THE MIRACLES OF EXODUS Colin Humphreys, Continuum Books, London and New York, 2006. Paperback, 370 pages, £8.99. ISBN 0-8264-8026-8

Many readers of Freemasonry Today will by now have experienced the ancient sites of Egypt and the Sinai peninsula. For me, the visit to the Sea of Reeds, the Exodus wilderness, St. Catherine and the early morning climb to the adjacent peak are still as vivid twenty five years on as they were at the time.
    To be where the ancient Hebrews once were is special. It was just that experience that led Colin Humphreys, who accepts the narrative of the Exodus as describing real events, to question what might be the true sites in which they took place. As a scientist, head of the Rolls Royce University Technology Centre at Cambridge University, he went again to see.
    Humphreys began to wonder whether the present view about some locations could really be correct.
    The usual idea that Moses led his sheep west from Midian to Mount Sinai did not make sense to him for his sheep would have to swim across the Gulf of Aqaba. Even if they went round the head of the Gulf, he asks, what was the point? The pasture in the Sinai Peninsula is very poor and the author has been unable to find any record of Bedouin ever having used that place for feeding their flocks. He notes the Hebrew word achar (Exodus 3,1) as ‘behind’ or ‘beyond’ with no reference to points of the compass - it is possible to interpret Moses’s movements such that Mount Sinai might more likely be east of the Red Sea, in Arabia.
    There is no question of doubting the authenticity of what happened to Moses and the Israelites. Humphreys is trying to understand, with the help of painstaking examination, how one can be even more impressed by the natural explanations of how the plagues of Egypt came about, how the waters rose up to let the people ‘cross the sea’, how bitter water turned sweet, and where the astonishing provision of Manna came from. He carefully plots the route and time taken for the travelling of so large a company of families. His role as the Chairman of Christians in Science in the U.K. must dispel any suggestion that here is a writer who is just debunking Scripture, though tours to this area may need re-routing if his findings are correct.
    Neville Cryer