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MOUNT NEBO, Jordan (CNS) -- The Memorial of Moses on Mount Nebo has reopened its doors to the public amid festivities, after nearly a decade of restoration. Believed by ancient tradition to be the site where Moses saw the Promised Land and died, a church and monastery are perched atop this 3,300-foot rugged mountain facing the northern end of the Dead Sea. It has drawn Christian pilgrims throughout the centuries and is considered one of the most important pilgrimage, tourist, and archaeological sites in Jordan and the Holy Land. Cardinal Leonardo Sandri, the special envoy of Pope Francis and prefect...

3500 years ago slaves toiling in the harsh mines of the Sinai scribbled some graffiti on the desert rocks. One of them wrote: "Moses then provoked astonishment." That, plus a lot of other inscriptions, deserve more than a passing glance. ------ "He sought occasion to cut away to barrenness our great number, our swelling without measure." (Sinai 349) "Our bond servitude had lingered. Moses then provoked astonishment. It is a year of astonishment." (Sinai 361) Anyone familiar with the book of Exodus will immediately spot parallels with the account of Pharaoh's attempt to reduce the number of newborn Israelites; and...

Moses was a prophet and a leader according to Abrahamic religions, but many scholars view him as a legendary figure rather than a real historic person. They do concede that a Moses-like figure could have existed in history, so is it possible to track this person down through historic records? It is the view of this writer that this is very possible and that in fact the Moses figure can be traced as that of the primary confidant of none other than Egyptian pharaoh Hatshepsut. The trail begins with Th Exodus.

I never paid any attention to it before, but when looking in the reference section of an old Bible, I noticed a picture of Moses holding the 10 Commandments and on them was Masoretic Text which was not in existence in Moses' time. Moses smashed the first set that God etched in Exodus 31:8 and chiseled out the second set. The language during Moses' time would not have been Masoretic Text with its diacritic markings, nor its predecessor, Aramaic Hebrew, nor its predecessor, Paleo Hebrew. Paleo Hebrew though would have been in use during the time of the Davidic Kingdom...

A newly analyzed inscription found in Sinai, Egypt, has stirred new debate among scholars after a language researcher claimed it may include the words, “This is from Moses.” The carving, located near an ancient turquoise mine in the south-central region of the peninsula, was photographed using high-resolution imaging technology that brought faded markings into clearer view. The markings belong to a group of rock-cut writings known as Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions. These early alphabetic characters were first documented in 1904 and are believed to date back to around 1800 BCE. The particular panel under review, labeled Sinai 357 and located across from...

Mysterious Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions may point to Moses and Joseph as historical figures, sparking global scholarly controversy. A groundbreaking proto-thesis by independent scholar Michael S. Bar-Ron suggests exactly that. After eight years of rigorous epigraphic analysis, Bar-Ron argues that two inscriptions found at Serabit el-Khadim, an ancient turquoise mining site on Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, contain the Semitic phrase “This is from MŠ” — a possible early rendering of the name Moses (Moshe). The inscriptions, dated to Egypt’s late 12th Dynasty during the reign of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, are written in Proto-Sinaitic, considered one of the world’s earliest alphabetic scripts. According to...

Archaeologists in Egypt have uncovered the remains of a massive 3,000-year-old fortress along an ancient route many believe was traveled during the biblical Exodus.The stronghold, recently unearthed in North Sinai, lies directly on the fabled Horus Military Road, the same route the Book of Exodus describes as the shorter path the Israelites avoided when Moses led them out of Egypt.Experts said the discovery provides tangible evidence that the road, long thought to be a key setting in the Exodus narrative, truly existed and was heavily fortified during the period traditionally associated with the Israelites' escape. The site's age, scale, and...

Paging Indiana Jones! An American archeologist thinks he may know where the lost Ark of the Covenant is hidden, and is hoping to mount a search to find it. Dr. Jones — err, Professor Chris McKinny — believes the Lost Ark may be waiting beneath the City of David, an archeological site just south of the Dome of the Rock which is considered to be one of the oldest sections of Jerusalem, the Daily Mail reported. McKinny — an associate professor of biblical archeology at Lipscomb University in Tennessee — drew on biblical and historical texts to zero in on...

JEWS THE world over will gather around the Seder table this week to recount again the great narrative of their ancestors' redemption from slavery in Egypt. In retelling the story, they will quote the passage from Exodus in which Pharaoh justified the unspeakable repression he intended to inflict on the Hebrews. "Come, let us deal wisely with them," he exhorted his nation. "Otherwise they may become so numerous that if there is a war they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the land." Though the tyrant's idea of dealing wisely with the Hebrews began with slave labor,...

