1018 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



NAGB EI, HAWA: SOME NICE RED GRANITE BOUEDERS 

 NEARING SINAI 



Egypt makes it certain that he and those 

 about him were well accustomed to writ- 

 ing. They also accept the fact that the 

 Israelites sojourned in Egypt, and that an 

 exodus from there to Palestine took 

 place. 



The duplications and variations in the 

 text of Genesis and Exodus (once the 

 despair of the literalists) are now seen 

 to be "the strongest proofs that written 

 documents were before the editors of the 

 Pentateuch, and that they were so ancient 



and revered that no unification 

 was to be tolerated. This fact 

 itself opens the door for a cor- 

 rection of the figures of the 

 Exodus on exactly the same 

 basis as other figures have been 

 modified in the Old Testament 

 text. Those who have exam- 

 ined the oldest manuscripts of 

 the Bible, and have faced the 

 known difficulties of transmis- 

 sion by copyists and translators 

 through a few centuries, will 

 have little difficulty in accept- 

 ing emendations proposed and 

 forced upon us by incontestable 

 facts from other sources. 



The impressions of the writer, 

 after the most careful thought 

 of the problem of the numbers, 

 is this : To lead any number 

 of people through the Peninsula 

 of Sinai under the circum- 

 stances of the Exodus was one 

 of the greatest undertakings of 

 human history. To have led 

 3,000,000, with their flocks and 

 cattle, was a physical impossi- 

 bility, and would have involved 

 an unbroken series of miracles 

 far beyond the claims of the 

 most ardent supporters of the 

 "miraculous" in the series in 

 which that word has been used 

 and abused. But the writers 

 of the Pentateuch make no 

 such claims as this would cer- 

 tainly involve. The reduction 

 of the numbers, for perfectly 

 justifiable considerations, re- 

 lieves the situation of its most 

 perplexing elements and brings the whole 

 movement well within historical limits 

 without taking one iota from the divinely 

 ordered plan. 



Critics seated thousands of miles away 

 in distance and three thousand years 

 later in time have formulated doubts and 

 queries, have raised imaginary difficulties 

 which vanish into thin air when the ob- 

 servant traveler enters the almost change- 

 less Peninsula of Sinai with the Bible in 

 his hand. Some have gone so far as to 



