of forts along that road.

That's the equivalent of an interstate highway in antiquity.

At this point it's just simply saying,

"You may not use that road."

All right, that suggests to me

they're going to be following a regular road.

There were only three options.

But now with this one out according to Exodus,

one is now left to two options, okay.

And that's this option right here?

This one goes across the middle part of the Sinai.

This is the way to Shur.

This is the road that goes to Jerusalem.

Professor Beitzel's Egyptian view,

suggests the Israelites traveled on the way to Shur.

However, the Bible says they traveled

on the way of the wilderness to Yam Suph.

The Bible says the Israelites took

the way of the wilderness of the Red Sea,

and in these days highways were identified

by their destination.

It's just like if you're in Dallas,

and you're gonna travel to Chicago,

I'm going to say, "I'll take the highway to Chicago."

When they left Egypt,

they took the highway to the wilderness of Yam Suph.

There was really only one way to get to Midian,

and that was to follow the trans-Sinai highway.

That was a direct route.

It was a well-traveled route.

So, it looks like Moses is simply following

the way he had traveled to go to Midian.

I went to see a distinguished professor of Hebrew

who has written extensively on the Hebrew Bible.

Professor Duane Garrett authored,

"A Commentary On The Exodus"

and co-authored "A Modern Grammar For Biblical Hebrew",

along with Professor DeRouchie.

He also has a Hebrew approach.

If you look at a lot of ancient maps,

the Gulf of Suez is the Red Sea.

What's happened to that thinking?

It's not really, in my view,

compatible with the narrative,

which says they got on the way of the Yam Suph,

and they crossed the Sinai Peninsula to get to the Yam Suph.

Whereas, if you put it at the Gulf of Suez,

they crossed the Gulf of Suez,

and then they just start wandering down to Sinai.

They don't spend any time on the way of the Yam Suph.

It does not fit the narrative.

The Bible says they went the way of the Yam Suph,

which I think clearly is directly across northern Sinai

to the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba

as an extension of the Red Sea,

and I think that's what they crossed.

(dramatic music)

What I've learned in the Direction step is that:

Moses was leading the Israelites out of Egypt

in a southeasterly direction,

and there were only three main roads to choose from.

The Bible states that they did not take the northern route

the way of the Philistines.

That leaves two other options.

The central route went to the deserts

of the Negev on its way to Jerusalem.

The southern route went to an arm of the Red Sea,

the Gulf of Aqaba, which was on the way to Midian.

If Moses was in Midian when he encountered the burning bush,

it would make sense that he would've returned

on this road back to Mount Sinai.

This is the Hebrew approach,

but most in the Egyptian approach disagree.

This leads to the next step of the Exodus journey: Desert.

(gentle dramatic music)

When the children of Israel left Egypt,

there were 600,000 men of military age, plus their families.

A pillar of cloud and fire led them into the wilderness,

and the mission was to bring the children of Israel

back to Mount Sinai where God first spoke to Moses.

Moses and his brother led the people

out of the land of Egypt,

and they were on the way of the wilderness toward Yam Suph.

(gentle music)

Which desert wilderness did this road pass through

on its way to the sea?

The Egyptian approach suggests this small desert

next to Egypt's Nile Delta.

But the Hebrew approach believes

the desert area was much larger,

in the Sinai Peninsula.

(birds chirping)

Egyptologist David Rohl wrote "Exodus - Myth or History."

We've traveled together several times into the Middle East

looking for patterns of evidence that match the Bible.

Although David is not a person of faith,

he believes the Bible represents historical events,

but he doesn't accept spectacular miracles.

Rohl uses the Egyptian approach,

which focuses on toponyms,

or the names of places in the biblical text.

This approach believes these terms connect

to Egyptian meanings and locations.

I think if we are gonna take this Exodus route seriously,

we need to look at something

like a satellite image like this,

and try and work out where they went.

Well, I know that we've got many different theories

about this with a lot of different locations,

so what do you think the crossing site, where would that be?

Well, for once I'm gonna follow

the conventional argument here.

So let's start over here in the land of Goshen.

In the area of Avaris

that you're talking about.
Yes, absolutely here,

and it's in the fertile Delta,

and then once they crossed the Yam Suph,

they travel down the other side through Sinai

until they eventually reach Marah here,

the bitter lakes or the bitter waters.

We have a number of toponyms along the way,

which match the story.

We have Elim down here,

which is the place where the 12 springs are located

and the palm trees that's even today called Ayun Musa,

the springs of Moses.

Then we get in here to Serabit el-Khadim.

This is the biblical Dophkah,

which the Egyptians call Mofkat,

and we work our way down to Sinai.

So, you have a number of toponyms in Sinai

which match the story.

The majority of scholars,

including Dr. Beitzel, use this approach,

and their focus on Egyptian connections

for biblical place names results in their

placing the sea crossing close to Egypt.

