Uh we have today all kinds of new theories about where the Exodus sea crossing took place. But what we want to ask is is there a traditional location? In other words, is there a location where ancient Jews and later early Christians visited believing that this is where this famous miracle from the Old Testament happened? We are here in the middle of the Gulf of Suez. I mean, what could go wrong? Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. I’ll leave a link in the description where you can order a copy of my book where God came down the archaeological evidence. Thanks for making it number one in archaeology. I’ll also leave a link where you can make a taxdeductible donation. These are greatly appreciated and used for the production of future videos. The most frequently mentioned event in the Hebrew Bible in the Old Testament is the Exodus sea crossing. And so we would expect that the ones who would preserve the knowledge for where this event took place would be the descendants of the ones who experienced it. Psalm 78 tells us the purpose of tradition and how it works. The Lord commanded our ancestors to teach their children so the next generation would know them. even the children yet to be born. And they in turn would tell their children. Then they would put their trust in God and would not forget his deeds, but would keep his commands. He did miracles in the sight of their ancestors in the land of Egypt. He divided the sea and led them through. He made the water stand up like a wall. We get a glimpse into where ancient Jews believed the Exodus sea crossing took place through the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus who wrote in the 1st century AD. In his book, The Antiquities of the Jews, book 2, chapter 15, Josephus wrote about how the Hebrews left Egypt. Josephus says, “So the Hebrews took their journey by Lopoulos, a place at the time deserted, but where Babylon was built afterwards. So the Babylon in Egypt that Josephus is referring to is a known place and the ruins of this place are in Cairo today. And so my team and I, we flew from Aman, Jordan, where I live, to Cairo, Egypt. So the ruins of this tower behind me from the Roman period marks the city of Babylon that Josephus is talking about uh in his Exodus account. So the city of Babylon is marked today by this tower and it serves as an anchor point for the location that Josephus gives us. And from here the Israelites go down to the Red Sea. Josephus wrote that after the Hebrews took their journey by Babylon on the third day they came to a place called Baal Zafon on the Red Sea. Traveling toward the Red Sea from Babylon, the Israelites would have arrived at Bahalafon at the northern end of the Red Sea’s largest gulf known as the Gulf of Suez. According to Exodus chapter 14, the Israelite camp in front of Bahalafon was by a place called Pi Ha, which is the camp where Pharaoh’s army overtook them, the last campsite before they crossed the Red Sea. While consulting this map created by Christian vanrikum in 1590 AD, I found that both Babylon and Pihairo are shown where we would expect them to be and that the crossing is shown to have taken place from between two large mountain ranges. Modern maps revealed mountains that seem to match the general size and location as well as two points of land which created the narrowest point on the entire Gulf of Suez at only about 6 milesi wide. So I started looking this area over on Google Maps and I was surprised to find that the traditional place is on Google Maps. It says Moses crossing Point and it showed it being in a park. So, it looked like it was going to be easy access and so why not start at this place and so we rented a car in Cairo and drove down to the shore of the Red Sea. Our team on this trip, we’ve got Omar with us from Iraq, of course, doing the driving on this team. This is my new son-in-law, Jason, and my wonderful daughter, Petra. So, we have come from Cairo and we are staying in a resort on the Red Sea. And now we are heading north and we’re going to visit the traditional place where the Israelites cross the Red Sea. For context, this is the Gulf of Suez. To the north is the city of Suez and next to it is the Suez Canal. This is a six-mile stretch across the sea. And in this point is the site marking where the Israelites entered the sea. In the next shot, we are driving toward it along this road. This is it. It’s It’s straight down this road. That’s blocked off. This looks military, doesn’t it? That doesn’t look good. Look at that fence over there. As shown before, this is the crossing site we were attempting to visit, but surrounding it is an Egyptian military base. When we reached the gate, Egyptian army soldiers approached our car. And even though Omar asked them about the site we found on Google Maps, they turned us away. So Omar, you just talked to the um soldiers at the military base there. What what did they tell you? >> Yeah. So I told him, I want to see the place where Moses uh crossed. And then on the GPS show, he crossed from here. And then he goes, “Yes, we know that place.” And then yes, he crossed from that place, but sorry, you can’t see it. It’s uh it’s a military base right now. So the soldier was aware that that was the traditional crossing place. >> Yeah, he’s he confirmed that. >> So we just went to the traditional place. Used to be a public beach, but the military has come in and closed all this down. And now it’s literally a military base. We talked to the soldiers. Is there anywhere that we can get down to the beach here? and they said no. So, they