2+ Hours Of The Greatest Bible Stories

[Music] The Exodus. The Exodus, I think, is the greatest story in the Old Testament. It's an amazing story. It begins with the flight from Egypt and the parting of the Red [Music] Sea. The climax is Mount Sinai. It's where Heaven meets Earth. It's where God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. Mount Sinai is the place where Moses receives the biblical laws that still govern much of our civilized world today. So, it is the most important mountain in the Bible.

For thousands of years, people have wondered about the root of The Exodus and the exact location of Mount Sinai. But many experts believe it's a futile exercise. We've got no archaeological evidence for an Exodus event. People trying to find things like the real Mount Sinai are, are essentially wasting their time. But one man dares to think otherwise. He believes that the Exodus took a different path, and Mount Sinai is somewhere else altogether, somewhere so dangerous it's impossible to reach. If he's right, pilgrims have been climbing up the wrong mountain for thousands of years. This is the story of Colin Humphries' journey to find the real root of The Exodus and the true Mountain of God.

[Music] Cambridge, England. Colin Humphries is the director of research in Material Science at Cambridge [Music] University. But he's also fascinated by the science of the Bible.

"When my younger daughter was 8 years old, my father gave her a book called 'Great Men of History,' and it gave the date of their birth and the date of their death. And against Jesus, it put 'Date of birth: 4 BC?' 'Date of death: AD 30?' And my daughter said, 'Daddy, why is only Jesus the person in this book whose dates of birth and death are unknown?' So I thought, that's a great question, and that's what started me thinking, thinking about biblical [Music] matters."

Colin is a man of faith, but as a man of science, he thinks the story of The Exodus is full of anomalies. Colin starts his journey in 1995 on Mount Sinai. At its foot lies St. Catherine's Monastery. Hundreds of pilgrims climb the mountain. They come here because this is said to be the holy mountain where God handed Moses the Ten [Music] Commandments. Among the pilgrims is Sir Colin Humphries.

"I visited Mount Sinai, the traditional Mount Sinai, in the spring of 1995. For the pilgrims, it's an uplifting experience. But Colin is racked with doubts. People were praying at the top and they were singing hymns and obviously having some emotional experience. I felt slightly guilty. I thought, you know, I should be having some emotional experience as, as these other people are. This should be a great place. So I started thinking, this cannot be the real Sinai. I wonder where the real Mount Sinai [Music] is."

Back in Cambridge, Colin reviews the traditional route of the Exodus and the location of Mount Sinai. The accepted view is that the Israelites leave Egypt, make their way south, and arrive at Mount Sinai on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. But if the location of Mount Sinai is wrong, then the route of the whole Exodus may be wrong too. To discover the real direction of The Exodus and the true setting of Mount Sinai, Colin looks for clues in the original story.

The Bible says the Israelites have been slaves in Egypt for centuries. One day, Moses, in exile near Mount Sinai, hears the voice of God in a burning [Music] bush. God sends him to deliver the Israelites from slavery and take them to the promised [Music] land. Moses confronts Pharaoh, but Pharaoh refuses to let his slaves go free. So Moses unleashes 10 plagues on [Music] Egypt: dead fish, dead cattle, lice, flies, and locusts. Moses sends plagues of hail and darkness. These plagues are the prelude to the most terrible plague of all: the death of the firstborn. At last, Pharaoh relents. What the Bible calls The Exodus begins.

Colin notes that the Israelites left in their thousands from Rameses in the Eastern Delta. They were led east by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. [Music] But Pharaoh reneges on his promise and leads his army to hunt the Israelites down. It was then that the greatest miracle in the Old Testament occurred. [Music] Moses parts the Red Sea. The Hebrews escape, and Pharaoh's army is drowned by the returning waves. But the Hebrews thought they were safe. They were wrong. The wilderness is scorching and arid. They face death through dehydration. But then, on the slopes of Mount Sinai, Moses uses his staff to miraculously bring water gushing from a rock. [Music] Moses ascends the mountain and receives the Ten Commandments from [Music] God. But when Moses returns, he discovers that the Israelites have lost their faith. God's punishment is unforgiving. But because of their complaining and their rebelling, God condemned them to travel in the wilderness for another 40 [Music] years.

This is what troubles Colin. "How could the whole nation of Israel have survived for 40 years in this barren wilderness with little food and water? And how could they have got lost? Sinai is very small and wandering around that small region for 40 years is pretty inconceivable. If you're going to get lost in a desert and wander around, it has to be a bigger area of land." So Colin begins to wonder if this really is Mount Sinai.

"The idea is only 1,800 years old. In the 3rd century AD, there were a small group of Christian hermits living at Jebel Musa. Some were living in caves, some in tents, and they got together one day and they said, 'We believe this is Mount Sinai.' And it's a very late tradition, over a thousand years after the, the Exodus events, associating Mount Sinai with a particular, uh, mountain in the Sinai Peninsula. It's pure guesswork. There's no factual basis for this being Mount Sinai. People trying to find the real Mount Sinai are, are essentially wasting their time. No professional archaeologist ever joins these expeditions. There's no point to it. If you want to go search for it, knock yourself out, have fun, but don't expect an archaeologist to come with you. We have, frankly, better things to do."

But Colin is convinced that science can discover the real Mount Sinai. [Music] Although a man of faith, Colin decides to combine his interests in geology and geography to discover the real Mount Sinai. His method is to begin with the start of the Exodus and follow the trail to see where it takes him.

The Bible says the Israelites leave from a city called Rameses in the Eastern Nile Delta. "The book of Exodus talks about the city of P-Rameses, which was the resident city built by King Rameses II in the Northeast Delta, and its location fits in very nicely with, if you've got a group who are leaving Egypt, that's the direction they would leave from. That gives Colin the start of the Exodus."

According to the Bible, the first stop is Succoth. "The Egyptian equivalent is a place called El-Mashuta, and so archaeologists agreed on that. And interestingly, it's just 25 miles from Rameses. So they would have done this journey in a day." Colin is on the right track, but the Israelites' next destination is harder to pin down. The Bible names it as Etham. "Like so many of the places mentioned in Exodus, Etham only exists in the text of the Bible. There have been speculations about where it might actually be, but there is absolutely zero objective evidence on which to base any equation."

Colin finds that many B atlases assume that The Exodus advanced south along the west of the Sinai Peninsula and so suggest Etham is somewhere between Succoth and Mount Sinai. But Colin disagrees. "Etham has been undiscovered so long because I think biblical scholars have been looking in the wrong place. People have assumed that because Succoth is one day's journey from Rameses, Etham is one day's journey from Succoth. But the Bible doesn't say that. It doesn't say it's just a day's journey away. And so I look further afield."

Colin pours over an old map from 1879. To the east of the Sinai Desert, he notices a place called Elum Peak. It's an unlikely stopover. "Elum is 180 miles from Succoth. But in Hebrew, 'altim' can also be pronounced 'Etham.'" If this is the biblical Etham, how did the Israelites get there? So Colin is amazed to find that the text actually tells us. "The Bible tells us that the Israelites went to Etham, but they used what's called the desert road to the Red Sea. The desert road to the Red Sea, if you look in ancient literature, was a well-known trade route which went from the top of the Gulf of Suez across the top of the C Peninsula." If Colin is right, the Israelites may well have bypassed the traditional site of Mount Sinai. So where was the real Mount [Music] Sinai?

The next milestone in The Exodus is the parting of the Red [Music] Sea. But where did this miracle actually take place? The Bible does not say. Traditionally, it's assumed the Israelites cross the Red Sea at the head of the Gulf of Suez. To find the true crossing place, Colin looks for clues in the original Hebrew version of the Bible.

"When I was at school, I had a religious education teacher called Major Evans, and he said, 'The translation Red Sea is the biggest mistranslation in the Bible.' And the reason he said that is because the Hebrew is 'Yam Suph,' and 'yam' means sea, and 'suph' means reeds. 'Yam Suph,' which means 'sea of reeds,' has been translated as Red Sea. So those who would quote the Hebrew text would say that it has to be an expansive water that has reeds." But where was this Sea of Reeds?

Sir Colin finds that the Hebrew Bible mentions the Reed Sea, or Yam Suph, in another context. "There's a clue in the Bible which enables us to to identify precisely where Yam Suph is. And this concerns where King Solomon built his ships. The book of Kings says that Solomon built his ships at a place called Ezion-Geber on the shores of the Red Sea. This would give another possible location for the, the, the sea crossing, which is on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula. That would put the parting of the Red Sea not in the Gulf of Suez on the west of the peninsula, but in the Gulf of [Music] Aqaba."

1999. Aqaba. Colin arrives to explore the area. The city is Jordan's gateway to the Red Sea. It's directly opposite Eilat, the famous Israeli resort. As a scientist, Colin is not expecting to find reeds in the saltwater. But while exploring some ancient ruins, a mere 200 yards from the waterfront, Colin spies a clump of vegetation. It stands 6 feet tall in the water.