In contrast, scholars using the Hebrew approach

generally see the Exodus as much larger,

including everything from the numbers of Israelites,

to the size of the miracles, to the distances involved,

because they think this is what the full weight

of the biblical information is describing.

The Hebrew approach acknowledges that some

of the words in the Bible have Egyptian connections,

but it focuses on the Bible's full description of events

and on Hebrew meanings of biblical place-names

rather than Egyptian connections.

The most natural context for us to understand

the meaning of words is first in Hebrew,

and what's significant, I think, is that

the Bible is given to us in Hebrew by Hebrews,

telling us the story of God's delivering of them.

And so, it seems very natural to me that

we would take this ancient book at face value

and allow the Hebrews to tell us what they experienced

point by point, location by location.

Examining the biblical text closely,

I could see that Moses identified three campsites

the Israelites stopped at after they left Egypt

and before they crossed the sea.

The first was Succoth.

"And the people of Israel journeyed

"from Rameses to Succoth,

"about six hundred thousand men on foot,

"besides women and children."

The second was Etham,

and the third was at the Red Sea,

which in Hebrew was Yam Suph.

So, David, tell me what do you think

the route of Exodus was in your mind?

Well, we know that Goshen is over here in this area,

and we know the first campsite is a place called Succoth

in the Bible, Hebrew Sukkot.

Not that's Tell el-Maskhuta or Ma-Sukkot.

It's the same name in Arabic,

and that's across here in the Wadi Tumilat.

So they came down from Goshen,

across this triangular desert here

to a place called Sukkot.

Now this triangular desert

is actually mentioned in the Bible.

It's called Midbar Yam Suph

or the Desert of the Sea of Reeds.

So the Sea of Reeds has to be

somewhere close to this desert here,

and that's where the Ballah Lakes system is located.

So, I'm very confident

that this is the Yam Suph region here.

So they cross this desert.

They come down to Succoth.

(dramatic music)

"And they set out from Succoth

"and camped at Etham,

"which is on the edge of the wilderness."

At that point they then journey to a place called Etham.

Now Etham's a bit of a mystery.

Nobody really knows where it is,

and, in fact, if you think about it,

if Etham is the word for Egyptian, Hetem,

which is the word for "border fortress",

there would have been a big garrison

of Egyptians sitting there.

In the Egyptian approach,

all these events leading to the sea parting

seem to be taking place in a very small area.

Was this the desert wilderness

the Israelites really crossed,

or did they cross a much larger wilderness?

There's a big difference between these two options.

Well, some people are proposing a crossing over here.

That's true, but if you look at the distances

involved here between Succoth over there,

then you have to have Etham other here,

and then you have to have the third camp over here.

We're talking about 250 miles in that distance.

It's just too far.

Too far.

(gentle music)

Numerous times I've traveled into the desert,

and I can tell you that with a lack of food and water,

combined with the extreme heat of the sun,

it's a very dangerous place.

So where does Glen Fritz place

the desert route in his Hebrew approach?

This is a map of my projected route

from Goshen to the seashore of Yam Suph.

There were two encampments listed on this route:

Succoth and Etham.

Over here.

The route is designed to follow the wadis,

the lower lying areas in the middle of the Sinai Peninsula.

And explain what a wadi is.

A wadi is an Arabic term meaning valley.

The thing to keep in mind here in leaving Egypt,

the goal of the exodus was to go to the mountain of God.

Moses in his thinking would have planned on

rounding the head of the Gulf to get into Arabia.

Because he was heading to Midian.

He was heading to the mountain of God.

Then they encamped on the edge of the wilderness,

and while they were in Etham,

they had avoided the steep downhill heavy terrain

between their campsite and the head of the gulf.

So this here is the?

Head of the Gulf of Aqaba.

This is an antique map showing this heavy terrain,

and they camped just shy of this area.

If the Hebrew approach is correct,

how would a multitude of people cross such a wilderness?

Could Moses' leadership be part of the answer?

This was something that DeMille also noted in his research.

The Bible omits the first 30 years or so

that brought Moses to manhood.

To fill in those missing years,

we turned to ancient historians such as Philo and Josephus.

Philo wrote during the lifetime of Jesus of Nazareth,

and Josephus wrote some 50 years later.

These historians had access to documents

long since destroyed.

(dramatic music)

(people shouting)

The Jewish historian Josephus

recorded that in his early life,

Moses was a general that led an Egyptian army

into battle against the Ethiopians.

This campaign may be what Stephen the martyr

was referring to in the New Testament book of Acts

when he not only says,

"Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,"

but also, "...he was mighty in his words and deeds."

(gentle dramatic music)

I set off for an ancient castle in Austria, Schloss Klaus.

It has guarded this valley for almost 1,000 years,

and now has become one of the homes

of Torchbearers International,

a Protestant retreat and educational center.

I went there to interview

a leading German Exodus Bible scholar

who has spent most of his career studying

the life of Moses and the event of the Exodus.

His name is Peter Wiegand.

