[Ed.
note: A few years ago, I was visited by a couple who revealed to us,
with photos and their personal video, a spectacular discovery in Saudi
Arabia. Unfortunately, this was one of these situations-surprisingly
frequent in our strange enterprise-which we couldn't disclose publicly
because certain lives would have been endangered. Fortunately,
information has now come out in public sources that makes it possible to
reveal what appears to solve one of the great mysteries in the Bible:
Where is the real Mount Sinai?]
Bob Cornuke,
1 a
dear friend, visited us this past week and shared with us one of his
recent adventures, which parallels several previous surreptitious visits
to Saudi Arabia and clearly appears to corroborate some surprising
discoveries. Bob Cornuke and Larry Williams managed - by means we will
defer discussing here - to spend some time in Saudi Arabia and made it a
point to check out an astounding theory about the Exodus in the Bible.
Most
people understand that Mount Sinai is Jebel Musa, in the Sinai
Peninsula, where the Monastery of St. Catherine's is located. Look at
any competent Bible atlas, and it will probably include a "?" since that
location is traditional, but speculative. There are a number of tenuous
conjectures associated with this location and numerous books have been
written suggesting alternative candidates, among them Jebel Helal
further north in the Sinai Peninsula, or Jebel Serbal, in the south.
Another candidate is Har Karkom, known to the Bedouins as Jebel Ideid,
also in the north.
2 None of these, all in the Sinai Peninsula, have any real archaeological evidence supporting them.
However,
Moses, when first exiled from Egypt, dwelt in Midian, at the base of
Mt. Sinai. Midian was in the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia.
The New Testament has always referred to Mount Sinai as being in Arabia.3
An alternative route for the Exodus according to Cornuke and Williams is suggested in the
accompanying map.
The Crossing Point
With
scuba gear, they discovered a remarkable land bridge crossing the
Strait of Tiran and the southern extremity of the Gulf of Aqaba, between
Saudi Arabia and the Sinai Peninsula. Presently about 50 ft. underwater
and several hundred yards in width, it drops several thousand feet on
either side. The topography of the southern tip of the Sinai also fits
the details of the Exodus narrative well.
Jabal al Lawz
Passing
the bitter springs of Marah, they came to the mountain known as Jabal
al Lawz. Moses kept sheep at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 2:21; 3:1ff); Bob and
Larry found vegetation suitable for grazing. (The Israelites camped
there 11 months.)
Jabal
al Lawz rises about 8,000 feet above the desert. It consists of two
snub-nosed peaks, with a natural amphitheater between them; the stage on
which the most momentous drama in history had been played out. However,
as one approaches closer to the mountain, one encounters military
guards and a chain link fence, 15 feet high, topped with barbed wire and
a sign, in Arabic and English:
ARCHAEOLOGICAL AREA WARNING:
"IT IS UNLAWFUL TO TRESPASS."
VIOLATORS ARE SUBJECT TO PENALTIES STIPULATED IN THE ANTIQUITIES REGULATIONS
PASSED BY ROYAL DECREE NO. M 26,
U 23.6.1392
Nevertheless,
slipping past the guards at night and digging under the fence, Bob and
Larry continued their adventure. Just south of the mountain, they found
what they believe may have been the battlefield of Rephidim (Exodus
17:1, 8; 19:2; Numbers 33:14, 15), a dozen football fields in size.
They
also found a large altar made up of extremely large, stacked boulders.
On one of them they found pictographs of cattle, not sheep native to
Arabia. These pictographs resembled the Apis bulls of Egypt. Could this
have been the altar for the Golden Calf? (Cf. Exodus 32.)
As
one reaches the higher elevations of Jabal al Lawz, the ground turns
black, dark like obsidian; the rocks look almost like coal. (Yet when
they're broken, they were actually granite.) They were not volcanic;
they appeared as if scorched from above (Exodus 19:18). They even found
an unusually large crevice in which a man could hide (Exodus 33:22?).
They also found an old stream bed; "the brook that descended out of the
mount" (Deuteronomy 9:21?).
At
the base of the mount, they also found two huge rocks-perhaps 60 ft.
long-wedged together, with a flat stone in the middle; possibly the
altar of the Bible? (Exodus 20:24-26). Nearby, they also found the
remains of the 12 pillars, all in a row, each one about 18 ft. in
diameter, spaced 5 ft. apart (Exodus 24:4). Around the mountain, about
400 yards distant, they also found what appeared to be the boundary
markers, the bounds set by Moses at the base of the mountain (Exodus
19:12, 21-23).
Needless
to say, Bob and Larry are convinced that Jabal al Lawz is, indeed, the
long-sought Mount Sinai of the Bible. We understand that a number of
books will begin to assemble what is known about the site, and there has
been talk of a television documentary.
An Arabian Museum
A
national archaeological museum is presently under construction in
Riyadh. While Saudi Arabia struggles to pay off its $55 billion Gulf War
debt, the Kingdom is spending more than a billion riyals-about $266
million-on a new museum, to be completed by the year 2000. Officials
believe it will attract international attention. "It will surprise the
world." Why?
The
mountain labeled Jabal al Lawz also boasts an unparalleled strategic
vantage point for military applications as well. We also understand that
new roads have been built, leading directly to Jabal al Lawz. Two
towers, four stories high, have been erected: they are part of the
FPS-117 radar systems for Site N-4 of the Peace Shield Air Defense
System.
* * *
Excerpted
in part from the article, "Mount Sinai's Deadly Treasure," by Howard
Blum, Vanity Fair, February 1998, pp.74-90, which in turn was an excerpt
from The Gold of Exodus: The Discovery of the True Mount Sinai, by
Howard Blum, in publication by Simon and Schuster.
This article was originally published in the
- Bob Cornuke is a native Californian, a former football star at
Fresno State, and a legendary member of the SWAT team of the Costa Mesa
Police Department. A participant in numerous adventures, he is in the
ministry and is presently associated with the Family Research Council.
- Emmanuel Anati, The Mountain of God, Rizzoli, New York, 1986.
- Galatians 4:25.
Or