"When I saw these reeds, I was just amazed. How could reeds grow at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba? The water there is not saltwater as you might expect. It's fresh water because it's all channeled down from the mountains. And so reeds grow right at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. The ancients, the Hebrews, they called this the Sea of Reeds because it was so unusual to see reeds growing at the head of a salty sea."

So Colin explores the outlying area, looking for more reeds. He is now just yards from the Israeli border. Centuries watch his every move. The last thing he wants is to cause an international incident. Colin decides to leave before he is arrested. [Music]

Sitting on the beach overlooking the Gulf of Aqaba, Colin takes stock of his progress so far. He's traced the march of the Israelites to the very edge of the Gulf of Aqaba. To find the real Mount Sinai, he must now get the Israelites across the Reed Sea. But how? The Bible says the Red Sea crossing was a miracle. An east wind parted the waters. As a scientist, Colin believes there could be a natural explanation for the miracle. A powerful wind can raise the sea, known as a storm surge, but it can also lower the sea.

"A strong east wind blowing along the Gulf of Aqaba all night would cause what scientists call the wind set-down, which means that the water is forced back from the shore. This wind set-down effect could have created the wall of water described by the Bible. When the wind stops blowing, this wall of water comes rushing back, and it comes rushing back in a very special form. It's called a 'b-wave,' and Pharaoh's army was drowned just as the Bible describes."

Colin has traced a new Exodus route from Rameses in Egypt all the way to the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. He's closer than ever to finding the real Mount Sinai. But now he's at a crossroads. "All the Bible says is that they head back into the desert after the Red Sea. They go into the wilderness. There are debates among scholars as to exactly what the route was. Some favor a southerly route. The traditional view would say that the Israelites went southwest to the southern tip of the Sinai [Music] Peninsula. But Colin already knows that cannot be the real Mount Sinai. The only other option is southeast to the forbidding wilderness of the Arabian Desert."

Colin knows that an Arabian setting for Mount Sinai will challenge the accepted view of the route of the Exodus. He has to proceed with care. He checks the next stop of the flight from Egypt. [Music]

After crossing the Reed Sea, the Bible says the Israelites walked for 3 days before finding water, and then they arrived at a spring called Marah. "Marah is a Hebrew word that means bitter. Here, the water is undrinkable. But where was this spring?" For Colin, it will be difficult to explore the deserts of Arabia, but he doesn't have to. He knows of a man who already has. Alois Musil.

"He was an early 20th-century adventurer from what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Musil was, uh, born in Moravia in 1868, and he was to become possibly one of the greatest explorers of the Middle East. He was a biblical scholar, he was ordained a priest, he was fluent in many, many languages, and he single-handedly mapped great uncharted territories." Sir Colin finds that Musil's diaries contain many clues that help him follow the route of the Exodus.

"Musil's journey took him to the northern Hijaz, to the east of Aqaba, an area of modern-day Saudi Arabia. Like the Israelites, Musil trekked across the desert from the head of the Gulf of Aqaba. He also ran out of water. Then, at last, after precisely 3 days, he came upon a spring called the Well of Al-Malha. Al-Malha is the same place in Arabic as Marah is in Hebrew, and they both mean bitter. I think that Musil was unwittingly following the route of The Exodus. He was not on a quest to try to retrace the footsteps of The Exodus, but he certainly, he would have been looking for evidence of The Exodus, and he would have had that in his head with all his studies."

Colin believes he's traced the actual trail of The Exodus from Rameses in Egypt to Marah in the Arabian Desert. The real Mount Sinai must be somewhere in this wilderness. But where? In one of the hottest places on Earth, Sir Colin's trail goes cold. [Music]

2002. Italy. Colin is on a field trip to the island of Sicily. It's meant to be a break from his quest, but the trip gives Colin a lead that could help him pinpoint the location of Mount Sinai. Sicily may be home to the best pasta in the world, but it's also home to Europe's most active volcano, Mount [Music] Etna. Colin decides to climb the volcano.

"We went up Mount Etna with a guide. I noticed the air just shimmering above my feet. I asked the guide, and he said, 'It's a volcanic vent.' And he got some paper out of his pocket and he just put this paper on top of this volcanic vent, and it instantly caught fire and [Music] burnt. You can get really hot gas coming out of those fractures, so gases which would be at many hundreds of degrees, and certainly high enough temperatures to cause, um, vegetation to combust spontaneously."

This volcanic phenomenon reminds Sir Colin of Moses on Mount [Music] Sinai when he heard the voice of God. "This is a scientific explanation of the burning bush. That there was a volcanic vent underneath. And what we do know is that certain types of acacia do turn to charcoal when they're burned, and it's found all over the Arabian deserts. The whole story fits together that the bush would burn, it would form this charcoal framework, it wouldn't collapse, and the flames will keep on coming through it because of the gas being continuously supplied."

For Colin, the implications are far-reaching. If the miracle of the burning bush happened on the slopes of a volcano, then was Mount Sinai itself a [Music] volcano? The Bible never once mentions a volcano. And yet, when Colin looks again, he discovers that indirectly, it does. Moses and the Israelites are led out of Egypt, guided by a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by [Music] night.

"As a scientist, I knew that a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire is what you get from [Music] volcanoes. The descriptions that we see in Exodus are certainly, um, certainly can be interpreted in terms of a volcanic eruption. When I realized Mount Sinai was a volcano, I thought, this is amazing, because so much then fits [Music] together. That, a, a huge feeling of, uh, of really, to, to discover [Music] this at last."

Colin has a hot lead. Mount Sinai could be a volcano. But are there any volcanoes in the Arabian Desert? Colin checks out "Volcanoes of the World." "It's a massive tome listing every volcano that has erupted in the last 10,000 years. When I looked in 'Volcanoes of the World,' uh, the first thing I did was to see if there were volcanoes in the Sinai Peninsula, and there are no volcanoes that erupted in the last 10,000 years in, in the Sinai Peninsula. Which was a huge relief. The Sinai Peninsula is not volcanic. There are no young volcanoes on the peninsula at all. The Sinai, um, includes some rocks that are volcanic, but they're ancient geologically, so hundreds of millions of years old."

For Colin, if there are no volcanoes in the Sinai Peninsula, then the traditional site of Mount Sinai must be wrong. So what of the Arabian Peninsula? "Here, here, in complete contrast, Colin finds an embarrassment of [Music] riches. Dozens and dozens of volcanoes. There are a lot of active volcanoes in Saudi Arabia. It's just riddled with active volcanoes. And so I thought, gosh, I'm now looking for a needle in a haystack sort of [Music] problem."

But could Mount Sinai really be in the Arabian Wilderness? These volcanoes are up to 300 miles from Egypt. Could the Israelites have even seen a volcanic plume from this far away?

Medina, 1256. [Music] Medieval records show that a volcano erupted in the Arabian Peninsula. Luckily for Colin, people reported seeing the eruption not just in Arabia, but hundreds of miles away. "In something like 1200 AD, a volcano erupted near Medina in Saudi Arabia. It shot a pillar of fire in the air, and this pillar of fire was seen from Syria, 500 miles away. Now, the Sinai Peninsula is only about 300 miles away. We can be certain, I think, that a pillar of fire erupting in Saudi Arabia would have been seen by the Israelites as they cross the top of the Sinai [Music] Peninsula."

To find out which volcano is Mount Sinai, all Colin now needs to do is to get to Saudi Arabia. He consults with the country's embassy in London, but he soon finds there's one problem. [Music]

"Having found that there are many volcanoes in Saudi Arabia, I was keen to visit. When I looked into this, I could not get a tourist visa to visit. You could only get a business visa, and you had to be invited in, and I had no way of doing [Music] this."

Unable to visit Arabia, Colin has to look for Mount Sinai in some other way. He decides to see if the Bible and science together can help him find the right volcano. In the final leg of their journey, the Israelites travel from Mount Sinai itself to the promised land. It says they travel via a place called Kadesh Barnea. "There's a very interesting verse in the Bible in the book of Deuteronomy, and it says it's an 11 days' journey from Kadesh Barnea to Mount Sinai. We might know where Kadesh Barnea is. A number of sites have been proposed, but the usual suggestion is that it's a site in an oasis called 'Ain Qadeis." Looking at the map, Colin sees that 'Ain Qadeis is right on the Israeli-Egyptian border. Colin now has a reference point. He can work out how far away the volcano is from [Music] here.

"He calculates the maximum distance the Israelites could have traveled in 11 days: 400 miles. Colin got a pair of compasses, drew a circle on a map, and found out how many volcanoes might be within this circle. Mount Sinai could be within 400 miles of 'Ain Qadeis. The Sinai Peninsula, of course, is within the radius, but bereft of volcanoes. But in the Arabian Peninsula, three active volcanoes fall within the 400-mile radius: Mount Raha, Mount Ishka, and Mount Beda. One of these could be the real Mount Sinai. But which?"

1980. Washington State, USA. On May 18th, 1980, the eruption of Mount St. Helens causes devastation for hundreds of miles around. It's the deadliest eruption in American history, and according to a measure known as the Volcanic Explosivity Index, it's also one of the biggest. "The Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, is a very simple shorthand way of classifying volcanic eruptions by size that was introduced by some geologists in the late 1970s."

