God struck Egypt with ten plagues
(Exodus 7-12).
To freshen up your memory a bit: in Exodus, Moses and his brother Aaron try to urge the pharao of Egypt to let the Israelites go. And to show they mean it, Yahweh, Moses and his brother Aaron unleash ten ugly plagues:
| 1. The Nile turned into blood |
| 2. Frogs pillaged the land |
| 3. Mosquitos attacked |
| 4. There was a plague of flies |
| 5. Disease infected the livestock |
| 6. People suffered from terrible boils |
| 7. There was a hail storm |
| 8. There was a locust plague |
| 9. There were three days of darkness |
| 10. The firstborn died |
Perhaps the plagues echo the vague memory of the volcanic outburst on the Greek island Thera, around 1450 BC. This would have caused the Nile to turn red with volcanic ash and the skies to darken with soot. So many babies and children would have died in the aftermath, that it would have seemed as if all the firstborn died.
Another ‘natural’ explanation is that there was an outbreak of red algae bloom. This would have reddened the Nile and chased the frogs on land. So many fish would have died that there were outbreaks of diseases and famine.
But to be honest, both explanations aren’t very credible. They don’t explain all the plagues. And more importantly, there isn’t any other, physical evidence that Egypt was struck by a horrible natural disaster. It isn’t on the hieroglyphs, and its traces haven’t been found in the Egyptian soil.
That leaves us with the second explanation: that the plagues never really happened at all, and that the story is all made up.
Heretical as that option may sound - theologists and historians have pointed out that there’s good evidence for it.
First, the plagues have obviously been tinkered with. The mosquitos and the boils have been inserted later. In earlier versions of Exodus, there were only eight plagues. In Psalm 78, there are six plagues (Ps 78:43-51); and in Psalm 105, there are seven of them (Ps 105:26-36).
Finally, there’s evidence the plagues weren’t always in the bible. Bible scholars have pointed out that older biblical verses don’t mention them. They simply state that the Israelites left Egypt, just like that. See for example Ezekiel 20, where the Lord says: “Therefore I led them out of Egypt and brought them into the desert.” (Ez 20:10)
What's more, the plagues are presented as a nifty literary style figure. The plagues have been organised in pairs, and in triplets. The pairs are:
| Nile + Frogs | Water |
| Mosquitos + Flies | Air |
| Livestock plagues + Boils | Disease |
| Hail + Locusts | Crops |
| Darkness + Death of the firstborn | Death, the underworld |
The triplets have a different rhythm. They go 1,4,7 – 2,5,8 – 3,6,9. They are as follows:
| Nile + Flies + Hail | Moses and Aaron warn the pharao by the Nile |
| Frogs + Livestock plagues + Locusts | Moses and Aaron warn the pharao in his palace |
| Mosquitos + Boils + Death of the firstborn | Moses and Aaron don’t warn the pharao at all |
This would symbolically stress the glory of the Lord, which surpasses the common world (the Nile) and that of its rulers (the palace). After all, in both the bible and in Egyptian mythology, three is a holy number.
All in all, such literary rhythms clearly indicate that the plague story is man-made. It is artificial. Some very clever writer wrote it, thought well about it, and deliberately bestowed it with religious symbolism.
A third important clue that the plagues never really happened historically but were made up, is that many plagues closely resemble other plague stories from other, older myths.
The river Nile turning into blood, for example, seems a copy from the Papyrus Ipuwer, and old Egyptian myth:
Exodus uses almost exactly the same words:
So all in all, it seems likely that the biblical plagues didn’t really happen. Most likely, they were inserted only later, to add drama to the Exodus-story. It’s a beautiful myth. But a myth it is.
