These films by Tim Mahoney provide thought-provoking evidence for the Exodus
Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
In the Crossing of the Red Sea, the Place Crossed is Key
If you watched any of the Mahoney films on the Exodus or the Red Sea crossing, I doubt you went away without learning something. You may not be convinced, but you should have been impressed that so many people have thought long and hard about this.
What surprised me was that the most logical place where the Jews crossed “a body of water” was so far from Egypt (~75 miles). In “The 10 Commandments,” it seemed like the Jews barely got out of town before Pharoah changed his mind and came chasing after them. But, because I believe that God does miracles, I agree with Tim – the one place that would require a gigantic miracle from God would be Nuweiba Beach on the Gulf of Aqaba (Point #3 in the Photo below). But wait! The Gulf of Aqaba is not the Red Sea, and doesn’t the Bible say that God parted the Red Sea? Yes, but if you watch the film, you’ll learn that the Egyptian name of the sea they crossed was “Yam Suph,” yet scholars have many ideas about where that place was and what it meant. Only one possible crossing was in Egypt, yet the Bible says the Jews left Egypt before the crossing. The other three were along the coast of the Gulf of Aqaba. The film explores all four possible crossings (Shown below) but only one (Nuweiba Beach) fulfills the following criteria:
- Access to the beach is through a single, narrow canyon. Once you are on the beach, you are trapped. The only way to escape is across the sea (See below. My apologies for the poor quality of the photos; it’s the best I could do taking pictures of my TV screen).
- It is 9.7 miles to cross the sea at this point, and in its deepest part, the sea is 2,800 meters (1.7 miles) deep! If God parted these waters, it was truly nothing short of a miracle!!! Many scholars try to explain God’s “miracles” through some type of natural phenomenon (e.g., earthquake, strong wind, etc.). But, if this was the point where the Jews crossed, nothing short of a miracle would suffice.
- Do you remember those images of things that looked like chariots at the bottom of a sea in my last blog? Guess where they were found? Yes, at the bottom of the Sea of Aqaba, just off Nuweiba Beach!
- And, as illustrated below, Nuweiba Beach offers a perfect place for God to hold off Pharoah while he demonstrates His power by dividing the sea so the Jews could cross.
- One last thought. The location of the crossing is important because it leads us to answering the question, “Where is Mt. Sinai?” The most popular location throughout history was that it was on the Sinai Peninsula. However, some scholars believe the true location is in Midian – located directly across from Nuweiba Beach.
I find all this research fascinating! It encourages my belief that God is truly the God of miracles! The Bible is very clear. God wanted to make a statement to Egypt and the rest of the world that He was God and the Jews were His people! He brought ten plagues upon Egypt – each one of which was its own miracle. And then, to cap it all off, He performed one last grand gesture by carving a path across a 1.7-mile-deep sea valley to allow His people to cross safely to the other side.
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