Someone recently asked why I do not support the idea that the Israelite crossing of yam suf (i.e. the body of water in front of which they seemed to be stuck after the exodus) took place at the Gulf of Aqaba. He then suggested to me that the proper translation of yam suf, which I have translated as "the Sea of Reeds" in my new book, is the Gulf of Aqaba. As a longtime teacher of all levels of biblical Hebrew, I assured him that the correct translation of yam suf is "sea of reeds" (Exod 13:18), no matter what body of water to which someone chooses to connect it. In fact, the possibility certainly does exist that it is a generic term for a body of water that is known for its reeds.

     With that being true, it may be pushing it to say that the use of the biblical term must be associated with only one body of water. Having said that, I want to address the notion of connecting yam suf to the Gulf of Aqaba and connecting biblical Mt. Sinai with someplace in Saudi Arabia, mainly because these errant views are gaining more traction among the untrained and easily influenced. Sadly, the view primarily is promoted by sensationalists and non-specialists who have little to no formal training in biblical studies or in ANE historical studies (including Egyptology and historical geography, the primary fields of importance). I do not know of one credentialed Christian scholar (in the proper fields) who holds to this view.

     This dearth of support from those with formal academic training should say a lot to us. If you were diagnosed with an aggressive malignant cancer, would you choose a botanist or an engineer to treat your life-threatening condition? These sensationalists are like the Pied Piper looking for rats to mesmerize. I eventually may publish on this topic, due to so many people who have contacted me after falling under the spell of the Piper, but I cannot present a complete case here. I can make several useful notes now, though.

     (1) The idea of locating Mt. Sinai in Saudi simply does not by any stretch of the imagination (or historical geography) fit the requirements in Moses’s description of the sea-crossing events or where Mt. Sinai would have been located. One of the main hindrances is the issue of distances described in Moses’s account. The traditional southern-Sinai view also is bankrupt. The only location that fits all of the biblical requirements is along the Trans-Sinai Highway, the road that people routinely used in antiquity to travel from Egypt to Midian. Moreover, to date, Dr. Bryant Wood’s attribution of Gebel Khashm et-Tarif is the only proposed site that fits all of the biblical requirements of Mt. Sinai.

     (2) Even if one decides that “the sea of reeds” should be restricted to one body of water, the Gulf of Aqaba is part of the same body of water as the Gulf of Suez, both of which are part of the Red Sea. Even modern descriptions of the Gulf of Aqaba call it an extension of the Red Sea, so when Solomon refers to Eilat as being on the shore of the sea of reeds (1 Kgs 9:26), it is that same body of water that extends all the way around the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. The ancients were not topographically challenged. In greater antiquity, the western side of that extension was connected to the Mediterranean Sea, slowly receding over time (cf. the receding of the Persian Gulf in antiquity). So, make no mistake about it: the ancients knew that the remnants of that earlier waterway extending to the Mediterranean originally were part of the Red Sea (above the Gulf of Suez), remnants such as the Bellah Lakes and the Great Bitter Lake.

     (3) Possibly the world’s #1 historical geographer related to biblical history is Dr. Barry Beitzel, and although he unfortunately is a late-exodus proponent (believing that the exodus occurred in the 13th century BC, instead of in 1446 BC, the correct time), he sufficiently refuted the Aqaba = biblical yam suf in his book, Where Was the Biblical Red Sea? Examining the Ancient Evidence (Lexham: 2020). Here is what he wrote in his conclusion (p. 123): “According to [Glen] Fritz’s hypothesis [#]one, all citations of Hebrew yam suf must solely and exclusively designate the modern Gulf of Aqaba/Elat. It has been my effort here to provide both exegetical and documentary evidence showing this hypothesis to be idiosyncratic and highly doubtful. The hypothesis also flounders in that it largely lacks a substantive, objective evidentiary foundation, and for the most part it stands in polar opposition to both historic and contemporary scholarship across a very wide biblical and theological spectrum within the discipline.”

     So, Beitzel’s extensive evidence and argumentation, as presented throughout the book, effectively refutes the view that the Gulf of Aqaba is the place where the Israelites crossed the waters to escape the Egyptian army. There is a ton more to say about this, including how bizarre it would be to suggest that the Egyptians waited so long before pursuing the Israelites, traveling all of the way across Sinai to the Gulf of Aqaba before reaching the released slaves. I honestly hope that anyone holding to this Gulf of Aqaba = yam suf (and Mt. Sinai is in Saudi Arabia) view holds to it extremely loosely, subjecting it to intense scrutiny in order to expose its flaws.

     On a related note, several years ago I was approached at an annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society by a woman who leads lucrative tours to Saudi Arabia to show enthusiastic Christians all of the alleged evidence that Moses’s followers were there. She knew of my first book, The World’s Oldest Alphabet, and its claim that Hebrew is the world’s oldest alphabetic script and dates back to the 19th century BC. So, she opened up a huge notebook to show me hundreds of pictures of ancient inscriptions from Saudi that she was convinced had to be Hebrew. Basically, she was ready to write me a blank cheque if I would participate in those tours, show people the sites with her, and claim that those inscriptions are Hebrew. I literally viewed every single photo (of the inscriptions) in her notebook, and I determined confidently that none of them is Hebrew. Needless to say, I turned down the offer to join her tours and provide legitimacy to this chaos. The Gulf of Aqaba is not the body of water that the Israelites crossed as the Sea of Reeds after the exodus, and the location of Mt. Sinai is not in Saudi Arabia. Stay tuned for a future post on this topic.