8
Into the Wilderness
Whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death.
EXODUS 19:12.
The image of Moses has been seared into the popular imagination as a bearded hero in flowing robes who took on an evil pharaoh and liberated his people from Egyptian slavery. The story goes that, initially, in a futile attempt to gain their freedom, Moses and Aaron try to capture the pharaoh’s favor with bedazzling displays of magic. Their efforts leave him unimpressed. Like the convenient appearance of angels and the commanding voice of God the royal command performance is witnessed only by the few who stand to benefit from this brazen bit of ultimate name dropping. Such a lack of authoritative evidence concerned the Israelites who were puzzled that their esteemed elders weren’t present for the display as would have been the custom.
A Jewish folktale tried to address this nagging problem:
Moses and Aaron now invited all the elders of Israel to accompany them to Pharaoh. The elders started out with the leaders, but stealthily, on their way, they dropped off, one by one, and two by two, so that when at last the sons of Aaron reached the palace, they were alone. And the Lord said: “Since ye have acted thus and abandoned my messengers, ye will be punished.” When the hour, therefore, came for Moses to receive the Law on Mount Sinai, the elders of Israel were not permitted to accompany him, and to ascend the holy mountain, for they were told to tarry at the foot of the mountain and to wait until Moses returned.1
Moses and Aaron were the only members of the tribe present at court because the elders had lost their nerve when the moment came to face a pharaoh who held absolute power over their lives. The folktale satisfied the people’s curiosity about their conspicuous absence. But the people had another problem with the story. They knew that commoners would never have dared enter the palace. The pharaoh was notoriously ruthless so how, they wondered, did Moses and Aaron penetrate the substantial security that surrounded Egypt’s leader? Another folktale explains: “But Moses and Aaron penetrated into the palace, led by the angel Gabriel, who brought them in, unobserved by the guards.”2
Since these two “heroes” were the only witnesses to their own amazing deeds (such as Aaron’s rod not only transforming into a serpent but swallowing the serpents of the Egyptian magicians) we must keep our skeptic’s hat on. Absent our faith in the truthfulness of Moses and Aaron, we suggest something less sensational but no less significant took place when Moses returned to Egypt. His sacred mission to retrieve the bones of his father was something the Egyptians could appreciate. And, as we’ve established, Moses was a respected Egyptian priest trained in the holy city of Heliopolis. The holder of such an esteemed position would have been guaranteed an audience with the pharaoh.
The Israelites learned about the amazing miracles performed for the pharaoh as stories told by Moses and Aaron. When simple magic fails to bend the pharaoh’s will and they can’t convince him to release the Israelites they are forced to turn to a more powerful display of sorcery.
The trump card that finally influences the pharaoh is Moses’s claim that God had personally warned Moses that a series of devastating plagues would break over the Egyptians. The prospect of these ten plagues were so terrifying, especially the death of firstborn sons, that the reluctant but fearful pharaoh finally agrees to grant the Israelites their freedom. But at the last moment, perhaps suspecting that he’s been tricked, he changes his mind and orders his army to pursue the fleeing tribe. Facing the insurmountable obstacle of the sea, Moses wields his magic staff to part the waters, allowing the Israelites to cross to dry land. After they have safely reached the other side he not only brings the raging water back together but drowns the pharaoh and his army in the process.
These wonderful and colorful events have formed the backbone of the Hollywood version of the prophet’s story. What are we to make of them? Are they true? Are they exaggerations of real events? Or are they the stuff of fantastical fiction?
PLAGUES
Sigmund Freud believed that Moses acquired monotheism from the priests of Heliopolis who practiced it in secret. Such secrecy was essential because Egyptians had come to hate the idea of worshipping a single god. The rule of Pharaoh Akhenaten was a time they’d rather forget. Indeed, it is archaeology, not Egyptian history that tells the real story of that age and its beliefs. Egyptian historians wiped clean the whole blasphemous subject of Akhenaten’s time. But there were, according to Sigmund Freud and others, a group of priests who remained secretly loyal to the monotheistic teachings of Akhenaten.
