Derec

Ron Wyatt might be dead, but his disciples are alive and kicking. The most recent claim from a fundy concerns a documentary "Exodus Revelaed" (2001) that she claims shows "evidence" of Exodus. However, it is nothing but rehashed Ron Wyatt nonsense. So I wanted to ask if there is a web site or some other resource debunking Ron Wyatt's Exodus claims.

The documentary (in abridged form) can be seen on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcCC0...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bJ5J...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLLhB...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0qtu...eature=related

Toto

Last thread on Wyatt lists this site: Tentmaker: a great Christian scam

Toto

More on Ron Wyatt: Coming this Fall. . . by By Edward T. Babinski

If you scroll down about half way (or search), there is a section entitled "DETAILED DOCUMENTATION OF WYATT'S QUESTIONABLE AND FRAUDULENT CLAIMS AND ACTIVITIE." I think this is what you are looking for.

Derec

Ok I think I see two things that I have seen not explicitly raised before:

First is the Nuweiba peninsula on the Sinai side of the Gulf of Aqaba:


The claim is that this is the location where Egyptians caught up with the Israelites and the sea was parted. They point out that this sandy peninsula is of sufficient size to hold 2 million people. It is also pointed out that the seabed in this area is higher and flatter than other areas of the gulf creating a sort of submerged "land bridge" making it easier to traverse once waters were split.

However, they assume that the topography of the area did not change in 3500 years. In reality both the peninsula and the land bridge were created by sediment being carried by the wadi that is visible in the photo above. 3500 years ago this area would look much different than today. Also any artifacts at the bottom of the gulf would have been buried under many meters of silt.

Which brings me to the second point: the gilded wheel partially buried in improbably little silt:


Lennart Moller offers an explanation that this was a gilded wheel made of wood that decomposed long ago leaving this golden (or electrum) shell. If that was the case, the thickness of this shell cannot have been more than 50 um thick, probably less. It would additionally have been "thinned out" through erosion in the water.
As such it wouldn't have any structural integrity to speak of (think of making a freestanding object out of tin foil) and would have torn and broken up long time ago.
It is much more likely that it is a brass wheel of much more recent provenance that has been discarded from some ship (or one deliberately placed there by Wyatt himself as some of his critics claim). Certainly our fearless Swedish scuba divers did not take a sample of the "gold veneer" for analysis. They didn't even provide any object (like a measuring stick) to gauge the size of the object. To think of it, the video does not even have the real photograph but only a "reconstruction". What's up with that? :huh:

So, what do you guys think of the points I just made?

Treefingers

Since the supposed parting of the sea took place at the Sea of Reeds (Yam Suph is the wording in Hebrew I believe), isn't whatever evidence they have from the Red Sea irrelevant anyways?

Derec

Yes, yam suph can be translated as "Sea of Reeds", but then again there is a passage in 1 Kings 9:26 which states:

The Hebrew phrase translated here as "Red Sea" is again yam suph and Ezion-Geber lies on Gulf of Aqaba, and not on some lake that could be described as "Sea of Reeds".

Anyone have any idea about that?