So his Egyptian time in Pharaoh's court

really groomed him in a number of ways, didn't it,

for the upcoming Exodus?
Of course.

Well, Tim,

God has various degrees of calls for people,

of callings in their life.

Now, if God calls a person to a job,

if God calls someone to become a doctor,

he'll need a specialized training for that.

If God calls someone into filmmaker,

he needs certain qualifications for that.

Now if you are to become a general of an army

or become a leader of a nation,

there are to be certain basic trainings,

and you can't be an idiot.

No you couldn't.
When, there have been

enough of that sort.

But God, when he chose his person,

he chose a highly-intelligent man,

and he chose a man who knew how to behave.

He chose a man who knew how to use words,

issue commands, and organize things.

He had to issue, "This has to be done now,"

and it has to be done without reserve, "You, go."

So he had to know how to command whole troop segments,

how to train his officers.

Moses' training may have included things like

military intelligence, logistics, preparation of supplies,

and managing the resources an army needed to survive.

This would have uniquely qualified him to lead

the Israelites out of Egypt and across the desert.

(wind blowing)

(gentle dramatic music)

In 2002, I traveled with Dr. Lennart Möller

and a film crew on this ancient road to Midian

across the Sinai Peninsula,

where the Hebrew approach believes the Israelites traveled.

What we observed was that the terrain

was not sandy like the Sahara Desert.

It was much firmer, almost like concrete in many areas.

However, the Egyptian view does not think

crossing this desert is realistic.

If you try and go straight across the Sinai here,

you're in this limestone area called The Altic Plateau.

Now that is extremely dry

because limestone absorbs the water.

So, it's a very dry desert.

Do you think it would be hard for people to make it across

the way of the wilderness to the Gulf of Aqaba?

No, because it was a regularly traveled caravan route.

It was a trading route.

Now they wouldn't want to waste time,

and they wouldn't want to dawdle.

But it's not as though they were out

in a trackless wilderness.

It was, in their terms, a highway.

Movement across Sinai is not as difficult

as people might imagine because the distances are not

nearly as great as many people might assume.

You're not going through mountains.

You're not going through deep valleys.

It's a very easy route if there's water.

Let me show you something.

There are three counties in southern California,

Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara.

They have a combined width of 150 miles,

which represents the approximate width

of the Sinai Peninsula.

According to ancient rates of daily travel,

this distance would easily be covered in a week to 10 days.

If I could get an idea

of how many days the Israelites traveled,

and how many miles they covered each day,

it would help determine which desert was crossed,

and if it was possible to cross the Sinai Peninsula.

How far could the Israelites have gone in a day?

Through the desert?
Yeah.

Well, many people would argue not very far.

But when you look at what Robinson and Smith managed to do,

they averaged two miles per hour, and they were walking.

They put all their pack materials on the back of the camels

and they actually walked.

So, a Bedouin would walk through

this territory at two miles an hour,

so that means in 11 hours of daylight

you would get 22 miles a day.

The question is whether the large group

of Israelites could have matched this pace.

The Israelites left with all their possessions,

with their families, the elderly, children,

and their animals, their flocks and their herds.

They must have water and they must have food,

and so you have to as you're going along,

provide for your animals, and this slowed them down.

And if you look at records of nomadic peoples

that travel around with animals,

a realistic distance of travel would be

about six miles a day, 10 kilometers a day.

That would be about all you could cover.

Well, for example, you go on walks,

and I go on walks with my wife,

and we walk around the lake.

The lake is about three miles.

We can walk around that lake in about an hour.

Take that walk, with a bunch of little kids,

a bunch of old people, and a bunch of animals

that need to have water and food and try it again.

(dramatic music)

I went to see an American professor

of animal science at Colorado State University,

and a leading consultant to the livestock industry.

Her name is Temple Grandin.

In 2010, her own autism story

and its insights on animal behavior

were captured in the feature film "Temple Grandin",

starring Claire Danes.

The Exodus story is about the Israelites leaving Egypt

and going distances.

What kind of distance could sheep or cattle or oxen go?

It depends on what kind of condition you want them in.

I was just looking at something the other day

about the cattle drives.

I mean you might go just a few miles each day

because you want to let them water and feed

if you want to maintain the body condition of the animal.

If this is an emergency situation,

you can go a lot further.

The big thing is they have to have water.

So how often would animals need to be watered?

Every three or four days,

and that's under emergency conditions.

Yeah.

If you've got the right kind of sheep,

they can probably go longer without water

than the people could.

I traveled to Tennessee to meet the Baker family.

They raise a unique type of sheep known as Jacob sheep.

Tradition says these sheep are descendants

of the spotted flock Jacob bred,

as recorded in the book of Genesis.

What is unique about this particular breed?

Jacob sheep are an older heritage breed.

They trace their lineage back into the Middle East

to the area of Syria.

So it is possible that this breed could have been

the sheep of Jacob?
Mm-hmm.

From the descendants of them?

So it's true that these guys could be related.

They're easy keepers.