Egyptian monotheism began as a counter-religion during a time when the country was suffering from a series of natural disasters. The German biblical scholar Jan Assmann defined a counter-religion as one that “rejects and repudiates everything that went before and what is outside itself as ‘paganism.’”3 But what made it possible for such a radical religion to take hold in Egypt? Was it just because Akhenaten was pharaoh and held the power to enforce his beliefs? Certainly, this was true. But there was another reason why he was able to carry through his reforms: the series of devastating natural disasters had shaken the people’s faith in their traditional gods.
Ian Wilson’s The Exodus Enigma links the story of the exodus and its series of “plagues” with the eruption of a volcano on the Greek island of Thera.4 It exploded with the force of six thousand nuclear weapons sending a cloud of smoke and ash high into the atmosphere and causing darkness to fall during daylight as far away as Egypt. The volcanic ash asphyxiated animals, destroyed crops, and left a fine dust spread over the land. The red iron oxide within the ash settled in lakes and the Nile River, turning its water the color of blood. As Wilson notes, volcanic eruptions are frequently accompanied by swarming flies, which in turn are swallowed by an ever-increasing population of frogs. All these natural consequences, Wilson argues, are reflected in the story of the plagues that God is said to have brought down upon Egypt to persuade the Egyptian pharaoh to free the Israelites.
Even in the twenty-first century, in April 2010, twenty countries initiated an ATC Zero (Air Traffic Control Zero—all airspace closed), the first since 9/11, after a volcano in Iceland exploded ash over western Europe, affecting the lives of millions. The impact of the eruption of even this minor volcano sometimes left sophisticated media at a loss to process it. We can hardly imagine the devastating effect an eruption would have had on the primitive people brought to their knees by it thousands of years ago. What other cause could they assume was behind this blow besides a magical, malevolent force or the hand of a supernatural power?
As we will see, much later the physical events caused by the volcanic eruption would be attributed to the God of the Israelites: “And the LORD said unto Moses, Stretch out thine hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, even darkness which may be felt. And Moses stretched forth his hand toward heaven; and there was a thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days.”5 Other plagues related to the volcanic eruption but attributed to God included the death of “all the cattle of Egypt”6 and “the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt”7 leaving “small dust in all the land of Egypt,”8 “and all the waters that were in the river were turned to blood.”9 God also sent “swarms of flies”10 and “frogs came up, and covered the land of Egypt.”11
In Act of God, author Graham Phillips expanded upon Wilson’s work. Reviewing changes in radiocarbon dating, Phillips recalibrated the timeline of the volcanic explosion, dating it to just before the rise of Akhenaten who came to power around 1364 BCE. Phillips believes that the resulting catastrophe was so traumatic for Egyptians that they felt abandoned by their gods.12 Akhenaten manipulated that fear to initiate his revolutionary idea of monotheism.
The priests of Heliopolis played a pivotal role in this religious revolution. According to Egyptian mythology, Phillips explains, the world had once before experienced a near world-ending catastrophe when the goddess Sekhmet had tried “to annihilate the human race. She was the negative aspect of the sun’s power, and it was the sun that was being obscured.”13 In the story, the sun god “Re” saves humanity. The priests of Heliopolis, Phillips notes, were “quick to draw attention to this fact.”14 In their theology, Re had been promoted to the role of supreme god. This was henotheism, the “belief in one god without asserting that he is the only God.”15 Having been educated within this Re cult, the new pharaoh, Akhenaten, took the notion one step further and declared that Re was the only God! And further, Akhenaten, was his prophet! This was monotheism, the “doctrine that there is only one God.”16
The idea that Thera’s volcanic explosion had a devastating effect on the Egyptian environment is compelling. But the idea that the exodus occurred following the demise of the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten, as Graham Phillips suggests, can be explained by other forces. Political human forces rather than environmental ones.