For Colin, the explosivity index could be the key that reveals the true Mount Sinai. "The first two volcanoes, Raha and Ishka, both have an explosivity index of zero. Raha and Ishka were not explosive volcanic eruptions, so they would not have put a large pillar of fire and a large pillar of cloud into the sky. Mount Beda is a much bigger volcano. It sits 500 feet proud above a plateau which itself is 5,000 feet above sea level. Crucially, its explosivity index is to the height of its column could have been at least 3 miles high. Just like Mount St. Helens, Mount Beda was an explosive eruption which would have sent a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire significant height into the atmosphere. And so I thought, this has to be the only possibility. The height of the column of smoke means a Mount Beda eruption could have been seen hundreds of miles away in Egypt. Could Mount Beda be Mount [Music] Sinai?"

Unable to go and investigate Mount Beda, Colin has no choice but to study the volcano remotely. Geological studies of the area reveal that the plateau Mount Beda sits upon is a huge sandstone rock. "Sandstone or limestone is porous, and if, if it rains, water comes out of the sides. And all over the world, we have aquifers, and these are porous rocks beneath ground level, and they store a lot of water. Mount Beda is 6 miles across, so just a huge sandstone rock which would have stored a huge amount of water."

For Colin, that is a vital clue. It could explain the setting of one of Moses's [Music] miracles. The Bible says that when the Israelites were thirsty, Moses struck a rock and water gushed out. [Music] It says the miracle happened at Mount Sinai. That means Mount Sinai was not only a volcano, it was also a vast store of rainwater, just like Mount Beda.

Colin is wary of using a miracle to confirm the location of Mount Sinai. Could he find a natural explanation for it? 1917. The Egyptian Desert. The British army is locked in battle with the Ottoman forces. The Imperial Camel Corps is a key part of the fight. One of its officers keeps a diary of his adventures. The diary says the camel corps were digging for water. "The sergeant then seized a pickaxe and smashed a rock. Out came a great gush of clear water. His men hailed him with shouts of, 'What ho, the prophet Moses!'"

Sir Colin thinks he knows what happened here in the desert. "You have desert storms where sand is blown around at high speed by the wind, and the sand abrades the surface of the rocks and it forms a hard crust on the rock. When the sergeant cracked the crust of the rock, the water flowed out. So what Moses is doing when he gives this rock a real hit with his staff, then he breaks the crust, and the water comes flowing out. And this is an effect known to geologists. So this thing which I first thought was an impossibility, the miracle, has a really good scientific explanation."

If Moses's miracle on Mount Sinai actually happened, then it must have happened on a mountain that stored vast amounts of water, just like Mount Beda. The two mountains must be one and the same. Sir Colin is more certain than ever that Mount Beda is Mount Sinai. There's just one final matter to settle. Could the area around Mount Beda have supported hundreds of thousands of Israelites as the Bible claims?

Sir Colin is unable to go to Arabia and check for himself. But again, Alois Musil had the answer. "Musil visited Mount Beda and he recorded that the vegetation and the plants he saw were the most luxurious he had seen in his travels. And the reason is, it's just very well watered. So the Israelites could easily have survived there. There was water for them to survive for at least a [Music] year."

Equating Mount Sinai with Mount Beda would even explain why the Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. "Mount Beda is in a fairly remote part of Arabia, and it's quite easy to see how they could have got lost when they left it. It's a large region, you know, Arabia, a large country, so you could easily have wandered there for 40 years before emerging into the promised land."

For Colin, Mount Beda in the Arabian Desert is the most convincing candidate for the Mountain of God. "There have been many other suggested Mount Sinis. It seems to me the evidence is clear-cut that Mount Sinai was a volcano, and none of the other mountains suggested have been volcanoes. So I would rule them all out on that basis alone. For me, it's an entirely plausible hypothesis to interpret the writings in Exodus in terms of a volcanic eruption."

But the notion that Mount Sinai is a volcano does not impress Bible experts. "This pseudo-scientific approach to trying to identify Mount Sinai as a volcano is, is completely irrelevant when it comes to biblical scholarship. The idea of a deity whose presence is announced with smoke and fire and quaking is a very common way to describe lots of other deities in the ancient Near East. So Sinai doesn't have to be a mountain that's volcanic."

Sir Colin Humphries' theory that Mount Sinai was a volcano is as good as any other. "If you're trying to find something that's a pillar of fire by night and smoke by day, a volcano fits the description. But beyond that, there's no particular proof one way or the other." For Colin, only one other thing can prove beyond any reasonable doubt that Mount Beda is Mount Sinai: that it erupted exactly at the time of The Exodus. "If that lava was, you know, about 3,000 years old, then that's a strong pointer that Mount Beda erupted at the time of The Exodus. But until Saudi Arabia welcomes Bible scholars, that must remain a forlorn hope."

"I would love to see Mount Beda. I think it looks increasingly likely this is the real Mount Sinai, and hopefully we'll be able to test it one day using science. In the meantime, Colin will remain convinced that the Bible describes Mount Sinai as a volcano. The description of Mount Sinai in the Bible as a volcano is the earliest description of a volcano in any ancient [Music] literature. Mount Beda, for the Israelites, would have been really impressive because they would have seen it erupting fires on the top, smokes coming out, just an enormously impressive sight. You would hear the rumble of earthquakes going on, and then God speaks to Moses. It's just such a dramatic setting, frightening, I think, terrifying, and also inspiring. Truly, the Mountain of God."

A single shot starts a cop on the quest of a lifetime. What propelled us on, in spite of the dangers? Possibly the greatest discovery in the world awaits you. On his team, the eighth man to walk on the [Music] moon, and one of the richest stock traders on Earth. Together, they set out to solve the greatest mystery in the [Music] Bible: the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea.

The crossing of the sea is the culmination of The Exodus story. It is meant to be awe-inspiring. It is God doing something only the Creator who made the waters, who made the wind, could do. But for many today, the story is no more than a myth. "The Egyptian evidence for the presence of the Israelites in Egypt is precisely zero. Trying to find the place where the Red Sea was crossed, it's an exercise in futility." But could the Bible story really be true? Two very different investigators vie to prove that God did part the waters. One is a software engineer who believes that science supports the miracle. "I have shown that the account of the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus 14 is a historical event." The other is a hardened cop looking for forensic clues on the ground. "God's fingerprints are left on this planet, and if we look close enough and hard enough, we will find the evidence."

[Music] My journey, for me, started right on the moon. [Music]

California, 1978. Plainclothes cop Bob Kuk is a crime scene investigator. He has no interest in the Bible, but that is about to change. "I heard the radio say that there was a truck on fire in somebody's front yard, and I, I was just right around the corner. Now, usually, a uniform guy will take that, but I said, I'd handle it." Kuk pulls up in front of the house. "I get out of my unmarked car, uh, in plain clothes, sports jacket, had a 9mm underneath my jacket, walk up to the front door of the house." Quickly, he realizes it's a trap. "And I see a man, and he's pointing a rifle right between my eyes. He has a half-drunk bottle of vodka in his other hand, and he says to me, 'Are you a cop?' And I said, 'No.'" Kuk runs for cover. The gunman opens fire. "And I heard the, the cracks of the bullets just zip past my ear. I radioed in that there was a shooting. I'm pinned down for about 3 hours. Finally, the man comes out shooting." Kuk responds in kind. "My shotgun was all sweaty holding it. I just threw myself over the hood to the police vehicle, pulled the trigger. The shotgun just exploded in my hands. This big ball of fire came out. The man goes down, fatally wounded in the chest." Bob survives, but he'll never be the same again. "You're holding a shotgun, and then the smoke is still coming from it. He's laying there, and he's dying. It was really, really tore my heart open at that time. It's hard to explain, but it was, it was really tough to go through."

This fateful encounter sets Kuk on a course that will change his [Music] life. After a decade of service, Bob leaves the police [Music] force. He moves to Colorado, looking for peace and quiet. "I felt my, my whole spirit was, was receiving this, this quenching break. I didn't realize that the greatest adventure was just around the corner." Soon, Kuk will be walking in the footsteps of Moses, investigating the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. The man who inspires this new quest is an American hero, astronaut Jim Irwin.

Jim Irwin was the eighth man to walk on the moon. "Uh, we're talking about out of 6 billion people on the planet, there's only 12 that have walked on the moon, and Jim was one of those 12." Jim Irwin is the Lunar Module Pilot on NASA's historic Apollo 15 [Music] mission. For Jim, the mission is above all a spiritual experience. "7% 20 at 1 [Music] contact." On July 31st, 1971, he steps out onto the lunar surface. "Oh boy, it's beautiful out here." Irwin spends almost 3 days on the moon. "He told me, he said, 'Bob, he says, I turned and looked at the Earth. I raised my visor, and he said, all, all I had was the beat of my heart and the hissing of the, the oxygen in my helmet.' What have you?" So he's looking at the Earth, and it's a living, breathing orb. It's blue and white and green and brown. And and he said, "You can see the water sparkling on it." And he goes, he knew at that moment it wasn't a cosmic accident. God's hand actually crafted the Earth. "They, I'm reminded of a favorite biblical passage from Psalm. 'I look unto the hills from whence cometh my help.' But of course, we get quite a bit from Houston too." Now, he was a religious guy, but going to the moon made his, made his faith just really explode.

