“God led the people by a roundabout route, through the desert towards the Red Sea. “-Exodus 13:18
Verse 18 brings us face-to-face with a hot controversy concerning the actual Exodus route the Hebrews took when hightailing it out of Egypt.
As I went over in my last post, God specifically commanded the Israelites to NOT take the more direct route called the “way of the Philistines“.
Instead He told them to take a “roundabout route” that headed towards a body of water most Bible translations will call the “Red Sea”.
The original Hebrew here is YAM SUP.
YAM means “sea”.
SUP means “reeds”.
So a proper literal rendering from the original Hebrew would be the “Sea of Reeds”.
It seems like when the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint, was created, YAM SUP was rendered “Red Sea”.
I’m not exactly sure why though.
Now the first thing you need to know is there were TWO MAJOR TRADE ROUTES going in and out of Egypt.
There was a north-south 1000-mile highway that followed along the Mediterranean Sea coast called the “Way of the Philistines”.
And there was a 200-mile east-west trade highway that went by the formal name “The Way of the Wilderness”.
Let me say that again.
We’ve got two major trade highways each respectively called “The WAY of the Philistines” and “The WAY of the Wilderness”.
The Hebrew used for “WAY” in both of these trade highway names is DEREK.
DEREK normally means “road” or “path”.
And this same word DEREK is used for both names “The WAY of the Philistines” and “The WAY of the Wilderness”.
My point is this.
Why in the world do scholars choose to make “The Way of the Philistines” the formal name of a well-established trade route but refuse to accept the “The Way of the Wilderness” as the formal name for the other well-established east-west trade route that stretches across the Sinai?
Do you see what I’m getting at?!
Why do some scholars in a deceptive manner intentionally render the phrase “The Way of the Wilderness” into some general direction and use ambiguous phrases like “the roundabout route” rather than just use the precise name of the long established ancient trade route that it was?
I’ll tell you why.
Because if the Israelites really travelled on “The Way of the Wilderness” (which they did), it utterly destroys any possibility that the traditional Mount Sinai location connected to Constantine’s mother’s 4th century A.D. vision is where they were going.
I hate to rain on anybody’s parade here, but when the Israelites left Egypt, the route they took was the “Way of the Wilderness” and it goes nowhere near the place Constantine’s mother’s vision pointed to.
I’m done.
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