They don't take a lot of grain.

They don't take a lot of water.

How is it to herd these sheep?

It's not difficult.

Sheep are followers.

They have a strong flocking instinct.

If you can convince two or three of them

to come where you want them to come,

the rest of them will be there.

I was impressed with their strength and speed.

But how far can sheep travel in a day?

Could sheep go 15 miles or 20 miles?

Oh, yeah, you can move sheep 15 or 20 miles if you had to.

In an emergency you can just walk them

as fast as you can walk.

But they wouldn't have time to graze.

They'd lose body condition.

They'd start to get skinny.

But they can last a long time and still live.

Mm-hmm, because then they could fatten up

once they got...
They could fatten up

once they get there, that's right.

They could get really skinny

and still live as long as they're getting water.

Yeah, could sheep then go several hundred miles?

Whatever the people could walk.

Yeah.

If the people can do it, the sheep can do it.

(gentle music)

So distance isn't a problem,

but how could the Israelites have had enough water?

I found out when I was in the Sinai region.

(thunder rumbling)

Basically it's gotten a lot worse right now.

So the question of would there be water in the wilderness?

This time of the year?

We are in the Sinai region now,

and I haven't been out long and I'm getting wet.

(thunder rumbling)

Whoa, I'm a little bit concerned about the lightning too.

Don't be concerned about it.

It won't hit you.

(Tim chuckles)

As you can see, this is the runoff that's come down

from the mountains from the storm.

So it seems real feasible that in this time of year

that there would be water to support

this crossing across the Sinai.

Even the scriptures talk about rain

provided for the Israelites.

"O God, when you went out before your people,

"when you marched through the wilderness,

"Rain in abundance, O God, you shed abroad.

"You provided for the needy."

(dramatic music)

There was another important clue

about distances that could be covered.

In the book of Genesis,

Jacob fled from his father-in-law Laban

with his children and large flocks and herds.

They covered a distance of 350 miles in 10 days,

averaging 35 miles a day.

So the Bible is telling us that ancient people with kids

and animals could quickly cover a lot of territory.

But speed is only one half of the equation.

The other is how many days

the Israelites traveled to the sea.

This could determine how large of a desert was crossed.

(dramatic music)
(insects chattering)

God told Moses to make a list

of all the camps of the Exodus journey.

He recorded that it took one month to get past the 6th camp

and around 50 days to Mount Sinai.

The Egyptian approach makes the case that

the sea crossing happened after just a few days.

In the actual evacuation of Egypt,

they come to the body of water on the third day.

However, the Bible does not give

the specific time to the crossing.

Josephus, when commenting on this,

I realize he's not inspired,

but there are times when his words at least are relevant.

He says, "In three days,"

Israel went from the beginning

of its migration to Baal-zephon,

where the miracle of the Red Sea occurred.

That has to be close to Egypt.

Now some people have said that the Bible stipulates

that it took them three days

or it took them seven days to reach the crossing.

I don't see that in Scripture that there was any timeframe

to reach the encampment by the sea.

But the total trip being about 250 miles,

if they covered 20 or 25 miles a day moving quickly,

traveling day and night,

they could certainly reach this point within 10 days,

and that would be probably a good figure.

These people were fit.

They were slaves.

They were used to working seven days a week.

The difference between three days and 10 days,

is the difference between a crossing at the border lakes

and a crossing at Aqaba.

Moses' information actually allows the crossing

to have happened somewhere between

three and 24 days into the journey.

This is what the timing looks like in the Egyptian view,

with the first three camps

squeezed into the first three days.

But since Moses recorded that it took

exactly one month to get past camp six,

in this view it would mean that the next three camps

were covered in the remaining 27 days.

But a Hebrew view argues,

since it was one month to camp six,

is it not reasonable that it was

about half a month to camp three?

The Israelites would have traveled a long way in two weeks.

However, proposing that the desert crossed was Sinai

brings a challenge from those using the Egyptian approach.

Bear in mind something else that's really important too,

Etham is described in the Bible

as being on the edge of the desert.

Now, the edge of the desert is over there.

It's not right over here on the far side of the desert.

So, Etham has to be over there too.

In which case you've then got 250 miles

all the way to the third camp.

David is making a good point,

if the second camp of Etham really was

at the near edge of the desert closest to Egypt,

it would be a problem for Aqaba.

The question is which edge of which wilderness

is the Bible talking about?

Tim, you were wondering

why I would pick this area for Etham?

Yeah.
Now, the area that

I theorize as being Etham

was a popular encampment in antiquity.

These green dots represent

Chalcolithic and Bronze Age settlements.

So this whole area up in here, huh?

Yes, settlements made even before the time of the Exodus.

But, the remains archaeologically show people

were camping in this area because it was suitable.

It had water and pasture, and it was flat.

The Wilderness of Etham is a term that

we have to understand to know why Etham was called Etham.