When Irwin returns to Earth, he has a new mission: to prove that the Bible is literally true. A decade later, he asks Kuk to help him. Bored with the quiet life, Bob jumps at the chance. "We sort of intersected at that moment in our two lives. He was looking for lost locations in the Bible. I was looking for adventure. We formed a partnership, and off we [Music] went." Now, Bob will use his forensic skills to investigate the most mysterious cold case on the planet: the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. [Music]

The parting of the Red Sea might be the most spectacular miracle in the Old [Music] Testament. The crossing of the sea is the culmination of The Exodus story. The Bible records that the Israelites spent years enslaved in Egypt. One day, God speaks to Moses from from a burning bush. He sends Moses to rescue his people. Moses asks the Pharaoh to release the Israelites, but Pharaoh refuses. God then sends 10 plagues on Egypt. Eventually, Pharaoh allows the Israelites to leave. [Music] Moses leads them out of Egypt on a journey known as The [Music] Exodus. Just days later, Pharaoh sends his chariot army to chase them down. "Pharaoh's changed his mind, and the Egyptians by now are chasing after them. A few days after the Israelites leave Egypt, they come to a sea which they can't get past. We have the people of Israel stuck between Pharaoh's massive army and this body of water." Moses speaks to God, and God tells him to move forward. "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The waters of the sea are parted." According to the book of Isaiah, God even builds a roadway across the water. The Israelites cross over on dry ground. When the waters come down, they literally come crashing down on Pharaoh's army, and they destroy the army. It's a powerful story.

But when Bob checks out the archaeology, he discovers there is little or no evidence for it. [Music] "There is no proof. There is no archaeological evidence for the Israelites at any stage in their journey. They have not been detected. There is no evidence of anything of the Bible stories of The Exodus in Egypt. Archaeologists don't bother with this. We have better things to do with our time. You try and locate the places that the Bible talks about. Is it this? Is it that? Who cares? You're not going to find it because it is an exercise in [Music] futility."

Kuk and Irwin disagree. They believe that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. "Archaeology is overrated. It's the study of durable [Music] rubbish. Now, as I study the Bible, it's an old crime scene. It's 2,000 years old, 3,000 years old, and and evidence erodes very quickly. Time is the enemy of every investigator. Time is brutal to an investigation."

The friends agree to use the Bible as a guide and look for any remaining evidence on the ground. In Egypt, in 1988, Kuk and Irwin set off on their mission. With them is multi-millionaire Larry Williams. He too is looking for adventure and agrees to fund the trip. "Larry is one of the neatest guys you ever want to meet in the world. Uh, he has a lot of courage, a lot of smarts, one of the, one of the wealthiest guys around." Their quest is to prove the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea. To do that, they need to pinpoint the exact location where it happens.

The Red Sea stretches all the way from the Gulf of Aden in the south to the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba in the north. In theory, the Israelites could have crossed almost anywhere. Fortunately, the Bible provides some clues. "Exodus is very specific on all the places they went to as they left Egypt. They start off living in Goshen, they gather together in Succoth, and it mentions a series of places until they get to the sea. In fact, the Bible names a dozen locations on the route of the Exodus. That's more clues than a cop could ever hope for." But there is a problem. The place names don't match the names of any modern locations. "One would think since the biblical narrative is so specific as to where the Israelites went and which cities they passed through, that one could find the route of The Exodus quite easily. Uh, in fact, one can't. It's been next to impossible to figure out which way they went."

Kuk and his team refuse to abandon their quest. The start and end points of the Exodus seem to be identifiable. Maybe they will provide a clue. The Exodus text records that the Israelites in Egypt lived in a lush and fertile place called [Music] Goshen. "From what the Bible says about Goshen, it implies it's somewhere in the Eastern Nile Delta. Where the Israelites cross the Red Sea depends on which direction they go after leaving Goshen. It all depends where the end of The Exodus, Mount Sinai, is located."

"Well, in, in the narrative of the Bible, we know they had a starting point, Goshen. They had a finishing point, which is a mountain known as Sinai, and in between is a huge event where the Red Sea part, and they went through the ocean." Today, Mount Sinai is thought to be at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula. It's also known as Jebel Musa, or the Mountain of Moses. "At Mount Sinai, the Israelites build an altar and 12 pillars of stone. At Mount Sinai, they live for many weeks. Mount Sinai is the place that Moses first encounters God in the burning bush. It's the mountain to which the people return, where the Ten Commandments and Torah is given through Moses to the people."

If Goshen is in the Eastern Nile Delta and Mount Sinai is at the southern tip of the desert, then the Israelites must have crossed the Red Sea somewhere along the Gulf of Suez. But so far, no one has found any trace of a roadway through the sea and no remains of a single chariot on the seabed. Kuk begins to wonder if the received wisdom may be wrong.

"We went to the traditional site of Mount Sinai, and we decided to start from there." Kuk and his team climbed the peak, searching for some clue to where the parting of the Red Sea took place. "It was crystal clear. The sun came up. It was dazzlingly beautiful. And I couldn't believe it when Jim looked at me with this, with this look of, of surprise on his face. He said, 'Bob, nothing about this fits. This is not Mount Sinai.'" The team cannot see any trace of an altar with 12 pillars, nor an oasis for thousands of Israelites to live with enough food and water for many weeks. "This is archaeology 101. This is not the mountain. There's not one scrap of evidence to support this is the mountain, and we need to look somewhere else."

Kuk learns that Jebel Musa was only nominated as Mount Sinai when a monastery was built there in the 4th century AD. That's more than 1500 years after The Exodus. "The traditional location of Mount Sinai in the Sinai today may not be the proper place. Bear in mind that a lot of these sites were identified much later." If the real Mount Sinai is somewhere else, the crossing site is somewhere else too.

Kuk and his team turn again to the Bible for clues. The Exodus text is clear that the miracle of the parting of the Red Sea happens because the Israelites are trapped. They are said to be bewildered by the land, closed in by the wilderness. They are stuck between Pharaoh's army and the [Music] sea. The team examines satellite pictures of the Sinai Peninsula. They look for any features that might explain why the Israelites could not escape Pharaoh's army.

"So, as a police investigator, you have to have an open mind and look at the evidence and let the evidence speak for itself, instead of us speaking for the evidence." At the very tip of the peninsula, they spot something promising: a narrow stretch of coastline surrounded by mountains. "Mountains hemming them in. We have that in the satellite imagery. The water in front of them. It's a deep sea. That's a feature that we have in the satellite imagery."

The team drives to the tip of the peninsula to check for themselves. They discover a location known as the Straits of Tiran. Here, the Israelites would find themselves trapped between the mountains, the sea, and the Egyptian chariots. "A large amount of people would have had an easy way of it just to walking down this area. The Bible says they went all the way to the end, turned back right here, right in this area here, and you can see this wide beach area here. That's where they were stuck. The wilderness had hemmed them in. The water had hemmed them in. Pharaoh coming upon them had hemmed them in. They had nowhere to go."

The landscape seems to fit the biblical description, but the sea does not. The Gulf of Aqaba plunges sharply down into the depths. The sheer sides are too steep for the Israelites to get down to the seabed and walk across. Kuk and Williams don scuba gear. "The Bible says God created a roadway through the sea. If this is the right place, the roadway should be here."

"You dive down and you start looking in the Gulf of Aqaba there, and it's just full of life. It's just a beautiful place. Beautiful." Here, beneath the surface, Kuk discovers something extraordinary: a gigantic coral reef. "We could see this wall of this reef, and it was straight up and down. This reef was right below the water, but then it descends down like a couple thousand feet into the depths of the ocean there."

It's a revelation for Bob. [Music] Kuk. Isaiah 51. "God says, 'I'm going to build a roadway through the sea that they're going to go upon.' And we have this underwater reef, not above water, it's just below the surface of the water, and this reef goes from the tip of the Sinai Peninsula to Arabia." Kuk and Williams search the reef for any surviving remains of Pharaoh's chariot army, but they find only modern shipwrecks. Nevertheless, Bob feels confident that the parting of the Red Sea took place here and not in the Gulf of Suez. "It's pretty exciting to think that this is the exact pedestal of land that's talked about in Isaiah, and that this is where the Red Sea parted, and the children of Israel went through on dry [Music] ground."

As a cop, Kuk wants to find corroborating evidence. He can't find any on the reef, but maybe he can on the other side of the Gulf. Jim Irwin issues him a challenge. "I was with Larry Williams and, and Jim Irwin, the astronaut. Then Jim looks at me and says, 'You and Larry need to go over there.'" But this is more dangerous than going to the moon. Across the gulf is the forbidden wilderness of Saudi Arabia. In 1988, the oil-rich kingdom does not welcome tourists. But Kuk and Williams will not be stopped. "What we did was absolutely off the chart dangerous, but we did it, and we got in. But what we found over there is, is, is to me [Music] mind-blowing."