As we’ve noted, Akhenaten’s monotheism was a counter-religion, one that declared that the sacred beliefs of the past must be eradicated to satisfy the world-saving sun god Re. But after Akhenaten’s seventeen-year reign ended, succeeding pharaohs turned violently against his religion. Akhenaten was deemed a terrible heretic whose influence had to be destroyed once and for all.
The priests of Heliopolis who had championed Akhenaten were thrown into disrepute. Heliopolis and its temple were considered too sacred to destroy but there was zero tolerance for any expression of monotheism and a fanatic effort at rewriting history succeeded in wiping the slate clean—leaving no trace of Akhenaten’s religious reforms. His idea that a single god reigned supreme would have remained unknown to the world if archaeologists hadn’t discovered the holy city of Amarna.
THE ENCLAVE CULTURE
Under constant threat of persecution by succeeding pharaohs, the priests of Heliopolis still loyal to the religious reforms of Akhenaten were forced underground. They became what the biblical scholar Mary Douglas called an “enclave culture” where a minority “develops a multitude of purity laws in order not to be swallowed by the majority culture.”17 Having originated as a counter-religion, monotheism was transformed first into an enclave culture that ultimately became a secret society.
Rebelliously, the priests of Heliopolis continued to develop their religion and as part of their lore, we suggest, they integrated the “plagues” that befell Egypt before the rise of Akhenaten into their secret theology. The terrible catastrophes became part of their cult and Akhenaten’s single God, Aten, was held responsible for the disaster that had devastated their world. They needed a new prophet to take up their cause.
That prophet was Moses, the grandson of their high priest.
After having fallen under Reuel’s spell Moses returned to Egypt to collect the bones of his father, Joseph. It seems probable that he would have visited with the people who had educated him, the priests of Heliopolis who saw in their former colleague a possible prophet who could revive Akhenaten’s monotheism. They urged Moses to propagate the powerful story of the plagues as being an integral part of monotheism.
Remember that no other Israelites accompanied Moses when he returned to Egypt and the magic he and Aaron performed before the pharaoh was witnessed by them alone. When Moses returned to Midian accompanying his father’s coffin he also brought with him the stories preserved by the priests of plagues that had devastated the land centuries earlier. Just like the stories that Moses and Aaron had told about the magic that they had performed at the royal court—nobody could challenge their version of events.
Reuel was naturally curious about the secret teachings of the priests of Heliopolis and when Moses revealed them to him he rushed to incorporate them into his emerging teachings. By this time, Reuel had decided to leave Midian where the locals were becoming hostile and lead the children of Israel to the Promised Land. Reuel wanted to turn the miraculous stories Moses and Aaron had acquired in Egypt into a reality for the Israelites. He decided to present them with a vivid miracle—one that they would never forget. One that would confirm the stories Moses and Aaron had brought to Midian from their Egyptian trip.
PARTING THE RED SEA
Hollywood has given us the quintessential Moses scene when Charlton Heston raises his arms and commands the parting of the Red Sea. But scholars have cast doubt upon this spectacle: the roaring wall of water falling back before Moses’s magic staff. There is considerable skepticism about where it is claimed that the event took place. The most direct translation of the relevant passage declares that the “miracle” took place at the “reed sea” not the Red Sea (as Hollywood would prefer). After Martin Noth explored this mysterious body of water he concluded that we “can no longer make out where” the “reed sea” was. He notes that the context implies a body of water near where Reuel plied his trade as a high priest: “In I Kings 9:26, as is clear from the context, the gulf of el-aqaba on the east side of the Sinai peninsula is described as the ‘reed sea.’”18 Midian was the ancient land directly east of the gulf of el-aqaba. The other country bordering the gulf was Edom.
In 2003, Colin Humphreys’s The Miracles of Exodus made, for the first time, physical sense of Moses’s parting of the sea. He began by noting that, “reeds grow in freshwater rivers and lakes and not in saltwater seas . . . Yam suph must therefore refer to an inland freshwater reedy lake in which reeds grow: hence the name ‘Sea of Reeds.’”19
This narrowed the search to a very specific body of water. Following Martin Noth, Humphreys wrote, “Since 1 King 9:26 states that Solomon built his ships at Ezion Geber, near Elath in Edom, on the shore of the Red Sea, and since we can identify ancient Edom as a country adjacent to the Gulf of Aqaba, we can say with reasonable certainty that the biblical Red Sea is the Gulf of Aqaba.”20
Reuel was a Prince of Edom. The exodus’s most spectacular drama took place on his home turf.
