The Red Sea Parting "An Explanation"

Study seeks to explain the parting of the Red Sea

The biblical account of the miraculous parting of
the Red Sea has amazed and captivated people for
thousands of years. New research released today
could give a scientific grounding to the story.

The study, published today in the online journal
PLoS ONE, finds that strong, persistent winds could
offer a physical explanation for the event, which was
made eternally famous by Charlton Heston in the
epic film The Ten Commandments.

Lead author Carl Drews, a scientist at the National
Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.,
used computer simulations to recreate what might
have happened that day some 3,000 years ago.

"The simulations match fairly closely with the
account in Exodus," says Drews.

As recorded in Exodus 14, "Moses stretched out his
hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove
the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land."

This allowed the Israelites to escape pursuit by the
Egyptians, who were killed once the water closed up
again.

Drews' simulations found that a strong east wind,
blowing at a constant speed of about 63 mph for 12
hours, could have pushed water back at a bend
where an ancient river is thought to have merged
with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean. Such
an event occurred in 1882, when a British Army
general reported a strong easterly wind that pushed
the water away on Lake Menzaleh, on the west side
of the Suez Canal.

With the water pushed back into both waterways, a
land bridge would have opened at the bend, Drews
says, enabling people to walk across exposed mud
flats to safety. As soon as the wind died down, the
waters would have rushed back in.

Drews says it is possible for people to walk in winds
as strong as 63 mph winds, which is partly why he
chose that speed for the simulation.

The research was based on a reconstruction of the
likely locations and depths of Nile delta waterways,
which have shifted considerably over time.

Other previous studies have looked into scientific
explanations for this event. One proposed that a
tsunami may have caused the seas to part. But Drews
says such an event would not have caused the
gradual overnight divide of the waters as described in the Bible.

"People have always been fascinated by this Exodus
story, wondering if it comes from historical facts,"
Drews says. "What this study shows is that the
description of the waters parting indeed has a basis
in physical laws."

Ken Ham, president and CEO of the Creation
Museum, in Petersburg, Ky., needs no scientific
explanation: "The parting of the Red Sea was a
miracle," he wrote in an e-mail. "It was an
extraordinary act of God. Yet, God used a force of
nature — wind — to bring about this miracle. But
there is no need to come up with a naturalistic
explanation of a supernatural event."

USA TODAY