In the Arabic Et-Tihama or Tahma is the coastal zone

of the Red Sea in Northwest Arabia

and Tahma or Tahamah is translated

as "land sloping toward the sea".

You know, when you and I have been there,

it's magnificent when you're there.

You see these beautiful mountains coming.

Dropping right into the water in some cases.

Right, and then you realize that

it's thousands of feet deep into the sea,

it's really a mountain range with water in it, right?

Yes, again, Moses used very

general geographical descriptions.

Large areas of terrain,

large landscapes were used and given a simple name,

and so when he uses the word Etham,

this is the last stop you can make

before you make this descent through

the rough terrain around the head of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Then they stopped on the edge of the wilderness

to encamp at Etham.

(dramatic music)

In the Desert step:

The Egyptian approach sees everything happening

on a small scale in the desert area north of Wadi Tumilat.

The first two campsites, Succoth and Etham,

are thought to connect with place-names in Egypt,

the second coming at the near edge

of the wilderness of Sinai.

This view also favors slower travel rates

and only a few days to the sea crossing.

In contrast, the Hebrew approach

sees the wilderness as much greater.

It has the Israelites crossing the Sinai Peninsula

before reaching the sea.

This view is open to faster travel

and has many more days to get to the sea.

Glen Fritz proposes a different edge

of the wilderness for the second campsite of Etham

coming just before the Gulf of Aqaba.

I have to ask which approach best matches the account?

The Bible says they left Egypt in haste,

(dramatic music)

and traveled day and night with God's miraculous provision.

(thunder rumbling)

When they got to Mount Sinai, God told Moses.

"You yourselves have seen

"what I did to the Egyptians,

"and how I bore you on eagles' wings

"and brought you to myself."

(thunder rumbling)

These Scriptures seem to fit the longer distances

and faster speed in the Hebrew approach for the Desert step.

The next step of the Exodus journey

was a Detour taken off the main road

that ended up at a Dead End on the shore of Yam Suph.

"Then the Lord said to Moses,

'Tell the people of Israel to turn back

'and encamp in front of Pi-hahiroth,

'between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon;

'you shall encamp facing it, by the sea.'"

What would the Egyptian view's explanation be

for this turning back that sent the Israelites on a detour?

The verb to turn is used hundreds of times in the Bible,

and what it means is you can turn north.

You can turn south.

You can turn east.

You can turn west.

You can turn just about any angle.

Doesn't it say they turned back?

Well, turned back would be the same verb.

Where the verb turn is used,

I think, it would be better to render it "veer".

So again, it's possible that the reason why Moses

turned back here is because there is a huge garrison

of soldiers at this point, and he couldn't go through there.

So he had to turn northward

and go north towards the area where the Yam Suph is located.

But having Moses and the Israelites

go north toward the Mediterranean

seemed to contradict the Bible's account

that said they did not go on the way of the Philistines.

But the Hebrews when they left Egypt

did not go by the sea route.

They were told not to go that direction.

They were told not to go that direction

as stated in Exodus 13:17.

One thing I want to bring up is that it says that

they weren't supposed to go north.

It says they weren't supposed

to go the way of the Philistines,

which is along the Mediterranean.

Well yes, of course, because that's the danger zone.

That's the way of the Philistines up here.

But that's what is meant by, "They turned back."

They turned back into the danger zone.

God orders them to turn back.

They don't go straight on.

They can't go straight on because of the fortress here.

They can't go further south because of all these lakes.

So he tells them to go northwards.

Why is he doing that?

Because he wants a confrontation

between the Israelites and the Egyptian army.

He wants to teach the Egyptian army a lesson.

Once again, the Egyptian approach

emphasizes natural explanations.

Whereas in the Hebrew approach,

the detour was not caused by canals or threat of a fort,

but simply because God ordered

Moses to turn off the main road

and follow the pillar of cloud to the sea.

My view is that they made it out of Egypt

with no problem because they had permission to leave.

They didn't have to dodge forts.

They didn't have to worry about the lakes.

They just went around the lakes and went past the forts

because the Egyptians wanted them out.

(dramatic music)

After the Detour,

the Israelites reached a Dead End

at the sea crossing itself.

DeMille's 1923 version of "The Ten Commandments"

portrayed this event for the first time.

As a filmmaker, I'm still impressed by what he was able

to achieve cinematically almost 100 years ago.

The Bible records that Pharaoh changes his mind,

pursues the Israelites with his chariots,

and they catch them at the shore of the sea,

trapping the Israelites.

In the Exodus,

the Bible states it was Pharaoh's chariots

that were cast into the sea

when God caused the waters

that were parted to crash down upon them.

This was how Cecil B. DeMille depicted it

in his second film based on his research,

which was quite extensive.

This is what it might've looked like in the Hebrew view.

But how would the Egyptian approach explain the Dead End

aspect of this step where Pharaoh

trapped the Israelites at the sea?

(birds chirping)

(dramatic music)

At the Karnak Temple,

there's an inscription that depicts a fort

along a waterway with reeds in the Nile Delta.

