The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert before invading Canaan
(Numbers 33)

Not likely. For more than a century, religious archaeologists have been ploughing through the Sinai desert, looking for evidence of the Israeli presence. They found none.

Particularly disappointing is the lack of evidence at Kadesh Barnea, a place where the Israelites are supposed to have lived for 38 years (Dt 2:14).

Usually, archaeologists using modern techniques are able to find evidence of even small bands of nomadic shepherds who camped in the desert for a single night. But at Kadesh Barnea, no evidence of 600,000 Israelites camping for 38 years was found.

(Some Christian websites will tell you there indeed is a ruin at Kadesh Barnea, but that’s a much more recent city.)

Numbers 33 features a long list of about 40 places where the Israelites are supposed to have set up camp. Of these sites, only Ezion Geber (33:35-36) yielded evidence that humans were present there in biblical times.

But Ezion Geber was only inhabited in the Iron Age, hundreds of years after the Israelites had crossed the desert.

Finkelstein and Silberman: "The bible unearthed" (2003)