turned us away. This isn’t unusual. This kind of thing happens quite a bit in um in our experience with Expedition Bible. And so, we got a problem and now we’re going to look for a solution. So, the next thing that we tried to do was rent a boat to take us over there. But this also was a fail. Um the people, the local people, whether they were store clerks or soldiers or boat owners, they they knew about this place, but they said that we couldn’t go there because of the military sensitivity. However, we had one more trick up our sleeve. We had brought our own boat. We’d brought an inflatable sea kayak in one of our bags. And so we pulled that out, pumped it up, and now we could paddle ourselves out into the Gulf of Suez, into this high intensity military area. I mean, what could go wrong? After launching in our kayak, the first to greet us was a pot of bottle-nosed dolphins. Exodus 14 says that where Israel had encamped by the sea, the wilderness had shut them in. How did the wilderness shut the Israelites in? This implies mountains because what else in the wilderness would shut them in? Josephus described the place Israel camped on the Red Sea as a narrow place between inaccessible precipaces and the sea. For there was on each side a ridge of mountains that terminated at the sea, which were impassible by reason of their roughness and obstructed their flight. The footnote underneath Josephus’s description of the geography gives the account of a traveler who had found these mountainous tracks which ran down towards the Red Sea while traveling near the city Suez. So as we paddled out and observed the geography near the city of Suez for ourselves, there was no question that we were exploring the right place. So right now in the Gulf of Suez, I’m looking back towards the land and I can see this valley with a mountain range on the south side and a mountain range on the north side descending into the Red Sea. This is exactly what Josephus is describing. And that’s exactly what we see down here when we look at the geography of this area. Again, the Israelites were trapped between these two rugged mountain ranges on either side of them, the Red Sea behind them, and the Egyptian army in front of them. They were in an absolutely hopeless situation. Uh their destruction was eminent. And so, their only hope, their only way out would be a miracle if God was willing to do a miracle to save them. And this is exactly what they got. Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. And all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on their right and on their left. As shown before, from the point where the Israelites entered the sea, it is only about six miles across to the eastern shore. We intended to cross this route in our kayak, but because of the shipping traffic and military zone, our only option was to simulate the six-mile crossing just to the south of the traditional site. But even this proved problematic. We had paddled over halfway across the Gulf of Suez when we saw an Egyptian Navy ship going parallel to the shore and we stopped paddling. We didn’t want to wave to them. We were hoping that they wouldn’t see us, but it wasn’t long before that ship turned and started coming straight at us. Here we are in our tiny red kayak. And this ship is the Egyptian Navy in front of us. Okay. Well, we had ourselves a scare there because we saw a military boat and we stopped paddling because we were hoping that they wouldn’t see us. Of course, that didn’t work and they did see us and they started coming straight at us and we were like, “Oh man, we are in serious trouble.” Anyways, they came right up to us. First question they asked us is, “What nationality are you?” And we were like, “Uh, well, we’re Americans.” And the next question was, “What on earth are you doing out here so far in the middle of the Gulf of Suez?” I thought we were in serious serious trouble, but they were very nice about it and uh they just wanted to make sure that we were safe and everything like that and that we weren’t going any further out. So, we had to turn around and paddle back towards the shore. I am very relieved that that didn’t end up being more serious than it was. As I was paddling across this six milei stretch, I was just thinking, “Wow, this is so much water. It just seems so impossible to me.” But of course, that’s the point. The point is that it is impossible. There is no other explanation for how this event took place other than it was a mighty miracle of God. After we finished our kayak trip, we drove north into the city of Suez, which holds its own significance in its ties to ancient Christian pilgrim routes. So we are at the very northern end of the Gulf of Suez in the city of Suez which is built over the ruins of an earlier city called Klesma. Kisma is the place that the early Christians came on their pilgrimage to look out over the Gulf of Suez where the Israelites crossed in the Exodus from the western side over to the eastern side. One of the early pilgrims that we get a detailed account of her visit to Kisma and the surrounding area is a woman named Ageria. In around AD 382, Ajgeria wrote, “And when we had arrived at Kisma, we were obliged to stay there also for rest.” Ajeria comes here in the 370s AD and uh she comes here to Kisma, looks out over the Gulf and then she goes over on the western side to the particular sites that are mentioned in the Exodus account in the Bible. Aia continues from Kisma that is from the Red Sea. There are four desert stations. Epilemium Pihairo was shown to us when we were at Mgdal where