This isn’t the first time scientists have tried to explain, in their terms, biblical occurrences. There’s an impulse to study historical events that religious people believe are divinely orchestrated: Noah’s flood, the star of Bethlehem, Jesus walking on water and so on.
A headline on the recent report about the exodus account read: “Moses had help parting the Red Sea.” Any Bible-believer would agree with that without even reading the story. His help was God, they’d say. It’s interesting that the research finds wind responsible for the legendary parting since God’s spirit in the Old Testament is referred to as wind or breath (“Ruach Elohim” in Hebrew).
on a new study that shows wind could have parted the Red Sea and allowed Moses and the Israelites to cross, as recorded in the Bible:
About 3,000 years ago, according to the Book of Exodus, Moses “stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” And then, according to the Bible, the Israelites were free from Pharaoh’s rule.
Fifty-five years ago, Charlton Heston stood in front of a Hollywood mock-up of the Red Sea and commanded the waters to part in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.
Today, Carl Drews, a software engineer with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has parted the waters again — this time with a computer.
Using a digital simulation of a particularly marshy area of the Sinai Peninsula, the researchers found that 63 mph winds could create a “wind set-down,” pushing the water away and forming a land bridge. Once the winds died down, the water would flood back quickly.
This isn’t the first time scientists have tried to explain, in their terms, biblical occurrences. There’s an impulse to study historical events that religious people believe are divinely orchestrated: Noah’s flood, the star of Bethlehem, Jesus walking on water and so on.
A headline on the recent report about the exodus account read: “Moses had help parting the Red Sea.” Any Bible-believer would agree with that without even reading the story. His help was God, they’d say. It’s interesting that the research finds wind responsible for the legendary parting since God’s spirit in the Old Testament is referred to as wind or breath (“Ruach Elohim” in Hebrew).