Some think this relief offers a clue

to the location of the Dead End

where the Israelites were trapped at Yam Suph.

Egyptologist James Hoffmeier and Geologist Stephen Moshier

use this inscription along with satellite information

to locate the Dead End in an area known as Ballah Lake.

They also propose that there are Egyptian place-names here

that connect with four biblical place-names

that any view of the Exodus sea crossing must account for.

These places are: Pi-hahiroth,

meaning "mouth of the canal" or "mouth of the gorge".

Migdol: meaning "tower" or "fortress".

Yam Suph: the sea that was crossed.

And Baal-zephon: meaning "Lord of the North",

likely a place of worship for the god Baal.

So what you're suggesting is that there's a crossing

in these border lakes right here.

How did you come up with that?

Well, it all began by my interest in this

very famous depiction on the walls of Karnak temple,

which show the Pharaoh Seti I,

who was the father of Ramesses II,

and what we have here is a 3300-year-old road map

containing the forts from Egypt's frontier,

depictions of forts, and their names,

stretching across northern Sinai

all the way to the land of Canaan.

This shows us water.

We have pictures of lakes.

We have pictures of reeds growing out here,

but all of this is desert today.

The reeds depicted on the Karnak inscription

connect well with the popular

Sea of Reeds definition for Yam Suph.

So as time went on as we studied these inscriptions

and other Egyptian papyri,

suddenly there were names on these documents

that compared very favorably with what we have in the Bible.

Back in 1975, Professor Manfred Bietak

from University of Vienna proposed that this area

was known in Egyptian texts as Pa Tufy,

which means the marshlands, the watery area full of reeds,

and, linguistically, this word Tufy does correspond

to the Hebrew Yam Suph.

This is why I pulled Steve into this because

I needed somebody who could understand the sand, the dunes.

Where were these ancient lakes in what is now all desert?

Earlier, Professor Moshier had introduced me

to declassified spy satellite images

of the area from the 1960s Cold War.

We can see the delineation of an ancient lagoon

back here that was set into the coast,

and we found river traces that take us into a depression,

which was called the Ballah Lakes.

This is a possible location for Yam Suph.

If we looked at this land today,

it would be covered with agriculture,

and we wouldn't see all of the details

that we could see 40 years ago on the ground.

In fact, look at that straight line.

That is the Mediterranean coast during the time of

Ramesses and the New Kingdom throughout the Bronze Age.

How does it relate to the story of the Exodus?

The significance is on that Karnak relief

the third fort is called Migdol,

the Migdol of Seti I.

That name Migdol is what piqued my attention,

because in Exodus 14:2 there's a site called Migdol,

which is by the sea that the Israelites crossed.

And Migdol means "fortress" or "tower".

A colleague, Dr. Ellen Morris of Columbia University,

she wrote a 900-page dissertation on these forts,

their functions, their locations, et cetera,

and she concluded that there was

likely only one fort named Migdol

located in the northern part of Sinai in the New Kingdom.

It's not like there were Migdols all over the place.

And then we have the other clues.

For example, the canal system

that was discovered by Israeli geologists back in the 1970s

may have a link to the Exodus itinerary.

Yeah, Israeli geologists discovered traces

of a canal right here, and in my research,

I began to look at the Biblical texts

because there you have in Exodus 14:2

a place called Pi-hahiroth,

which means "the mouth of the canal".

And this is beside the sea that they pass through.

That word "hiroth" is an Akkadian Babylonian word for canal.

This is a man-made feature not a natural feature,

and so suddenly the realization that

there was a canal on the frontier of Egypt

became something very interesting to us.

And you think that the toponyms,

the names that are used for these areas,

match the biblical narrative?

It does, so we have Migdol there.

We have the sea to the north,

and we have Baal-zephon.

That's a place called Tel Dephana over here.

Now that was a major temple of Baal-zephon,

the god Baal-zephon.

So, all those three toponyms locate Pi-hahiroth,

the crossing point, right in the middle.

I asked Professor Hoffmeier how did the Israelites

end up at this Dead End at the Ballah Lakes?

They come to this area,

and they're on the edge of the wilderness.

They're about to leave Egypt Exodus 13:20 tells us,

and then suddenly they make a turn.

Exodus 14:1 and 2 indicates a turn,

and the word shuv means "to turn back".

Did they turn more to the east

or a little bit more to the west?

But clearly they're heading back

to the very area they were originally trying to avoid.

So we have a potential location for Yam Suph,

the Sea of Reeds.

We have Migdol.

We have Pi-hahiroth.

That's the compelling evidence that this is the location.

However, I also noted in the Bible

that God told Moses that the southern border

of the promised land was at Yam Suph,

which historically has always been the Gulf of Aqaba.

This is a big problem for the Egyptian approach.

As a Hebrew scholar,

Professor Garrett also challenges these connections,

especially in the north, because of the Bible's command

not to go the way of the Philistines.