But how did Moses part the waters? This, according to Humphreys, is entirely possible because of a natural phenomenon known as “wind setdown.” The Bible tells us that before the sea of reeds parted, “the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night.”21 Such a wind blowing from the east in the Gulf of Aqaba creates a phenomenon familiar to oceanographers. Because of a wind setdown the depth of the waters can vary considerably.22 “For example, a strong wind blowing along Lake Erie, one of the Great Lakes, has produced water elevation differences of as much as sixteen feet between Toledo, Ohio, on the west and Buffalo, New York, on the east.”23
The situation at the Gulf of Aqaba is ideal for a wind setdown because the prevailing wind is from the northeast*29 and the gulf extends to the southwest. Since the gulf is over a hundred miles long, the water levels near the shore create ideal conditions for a wind setdown, which forces the waters here to recede by a full mile.24
In the gulf near the shore, where the freshwater reeds grow, there are two dips in the water basin that expose a hump of land. The children of Israel might well have seen a vast sea blocking their passage the night before the wind setdown occurred. The hump of land was below normal sea level. In the morning, after the northeast wind had pushed the waters to the southwest, the hump formed a miraculously dry pathway. There would indeed be water to the left and right as they crossed over where, the night before, there been sea. And after they crossed over the hump and the winds died down and the waters returned, the pathway was again swallowed by water.
So, the parting of the “reed sea” could have been nothing more than a natural phenomenon familiar to the magician Reuel that he used to amaze his unsophisticated countrymen. And this would not be the only “wonder” of Edom that Reuel would use to frighten and amaze the children of Israel.
There were some skeptics in the crowd. Not all the Israelites were convinced that Moses was a great leader. Shortly after they left the “sea of reeds” and had traveled in the relentless heat for three days, “the people murmured against Moses saying, ‘What shall we drink?’”25 Soon Moses, with the aid of a guide supplied by Reuel, discovered “twelve wells of water,”26 which put a temporary stop to the grumbling. However, the seeds of discontent had been planted. As the journey continued into the “wilderness of Sin” dragging over two and half months the people became desperate, “And the whole congregation of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.”27
To satisfy the new demands of the dissatisfied Israelites, Moses arranged an encounter with God (played by Reuel) who reassures him, “I have heard the murmurings of the children of Israel: speak unto them, saying, At even ye shall eat flesh, and in the morning ye shall be filled with bread; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God.”28
It should come as no surprise that the next public “miracle” was designed to curb the people’s relentless hunger and put an end to any further murmurings. In the morning they wake to find a sweet, white, sticky substance, manna, covering the ground. A miracle? Like the parting of the sea, the food delivered at this critical point was provided by Reuel’s inside knowledge of the plants found in abundance in his homeland. Manna was a natural product of the tamarisk tree that grows in Edom.29
Arriving like magic with the dew in the night it was baked into cakes that satiated the tribe’s hunger. Manna has been identified as everything from tamarisk resin to lichen to hallucinogenic mushrooms, which interestingly, considering that this stressed, desperate, nomadic tribe was subject to the eccentricities of a volatile leader, produce spiritual experiences.
The manna satisfied for a short period. It was thirst that set off the next round of murmurings. The people cried, “Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our cattle with thirst?”30 Once again, Moses had to produce a quick miracle. He asks God, “What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me.”31 The Lord replies, “Behold, I will stand before thee there upon the rock of Horeb; and thou shalt smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink.”32
“The rock of Horeb” provides a clue as to where the tribe is to be found at this time in their travels. They have arrived at the Mountain of God where Moses will receive the Ten Commandments. It is here that Aaron will eventually die and be buried. It is in the heart of Edom, at Petra (in modern-day Jordan)—a location that Reuel would know well. Natural watering holes are plentiful because of its perennial stream and regular flash floods. Reuel would have been aware of such a reliable watering place and it would have been a simple task to order his confederates to cover a well with a frail material that could easily be broken by Moses’s “magical” staff.
