Where in the Middle East was the Red Sea?

95,295 views
I've been online a bit of late researching the fairly recent (as Bible scholarship goes) theory that the Israelites, upon escaping from Israel, crossed that part of the Red Sea now known as the Gulf of Aqaba (in Israel, the Gulf of Eilat). Even Snopes has tried to debunk the theory, and the best they can come up with after five years is "Undetermined."

I'm not happy with the slipshod manner in which this theory has been investigated on the ground, but I will say one thing: It's clear that "the Red Sea" (when doubly capitalised in the KJV, it's always a translation of yam suf) does, in at least a handful of places in the Torah, refer to the shoreline of Edom on an arm of the Indian Ocean (interestingly, both 'Edom' and 'Indian' can carry the connotation of the colour red).

Thus it has to be at least a possibility, from a biblical perspective, that the Israelites walked across the Gulf of Aqaba on dry ground. Moreover, even Eusebius in his Encyclopedia located it there. However, apparently out of respect for Constantine's mother, who had located Mt Sinai in what is now (because of her) known as the Sinai Peninsula, he failed to explicitly locate Mt. Sinai in Midian (where it must have been, if the Gulf of Aqaba was crossed in the Exodus).

The problem is, it doesn't appear to be a physical possibility. The Gulf is at least 800 meters deep at the center of its portion of the Great Rift Valley. I have yet to see a sea chart of any stretch of the Gulf that would allow for passage by foot should the water level drop--unless it were to freeze over, and that goes against the statement that the Israelites crossed over "on dry ground."

The Gulf-of-Eilat theory requires that the Israelites covered about 200 miles in what appears from Exodus to be a three-day period. Usually proponents of this route are semantically able to stretch that out to about a week, but still--could an entire nation really cover 30 miles a day, even if that day were prolonged by a massive nightlight overhead?

I found documentation to show that this is basically impossible by natural means--of course if God wanted to, he could have made all the toddlers run 10 miles an hour around the clock, but were that the case, they could have made the trip in only one day!

The Spanish Road was a 16th-century supply line linking the Hapsburg Empire's domains in the Low Countries and Italy. Although sea travel around the Iberian peninsula was faster, the Road was preferred because it ran entirely through territory friendly to the Hapsburgs. Marching soldiers could average 12-15 miles a day along its 1000-km length. And it wasn't darkness that limited them to that--it was the sapping heat of summer, when the days were longest. The fastest trek on record, during the dark month of February, averaged 23 miles a day.

If an army at forced march couldn't top 23 miles a day, even 30 miles a day for an entire nation on the move is supernaturally fast. Fifty to sixty miles in three days over level land, however, is entirely within the realm of possibility. Thus we are forced to accept a Red Sea Passage over the Gulf of Suez.

Missing in Action: The NIV's Young Men in 1 Peter 5:5

Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble. --KJV (Cambridge)

Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for “God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.” --NKJV 1982, 1990

 Young men, in the same way be submissive to those who are older. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble."
-- NIV 1973-1984

In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because, "God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble and oppressed." TNIV, NNIV

   Back before the NIV had even gone to press--when we were both children--my elder sister, when wanting to get her way, used to remind me of the biblical exhortation to "obey your elders." Obviously she held to an egalitarian interpretation of this verse, one actually encouraged by the KJV as it was.

  The NIV, however, in search of accuracy, turned that notion on its head. Not quite all the way--though; they identified the gender of those submitting, but not those being submitted to! This, despite the fact that the entire preceding portion of this chapter of First Peter is talking about 'elders' who 'feed the flock' and 'take oversight,' not merely 'older people.' 

  Well, the gender police fixed that. Since 2001, the NIV brand has not only applied the command across the board to all young people, but it even calls those to whom they should submit 'elders.' But what about the rest of the verse? In the KJV family of versions, the elders have to turn back around and submit to everyone else--something the CBT was quite in favour of when translating Ephesians 5:21, but instead, here they are advocating nothing more than an all-around equanimous dose of humility. This turns out to be the result of them using a 'superior' Greek text, which lacks the second occurrence of the word for 'submit.'  But is it really? As I read the Greek, the missing word is still understood by the context--so they must have some other reason for omitting it.

What it is, I have no idea.

Secular Government brooks no religious competition--not even from Jews in Brooklyn

The government of New York City is suing to ban stores in Brookly from posting their Hasidic version of the common but unconstitutional sign, "No shirt, no shoes, no service." “These stores are public accommodations, and they are prohibited from posting any kind of advertisement specifying a preference for one type of customer or another, or expressing discrimination against one type or another,” said Clifford Mulqueen, deputy commissioner and general counsel to the human rights commission.