Back in Colorado, a different kind of detective is also inspired to seek evidence of the parting of the Red Sea. But software engineer Carl Drews believes that Kuk is looking in the wrong place. Now systems designer of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, Drews is also a Christian. "The parting of the Red Sea is one of the greatest miracles of the Old Testament, so I always figured this happened somehow."

Drew's quest begins in a graduate class on fluid dynamics. [Music] Carl is learning about how wind blowing over water moves the water. When wind raises water levels, it is known as storm surge. When it lowers them, it is known as wind set-down. "I wasn't thinking of the Red Sea at all, but the professor was talking about a phenomenon where the wind blows in, let's say, this direction, and what happens is the sea moves at a 45-degree angle. So you have the wind pushing this way, way, and the sea moves this way. I said, 'That sounds like something I heard and read in Exodus 14.'"

The Bible records that God drives the Red Sea back with a strong east wind, which blows all night. Drews begins to daydream. He imagines how winds set-down might explain the parting of the Red Sea. "So in my mind, somehow it flashed that, how about if the wind blows across the Eastern Nile Delta and the Gulf of Suez? So the land will become dry there, and so that's the place where they could cross. I was really excited about this, and I guess I thought, I've got it. In 30 seconds, I've"

I've figured out this mystery that has kept people up at night for 2,000 years. "So I've got it! I've got it!" excited Drew goes to a colleague to explain his discovery. "I proudly said, 'I figured out the mystery of The Parting of the Red Sea,' and I showed how an East Wind would blow here and then the Gulf of Suez would move out of the way." And I was very smug. "And I said, 'Jason, what do you think of [Music] that?'" He looked at my diagram and said, "Generally, an East Wind blows that way. It's a rookie mistake. My wind was rowing in the wrong direction. Wind setdown is not the answer, at least not on the Gulf of Suez."

Carl Drews is no Bible archaeologist, but that won't put him off. He decides to make The Parting of the Red Sea the subject of his graduate computing thesis. His first task is to find a body of water where winds set down would work. Like Kuk before him, he turns to the Bible for clues about where to look. He discovers that in the original Hebrew, the Israelites cross at Yam Suf. Yam is usually translated as Red Sea, but in fact, it means Reed Sea. The Hebrew is "Yam Suf." Yam means "a sea," and Suf is "reed." "It's a kind of thick sea with some kind of large vegetation inside it. It's a puzzle for Drews. Reeds usually grow in brackish water, not in the ocean. A thick sea with reeds in it is more likely to be a large lake."

"It didn't seem to make any sense until I looked closely at the Eastern Nile Delta." Drew studies detailed maps of the Delta, close to the land of Goan, where the Israelites live in Egypt. He discovers a large lake. "It's quite big enough to be called a sea. Lake Manzala." Lake Manzala, to this day, is this huge body of water, shimmering body of water with lots of reeds in it, stretching over the horizon. "So if there's any place in the Egypt frontier now that matches the description of a sea of reeds, Lake Manzala is it."

Lake Manzala seems to fit the biblical description, but could winds set down here create a dry roadway through the waters? To find out, Drews will now have to construct a complex computer model of the area. "I really couldn't tell what would happen until I created an ocean model and then ran the results." To create the ocean model, Drews needs to input precise data: the width, breadth, and depth of the lake and connecting rivers at the time of The Exodus. But here he encounters a problem. "I tried to figure out what did exactly did the Eastern Nile Delta look like at that time, and this is one of these problems where nobody knows. It's been 3,000 years since the Israelites left Egypt. The rivers and lakes in the Eastern Nile Delta have changed radically in that time."

"What has happened there in, um, the 1860s was the Suez Canal was built right through the side of Lake Manzala there, so that messed up everything. So you have to figure out what did it look like before that period." Drews discovers a source that may contain the answers. Greek historian Herodotus writes about his travels in the region in the fifth century BC. His experiences are reproduced in the Geography of Herodotus by an early 19th-century scholar. Drews goes to the University Library, hoping to find a copy. "I went down into the stacks, down the deepest part of the library, which is the place I like best, and found his book. And I was thinking, 'What would I find here?' And this is an old book, so it's kind of a little bit crinkly. And I'd been thinking, you know, Indiana Jones always finds a map at some point. Maybe I'll find a map." And he looked at his book and opened it up, and out fell this map. "It was one of those kind of old, crinkly maps, just like in the movies. And I looked at it, and he had written down exactly what he thought the Eastern Nile Delta looked like."

Drews hurries back to the office and makes a high-resolution scan of the ancient map. At the time of Herodotus, Lake Manzala is called Lake Tennis. The map gives Drews data he badly needs. But before he can run the test, he needs one final piece of information: a potential crossing place on the hundreds of miles of lakes. He turns again to the Bible. The text offers some tantalizing clues about where the Israelites are when the miracle occurs. "You must camp at Pihahiroth, across from Baal-zephon, between Migdal and the Sea." "So you can imagine the author of Exodus saying, 'I've given them three place names. They've got to know. They've got to get one of these. They've got to know where it is.' So there's three place names. How can you miss it?" But like Kuk before him, Carl quickly realizes that the ancient names are of little use. "They don't seem to match any modern name. We say, 'We don't know. Yeah, we thank you for three place names, but we don't know where those are.'"

The names don't match anything in the region, at least not today. But could they match a name from Herodotus' time? Drew studies the ancient map again, looking closely at the shoreline. He spots a town. It's called Magdum. "And I looked at that and said, 'That sounds like Migdal.'" If Magdum on the map is another name for Migdal in the Bible, then the crossing site must be nearby. Just north of Kulum, Carl spots a peninsula which seems to fit. "This is the map that I found in the basement of the Norland Library. You'll see this place called Magdum. And if Moses is standing right here, then he would truly be between Migdal and the Sea." That is the Mediterranean Sea. It's a place where wind set down just might work.

Carl constructs a digital representation of the area called an ocean model. "Here is the Mediterranean Sea. Here is the shallow coastal lagoon called the Lake of Tannis. This area along here is a couple of shallow lagoons which formed along the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. This point here is where Moses and the Israelites were trapped. Water on three sides, and the chariots facing them from the West. They're stuck here. Something could happen there where the wind would blow from the East, the water would slide away from the wind direction and part. So Moses and the Israelites escape across here. When the wind stops blowing, these bodies of water come back together again with this huge surge, and they drown anybody who's left in the crossing. And I said, 'What about that? Perhaps that would work.'"

It's a huge boost for Carl Drews. "So things were clicking in a number of ways, and you really feel excited, like this, 'Yes, I've got it, and I think I'm right this time.'" Now all Drew has to do is prove it. "It's kind of, you have to do the math. You can talk all you want and reason and do things, but at some point, you have to do the math."

After months of math, Drew is ready to put his theory to the ultimate test. He must run his ocean model on the university supercomputer. It's a nerve-wracking moment. "You are supposed to report negative results as well as positive results. But somehow there was this idea that if I don't get Moses across, I'm not going to graduate. So these ideas go through your mind late at night when you're trying to make these things work." Drews runs his model. The first attempts do not work. It's a frustrating time for the young scientist. "At times like that, it was the best thing was having Christian faith."

Bob Kuk also has faith. He too knows about the translation of Yam Suf, a sea of reeds. But he has no patience for suggestions like Carl Drews' of a lake crossing. He believes the Bible is clear enough; it must be a proper sea. "I would have to say that people have got it wrong on the Sea of Reeds and all that. The Bible says that the Egyptians sank like stones in a mighty sea, in the depth of a deep [Applause] sea."

In 1988, Bob Kuk and Larry Williams travel to London to pursue their own Red Sea quest. Archaeologists say it's pointless, but Bob is determined to continue his investigation of the crossing point at the Straits of Tiran. To find proof, he must get across the Gulf of Aqaba and into Saudi Arabia. The problem is, Saudi Arabia will not let him in. He and Larry Williams are in London, hoping to get a visa there. "Larry had some contacts there that assured us that they could get us a visa. Uh, we tried all different ways. In fact, there was some Prince from Saudi Arabia supposed to meet us, and he was gone." Kuk and Williams wait hopefully in London, but no visa is forthcoming. It's a huge disappointment. Without permission to travel, their investigation has hit a brick wall.

To get across, Bob will have to do something which goes against all his instincts as a cop. To get visas, Kuk and Williams plot a desperate but daring plan. Larry goes to his friend, and his friend says, "I have a letter from the son of the King of Saudi Arabia on an old oil deal. It's a long time ago." Kuk and Williams take the letterhead and the signature. They use them to create a letter asking the Saudi Embassy to grant visas. "We had the signature, and so we had to blow it up really big, and then fill in the little grainy outline so it would look real crisp, and then shrink it back down. Cut and paste, you know. It didn't take long to make it look pretty convincing."

