Lake El Balah in Hebrew means

At this point, further seismic activity, or another collapse of the delta, would have sent a major tsunami crashing against the coast.

Strange how all of this major motion of the entire tectonic plate was never mentioned directly by anybody in Egypt and doesn’t seem to have done any damage to the various cities in the region.  You’d think that the entire tectonic plate pitching to that extent would have had an effect in places other than just Yam Suf. . .even the Israelites making the crossing and the Egyptians in pursuit apparently didn’t notice it.

And if Jacobovici is saying that the delta’s collapse caused the waters to recede, why is he now saying that the delta’s collapse might have caused a tsunami to flood the place?  He’s basically using the same mechanism to explain one event, and then using the exact same mechanism to explain an opposite event.

DR. CHARLES PELLEGRINO:

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Until late in the 20th Century, there was no archaeological proof of contact between Avaris and the Minoans of Santorini.  Then, in 1992, perfectly preserved Minoan paintings were discovered at Avaris, proving that in Biblical times this city was populated not only by Israelites but also by people from ancient Greece.

Possibly.  Or that Avaris traded with the Minoans.  Just because you have plates from China in your house doesn’t mean that you have Chinese people in your house.

DR. CHARLES PELLEGRINO:

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If you ask scholars,

Which brings us to his other bit of fakery.  Even with the substitution of the stele from Argos instead of the stele with the hunting scene, he had to fudge things.  He shows a picture of the actual stele for a moment, but after that he uses a computer-generated version of it to

Just to be clear, let’s look at those grave stele one more time.  Here they are as the documentary introduced them around 68 minutes into the program:

That’s the four grave stele Schliemann found in Grave Circle A, two to the left of Jacobovici and two displayed to his right.  From left to right in that image, this is how they look:

The one on the far left is an abstract design, as Schliemann photographed it on page 91 in his write-up.  We’ll call this Stele A.  Jacobovici ignores it totally.

The second from the left is this one, as seen on page 81 of Schliemann’s book.  This will be Stele B.  It is interpreted by Jacobovici as an Egyptian in a chariot chasing Moses or an Israelite.  Even though it’s not an Egyptian style chariot (they had much larger ones, carrying two or three people) or Egyptian style equipment.

Then we cross the aisle and go to the third stele, which is shown on page 86 of Schliemann’s book.  This is Stele C.  This is interpreted by Jacobovici as Moses turning to face the Egyptians as the waters start to close in.

And finally on the far right we have Stele D, from page 52.  This is a scene of a hunt.  Jacobovici claims that this stele doesn’t exist.

In the film, Jacobovici walks up to Stele C and starts giving his interpretation of it.

You’ll notice that he is standing right by Stele D as well, and that you can see Stele D in the background.  But next he instead goes to Stele B.

Stele B and C are the only two of the four that he actually points out.  He totally ignores A and D.  What’s more, he tells us specifically that there is no image of a hunt, even though Stele D is one.  Instead, he next introduces a totally different stele that is in a totally different museum and was found someplace else, Stele E.

He even shows us some close-ups of it.

Here is another nice photo of it, from another website.

The stele has a large hole cut into the middle of it, from when it was re-used at some later date as part of some building.  Jacobovici uses computer graphics to

The earthquake activity that led to the crossing of the sea would have now led to oil and gas fires in this oil- and gas-rich area.  What Moses and his followers would have seen, just like the Bible says, is a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night, beckoning them into the desert.

No, earthquakes don’t make oil and gas deposits spontaneously ignite.  You can tell that by the marked lack of spontaneous combustion in the Middle East during all the earthquakes they have there.  You will occasionally get a fire at an actual oil well, but that’s because the oil is being pumped up to the surface and is surrounded with all sorts of machinery and electronics and other stuff that can easily catch it on fire.  You’ll notice that oil rigs were a bit scarce in the days of Moses.  There wouldn’t be anything to ignite the oil when it’s just sitting around in the ground or seeping up to the surface.

The only oil on the surface at the time of Moses came from oil seeping out of the ground on its own.  And even if somehow one of those oil seeps was to catch on fire during an earthquake, it wouldn’t go up in a big

The Bible explicitly states that it wasn’t the northern route.  Geography rules out the southern.  Leaving only the central routes, which combine to form a single road leading to the promised land.

