Scientists Suggest Possible Explanation for Biblical Parting of the Sea

One of the most famous passages in the Bible is the miraculous parting of the Red Sea/Sea of Reeds by Moses when the Egyptian army is pursuing the Israelites:

¹⁹ Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, ²⁰ coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long.

²¹ Then 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. The waters were divided, ²² and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
Source: Bible Gateway NIV

Through the past few hundred years there have been many attempts to explain this event in a rational, non-religious manner. That is, some people feel that if the event happened there must be a logical explanation for how it happened. Miracles can still be miracles even if they have rational explanations (after all, “timing is everything” in the realm of the miraculous). But then, we don’t really seem to have a good definition for what constitutes a miracle.

But let’s look at a recent study that seeks to explain how the waters might have been parted through a process that was rational and acceptable to modern science:

The new study, by Drews and CU oceanographer Weiqing Han, found that a reef would have had to be entirely flat for the water to drain off in 12 hours. A more realistic reef with lower and deeper sections would have retained channels that would have been difficult to wade through. In addition, Drews and Han were skeptical that refugees could have crossed during nearly hurricane-force winds.

Reconstructing ancient topography

Studying maps of the ancient topography of the Nile delta, the researchers found an alternative site for the crossing about 75 miles north of the Suez reef and just south of the Mediterranean Sea. Although there are uncertainties about the waterways of the time, some oceanographers believe that an ancient branch of the Nile River flowed into a coastal lagoon then known as the Lake of Tanis. The two waterways would have come together to form a U-shaped curve.

An extensive analysis of archeological records, satellite measurements, and current-day maps enabled the research team to estimate the water flow and depth that may have existed 3,000 years ago. Drews and Han then used a specialized ocean computer model to simulate the impact of an overnight wind at that site.

They found that a wind of 63 miles an hour, lasting for 12 hours, would have pushed back waters estimated to be six feet deep. This would have exposed mud flats for four hours, creating a dry passage about 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide. The water would be pushed back into both the lake and the channel of the river, creating barriers of water on both sides of newly exposed mud flats.

As soon as the winds stopped, the waters would come rushing back, much like a tidal bore. Anyone still on the mud flats would be at risk of drowning.
Source: Science Daily

This study introduces an interesting idea: that the exodus took place much farther north than most people assume — and that it lay close to the Mediterranean Sea. That actually makes sense for a number of reasons, not the least being that there are really no incentives for a group of people fleeing Egypt on foot to head toward the Red Sea.

However, the Red Sea hypothesis cannot be fully discounted (yet) because there is growing evidence that all modern human groups from outside Africa descend from a small group of warlike humans who migrated from east Africa (what is now Eritrea on the Horn of Africa) to southern Yemen, and from there spread out across the world. These humans took the L3 haplogroup of mitoChondrial DNA out of Africa.

According to studies of the climate and geography of the region about 70,000 years ago, the mouth of the Red Sea was narrower and shallower. A group of as few as 150 people might have crossed over and begun expanding into new lands along the seacoast, following the shoreline until they reached what is now the Persian Gulf.

This ancient migration route suggests that migrating groups did cross the Red Sea; so if the ancient could do it, why not the fleeing Israelites?

However, a rational explanation for a parting of the Red Sea has so far eluded scientists, whereas a wind-driven parting of a smaller body of water (a reed-infested body of water) is more palatable to science.

Biblical teachers don’t need science’s vindication to discuss the Exodus. Nor do they really invite rational explanations of miraculous events. But science offers a lot of validation to the Bible in terms of archaeological discovery, linguistic analysis, and verifying the movements and placements of peoples. In a way, studies like these attempts to rationally understand the Exodus event (which still leaves a few unsolved mysteries) do seem to bring science closer to understanding the nature of God.

As I have said many times, if God exists he is completely natural. It is wrong for scientists to dismiss God and matters of faith as belonging to “the realm of the supernatural” because that is merely a disingenuous way of saying “God isn’t real”. An atheist may say that on the basis of his faith in his disbelief in God, but a scientist has no scientific or rational excuse for dismissing God as supernatural.

There is no science in seeking either to explain away miracles as unplanned natural events or to validate them through convoluted philosophical arguments. The historian is only concerned with what happened, how it happened, and why it happened. A science that seeks to rewrite history for the sake of unwriting belief is no science at all; but history, as we know, is written by the victors.

Those other aspects of the Exodus story that we cannot yet explain include the mysterious Pharoah and his drowned army. There is no record in Egyptian archives of such a loss. Nor is there any record in Egyptian archives of a slave exodus. However, verified Egyptian history does place Semitic peoples in Egypt around that time (notably the Hyksos, who conquered Egypt) and some archaeological evidence has been brought to light showing that Hebrew was indeed spoken/used in Egypt in the middle of the second millennium BCE.

Also, Egyptian Pharoahs were known to try to erase history by purging records wherever they could. We’ve seen plenty of evidence of Egyptian rulers trying to erase the memories of their predecessors. Hence, a humiliating loss of slaves does not have to be mentioned in Egyptian archives. The Biblical account might be all that survives of whatever contemporary records there may once have been — records written by the Israelites, who may well have believed their Egyptian pursuers were drowned. But what if they didn’t drown? What if they were simply overwhelmed by the water and managed to survive? Who would want to carve on the walls of their tomb, “I, Pharoah, survived the crushing waves of the Sea of Reeds when the Habiru slaves fled”?

The story of the exodus raises many questions and we really don’t have the answers to those questions. They may never be answered. Or perhaps the answers will emerge somewhere in the future. Whatever those answers reveal, I am pretty certain they will be rational explanations, even if they prove the existence of God.