Page 30 - Advanced Biblical Backgrounds Student Textbook

been taught to worship God alone. The wilderness wandering lives in Jewish culture as both an event
and as a fundamental conceptual foundation for approaching God and their future. Much like the
exodus, the wilderness wandering has served as a conceptual foundation within Judaism for years. It
shaped how they, and by extension much of the early church, perceived their relationship with God.

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There were likely between two to two and a half million people Israelites that left Egypt. According to
the author of Hebrews, these people travelled “by faith” (Heb. 11:29). The people of God, then,
ultimately trusted God to provide for them. Vos further highlights that the people had been living for
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400 years in permanent villages. In light of this, the people were not prepared in any meaningful sense
for this journey. It was an act of trust to pack up quickly and leave everything they had ever known for
the land God had promised to His people.

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This wandering was a period of great significance in the life of Jewish nation. Indeed, we can say that
this was the period that the Israelites truly became a nation. God specifically established them as his
people by giving them the law, the priesthood, the sacrificial system, and the tabernacle.

Crossing the Red Sea

On 24 October 2014, the web site World News Daily Report (WNDR) published an article reporting that
chariot wheels and the bones of horses and men had been discovered at the bottom of the Red Sea,
thereby supposedly proving archaeological proof of the Biblical narrative about the escape of the
Israelites from the Egyptians. Here is an excerpt from that article:

Egypt’s Antiquities Ministry announced this morning that a team of underwater archaeologists had
discovered that remains of a large Egyptian army from the 14th century BC, at the bottom of the Gulf of
Suez, 1.5 kilometers offshore from the modern city of Ras Gharib. The team was searching for the
remains of ancient ships and artefacts related to Stone Age and Bronze Age trade in the Red Sea area,
when they stumbled upon a gigantic mass of human bones darkened by age.

The scientists lead by Professor Abdel Muhammad Gader and
associated with Cairo University’s Faculty of Archaeology,
have already recovered a total of more than 400 different
skeletons, as well as hundreds of weapons and pieces of
armor, also the remains of two war chariots, scattered over an
area of approximately 200 square meters. They estimate that
more than 5000 other bodies could be dispersed over a wider
area, suggesting that an army of large size who have perished
on the site.
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49 Voss, Nelson's New Illustrated Bible Manners and Customs, 83.
50 Ibid., 83.

51 Ibid.
52 https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/chariot-wheels-found-bottom-red-sea/

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