Public accommodation is a legal term meaning entities like stores, public or private, that are used by the public. The signs are “pretty specific to women,” Mulqueen said. “It seems pretty clear that it’s geared toward women dressing modestly if they choose to come into the store, and that would be discrimination.”

There are two problems with this idea: one, no customer has EVER complained about being denied service on the grounds of immodesty--no male, no female, no other. Secondly, just because an unemployed city official could construe something as being unacceptably discriminatory, that doesn't mean it is. No one has grounds to sue against these regulations, because no one has been harmed by them.

Government continues to grow until it becomes so oppressive that the remaining populace resort to violence to throw it off their backs. Or, they could vote the bums out, but that never seems to happen.

How the Feds bungled the investigation and prosecution of Israel Keyes, serial killer extraordinaire

You may have never heard of Israel Keyes, and if you haven't, it's because he wanted it that way. Right up until the very end, he preferred to operate in secret. And in control.

Israel Keyes, the oldest son of ten children raised in a Mormon household in Utah, knew he was different from other people. When he tortured and killed pets, the shocked looks on his playmates' faces told him not only that he didn't have the same morals most people did, but that he'd better keep that part of his personality a secret, or he would be in big trouble.

So, for the next twenty years Israel lived a double life. He wasn't even out of his teens when he transferred his attention from defenseless animals to defenseless people. By the time he joined the Army--which happened during a time of such relative peace that he never got the opportunity to use his license to kill--he'd already abducted and raped a teenage girl in Washington State, where he lived.

After finishing his army term, he began his killing career in earnest. The consummate serial killer, he traveled thousands of miles to hunt down random people, whom he tortured and killed simply for the thrill it gave him. After a kill, the urge would subside and he'd return to his construction business. When his girlfriend gave birth to a baby girl, he decided that little children, and parents of little children, were off limits; he only killed childless couples and post-pubescent girls. He covered his tracks so well, there was virtually no chance he would ever be caught--or that any of his growing number of murders would be solved.

But in 2012, his career started to unravel. Like all addictions, killing had gone from a sport to a compulsion that he could no longer control--even by killing. When he spontaneously chose his last victim, he broke all his own rules. First of all, he targeted a local--18-year old Samantha Koenig, whom he kidnapped from her job at a coffee kiosk in his own town of Anchorage, Alaska. Secondly, he used the girl's cell phone to text a ransom demand to her parents--although by that time he had already raped and killed her. And finally, he had the ransom money deposited into Samantha's own bank account, using her ATM card to withdraw cash in a spree that took him all the way to the double wedding of his sisters in Wells, Texas, where he nearly broke up the wedding with a defiant proclamation of his atheism. As his family members tearfully urged him to repent, assuring him that God could forgive him no matter what he'd done, state and federal police officers were already closing in on his trail. He left the wedding in disgust, a cigarette between his lips and Samantha Koenig's ATM card in his rental car.

The end came soon after his last rejected chance to repent. A Lufkin police officer identified the rental car from an all-points bulletin based on a surveillance photo of him pulling away from an ATM where he had used Samantha's card. The cop pulled him over for speeding, called for backup, and arrested Israel on what turned out to be federal charges of using someone else's ATM to withdraw over $1000 in one month. The District of Alaska took jurisdiction of the case, since that's where Samantha's bank account was based.

This is where the prosecution really began to bungle the case. Focused on the intricacies of the law that protect accused criminals, the crime investigators couldn't ask him about Samantha's murder. But when he started to open up about "other chapters in this story," they realized they had a serial killer on their hands.

For the next nine months investigators continued to ask him about his previous murders, but he was cagey. Sometimes he'd bargain with them: a cigar for a name and a place. Returning his girlfriend's confiscated property for a description of where he'd disposed of a body. Again and again his demands came back to: a swift and speedy trial, sentencing, and execution. Until he got some idea of how soon the end was, he wouldn't give them all the information they demanded.

The prosecution, looking forward to a big trial--one that would no doubt be dominating the headlines right now had it gone as scheduled--wouldn't cooperate. They kept reminding Israel that he was in jail now, and they held all the cards. The best he could hope for was a life sentence, if he cooperated.

