Alleged Discovery of ‘Real’ Mt. Sinai Could Change the Middle East Forever
Actually the miracle about Moses hitting a rock with his staff to get water is the easiest of the Exodus miracles to explain and the only one we can be pretty sure actually happened. According to the Bible Moses lived for many years among the nomads of the Sinai, so would have been familiar with the water resources of the area. There is an aquifer in the Sinai that is made of friable rock. The modern day bedouins break it up with hammers and get a temporary flow of water from it. It’s quite conceivable that in the Bronze Age nomads also knew of this aquifer and got water from it the same way. Now filter that scene through the eyes of somebody with a Bronze Age mind who spent all his life beside the Nile and is incredibly thirsty in the middle of this deathly desert. Suddenly Moses is able to get water out of rocks. The Bronze Age mind would remember it as a miracle.