Well, I analyzed his arguments

pretty thoroughly in my book, and in my view,

I mean Dr. Hoffmeier is a great scholar,

but in my view he's just not correct.

He has them making movements

that the Bible says they didn't do.

Even his geographic layout of the lakes

and the fortresses is not compatible,

in my view, with what the narrative says.

When I reread the verse about the Dead End,

it said the Israelites were to camp

between Migdol and the sea.

This would put the Migdol fort behind them

and the sea in front of them.

But in this Egyptian proposal,

the Migdol fort was not behind them.

He has Israel on the other side of the lake,

and so it doesn't really fit the narrative.

I also found that not all egyptologists agree

that these biblical place-names

can be linked to Ballah Lake.

Professor Donald Redford

is one of the world's most respected egyptologists.

He was given the award for

Best Scholarly Book in Archaeology

for his work "Egypt, Canaan, and Israel In Ancient Times".

He notes that some of these sites

didn't exist until long after the Exodus.

The reference to Baal-zephon is a late reference.

That doesn't go back very early,

and Pi-hahiroth, if we have identified it correctly,

belongs in the 4th century.

That's a late period site.

I don't know how Jim can deny it.

But at that point if you agree,

and I don't but many people do,

that suph, Yam Suph, is Tufy meaning "the reeds"

and it borders on Pi-Ramesses.

So, at that point they've come all the way around.

They're back where they started.

Right next door to Pi-Ramesses.

It doesn't make sense.

Because of the northern route prohibition

in the Bible, some in the Egyptian approach,

like Dr. Beitzel, propose lakes further south,

which would require a different Migdol.

Beitzel suggests it's an Egyptian fort near Lake Timsah.

And when you add that to the prohibition

to follow this established road,

I think what it means is they got down

to this established road,

and it was at that point somewhere around Migdol,

that the miraculous event took place.

Here you see the way to Shur.

There's Timsah Lake.

Up here is where they started at Ramesses.

This is out.

That road is out because of Exodus 13.

This road is not out,

and, in fact, you have the same three sites.

Bing, bing, and bing, in the same sequence.

To me, this means that the most reasonable choice

would be the body of water that intersects the road to Shur.

I have singled out Timsah Lake

as the point where I think it took place.

I noticed that all the different Egyptian proposals

for Yam Suph have different Migdols.

It makes me wonder if Egyptian place-names

really demand a crossing near Egypt.

So where does the Hebrew approach suggest

the Detour to a Dead End occurred?

After leaving Egypt and crossing the Sinai wilderness,

there are three proposed routes

that lead to the Gulf of Aqaba.

One leads to the northern tip,

the second to the center,

and the third to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula.

But if the Gulf of Aqaba is Yam Suph,

why hasn't it been considered

as the sea of the Exodus before?

The reason that the Septuagint assigned

the Red Sea term to Yam Suph is because

it was the only body of water adjacent to Egypt

or Arabia recognized by the early Greek geographers.

The Greeks were the geographers

par excellence of 2,000 years ago.

However, they failed to recognize

the existence of the Gulf of Aqaba.

Tim] The case Glen was making was that

although the Gulf of Aqaba existed in ancient times,

it was not included on maps made by Westerners.

Now, evidence of this lingering problem

is seen in some relatively modern maps.

In this map from the 17th century you see the Red Sea,

but we do not see the Gulf of Aqaba.

Geographers long continued to interpret the Red Sea

and the Gulf of Suez as a single

shaft of water adjacent to Egypt.

But there's no Gulf of Aqaba.

Here is another example from the 18th Century.

Here we see the Red Sea, but guess what's missing?

The Gulf of Aqaba.

For me this was incredible,

an entire sea was mis-drawn

and left off maps for centuries.

This misunderstanding continued

as a tradition into the 1800s.

Here's the point.

If the Gulf of Aqaba was missing through much of history,

how could it be identified as

the biblical location of Yam Suph?

Well, that's interesting.

If the ancient understanding was that

the Israelites crossed the only known sea

on their way to the mountain of God,

what happens if a previously unrecorded body of water,

called the Gulf of Aqaba, is inserted in its true location?

It might easily shift Mount Sinai to the other side of Aqaba

into the ancient land of Midian,

the area where Moses lived for 40 years.

This is where the exodus explorers

have been searching for evidence of Mount Sinai

and diving in the Gulf of Aqaba,

looking for the remains of Pharaoh's army.

But before Aqaba's true extent was known to the West,

the traditional sites were already set in stone.

(dramatic music)

(gentle music)

I went to the University of Cambridge

to interview Sir Colin Humphreys.

He is a highly-awarded physicist

working in the field of material science.

Humphreys also believes the Exodus crossing site

is at the Gulf of Aqaba as described in his book

"The Miracles Of Exodus".

I asked him about 19th century English geographer

Charles Beke, who was one of the first to explore

the Gulf of Aqaba as the crossing site.

Beke was a great explorer.
He's from England, right?