Today, visitors to Petra will encounter a small domed shrine called Ain Musa, which means “Spring of Moses” “located on the west side of the gorge.”33 This “miracle” of water was nothing exceptional at all—a trick designed to impress the children of Israel when they were at yet another vulnerable point: this time desperately afraid of death from thirst.
Still later the Israelites demanded meat. Moses consults with Yahweh. Before long quails “miraculously” fall from the sky.34 Elias Auerbach reports that travelers in this part of the world tell stories of how “migratory birds, tired of flying across the hot desert, suddenly appear in large numbers; worn out they descend upon the oasis to quench their thirst and thus supply the inhabitants of the oasis with a rare and desired meat dish.”35
So, far from being a miracle the startling sight of birds falling from the sky was yet another natural phenomenon well known to Reuel.
WHERE WAS THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD?
Around 310 CE, an eighteen-year-old Christian named Catherine of Alexandria had a theological confrontation with the Roman emperor Maxentius. The beautiful, quick-witted woman confounded the powerful man with the force of her arguments. Astounded by her audacity he offered to marry her if she would change her faith. She refused. Maxentius then summoned fifty prominent philosophers who attempted to make a fool of Catherine but to no avail. The enraged emperor ordered the philosophers burned alive before departing on a journey leaving Catherine in the hands of his queen and two hundred bodyguards. When he returned Maxentius discovered that Catherine had converted his wife and bodyguards to Christianity. He promptly had the girl beheaded.
It is at this point that a story that might have been rooted in real historical events veers abruptly into legend. Angels are said to have carried Catherine’s head south where they deposit the relic on a mountain in the Sinai Peninsula. Shortly afterwards, the hermits who were living in caves on this mountain saw an opportunity to exploit the tales of miracles. In a shrewd PR move, they renamed their mountain Jebel Musa (Moses’s Mountain), establishing a not very subtle claim that it was the sacred mountain of the book of Exodus. They soon “found” further evidence for their bold, self-serving assertion.
The sacred mountain received official approval in 337 CE, when Empress Helen persuaded the Greek Orthodox Church to establish a sanctuary at its foot at the site where the locals claimed the “burning bush” once glowed in all its glory before the amazed Moses. Thousands of pilgrims journeyed to the sanctuary and they, in turn, drew the attention of nomadic tribes who wasted no time setting up a lucrative business raiding and looting distracted travelers. A small chapel was built in 363 CE at the peak known to the Christian world as “Mount Sinai.”
In 537 CE the Byzantium Emperor Justinian responded to the outcry of the pilgrims who were by then constantly under attack by the nomads. He dispatched his court architects to supervise the construction of a proper fortress and monastery at the sacred place. Slaves from Romania were dispatched to do the hard labor. Legend has it that when Justinian learned that the fortress was at the foot of the holy mountain rather than at its peak, as he imagined, he had the chief architect beheaded. The slaves were freed, and many stayed on to become monks at what was now officially a holy site. Today, it remains protected by its original massive fortifications. Up until the last one hundred years, entry could only be gained by reaching a door located high in the outer walls. Crusaders could be found in the area until 1270 and their tales instigated the wander lust of Christian pilgrims from Europe.
At this dusty, isolated place where the stars shine undimmed in the desert night sky can be found a collection of early codices and manuscripts second only to that of the Vatican’s library. The monastery holds Hebrew, Arabic, Greek, Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, and Armenian written treasures.
The remnants of the fortress remain today, and the monastery has been designated a UNESCO world heritage site. The Sacred and Imperial Monastery of the God-Trodden Mount of Sinai, otherwise known as St. Catherine’s Monastery, continues to receive thousands of pilgrims who travel by air rather than camel and enjoy all the conveniences of the twenty-first century.