Fools. Israel didn't want a life sentence, and told them so openly. Liars that they were, they could have told him anything he wanted to hear; and in return, he would have given them the information they so desperately needed to close down a dozen cold murder cases. But when they told him he couldn't expect a trial to even start until a year after his arrest, he pulled out the trump card and ended not only the valuable stream of data they'd been teasing out of him, but the whole prosecution: despite being on suicide watch, he killed himself in his cell on Dec 2, 2012. There would be no trial, no sentencing, no execution. The Koenig case was closed without resolution--other than that divers had found her dismembered body in an Alaskan lake, just where he said he'd left it.

Prosecutors who really want to solve a case have to realize that the only person who can say how many victims a serial killer has murdered is the killer himself, and they NEVER hold all the cards until the dealing's done.

The non-combatant American

An earlier post reflected on the European desire to kill or be killed for the motherland. Rose Wilder Lane very elegantly explained that this ideal never became part of the American psyche:

War has always been the primary function of Old World Government. Men living in the Old World use a large part of their energy in killing men and in destroying food, shelter, and all other necessities of human life. Americans in general do not understand this. Neither do most continental Europeans understand the American attitude toward war.

When I was living in Albania I had a friend who was one of the finest persons I ever knew. He was an Italian of English ancestry. His mother and his maternal ancestors for many generations had been English. He was fourteen and his brother was nine, when their parents were drowned at sea. The boys had no other near relatives and from that time they were inseparable. They stayed together in schools and universities; they got from the King himself a special permission to do their military service together. They went together to Argentine, and in 1915 returned to join their regiment. They were both wounded at Caporetto, and abandoned on the field. My friend reached his brother but was too weak to do anything for him. The brother died during the third night. My friend's wounds still required him to return to hospitals at intervals.

For weeks I tried to explain to him the American attitude toward war. He could not understand it. I was confused, myself, for like most Americans I had taken it for granted that no one wants war. My friend had the best European schooling, Italian, German, and English. He was widely and accurately informed; he was intelligent, open-minded, and eager to understand my puzzling country. The clue, he said, was in our attitude toward war. It baffled him.

"War has always been the primary function of Old World Government." He laughed at the superficial European belief that Americans are mere dollar-chasers. He knew several Americans intimately. He did not find them mercenary, nor cowardly, nor weak, nor — exactly — unpatriotic. American patriotism is peculiar, he said. Americans never say "my fatherland," "my motherland." What a peculiar attitude toward your country, to call it Uncle Sam. And notice, he said, the tone in which you say "Uncle Sam," or, "The States." It is affectionate; it has a sound of — what should he say? equality? tolerance? — as if a confident young man were speaking of a good old uncle. That is not the way in which a man speaks of his country, the fatherland, the motherland, the parent whose child he is. And then, the curious American talk about war. He did not believe that it was entirely hypocritical. But would I explain the facts?

The United States are made by unprovoked military aggression. They attack the Indians and take half a continent; they attack Mexico and take Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California; they attack Spain, and take Cuba; they attack the Filipinos and take the islands. Then why don't they hold and subdue Mexico, when American troops have taken Mexico City? Why don't they attack Canada while the mother country is embroiled in Europe? Why do the United States reverse all history, and fight for an older empire instead of helping to dismember it? Now (in 1928) the United States are the strongest world power; why do they no have compulsory military training? They have used military power to dictate to all Europe; then why has the army no influence in our foreign policy? Why do the sons of our upper classes go into business or professions, why not into the army and navy? Why do Americans not honor their great Generals above such men as Edison and Hoover? Why, when General Pershing is an American, do Americans make a small-town editor the President of the United States?

One morning his servant brought a note, asking if he might see me at once, for only a moment. He came in, excited, apologizing for calling at that hour, "but I could not wait to tell you! It came to me in a flash, suddenly, just now. It is materialism! As you have said, Signora: Americans hate war because it kills men and destroys property. Suddenly, it comes to me. What are lives and property? Material things. All men die, time destroys all property. Lives and property have no value. The immortal value is the soul of a nation, and war regenerates the nation's soul. Americans cannot see spiritual values. That is it, Signora; yes, yes, that is the truth. Deep down, at base, au fond, your countrymen are pure materialists. You see only the material world; you cannot see what war is, because it is spiritual."

He had seen his brother die at Caporetto, and he died in Ethiopia, a fine, brave, honorable man, who believed with his whole mind that an individual is a cell in the body of The State, that Authority controls all human beings, and that his own life had no value whatever but service to Immortal Italy.

That is the cause of war.

Men who have that pagan belief will always make war. They must make war, because of the nature of human energy. Not knowing that individuals control themselves, they do not recognize and accept that responsibility; they try to make their own energy work on a false basis. It will not work on a false basis, and one of the results of trying to make it do so, is war.

--Rose Wilder Lane, from The Discovery of Freedom