Email is not in common use in 1988. The fax machine is the normal way to send documents quickly. To make their fax look like it had come from Saudi Arabia, Larry had to go in then reprogram it with the date, the time, the address of the... "So I mean, it was impeccable. The letter looked pretty, you know, pretty convincing." The time has come to send the fax. Kuk knows their plan is dangerous, but still, they go ahead with it. "It's a desperate last throw of the dice. I thought at that point, we're either going to make the biggest discovery in history, or we possibly would be in some unmarked grave in the middle of Saudi Arabia for all [Music] eternity."

Amazingly, the plan works. Bob Kuk and Larry Williams get their visas. Within days, they are en route to Saudi Arabia. "When we close that big door on that airliner, I realized there was no way we're going back." The two friends fly to Tabuk and then drive towards the coast. They believe that The Parting of the Red Sea happened at the Straits of Tiran. If they are correct, then two key stopping points mentioned in the Exodus of the Israelites must be on the Saudi side of the gulf.

The first is the Bitter Waters of Marah. "Marah is a word that simply means bitter. And what happens there? Moses performs a miracle by throwing a stick half into the water that turns it from being bitter to being sweet and [Music] drinkable." The second location is the 12 Springs of Elim. It is presented as an oasis with 70 palm trees and 12 springs. Kuk and Williams spend the night on the Saudi side of the Straits of [Music] Tiran. "This is the beach Kuk believes the Israelites reached after God parted the waters. We laid out on the beach, uh, had some bottles of water and watch the twinkling lights. Let's listen to the lapping waves and we're thinking, 'Okay, if it did happen, and I'm here where it happened, then why does God have me standing at this place?' [Music]"

The next morning, the friends set out to put their theory to the final test. Will they be able to find the Bitter Waters and the 12 Springs? "I have the Bible out, and it says they took a three-day journey to the bitter springs of Marah. So we set our odometer and said, 'Tomorrow we're going to go about 30 to 40 kilometers right in there. That's where we should find the bitter springs of Marah.'" Kuk and Williams drive across the barren [Music] landscape. At 33 kilometers, they discover an area of springs. To test it, they taste the [Music] water. "It was so bitter. It, the bitter taste lingered for two days. It was just a horrible, just kind of like almost burned our tongues. It was definitely bitter. So we think that could possibly be the bitter springs of Marah."

Bob Kuk believes he has found the first piece of evidence that the Israelites did cross into Saudi Arabia at the Straits of Tiran. Now he and Williams must find the other: the 70 palms and 12 springs of Elim. They continue their drive along what they believe is the route of the Exodus. Their excitement mounts as they see ahead of them an oasis in the wilderness. "We have these big palm trees everywhere, and the thing was just beautiful there." They discover that there are indeed springs in the grove. This time, the water is fresh and clean. It's the discovery they were hoping for. "This palm grove has 12 springs in it. 12 springs, not 11, not 10, exactly as the Bible says, the 12 Springs of Elim." Bob Kuk feels the evidence is beginning to stack up. To clinch it, he believes he needs just one last piece of proof. He can't find any remnants of the Chariot Army on the Egyptian side of the gulf. Perhaps he can on the Saudi side. "I charted the drift of if these soldiers would have bloated and they would have floated to shore, where would their bodies have settled? And could their bodies have just left little pieces of metal that could survive?" Bob feels he is coming very close to proving beyond doubt his theory that the crossing happened at the Straits of Tiran.

Back in Colorado, the pressure is on for computer scientist Carl Drews. He believes that the crossing happened far to the north of the Straits of Tiran, at the edge of Lake Manzala in the eastern Nile Delta. To prove his theory as possible, he must get his computer model to show that an East Wind can part this body of water as it was 3,000 years ago. After many setbacks, he is ready to run his test using a powerful supercomputer. With his heart in his mouth, he presses the return key to start the model. He watches as the giant computer crunches the numbers. Every six minutes, the model updates, gradually plotting the movement of the water. "It's so complicated that even a supercomputer would take many hours to run the whole [Music] test. But at some point, it occurred to me, be like Moses. Moses had to wait in faith. I need to wait. This is my Moses moment."

The computer model will take all night, so Drew cycles home, full of anticipation. In the morning, he checks the completed test to see if his theory holds water. "I zoomed forward in the model, and yes, it worked." To software engineer Carl Drews, the results of his ocean model testing are [Music] conclusive. "We have blue, which is water, green, which is low-lying land, and red, which is higher land. You'll see a brown area growing here on this side. That's the land bridge. After nine hours, it connects. This is kilometers wide, so there's plenty of room for as many Israelites as you want to cross. Until twelve o'clock, twelve hours into the simulation, when the wind stops, the water's going to come back in from both directions. So if anybody is left here, they have just minutes to escape. The land bridge closes, and the game is over. This is the end of Pharaoh's Army if they are the ones trapped in that gap." Carl believes his model shows that the Red Sea Crossing could happen just as the Bible says, at the eastern edge of Lake Manzala. "To make up a wild tale that's confirmed by an ocean model is just about beyond the abilities of a Bronze Age storyteller. So this really does show that this is feasible, and this really happened." Drews has proved, to his satisfaction, both where and how The Parting of the Red Sea occurred.

Kuk believes the lake theory is wrong. He's sure it happened instead at the Straits of Tiran. But to bolster his theory, Kuk needs to find evidence of chariot remains along the shores. He contacts friends who have permission to travel in Saudi Arabia. Kuk asks them to look for further clues in the sandstone ridges along the beach on the Saudi side of the Straits of Tiran. Bob is astounded by what they discover. "Sure enough, they found little pieces of ancient bronze. This object was found on the Arabian side. Uh, we believe that this area was underwater at one time, about 3,500 years ago. It surely would have been the shoreline where they water now. The water's receded about 20, 30 feet, and so this was harvested there where the Egyptian Army would have floated and gone to shore. And so coral grows that possibly grew over this remnant, and it preserved it for all these years. So this could be an artifact from The Exodus." "I believe with strong, strong conviction in my heart that the Straits of Tiran is the actual place where the Red Sea split in two, and the children of Israel went through, and the entire Egyptian Army was drowned." "This is evidence. This is God's fingerprints left on this planet for us to know that He was here then, He's here now, and He has a destiny for us in the [Music] future."

Professional archaeologists insist that finding the location of the Red Sea parting is futile. But amateurs Carl Drews and Bob Kuk each think they have solved the mystery. If, as they believe, God has left his fingerprints on the earth, it cannot be long before the truth is revealed. The staff of Moses, it created some of the most awe-inspiring miracles in the Bible. It's a very powerful ritual instrument. It amazed the Pharaoh as it turned into a snake. [Music] It was one of the first weapons of mass destruction. It brought forth the great plagues of [Music] Egypt. Some kind of conductor for divine power. It parted the Red Sea and drowned the Pharaoh's Army. But what happened to this instrument of divine power? One man believes he knows what became of it. The staff of Moses was the most powerful artifact in history. He claims the famous staff went through ancient cities and traveled the modern [Music] world. It might even have survived the Titanic. And he believes he knows where it is today. Could he possibly be right? [Music]

Birmingham, England. The 1st of January 2000. It's Britain's second biggest [Music] city. It's also a gold mine of libraries and museums, and it's the home to one of the country's most tenacious historical detectives. On the first day of the new millennium, Graham Phillips is pondering his next challenge. Phillips is an investigator of myths. He's tracked legends from the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant to the location of King Arthur's Camelot. Tales other academics are unwilling or even afraid to touch. But the story Phillips always wanted to crack was Moses. "Moses is the founder of the Israelite religion, the character that seems to have started it [Music] all. And so it was him that I decided to [Music] investigate."

Phillips was particularly intrigued by the staff of Moses. The sturdy stick wasn't just an ancient walking aid; it was a weapon that could command nature and bring an empire to its [Music] knees. If the story of Moses is true, then Phillips believes his staff could still be out there somewhere. He's determined to track it down. Phillips begins his research. He learns that although Moses was a Hebrew, he was in fact born in Egypt after his people had been taken there to work as slaves. "Moses' birth takes place in the context of real danger and threat in the land of Egypt. [Music] The Hebrews are growing as a people, and the Egyptian authorities think they might pose some kind of military threat. A death sentence is passed by the Pharaoh on all Hebrew boys." Fearing for his life, his mother hides him in a basket amongst the reeds on the River Nile. "The daughter of the Pharaoh, we are told, found this baby floating in this little basket in the bullrushes and decided to adopt him as her own [Music] son. So he has two aspects here. He's not only a Semite, a Hebrew, if you like, he's also an Egyptian prince, adopted into the court of Pharaoh."

But though raised an Egyptian prince, Moses doesn't forget his Hebrew roots. One day, he makes a decision that changes his life forever. "So Moses grows up, and he sees an Egyptian oppressing a fellow Hebrew, and he steps in, and he actually kills the Egyptian." Fearing for his life, Moses flees east to the land of Midian. Moses spends the next 40 years living and hiding in the desert. But as Phillips reads, one day, Moses, now an old man, hears the voice of [Music] God. While Moses is in the wilderness, he comes across a bush which is burning but is not consumed. God speaks to Moses from the flames. He tells Moses to throw his staff on the ground. Miraculously, it turns into a snake. God tells him to grab the snake by the tail. Incredibly, it turns into a staff again. It becomes Moses's supernatural weapon. "If we are to believe what we are told in the Old Testament, the staff of Moses was the most powerful artifact in [Music] history."