An ancient Egyptian manuscript may prove the biblical 10 plagues described in the Book of Exodus. Known as the Ipuwer Papyrus, the document takes the form of a poetic lament attributed to a scribe named Ipuwer. It recounts widespread catastrophes and societal upheaval in ancient Egypt, describing famine, mass death and environmental disasters.... The text also echoes the biblical plagues' attacks on Egypt's gods, with the river of blood, frogs, and darkness recalling Hapi, Heqet, and Ra. It references slavery and wealth, noting precious metals and stones fastened on female slaves, reflecting the Israelites' bondage ....

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...

While some depict the Bible’s Passover meal and Jews’ Exodus from Egypt as a fable, archeological and other evidence squares with the Bible’s account.Tonight begins Passover, or Pasach, celebrated worldwide by Jews. As recounted in Exodus 13:3-10, this ritual meal marks their ancestors’ escape from Egyptian captivity.About three weeks earlier, Christians celebrated Easter to commemorate Jesus’ Resurrection. Judaism and Christianity share not merely monotheism, but also recount their miraculous foundations as history.Together they form the moral foundation for Western culture, a foundation that is collapsing, in part due to post-Enlightenment critiques of the historicity of these religions. But, as a...

MISCONCEPTION: Upon leaving Egypt, the Jews crossed the Yam Suf, which is translated as the Red Sea. This translation, however, is an error. Red Sea is a corruption of the correct Old English (OE) translation, Reed (Rede) Sea. (Rede is a legitimate spelling of reed in OE.)FACT: The notion that the Yam Suf is the modern-day Red Sea predates any English translation of the Bible by well over a thousand years. In fact, it seems that until the late eighteenth century no one questioned the translation and identification of Yam Suf with the Red Sea...The Septuagint (second to third century...

The remains of a burnt beetle found in a grain of wheat about 3,500 years old provided a group of researchers from Bar-Ilan University with a key to a question the Bible left without a definite answer: How did Joseph the Dreamer, who became the viceroy to the king of Egypt, succeed in preserving the grain during the seven lean years and prevent Egypt's population from starving? According to the description in the book of Genesis, during the seven years of plenty in Egypt, Joseph had all the wheat collected in silos. "And he gathered up all the food of...

An inscription dating back some 3,100 years ago bearing the name of a biblical judge Jerubbaal was uncovered in the excavations at Khirbat er-Ra‘i, near Kiryat Gat in the Southern District of Israel, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Monday.The researchers highlighted that while there cannot be any certainty on whether the inscription refers to the figure mentioned in the Book of Judges, this discovery offers important insights on the connection between the biblical text and historical reality...All the dating has been carried out through both pottery typology and radiocarbon of organic samples found in the same archaeological layer.The writing,...

That the Bible refers to these structures as "cities" instead of merely "buildings" is likely a consequence of the magnitude of these projects. The area that these depots covered sometimes exceeded the area taken up by the temple itself. Examples of storage depots can be found surrounding several mortuary temples, for example, the Ramesseum. The reason why the temples needed such storage depots was because Egypt had a barter economy that did not use money. Any temple cult only lasted as long as there was food to make offerings and feed priests. Storing food for offerings was essential for a...

The tip came from a lawyer, a faithful reader from Brooklyn named Harvey Herbert- An Egyptian hieroglyphic papyrus now in the Brooklyn Museum mentions an Asiatic slave named Shiphrah. Shiphrah, of course, is the name of one of the Hebrew midwives (the other is Puah) whom Pharaoh summoned to carry out his order that all boys born to the enslaved Israelites be killed (Exodus 1-15)... And here was an Asiatic slave with this same name mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus written in hieroglyphics... All I can do is report what to some (surely, to me) are previously unknown facts that...

Red SeaBOULDER, Colo.- From his office in Boulder, scientist Carl Drews can pinpoint the spot where his research theorizes the biblical miracle of the parting of the Red Sea took place. Although Drews has never been there, the Google Earth Pro imaging on his computer can zoom in on the place in Egypt where Moses and the Israelites escaped death when the waters parted, according to the Book of Exodus. His virtual "pushpin" comes back with images of what is now predominately agricultural land, with orchards, irrigation canals and grape fields indicating vineyards. It is in the Eastern Nile Delta,...

The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed. Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based. But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of...

Background Wind setdown is the drop in water level caused by wind stress acting on the surface of a body of water for an extended period of time. As the wind blows, water recedes from the upwind shore and exposes terrain that was formerly underwater. Previous researchers have suggested wind setdown as a possible hydrodynamic explanation for Moses crossing the Red Sea, as described in Exodus 14. Methodology/Principal Findings This study analyzes the hydrodynamic mechanism proposed by earlier studies, focusing on the time needed to reach a steady-state solution. In addition, the authors investigate a site in the eastern...