ReViews

The Gold of Exodus: The Discovery of the True Mount Sinai

Howard Blum (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998) 364 pp., $25.00 (hardback)

The Search for the Real Mt. Sinai

Video (Monument, CO: Reel Productions, 1998) $24.95

In “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” the swashbuckling archaeologist Indiana Jones defeats the evil Nazis, wins the girl and discovers the Ark of the Covenant. Adventure, religion and sex swirl together to create a marvelously entertaining movie. But, as I tell my children, it never really happened. It is important, as you grow up, to be able to distinguish between fantasy and reality. This distinction sometimes escapes my children, and it certainly escaped the two grown-ups who set out to discover “the Real Mt. Sinai” and who are the subjects of this book and video.

In the mildly engaging book, journalist Howard Blum details how a Wall Street millionaire (Larry Williams) and a former cop (Robert Cornuke), both apparently with too much time on their hands, decided to sneak into Saudi Arabia and discover Mt. Sinai. (The video tells the same story, with some footage of Cornuke and Williams on location.)