Is the Promised Land in Saudi Arabia?

Answer 1

With any such issue, there is a prior question on which you must be clear: What counts as evidence for this case? The answer to this question is going to determine how you resolve the more specific one you posed. It is particularly true for matters touching on religion, that people often base their conclusions on their intuitions, feelings, and speculations, rather than on historical and archeological evidence. The problem is, of course, that you would be asking an objective question and getting a purely subjective response, a response that anyone could have invented. I would suggest that only sound historical documents and unequivocal archeological results can be counted on to give you a correct answer.

So, let's say that there are two possible candidates for the location of the promised land: Palestine (the traditional location) and Saudi Arabia (advocated by a few people, who are not scholars in this discipline). What is the evidence for each? Well, there is much evidence for Palestine as the correct location. In addition to the Hebrew Scriptures, which match up with locations in Palestine foot by foot, there are also historical records from other people that only make sense if Palestine is the correct location. These attestations include several Pharaohs of Egypt (Shishak, for example), kings of Assyria (e.g. Sennacherib), Babylon (Nebuchadnezzar and Nabonidus), and Persia (Cyrus).

On the other hand, the evidence for the location of the promised land in Saudi Arabia is not available. I could have, and perhaps should have, said that there isn't any, but there are some people who call themselves archeologist, but have no credentials as such, who claim to have proof of their assertion. None of them has any formal training in either archeology, biblical studies, or any other field touching the Ancient Near East, and they tout their conclusion, but not what it is based on allegedly. They claim that their evidence is either too important to share with the rest of the world, or was confiscated by some government or or other, the typical excuses people make up when they don't have any evidence. They might as well have said that "the dog ate my evidence."

One more quick point: As soon as someone sets out to clarify something in The Bible, they assume that the Bible is true, at least in this regard, and is their source of data. Then they start to invent various ways in which to "correct" the Bible. That's rather inconsistent from a scientific point of view! By way of comparison, imagine a chemist performing an experiment, resulting in certain results in his test tube, which now constitute his data. If he wants to build a theory, he needs take whatever happened in his test tube into account. But instead, he decides to advocate a theory that has nothing to do with his experimental results and declares his real data (in the test tube) to be irrelevant. He would be a rather sorry scientist, but I'm afraid that the world of people who write on biblical matters is full of such people. This does not make sense. Either you accept the Bible as legitimate source of data, or not.

More specifically then, once you start to look for the location of the promised land, you are giving the Bible credence. But then, if you look for the promised land in Saudi Arabia rather than where the Bible says it is (Palestine), you are not accepting the Bible as true after all, but are acting as though you have superior information (which you don't.) You would be in the same position as that chemist who prefers his own ideas to his results in the test tube.

In short, the idea that the promised land is located in Saudi Arabia simply has no rational support.