Amateur thinks he has traced Moses' steps

Amateur thinks he has traced Moses' steps

By ROBERT UNRUH

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (February 5, 1999 9:49 a.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Scenes from the life and times of Bob Cornuke:

Egyptian hieroglyphics of cattle on stone slabs oddly out of place in the Arabian desert. Soldiers with guns. The granite top of a security-fenced mountain blackened by flames. Millennium-old local stories about a visit from the Hebrew nation when Moses was its leader.

Cornuke is not a movie scriptwriter. He heads a foundation, Bible Archaeology, Search and Expeditions, that hunts down sites of biblical importance.

"We're (taught) that this is myth and legend," said Cornuke, who acknowledged he was looking for fun when he got involved in his first biblical explorations with Apollo 15 astronaut Jim Irwin.

Irwin's moon trip proved a religious revelation after which he retired and hunted for Noah's Ark.

"To me, this was adventure; maybe we'd find something," Cornuke said.

Previously, he had pursued many careers: police SWAT team member, Washington lobbyist, real estate agent.

But a literal mountaintop experience changed him, leaving him to conclude the Bible is "100 percent historically true." He told himself: "Morally editing it to fit my lifestyle was over."

The change came during a clandestine visit to a fenced-off mountain in Saudi Arabia, where he and fellow explorer Larry Williams discovered what experts consider the original Mount Sinai, from which, the Bible says, God delivered the Ten Commandments into Moses' hands.

"When I stood on those scorched rocks, it was like a floodgate opening in my life. My life was changed in that 10-15 minutes," Cornuke said.

He dedicated himself to finding other archaeological support for the Bible. "To make a decision" about God, he said, "you need to have all the information available."

On today's maps, Mount Sinai is on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. But Cornuke says there are dozens of references in the Old Testament that say the Hebrew nation, escaping from the Egyptian Pharaoh, "went out of" Egypt before reaching the mountain.

He and Williams, using the literal directions in the New King James Bible, traced the route of the fleeing nation, putting the crossing of the Red Sea at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, locating the bitter springs of Marah, the separate site of 12 springs and 70 palms, and Jabal al Lawz in Saudi Arabia, which they believe to be the biblical Mount Sinai.

There, they found an altar that they concluded matched one described in Exodus 24, boundary markers described in Exodus 19, a split rock described in Exodus 17, and a cave described in 1 Kings 19.

They discovered evidence of what apparently was a huge lake below the mountain in a region that gets one-half inch of rain every 10 years, which they consider evidence of the story in which Moses struck a rock and water gushed out onto the desert, saving the Hebrews.

Egyptian hieroglyphics on stones at Jabal al Lawz showed bovine animals, which are not indigenous there, and locals repeat stories learned from earlier generations about a visit from Moses.

Penetrating the security perimeter at the mountain, they also found the top covered with granite rocks that had been melted by an exterior heat source, because while the exteriors were burned smooth as glass, the interiors of boulders were untouched.

In the Exodus story, God descended on Mount Sinai in flames and smoke like a furnace.

"The visible evidence is quite overwhelming: The location of the true Mount Sinai has been discovered in the ancient land of Midian, known today as Saudi Arabia," said Dr. Roy Knutson, another explorer who also has spent time on digs at prominent archaeological ruins.

Cornuke and Williams' discovery is the subject of a video, "The Search for the Real Mount Sinai."

Bill McCartney, the former football coach who founded the Promise Keepers Christian ministry, called it "the most powerful thing I've ever seen."

Jeffrey Katzenberg, whose DreamWorks studio produced the recent animated hit "Prince of Egypt," wrote in an endorsement of the videotape, "There really isn't anything quite like standing on the very ground where dramatic and tumultuous events have taken place."

Cornuke and Williams both seek further investigation by experts, but doubt whether the Saudi government will allow it. Cornuke has been arrested on allegations of espionage during his expeditions.

He is now working on an expedition concerning Noah's Ark. He also said he has clues to the whereabouts of the Ark of the Covenant, the gold and acacia wood box containing the Ten Commandments.

While some archaeologists decry the involvement of amateurs in their work, Ken Durham, professor of Old Testament history at Colorado Christian University, notes the Dead Sea Scrolls were found by a shepherd boy.

He said the impact of the expeditions could be immeasurable.

Proving the authenticity of particular events in the Bible "ultimately has a bearing on everything in it," Durham said. "If it's not historically reliable, it's just not reliable.

"It's like a witness in a courtroom."