You can’t both argue that the Israelites did their exodus from Egypt AND Saudi Arabia and that both countries are trying to cover up evidence of it.
This is an understandable impression because of the author's sloppy and misleading writing style, wherein she wrote "One reason may be that the explorers have discovered a mountain on which are located the remains of religious altars, ancient Semitic inscriptions, and evidence of major encampments by nomads at the base of the mountain—all of which are elements, of course, of the Biblical narrative of the Revelation at Sinai. If the Exodus really took place in northern Saudi Arabia as Mr. Mahoney and his interviewees maintain, then the Arab claim to be the sole "indigenous" inhabitants even of the Arabian Peninsula itself, let alone "Palestine," could be thrown into doubt.
What she has done with her careless writing is to muddle the distinction between the point of origin of the Exodus and the subsequent route of the Exodus. What she should have said was "If the route of the Exodus took them through northern Saudi Arabia..."
I haven't seen the movie on which the article is based, but I'm certain it clearly differentiates the two. There is no scholarly dispute that I'm aware of that the Exodus originated FROM Egypt, but there are several competing theories as to the actual routes which might have been taken by the Hebrews on that long journey. One can do a lot of wandering in forty years.
I guess I’ll buy that her lousy writing style conveyed something other than she meant to convey.
A couple of points. There can really be no dispute that the Jews had their origin in the middle east. Nor that they occupied modern day Israel and beyond. Any suggestion that today’s Jews are merely european interlopers is flatly wrong.
The exodus story is more interesting. If it is historical and not legend, there should be solid evidence of it, especially if it’s asserted to have been from a period of 400 years of slavery in a fairly advanced civilization. Despite the claims of this article, such evidence in Egypt does not exist, and archaeologists have been pouring through the Egyptian historical records long before the state of Israel was created.
It’s simply impossible to erase the records of 400 years of Egyptian history, and the plagues which brought Egypt to its knees and allowed the Exodus to occur couldn’t have happened. This was the Golden Age of Egyptian history in order to fit the biblical timeline. In a country that documented every season’s harvest totals or crop failures, it’s impossible to believe it wouldn’t have documented the 10 plagues and the release of its slave population which it never documented that it had in the first place.
In an ironic twist, I believe there was an Exodus, not from Egypt but from the Iraq/Saudi Arabia area. The bible is full of references to the Tigris and Euphrates, and even Abraham’s home is said to be in Ur, which is in Iraq.
The “pillar of fire by night, and pillar of cloud by day” that guided the exodus corresponds timewise nicely to the volcanic eruption of Thera in the Mediterranean Sea, which is one of the biggest in recorded history. And it would point to Canaan if you were coming from Mesopotamia.
But not Egypt.
So, I’m going to catch it from all sides. I believe there was an exodus. I just don’t believe it was from Egypt.