The Sea of The Exodus
Although the location of Mount Sinai has been the focus of much curiosity, an examination of the biblical account of the Exodus shows that the location of the sea crossed by the Hebrews is the most crucial piece of the geographical puzzle. The identity of this sea is helpful because it was a recurring landmark in their forty-year journey, being mentioned even in the last year of the event. It also was a boundary marker of the Promised Land (Exodus 23:31).
The ancient Hebrew name for this sea is Yam Suph. For many centuries, it has traditionally been called the “Red Sea,” and its crossing site has been relegated to the northern part of the Gulf of Suez near Egypt (see map below). Over the last century, a number of scholars have proposed that it was the “Reed Sea,” a marshland located on the eastern border of Egypt. However, the evidence for either of these traditions is limited and contradictory. As a consequence, nearly every body of water surrounding the Sinai Peninsula has been proposed as a potential site of the sea crossing.
The meaning of Yam Suph has also been a longstanding conundrum. Some scholars have scrutinized the term, hoping that its correct translation would yield geographical clues about its location. The popular idea found in many Bibles and encyclopedias is that Yam Suph means “Reed Sea.” However, close analysis reveals that “Reed Sea” is not a translation, rather, it is an interpretation that is encumbered with linguistic and geographical contradictions.
Biblically, there are about a half dozen verses that clearly specify a location for Yam Suph at the modern day Gulf of Aqaba. Conversely, there is no single verse that specifies a location in the vicinity of Egypt. However, on the basis of tradition, for a Mount Sinai in the Sinai Peninsula and a sea crossing near Egypt, the Gulf of Aqaba hypothesis has been scorned or ignored. In addition, the Gulf of Aqaba is often assumed to be too deep to have been parted, or too far from Egypt to have been reached by the Hebrews in two or three weeks.
Most of these difficulties stem from preconceptions that are not based on the biblical account. More importantly, the lack of a tradition for the Gulf of Aqaba can be explained by its virtual absence from maps until the 19th century. A prime example is the 1544 representation of the Red Sea by Battista (above). This circumstance is tied to its geographical isolation and the strong reliance on Classical Geography (Greek and Roman), which omitted the Gulf of Aqaba.
In essence, for most of history, Bible scholars never associated Yam Suph with the Gulf of Aqaba because the gulf was missing from their maps!