There
s deception as well, though. To claim that he actually explored part of Noahs Ark when "Noah
s Ark" is actually the result of land slippage past a rock is a bit off. And to claim that he removed blood from the Mercy Seat and had it analyzed by "a laboratory"......WHICH LABORATORY? Obviously none. You re right about "evidence" and theories. He chose General Gordons opinion of where the Crucifixion took place because the rock formation resembles a skull, but in Our Lord`s time, that part of the landscape was totally different. Plus, photographing the rocks with the sun at the right angle to get the skull effect…
Too much “evidence” is a giveaway.
Again, though, i feel sorry for the poor bloke, rather than feeling angry. He obviously had a psycho problem.
His surviving family and others shouldn
t be keeping the deception alive, and theyre the ones i feel cranky about. His claims should be allowed to die out and to be given a decent burial.
You’re totally spot on about the “Arabia” thing. This is what James K. Hoffmeier wrote in his book
Ancient Israel in Sinai (p. 130; chapter 6, §IV, B):
One of the early proponents for locating Mt. Sinai in Arabia or Midian was
Charles Beke, who in 1878 identified it with
Mt. Biggir, located around fifteen kilometers (nine miles) east of Elath/Ezion-geber (figure I). This placement would have been in the very northern part of the land of Midian. For him,
yām sûp is identified with the Gulf of Suez, on the basis of the reference to Solomon’s fleet docked there (1 Kings 9:26), which meant that the escaping Israelites crossed the Sea of Suez. The declaration by St. Paul in Galatians 4:25 (“Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem”), he believed supported this theory. Given the allegorical nature of Paul’s statement, one might be inclined not to put too much geographical weight on such a statement. But more problematic is the assumption that first-century A.D. geographical terminology applies to the second millennium B.C. As we observed above (chapter 3, §III), the term Arabia as used in Greco-Roman times included Sinai. This is proven in the translation of the Septuagint of Genesis 46:34, which locates the Land of Goshen beside or in Arabia (i.e. Sinai). The Hebrew of Genesis 46:34 does not include this explanatory note, clearly because the association of Sinai with Arabic only begins in the Persian period. The MT version evidently predates this correlation. Hence, Paul is plainly using the geographical term that was understood in his day to refer to Sinai. Those who appeal to Galatians 4:25 err by interpreting this verse through the lens of twentieth-century international borders, and not from a first-century A.D. geopolitical map, which would have included Sinai within Arabia.
Hoffmeier then goes on about “
a serious problem for those who build on Beke’s Midian hypothesis:” Beke evidently held the opinion that the
Mizraim where the Israelites were enslaved is not Egypt in Africa as is commonly believed, but an area encompassing
Philistia, the Negev, and south into mid- to eastern Sinai, something ignored by those who appeal to his work. There were also a number of other folks aside from Beke (from scholars such as
Alois Musil, E. Meyer,
Hermann Gunkel,
Hugo Gressman,
Martin Noth, Jean Koenig and
Colin Humphreys, to folks such as Sigmund Freud and
Immanuel Velikovsky) who attempted to look in northern Arabia the Biblical Sinai, since they held the opinion that the biblical descriptions of the theophany described volcanic activity, and since there were no volcanoes in Sinai, Arabia is the more likely place to look. The main Arabian candidates are
Jabal al-Nour (Beke’s first choice), Jabal Baggir (Beke’s second opinion; the Biblical Sinai) and Jabal Ertowa (Horeb, which Beke distinguished from Sinai),
Hala-'l Badr (mainly advocated by Musil, Koenig and Humphreys), and
Jabal al-Lawz (according to Wyatt and
Bob Cornuke).
Fr. Roland de Vaux contested the Midian-Mt. Badr identification, which he called “quite arbitrary.” He did allow for the probability that if the Bible is describing a volcano then northern Arabia could be a possible candidate, but concludes that the most likely location is still somewhere within the Sinai peninsula.
Assuming it’s the same man, ofcourse.
eek
i wasn