You have all heard the joke.
One man comes across another man at night under a street lamp. The man is obviously searching for something, so the newcomer asks if he can help.
“Yes, please! I have lost my wallet.”
“Where do you think you lost it?”
“Over there in the bushes.”
“Then why are you looking here?”
“Because the light is better here.”
In some ways the search for archaeological evidence of the Exodus and the Red Sea crossing seems to have met the same sort of logic since before the Dark Ages.
Ever since Emperor Constantine’s mother Helena designated many of the holy sites in Israel and “located” Mount Sinai at the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula. Christians and even Muslims have believed this to be the actual location of the mountain of the Ten Commandments.
The first clue I personally encountered that there might be a problem came from an article by noted New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N.T. Wright. He notes that in Galatians 4:25 the Apostle Paul locates Mount Sinai in “Arabia.” Unfortunately, even with that clue Dr. Wright still believes that the traditional location of Mt. Sinai is correct. (You can find out more Paul and Mount Sinai in this post.)
A better question to ask is whether the Sinai Peninsula was ever a part of Arabia in Paul’s day. An even better question to ask is whether the Bible provides other clues as to the whereabouts of the fabled mountain.
The answer to the first question is that there is no documented evidence of that part of Egypt ever belonging to Arabia.
The second question has interesting answers from the story of Moses himself. Exodus 2:15 tells us that Moses fled to the land of Midian to escape from Pharaoh’s wrath. We then pick up the story in Exodus 4:1-4 where Moses is herding sheep for his father-in-law, the Priest of Midian. It is not hard to imagine that this is within the region of Midian, since Moses has settled there and his father-in-law is the head priest of that region. We therefore learn that Mount Horeb (also known as Sinai) is within Midian. God also tells Moses that he will bring the people of Israel to that very mountain to worship him.
A lot of Bibles have a map of the time of the Exodus, and each one I have seen places Midian along the east coast of what is now the Gulf of Aqaba, south of Israel in what is now Saudi Arabia. If you don’t have such a map, you can find one here.
Since Moses does indeed lead them to the same mountain without crossing through Canaan or Edom, we have to wonder how they got there.
Or do we?
A Red Sea crossing through what is now the Gulf of Aqaba now becomes the most logical solution to the problem of getting there without crossing through either territory.
Now I wish I could honestly say that I figured all of this out on my own. Even with Dr. Wright’s clue in Galatians I still was not alert enough to catch on until I saw a video entitled Finding the Mountain of Moses.
After stumbling across that video I began to try to find the evidence and became convinced that scholars have been looking in the wrong place for evidence of the most important event in pre-Jesus history. Besides the video you can find other information at this site.
If you are looking in the wrong place, even if you think the light is better, you won’t find what you are looking for.
John Valade 
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