Each morning dedicated pilgrims (those who reject the donkey or camel route), convinced that they are following in the footsteps of Moses, pass the merchants’ stalls and start their long climb up the 7,500-foot mountain. Under a brilliant blue Sinai sky, they follow the 4,000 worn steps that have been polished to a smooth hue by thousands of feet over the centuries. It takes three hours to reach the summit of the “Path of Moses” where they are rewarded for their dedication with the cool relief of a small chapel.
The present building was erected in 1934 to replace a sixteenth-century structure badly in need of reconstruction. The older, sixteenth-century chapel had, in turn, been built over the remains of the original chapel of 363 CE. Emperor Justinian I who ruled from 527–565 ordered the monastery constructed to enclose the Chapel of the Burning Bush, which had been built by Constantine I’s mother, Helena. The living bush is advertised as a descendant of the original.
Visitors are shown the cleft in the mountain where Moses sheltered while Yahweh passed by. They are invited to examine the rock face from which God cut the tablets upon which he carved the Ten Commandments. The experience is exhilarating for the devout. But is it based upon fact or fiction?
JEBEL MUSA
There is no evidence that Moses ever set foot in this part of the Sinai Peninsula. A legend created in the third century CE by hermits who had a vested interest in promoting their isolated mountain about an incident that supposedly took place many centuries before is hardly a reliable source. Before the hermit’s imaginative claim no one believed that the place that came to be known as Jebel Musa (Moses’s Mountain) was associated with the prophet.
The subject of the location of the Mountain of God has invited controversy for centuries. Biblical scholar Martin Noth was convinced that the mountain that rose above St. Catherine’s Monastery had nothing to do with the story told in the Torah. The biblical text, he argued, pointed to a volcanic mountain, “we should no longer look for it on the present ‘Sinai peninsula,’ for there have never been any active volcanoes upon it in historical times. . . . On the other side of the gulf of el-‘aqaba in the north-west part of what is now Saudi Arabia, . . . there are volcanoes which are still active today.”36 On strictly geological grounds, Noth thought that the area around Midian (northern Saudi Arabia) and Edom (southern Jordan) was a far more probable location for the Mountain of God.
More recently Harvard scholar Frank Cross took issue with linking the biblical text with a volcano. “Such a tradition surely rests, not on a description of volcanic activity, but upon hyperbolic language used in the storm theophany.”37 And later, “When Sinai or Zion is described as on fire or smoking, we need not send for seismologists. Experienced mountain climbers know well the frequent violence and special danger of the thunder storm in high mountains is not a rare sight, moreover, to see lightning strike high points including often isolated trees near the timber line. Those who bear witness to such sights speak of explosions of fire, smoke and steam.”38 Were the terrifying events that shook the children of Israel the effect of a volcano or a storm?
Whether we should look at the Sinai Peninsula or Midian or Edom as the site of Moses’s celebrated experiences on the Mountain of God cannot be determined by geology alone.