PROF. DAVID FAIMAN, BEN GURION UNIVERSITY:

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Elim is now easily identified with a place just south of Lake El Balah called to this day the Springs of Moses.

Not really.  Elim is identified as all sorts of places all over the Sinai peninsula and elsewhere.

If a mass of people can walk no more than 15 kilometers a day, we can now draw an arc from Elim that takes us 210 kilometers into the desert.  This gives us our first coordinate.

According to the Bible, the Israelites left Egypt with 600,000 men, plus all of the women and children and livestock and baggage and whatever else.  So there were young children, elderly people, pregnant women, flocks of goats, large quantities of gold, and so on all traveling down the road.  Even armies consisting entirely of trained and healthy males have a hard time traveling 15 kilometers a day, week after week.  A much more realistic distance for the Israelites would be about half that.

So, 8 kilometers per day for 12 days of travel gives us 96 kilometers.  And remember, that’s travel by foot across the desert, not flying through the air.  Desert trails of the time (and even most of them of modern times) are not straight lines.  For one thing, they had to detour around mountains and valleys and other obstacles.  Also, they didn’t just head straight towards the end destination; they headed towards the nearest source of water.  Desert roads generally zig-zag all over the place, going from one watering hole to the next.  It’s entirely possible that you’ll walk 200 kilometers of road to get to a place that is actually only 100 kilometers from your starting point.  So not only is Jacobovici’s distance of travel suspect, but his use of that number as a straight line is rather questionable.

Exodus 3:1-2 states that God first appeared to Moses in a burning bush on Mt. Sinai.  At the time, Moses was tending his Midianite father-in-law’s flocks.  Mt. Sinai, therefore, has to be within flock-grazing distance of Midianite territory.  The problem is that the Midianites lived in Saudi Arabia, not the Sinai Peninsula. . .except for one place.  A place called Timna.  Here, archaeologists found the remnants of Midianite flocks and even Midianite wall-drawings.  If Moses was tending Midianite flocks in the Sinai, this is the only place he could have camped.

The only place he could have camped known to archaeologists.  It’s a bit much to assume that every campground of the Midianites from three or four thousand years ago has been identified.

And, based on local flock-grazing practices, Mt. Sinai should be no more than 45 kilometers from Timna.  This gives us our second coordinate.

Assuming that that is indeed the only place in all of the Sinai peninsula where Midianites camped, and doubly assuming that you can look at modern grazing practices and work out practices from 3,500 years ago, and assuming that Jacobovici didn’t just pull the number of 45 kilometers out of thin air like he apparently did with the distances people could walk and suchlike.

Everything to do with these first two “coordinates” is based on assumptions that are based on assumptions that are based on assumptions.

The final Biblical coordinate in the search for Mt. Sinai appears in Deuteronomy 1:2.  It states that the Mountain of God is an eleven-day journey from a place called Kadesh-Barnea.  Today, almost all archaeologists identify the Biblical Kadesh-Barnea with the oasis of Tel el-Qudeirat in north-central Sinai.  Using 15 kilometers a day as our measure, we can now draw our last arc into the desert, 165 kilometers from Kadesh-Barnea.  Leaving us with a very tiny area that conforms to all the Biblical coordinates.

Right, this here is the one spot in the entire Bible where it give a fairly definite bit of information relating to Mt. Sinai.  The Bible states explicitly that it is 11 days’ journey from Kadesh-Barnea, by way of Mt. Seir.

However, the location of Kadesh-Barnea and Mt. Seir are greatly in doubt among archaeologists and scholars.

Nonetheless, even in this small area there are many mountains.  But there is a clue that might help us zero in on the precise peak.  The Book of Exodus calls Mt. Sinai a holy mountain.  And holy mountains in the desert are marked by ancient open-air rock sanctuaries.

In this area, there is only one mountain surrounded by sanctuaries.  Today, that mountain is called Jebel Hashem el-Tarif.  Although this entire area is in the middle of a military zone, we got to it.  This mountain perfectly fits all the criteria for Mt. Sinai.  It is surrounded by a huge plateau that could have accommodated hundreds of thousands of Israelites.  It is easily accessible:  it literally sits on the main trans-Sinai highway which follows the topography of the ancient route.

PROF. UZI AVNER, ARAVA ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE:

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