God tells Moses to go back to Egypt and lead the Hebrews to the promised [Music] land. But Pharaoh refuses to let the Hebrews leave. So time and again, Moses uses his staff to threaten him. "Moses is a ritual specialist. He pulls out all sorts of magic tricks to try and intimidate Pharaoh into letting the Israelite people go. He turns it into a snake, but then Moses says, 'I can do far more with this staff.'" With this staff, he calls down 10 plagues upon [Music] Egypt. Dead fish, dead cattle, lice, flies, and locusts. Moses unleashes plagues of hail and darkness. The state is systematically dismantled. These plagues are the prelude to the most terrible plague of all: the death of the firstborn. And it's at that point, it would seem, that Pharaoh is then finally broken. At last, Pharaoh relents. What the Bible calls The Exodus begins. The Hebrews are free at last.

But Pharaoh goes back on his word. The Hebrews become trapped between Pharaoh's Army and the Red Sea. Once again, Moses's staff comes to the rescue. It's the most awesome display of power in the Old Testament. Moses uses his staff to part the Red [Music] Sea. The Hebrews [Music] escape, and Pharaoh's Army is drowned by the returning [Music] waters. But if the Hebrews thought they were safe, they were wrong. The wilderness is scorching and arid. They face death through dehydration. But then Moses uses his divine staff to miraculously bring water gushing from a rock. [Music] [Applause] The Bible says that Moses and the Israelites would wander through the wilderness for 40 long years. Only then finally do they come through Jordan to the very edge of the promised land. But just before he enters it, Moses dies. As for the staff, it vanishes from [Music] history.

For Phillips, the disappearance of this ancient superweapon is one of the great mysteries of the Bible. "Where on earth was the staff of Moses? We don't know what happened to Moses' staff. According to the Bible, we can only assume that it was buried with him. Most people that could afford it were buried with goods in their graves. Israelite graves have grave goods in them: little jugs, they might be a dagger, beads, a necklace, a scarab of some sort." Phillips's task seems clear: find the grave of Moses, and there's every likelihood that he can find the staff. "As I'd written a few books about searching for mysterious graves, I thought, 'Why not Moses? Let's try my hand at finding the grave of Moses.' [Music]"

Phillips begins by assuming that the grave of Moses is surely somewhere near where he died. But where exactly is that? Phillips turns to the Bible. Surely it records where Moses was buried. But the first reference he finds bluntly states that "no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day." Phillips has barely begun his quest, and already he's hit a brick wall. He cannot believe that the burial place of Moses has been forgotten. But there are other places in the Bible that Phillips can look. In the Book of Deuteronomy and the Book of [Music] Numbers, both contain the same promising lead. They talk about the burial place of Aaron, the brother of Moses. "Twice in the Bible, in the books of Numbers and Deuteronomy, it tells us that Moses is buried near his brother Aaron." The text says Aaron was buried on Mount Horeb. Surely the brothers must have been buried close together. Now, presumably, Moses has to be somewhere near Mount Horeb. Critically, Phillips knows exactly where Mount Horeb [Music] is. To find the staff, he needs to get to Jordan. [Music]

Phillips drives from the capital, Amman, south into the desert. The mountain where Aaron is said to be buried, Mount [ __ ], is also known as Jebel Harun. It dominates the skyline over Jordan's most famous ruins: the Rose City of Petra. "Petra is one of the great wonders of the world. Fabulous, wonderful temples and tombs into this red sandstone, and it's a secret place. It's hidden away. You have to go down the Siq, this narrow gorge, to reach you." These amazing sandstone structures were built by a civilization known as the Nabataeans. They date from the 3rd century BC, around a millennium after the life of Moses. Phillips is soon struck by the sheer immensity of his task. "The site is huge. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack." Phillips starts by looking for any features in the landscape that link this place to Moses. [Music]

Suddenly, Phillips comes across Wadi Musa. It means "the Valley of Moses." There are Arabic traditions about Moses and the Israelites being there, that Petra did play a role in the story of the wandering years between Egypt and the promised land. So Phillips could indeed be following in the footsteps of Moses. But are there any more landmarks that tie this place to the stories of Moses [Music] themselves? A little further on, Phillips comes across a holy spring. It's called the Ain Musa, "the Spring of Moses," and it's said to be where Moses struck his staff against a rock to create a miraculous [Music] spring so that the Israelites didn't die of thirst while they're wandering in the [Music] desert. But despite being close, he is on the right track. Philip still hasn't found anything that's like a Hebrew grave. He needs a more obvious clue, like a memorial stone. But how would he know it if he found it?

Phillips goes back to the story of the staff. At will, Moses could turn it into a snake. That was his trademark. Maybe he should be looking for symbols of a snake at the foot of Mount Horeb. Phillips looks again at the Bible's reference to the burial of Moses. He finds a detail he hadn't spotted before. Deuteronomy states that Moses was buried "over against Beth-peor." Beth-peor means, literal translation, "the house of the snake," but it can also be used to mean "place of" rather than just "house." So Beth-peor actually means "the place of the snake." The Book of Numbers is even more promising. It says that when the Israelites were in the wilderness, Moses built a magical icon of a snake, and Moses, with the power of God, has power over this creature. He scours the ancient valley searching for images of a snake. And then, in the shadow of Mount [ __ ], Phillips finds an extraordinary structure: a massive statue, and it's shaped like a coiled snake. "I was standing, as far as I was concerned, at the very place where Moses was buried. And the Bible says that to this day, no man shall know the place where Moses's sepulchre lies. And there are... I was at it. It had to be somewhere in that area. I was absolutely thrilled. It was the high point of my whole life."

Phillips looks around for signs of the grave itself. He's convinced the staff has to be close by. There are intriguing caves all around the snake monument, but Phillips is powerless to investigate, never mind excavate. Petra is Jordan's national treasure. He'll be in serious trouble if he damages the fragile [Music] sandstone. It's a frustrating end to his quest. Phillips feels he's closer than anyone else has ever been to locating the grave of Moses. The mythical staff remains as elusive as ever. Reluctantly, he returns [Music] home.

Back in Birmingham, Phillips wonders what else he can do to find the staff of Moses. He throws himself back into his books, only to find that his detective work may be questionable. His translation of the key clue, Beth-peor, "the House of the Snake," is not shared by others. "Peor certainly occurs in the Hebrew Bible in the words Baal-peor and Beth-peor, 'House of Peor,' and 'God of Peor.' I don't myself know of any word that means snake that looks anything like peor. Frankly, I'm very skeptical." Phillips can't answer the skeptics. But whether by accident or design, he has identified several features in Petra the tradition links to Moses. If he can't search in the field, he wonders if he can find leads closer to home, in Birmingham's libraries and museums. His native town is a treasure trove of artifacts and historical reports. Did earlier explorers by chance find out about the grave of Moses? One account in particular catches his eye. It has a description of a strange tomb. It's the diaries of two British adventurers, the painter David Roberts and his friend John Cainer. They visited Petra in the 19th century, a journey captured in Roberts's landscapes. "And I discovered that in 1839, they went to excavate various old tombs in Petra, in Jordan." It appears that the men explored behind the snake monument and discovered a tomb. According to Phillips, Cainer and Roberts didn't think the tomb was anything special. But Phillips reads on to see if the explorers found any trace of a body. But no human remains were discovered. Just as Phillips is about to put the report away, he notes that they did find [Music] something. It's not a skeleton; it's better than that: a black-painted wooden staff. "The staff could very well have been the staff that Moses had with which he parted the Red Sea." But what did they do with the staff?

The 3rd of July 2000. It's six months since Phillips first set off on a quest to find the staff of Moses. Now, thanks to Roberts and Cainer's reports of Petra, at last, he's picked up a scent. It's now a matter of seeing where the trail takes him. He starts to put together the pieces of the puzzle to try and trace what happened to the staff. "It appears that Cainer does bring the staff back to England, but it doesn't stay with Cainer for long." Philip says the staff falls into the hands of John Wilson, a collector of antiquities. Phillips believes that Wilson then sells the staff on to the Earl of Devon. He keeps it at his estate at Powderham Castle in the southwest of England. Then, in early 1912, the staff is sold again, this time to a Mr. Stanley May, an American collector of antiquities. "According to the diary of Lady Devon at that time, an American businessman and friend of the family by the name of Stanley May came to stay and had a considerable interest in a number of the artifacts that Lord Devon possessed, and one of the artifacts that he let him have was this staff." Phillips wonders if his research is right, and the rod found in Petra is the staff of Moses, then maybe it is no longer in England. It could have been taken to [Music] America.