Israeli archaeologists rule out the Sinai:
Except for the Egyptian forts along the northern coast, not a single campsite or sign of occupation from the time of Ramses II and his immediate predecessors and successors has ever been identified in Sinai. And it has not been for lack of trying. Repeated archaeological surveys in all regions of the peninsula, including the mountainous area around the traditional site of Mount Sinai near Saint Catherine’s Monastery . . . have yielded only negative evidence: not even a single shed, no structure, not a single house, no trace of an ancient encampment.39
THE FIRST EUROPEAN AT THE MOUNTAIN OF GOD
In the summer of 1812, Johann Ludwig Burckhardt*30 (1784–1817) made his way to the ruins at Petra in present-day Jordan. No other European had risked traveling so deeply into this ancient land. To disguise his real identity Burckhardt dressed as a Bedouin and spoke Arabic. The reason he gave for the deception was recorded in his journal. “I was without protection in the midst of a desert where no traveller had ever before been seen; and a close examination of these works of the infidels, as they are called, would have excited suspicions that I was a magician in search of treasures.”40
On August 22 he came across a haunting rock formation that would lead him to the ruins. “I perceived a chasm about fifteen or twenty feet in breadth . . . called the El Syk. . . . The precipices on either side of the torrent are about eighty-feet in height; in many places the opening between them at top is less than at bottom, and the sky is not visible from below.”41
He walked in the shadows of the towering cliffs until he was stopped in his tracks by a remarkable sight. “On the side of the perpendicular rock, directly opposite to the issue of the main valley, an excavated mausoleum came in view, the situation and the beauty of which are calculated to make an extraordinary impression upon the traveller, after having traversed for nearly half an hour such a gloomy and almost subterranean passage as I have described. It is one of the most elegant remains of antiquity.”42
What he saw was the Khazneh Mausoleum, the “Treasury of the Pharaoh.” It had been carved from the great chasm’s red rock. Thousands travel to see this wonder, especially since it was popularized by the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Indy and his father enter the Khazneh Mausoleum searching for the Holy Grail. The movie ends with father and son riding from between the narrow red walls of what the locals call the Siq.
The word may be derived from the Greek sakos, meaning “tomb,” or “shrine.” But today it refers to the entire length of the crags that enclose a shade-and-sun-darted chasm reminiscent of the Grand Canyon.
The Siq and the Petra ruins lie within the confines of an ancient gorge named the Wadi Musa by the local Bedouins, which means the “Valley of Moses.” In 1930, the author George Livingston Robinson (1865–1958) published a detailed description of the Siq and its surrounding tombs and sacred places. Robinson didn’t put much stock in the Bedouin’s stories of Moses. He begins The Sarcophagus of an Ancient Civilization by dismissing “a worthless Mohammedan legend to the effect that Moses died and was buried in this valley!”43 He was arrogantly discarding the local Islamic tradition passed down through generations that held that Moses died at Petra and that the remains of both Moses and Aaron had once rested there.
The Torah claims that Moses died on a mountain overlooking the Promised Land. His burial spot remained a mystery.
Robinson was most interested in proving that a “High Place” overlooking the Siq was once the holy place of the “sons of Esau.” He believed that the ancient ruins of Petra were the sacred remains of the heart of Edom. Drawing upon a journal he had kept thirty years earlier (May 3, 1900) Robinson concluded, “If we mistake not, we have found nothing less than the principal High Place, or sanctuary of the sons of Esau, which henceforth will throw valuable light upon the religion of the Edomites and illumine the whole question of worship in High Places, so frequently alluded to in the Old Testament.”44
Robinson describes the High Place as being about six hundred feet above the trench known as the Siq. “The whole summit of the mountain on which the High Place is located, does not exceed five hundred feet in length by one hundred feet in breadth. . . . The view obtained from it is superb, commanding not only all of the city site, or valley bottom of the Wadi Musa. . . . So steep are the sides of the whole ridge that without artificial cuttings in the rocks ascent would be well-nigh impossible.”45
Yahweh refers to the “artificial cuttings in the rocks” when he tells Moses to command the Israelites not to “go up by steps unto mine altar.”46 Robinson noted that, “The height of the perpendicular walls which bound the chasm is deceiving, and has deceived many.”47
Burckhardt estimated the Siq cliffs to be about eighty feet high. Robinson estimated the average height as closer to two hundred feet. He noted, “The entrance to the Sik was easily defended. The rocks on either side are so high and the passage so narrow that a dozen men in ancient times could, without very much difficulty, have held at bay a whole army of Arab invaders.”48
Robinson credits another American traveler for having identified the High Place as being of great religious importance to the Bible. “To an American editor, Mr. Edward L. Wilson, is due the credit of having been the first to see this great, and now celebrated, sanctuary. . . . Mr. Wilson visited Petra in 1882.”49
But it was Robinson, during his 1900 visit, who recorded the most detailed account of the sacred place of the priests of Edom. The High Place was described as having two pillars, a raised platform and a rectangular altar. Each of these he described, including measurements and speculating upon their various purposes. One thing was paramount to his thinking: he had found the Holy of Holies of the sons of Esau.
