Professor Barrett opened the next session, “OK, so now Moses has led the Israelites to Mount Sinai. Bethe, ready to go on?” Bethe nodded and went to the lectern, holding a sheaf of papers: “It seems that Mount Jabal Al Lawz or Lodz, in Saudi Arabia, is the ‘real McCoy’ - all those cited books and the Internet are full of photos that seem to satisfy the descriptions in the bible for Mount Sinai. I’ve got them listed:

• “There is a scorched, darkly discolored top in all the photos, yet it is a granite mountain with nothing combustible, not even trees. Climbers say the granite at the top seems to have been molten - which agrees with the Bible’s statement of fire and flame at the top.
• “There’s a cave, as where Moses and Elijah hid their faces to avoid looking at God - local Bedouins call it ‘Elijah’s cave’”;
• “The Bedouin name for the mountain is Jabal Musa, “Mountain of Moses”.
• “Sketches and photos by visitors show broken sections of round stone pillars at the base - which tie in with the twelve pillars that the Bible says Moses erected for the twelve tribes.”
• “There’s a line of stone mounds running around the mountain. They are described as eight to ten feet in diameter and spaced about a third or fourth of a mile apart, curving about both sides of the mountain and separating it from the flat plain. Of course, surrounding the whole area today, is a fourteen foot barbed wire fence, with Arabic signs calling it an Archaeological Site.”
• “There are also two very large stone altars, with petroglyph drawings depicting the uniquely-horned Egyptian Aphis bulls;”
• “One book describes gold dust being found in the soil near a brook - the author claiming it as proof of the biblical story of the Golden Calf, which Moses broke up and had ground into dust which was cast into the brook - then forcing the idolaters to drink of it.”

Lawrence interrupted, “You know, using 21st century facts and logic, these things are really there, so there’s a question - who would have built them in Saudi Arabia, and when, and why: the piles of rocks around the mountain; those altars; and those twelve pillars? Other than as told in the Exodus story of the Bible, can anyone come up with a reasonable, non-biblical, explanation?”

Bethe wasn’t done with her listing, “Wait, there’s something else about the topography - the question of how the large number of Hebrews survived for perhaps a year. Well,” she said, “there is a large flat, well-watered valley just off the base of Mount Jabal Al Laws, which is perfectly suitable for a long encampment for hundreds of thousands of people, even with herds. The valley is 25 miles long and one-and-a-half miles wide, and is even contiguous to a vaster plain, fifteen by seven miles. There is abundant water and vegetation for a multitude, even for a long encampment - and as also for what would be required for Jethro’s herds, tended forty years earlier by the young Moses.”

“Well,” summarized the professor. “It appears that there is topographical consistency with the biblical description of Mount Sinai.

Avi cleared his throat, “As a commentary upon the pervasive power of media propaganda, and the conventional wisdom of what the world believes - rather than truth and fact - are these well-advertised tours of Mount Sinai, taking pilgrims or adventurers to lower Sinai Peninsula, although completely devoid of any topographical attributes of the biblical Mount Sinai. Meanwhile, here is Jabal Al Lawz in Saudi Arabia - with everything the Bible talks about - described in a dozen books and easily seen on the Internet. What a sad reality!” He shook his head, others doing the same..

Sarah laughed. “Well, that puts us in a unique category - more knowledgeable than almost all of the leaders of society - our brain-washed elite - whose erroneous conventional wisdom is that the Bible is essentially only myth! Hah!”

The professor said, “OK, we’re about done with Exodus. I’ll do the wrap-up for the next session.”