This account harmonizes the passages. It does require that we accept that the Hebrews are wandering aimlessly in the wilderness, sometimes going in circles, sometimes backtracking.

To me, this is not much to accept. I’d expect that kind of journey given that they’re wandering around for 40 years to make a 1 month trip. Indeed, I’m not sure it would be possible to make sojourn they made in forty years without doing a lot of aimless walking in circles, backtracking etc.

The implication is that we don’t know where Moserah and Mount Hor are, but because Aaron is said to have died at both of them they must be in the same place.

Given the reason for thinking that the Bible has Aaron die in two different places outlined in my previous comment (admittedly not a decisive reason, but a reason nevertheless), I’d prefer a counter-argument based on some extra-biblical evidence.

That said, I agree that this isn’t the strongest claim of biblical error, and am starting to think that it should be recast as something like “Did Aaron die before or after the Israelites went to Jotbathah?” Perhaps I’ll post that as a closely related problem.

Perhaps there is some dispute about the location of Mount Hor. Could it be that the dispute is over a distance of .4 miles? If so, the alleged error is still a non-starter.

I think that the case for this being a discrepancy rests on whether we see the journey in Deuteronomy from Beeroth-bene-jaakan to Moserah to Gudgodah to Jotbathah as the same as the journey in Numbers from Moseroth to Bene-jaakan to Horhaggidgad to Jotbathah.

The direction of the first leg is reversed, and there are some differences in place names (Moserah/Moseroth and Gudgodah/Horhaggidgad), but these are sometimes seen as parallel accounts.

If they are parallel accounts, then Deuteronomy kills off Aaron at the beginning of this journey while Numbers continues the journey and then kills him off later.

If they aren’t parallel accounts, then saying that Mount Hor was at Moserah seems fine as a harmonisation absent any geographical data to the contrary.

Moseroth coordinates: 30.317396,35.407152
Mount Hor coordinates: 30.31667, 35.4

Use the ruler tool in Google Earth to see that they’re about .4 miles apart, and there’s a broad flat area between them. The Israelites might have camped in that area.

One place could have two names, or the mountain could be located in a region called Moserah.

Or some explanation along these lines?