Reuel was one of those sons.
Astonishingly, Robinson also speculates that there might have been a cave carved into the walls used to broadcast a hidden speaker’s voice. Such a device had been found in Israel at Gezer, another sacred High Place where an “inner chamber was the secret chamber, in which a priest, or a boy, was hidden, in order to serve as the mouthpiece of the god. The human voice issuing from the mouth of the narrow tunnel, connecting the two caves, would be regarded as the voice of a spirit.”50
In Exodus 20 the Israelites hear, for the first time, the voice of Yahweh as he recites the Ten Commandments. Reuel might well have prepared a cave, like the one found in Gezer, which amplified God’s voice*31 so much so that its sheer volume would have completely cowed the already terrorized Israelites.
Reuel’s father had once ruled ancient Petra, a part of Edom. Edom consisted of a thirty-mile wide track of mountains that was over a hundred miles in length. Reuel spent much of his youth there and would have known of all its special features including one that was only recently rediscovered. In The Moses Legacy, Graham Phillips suggests that the real Mountain of God was near Petra: “According to the Book of Exodus, Moses first discovered the Mountain of God on the far side of the Sinai wilderness from the land of Midian, which would place it in the land of Edom. This is confirmed by the book of Numbers, which tells us that Aaron was buried on the Mountain of God in Edom. The first-century Jewish historian Josephus confirms the place of Aaron’s death as the valley of Edom.”51
The magician Reuel was an Edomite prince familiar with all the unique features of the Edomite mountain range and particularly the “High Place” that lies above the so-called Wadi Musa—Valley of Moses. It was at this High Place that the Egyptian Moses would disappear and be replaced by the masked Moses.
Until he left Edom to learn his trade in Egypt, Reuel, both as a boy and young man, would have climbed all over the mountainous land of his father. He would use this intimate knowledge to dramatic effect when the children of Israel settled beneath the tall walls of the gorge that hid the High Place. Reuel knew that in Canaanite mythology the sound of trumpets signified the coming of God. And he knew how the wind in this valley created a howling blast that imitated so well the din of trumpets and seemed to cause the claustrophobic walls to vibrate.
Phillips writes, “When there is a strong wind from the east, the Siq and Wadi Musa below act together to create a most unusual phenomenon. The wind howls down the narrow cleft to trumpet, quite literally, through the Wadi Musa gorge. The noise it makes is not only eerie: if you happen to be in the gorge itself it is deafening.”52
Weather and geology had provided the magician Reuel with ideal tools for the creation of one of his most creative and effective tricks.
THE SETTING
The children of Israel had traveled across the desert until they reached a mountain range where Moses, or more likely his Kenite guide, directed the people through an opening in the mountain. It was the narrow entrance to the Siq and it was the beginning of a nightmare of confinement, claustrophobia, and terror for the long-suffering tribe.
Upon first crowding into the welcome embrace of the cool gorge the Israelites would have sighed with relief as they escaped the merciless heat. But it would not have been long before they realized that they were entering an almost subterranean, alien world. Huddling against the rock walls they were immediately warned by Moses, “And thou shalt set bounds unto the people round about, saying, take heed to yourselves, that ye go not up into the mount, or touch the border of it: whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death.”53
Moses announced that Yahweh would speak to the people himself. His Voice would be channeled through the narrow crevice of the Siq’s walls.
Imagine for a moment the fear that the people must have felt. They were hungry and thirsty and exhausted from their interminable journey. They had seen wonders that they never dreamed of and now they had been herded into a confined and strange place and warned that if they trespass they will be struck dead. And then the worst happens—the deafening blast of trumpets announces the coming of God. The thundering echo intensifies their claustrophobia, but the children of Israel can’t flee their maker’s fury. They are trapped. Some begin to whimper, to cry, to wail, magnifying each other’s terror. A voice from above shouts commands but the people are far too frightened to comprehend or obey.
Only one man remains calm—Moses.