Phillips now starts to trace what happened to Stanley May. It seems that on the 10th of April 1912, May takes the staff and his other train measures and boards a ship bound for the United States. "Stanley May was traveling with his brother Richard and with his sister Lily Odell, and she was traveling with her son Jack May. And his party boarded a ship at Southampton bound for New York. And there people would have been milling around, lots of crew getting ready, lots of stores being loaded, and lots of passengers going up the gangway to board the vessel. They booked three cabins adjoining each other in first class on ticket number 84, which cost in today's money £7,000." Phillips has now traced the staff all the way from Petra in 1839 to Southampton in 1912. But then Phillips makes a quite extraordinary discovery. "This is the ship's first [Music] journey, but also its last. [Applause]" Unfortunately for Stanley May, the ship which he had chosen to travel on was the Titanic. Phillips's discovery begs an awful possibility: the staff is at the bottom of the [Music] ocean. "When I traced the staff to the Titanic and knew where the Titanic ended up, I thought, 'That's it. I've traced it so far, and it's at the bottom of the [Music] Atlantic, and that's it, gone.' I was, I don't know, devastated. [Music] [Music]"

Phillips now faces a new question: what happened to the May family? Did they survive, and did they have the staff with [Music] them? Hoping against all hope, Phillips checks the records. He knows the odds are low. Of the more than 2,000 people on the Titanic, two-thirds drowned, and only 700 survivors were picked up by the rescue ship [Music] Carpathia. The May family is not mentioned in the list of survivors. For Phillips, it feels like the end of the road. [Music] But he is not done with the Titanic. He turns to the list of the dead and notices something strange. There is no record of the May family amongst the dead either. Were they not on board? Incredibly, the Mays, like ghosts, somehow escaped the freezing tragedy of the [Music] Atlantic. What was going [Music] on?

Phillips discovers that the May family were not on board when the ship sank. "Well, incredibly luckily, Stanley May was in fact not bound for New York himself. Although the Titanic was, they disembarked at Queenstown because it was their intention to have a week's driving touring holiday in southern [Music] Ireland." Stanley May and the famous staff had narrowly avoided an icy [Music] demise. So where was the staff now? Phillips can't quite believe the turn of events. The survival of the staff is a miracle worthy of the Bible. The staff had survived. It wasn't at the bottom of the Atlantic. "What I had to do next is to find out what the May family did with [Music] it."

Phillips is firmly back on the trail. A year after the Titanic disaster, it appears that May sells the staff to Edward Erton, a distinguished British archaeologist. But Erton dies in 1940. His artifacts are packed and shipped away to New [Music] York. They are gifted to the Metropolitan Museum. Maybe the staff is in America after all. But Phillips reads on and believes that some artifacts go [Music] elsewhere. One item does not cross the Atlantic; it stays in England. A priestly staff. Phillips is astonished to discover where the staff ends [Music] up: in Birmingham [Music] Museum. "So I raced, literally, down the stairs, out the door, across the courtyard, seeing the library from the museum, up the stairs, and into the Egyptian [Music] Gallery. It was, it was the staff that was found next to the snake monument in the 1830s. [Music] And it was still there on public display. I mean, if I was right, and all my research was correct, which I believed it was, then I was looking at the staff that, according to the Bible, Moses had used to part the Red [Music] Sea."

"Astonished is not the word I would use. Knocked out is probably closer to it." The staff is a thing of beauty: 135 cm long, 2 cm wide, and painted black with white [Music] hieroglyphics. But is it really the staff of Moses? Before anything else, Phillips must first translate the inscription. It's not written in Hebrew, but in Egyptian hieroglyphics. That's when the doubts creep in. Phillips finds that the hieroglyphics say the staff belongs to the butler or steward of the Pharaoh's daughter, a man named Thutmose. "The inscription made no reference to Moses at all. It referred to Thutmose, an Egyptian. It couldn't be the staff of Moses after all." "Having read the inscription on the staff, it's perfectly clear that the staff belongs to, um, somebody called Satmose, who was the butler of a royal princess." It looks like a terrible [Music] blow.

But why then was this staff found in a grave behind a snake monument, by the Spring of Moses, in the Valley of Moses, in the shadow of Mount [ __ ], where Moses's brother Aaron was buried? "It just doesn't add up." Could there be a case of mistaken identity? Could Moses and Thutmose be one and the same [Music] person? Phillips starts to research the land of Moses's birth, Egypt. The Bible says he was born a Hebrew, and yet his name was a common Egyptian name. "The Egyptian word 'mose' means 'to be born,' and there are many Egyptian names which incorporate that element: Amun-mose, Rameses, and so on, which really means 'the one who is born of the god who is being cited in the name.'" Moses sounds a lot like the Egyptian name Thutmose, as an example. So it seems that Moses was given an Egyptian name. Phillips finds nothing in the Bible to suggest that he was Egyptian. He wonders what else he can find about Moses in other sources. [Music]

Jerusalem, 2 and a half thousand years ago. This is where the story of Moses was written down. But Phillips finds this story was also recorded in the 1st century AD by the Jewish historian Josephus. He writes that Moses wasn't just a prince; he was also commander of Pharaoh's [Music] forces. Turning to Egyptian history, Phillips discovers a commander who fits the bill. "I was looking for a figure that might fit with the character that Josephus described as a general, and there was one in 1360 BC. He was not only a general; he also acted as the steward to the Pharaoh, and his name was Tuthmosis." It could all be pure coincidence, but Phillips finds an even more direct parallel between Moses and Tuthmosis. The clue is in the story of The Exodus. Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt across the Red Sea and into the Sinai Wilderness. For Phillips, it's the timing of The Exodus that's critical. Many Bible scholars agree that it occurred in the middle of the 14th century [Music] BC. Amazingly, Phillips discovers that Tuthmosis may have left Egypt too, and at exactly the same time in history. Phillips finds the evidence in a tomb he believes was prepared for Tuthmosis. "The Tomb of Tuthmosis, the steward to the Pharaoh Amunhotep IV, was found by the Italian archaeologist Giovanni Belzoni in the Valley of the Kings. According to Phillips, Belzoni noticed that the tomb did not contain the body of Tuthmosis." "Phillips's interpretation of Belzoni's finds is controversial. Giovanni Belzoni most certainly did not find the tomb of Prince Tuthmose. Belzoni has left an extremely good account of his excavations, and we know exactly what tombs he found, and a Prince Tuthmose was certainly not amongst them. People who say that Tuthmose's tomb hasn't been found are correct in as much as the body of Tuthmose buried in his tomb has not been found. What has been found is a tomb that had been prepared for him."

For Phillips, the empty tomb of Tuthmosis is a telling clue. "The discovery of a tomb which was prepared for a person of very high status, which was never used, it was never robbed, is a sure indicator that the person had been disgraced in some way, probably exiled." Phillips wonders if perhaps Tuthmosis turned against the Egyptian gods. Did he drop "Thoth" – the moon god – from his name and instead, as plain Moses, embrace the god of the Israelites? [Music] The dating of Tuthmosis's vanishing act is 1360 BC. For many, the same time as the Exodus. For Phillips, that is too much of a coincidence. "There's no definitive proof that Tuthmosis actually led the Israelites to [Music] freedom, but what there is is pretty convincing evidence that their flight to freedom did take place at exactly the same time as he disappears from history." For Phillips, it all makes sense. Both men grew up in the Royal House. Both men were military commanders. Both men vanished from Egypt at the same time. "They have to be one and the same person. When I realized, I was [Music] overwhelmed."

Phillips is convinced that the staff in Birmingham Museum is the staff of Moses, but few Egyptologists share his confidence. "There was a prince, Tuthmose, who was an officer in the army. However, that 'mose' was an extremely common name during the 18th Dynasty. There were four pharaohs of that name, a number of princes, and various nobles and other commanders as well. So it's often possible to mistake one individual for one or more others. I quite expect many people who are trained Egyptologists to be very critical of my theory as a whole, but what I've tried to do is to look at things from an overall perspective." Phillips is so convinced of his discovery, he tries to enlist the support of others. He approaches the current custodians of the staff, Birmingham Museum, but they too are unconvinced by Phillips's claims. "The curators of Birmingham Museum now will obviously not endorse the fact that this is the staff of Moses. That's fine, but unfortunately, they have no records really pertaining to that staff going back much earlier than 1950." The museum does admit that the staff's early history is unclear. In theory, it could be a Victorian forgery. It could have been that Roberts and Cainer just made the whole thing up. Maybe they didn't even go to Petra or Egypt or anywhere else with all the artifacts they came back with and sold to people.

Phillips wants nothing more than to establish the truth of the staff, one way or another. He wants a radiocarbon test to determine the age of the wood. "If the carbon dating came up with a central date of around about 1360, 1350 BC, I think people would have to sit up and take notice that this very well could be the staff that parted the Red Sea." Until such a time as a carbon-14 test is carried out, many Egyptologists will remain critical of Phillips's claim. "The assertions which have been made over this, as far as I can tell, based partly on misinterpreting what some Egyptologists have said and on evidence which, as far as I can make out, doesn't even exist. It's been made up." But if he's right, and this staff does date back to 1350 BC, just maybe this museum has one of the most prized relics in the world. "If I was to be asked the question, 'Have you found the staff of Moses?' my heartfelt answer would be, 'Yes.'" To some, the adventures of this staff seem almost as surprising as those of the biblical staff of [Music] Moses. Maybe it still has more surprises in store. [Music] [Music]