there is now a fort with an officer set over soldiers. These escorted us to another fort and balls of phone was shown to us when we were at that place. It is a plane above the Red Sea along the side of the mountain where the children of Israel cried out when they saw the Egyptians coming after them. Although the exact location of Bahalapon is unknown today, Ajeria’s description of Bahalafhone being a plane above the sea along mountains matches the geography of this valley we observed earlier. The general location is agreed upon by both Josephus and Ageria. It is both east of Babylon like Josephus reports and south of Kisma like Ajeria reports. So after exploring the western shore of the Gulf of Suez, we wanted to go and explore the eastern shore. And so we went through security and then we drove through a very long tunnel which took us underneath the Suez Canal onto the east side of the Gulf. So we’ve now come around and we are on the east side of the Gulf of Suez. And behind me is the traditional place where the Israelites came out of the Red Sea in their Exodus crossing. So many Christian pilgrims visited the traditional site on the eastern side of the Gulf of Suez because this is the place that the Israelites came out of the sea. One such pilgrim named Felix Fabri visited the eastern side in around AD 1483 and wrote, “We came to the seawater, for it was here that the children of Israel walked on dry ground from one shore of the sea to the other. The sea by a miracle standing on a heap on either side. Indeed, the sea is not wide at this place, but it is perhaps one German mile to Pihario on the other side. It was at Pih Hario on the other shore over against us that Moses struck the sea with his rod and it gave way. Felix Fabry is over on this side and he’s looking at this traditional place of the crossing and he’s estimating it to be about one German mile which is just under 5 miles. And that matches really well because this narrowest place across here where the traditional crossing place is is about 6 milesi across. So this is where the Israelites were when they were watching the Egyptian army be drowned in the Red Sea. Exodus 14 says, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived. So what looked like a trap for Israel, God suddenly changes into a trap for the destruction of the Egyptian army. And Israel didn’t have to fight for their deliverance. They simply stood there and watched the Egyptian army drown in front of them. They were saved. They were delivered. And what did they do in response? They sang a song of celebration. Exodus 15 says, “Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the Lord. I will sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted, both horse and driver he has hurled into the sea. The Lord has become my salvation. He is my God and I will praise him.” You can hear the new identity of Israel in the song of celebration because listen to the personal pronouns that they use in regards to the Lord. They refer to him as my God and what had just happened as my salvation. And then it also says in verse 14 that the nations would hear of this and tremble. And so this was a famous famous event that wasn’t only remembered by Israel but also by the other nations uh which has to do with why it is a remembered miracle to this day. So when we are looking at the Bible and uh what it actually says about this Exodus crossing place then there’s something very important that we have to take into consideration and that is to answer this important question who is it that is leading Israel. Exodus 13 says God did not lead them on the road through the Philistine country though that was shorter. If they went that way, they would face war. So God led the people toward the Red Sea. They’re not being led according to human reason, but by God himself. Um the question therefore isn’t where would people go, where would people have gone to camp. The question is where would God take them and why? And uh this is very significant because God does not take the Israelites the easiest way. He doesn’t take them the shortest way. He takes them to a place where they’re trapped in between mountains and the sea and the Egyptian army. Now, why is God doing this? Because he’s going to teach them that their only hope, that their only salvation is God himself. Josephus understands this when from the perspective of the Israelites he wrote, “We are now encompassed within this narrow place that he may deliver us to demonstrate his own power and his own providence over us.” This is biblical salvation. The Bible says that all people are slaves to sin. And the only way that we can be freed from sin is if God himself delivers us. And this is exactly what he does by dying on the cross, forgiving us of our sins, being raised from the dead, and bringing us into relationship with him. And that’s why when we have salvation through Jesus, not of ourselves, then our identity is solely in Christ alone. Don’t forget to hit that subscribe button. I will leave links in the description where you can order a copy of my book, Where God Came Down: The Archaeological Evidence. Thanks for making it number one in archaeology. I’m going to be leading tours uh through the lands of the Bible. So, go check that out in a link in the description. I’ll also leave a link where you can make a taxdeductible donation. And it’s your generous donations that allow us to make future videos. You can go to our YouTube channel and watch other videos like this one. You can watch another video right here. And thanks for watching. I’ll see you next time.