He's from England, that's right,

a great explorer and renowned for being an explorer,

and, in fact, he got the gold medal

of the Royal Geographical Society,

which is the highest award an explorer can get in England,

and he believed that Mount Sinai was in Arabia.

I didn't know this when I started my research,

and was sitting here in Selwyn College,

and Selwyn College Library has the original book,

which he started to write and his wife finished.

It's this beautifully bound volume.

It's called "Sinai in Arabia", by Beke.

But because of his work saying

that Mount Sinai was in Arabia,

he was regarded as a heretic

and his gold medal was taken away from him.

They took his gold medal away from him?

Was his gold medal for something else?

Yes, his gold medal was for his earlier discovery.

So he was a very distinguished geographer and explorer.

So he got his gold medal and that was taken,

and then he said "I believe Mount Sinai is in Arabia."

Before this book was written,

he wrote some other pamphlets about this.

There was correspondence in the Times newspaper of England,

and he was declared to be a heretic, essentially.

So they took his gold medal away.

The only time a gold medal has been taken away.

In the history of...
In the history of

the Royal Geographic Society at the time, yes.

From that time until now, huh?

Yeah, that's right, yes.

So that tells you that if people have ideas

about the way things are supposed to be,

it's very difficult for anyone

to come up with new information.

That is right, that is right.

It's also true in the scientific field.

You say something against the accepted belief,

it's quite hard to get your work published, it can be.

I guess not much has changed in the last 150 years.

Even I had to decide if I was willing

to explore the idea of a crossing at Aqaba,

because some scholars told me,

"If you're gonna talk about this,

"then I don't want to be involved."

They had already decided how things happened.

(gentle music)

But my approach has always been to look at all the views

and see if a pattern of evidence will appear

that matches the biblical text,

because that's what I'm investigating.

What I know so far is that there is powerful evidence

for the Israelites' Departure Point,

That Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt

in a southeasterly Direction on a wilderness road.

That they could have traveled

a great distance across a Desert,

even with children and animals.

That in numerous biblical references the large number

of people on the Exodus journey were provided for

by God's supernatural care.

And if God went to these lengths for his people back then,

what does that mean for me and my family today

if I trust him in what appears to be impossible situations.

(dramatic music)

In part two of the "Red Sea Miracle" investigation,

I look forward to exploring the Detour to the Dead End

locations for the Gulf of Aqaba,

and then onto the Deep Sea step.

Does Yam Suph really mean the "Sea of Reeds"?

Was it shallow or was it deep?

And what would the parting of the sea look like

in either the Egyptian or the Hebrew approach?

If this is the Yam Suph,

and they crossed this way heading back

to the ancient land of Midian.

If Moses was in this land,

and they were heading this direction,

and they turned back and went to this location.

Yeah, okay, I think most scholars would argue

and accept the fact that this is definitely also Yam Suph.

The question is: Is there more than one Yam Suph?

If that sort of water can be moved by wind, even by miracle,

what sort of miracle could do that?

And what sort of people could stand the strength of the wind

that would part that depth of water.

Nobody could stand and walk

that land bridge in that sort of wind.

It would be impossible.

(dramatic music)

The Gulf of Aqaba is part of the Rift Valley

which stretches through Israel all the way to Africa.

(dramatic theatrical music)

The depths of Aqaba reach down

thousands of feet to the seafloor.

If the Red Sea miracle happened here,

it would be bigger than anyone could have imagined.

If this is the site of the crossing,

we would expect to find physical remains

of the Egyptian army on the seabed.

You bring me up one chariot wheel from that,

the bottom of the sea there, and I'll be convinced.

(dramatic music)

We cannot minimize the location of the Exodus.

These were waters that could destroy an entire army.

That could be described

as the very foundations of the Earth.

Could the Red Sea miracle

really have happened at the Gulf of Aqaba?

Or did the crossing happen at the border lakes?

I think it is possible to demonstrate

from inside the Bible itself that it took place

in close proximity to Egypt.

I think that's definitive.

The Bible tells you it was a natural mechanism.

It's explicit.

If you had told me that somewhere near the Sinai,

wind blows and splits the water, I could find it from there.

Make the sea small, put it close to Egypt,

all of a sudden it calls into question

the biblical text itself.

Do you think that there are such things

as miracles that are actually supernatural,

not just naturalistic?

Do you mean spectacular supernatural?

Today, we have hundreds of millions of people

who claim to have witnessed miracles,

and people actually who are in our academic environment

are sticking our necks out to talk about this.

What kind of miracle

would either of these scenarios require?

It was something that God did to blow their minds.

He could have delivered them

a thousand other less-dramatic ways.

He chose not to.

He chose to do it in such a way that it was

for maximum effect that they would never forget it.

That they would talk about it for millennia

because no one ever parts bodies of water.

(thunder rumbling)

I look forward to seeing where

the biblical pattern fits best.

This investigation has a lot more to uncover.

(upbeat uptempo music)

(gentle music)