Moses split up the sea
(Exodus 14:19-31)

Experts agree on one thing: it didn't literally happen like Exodus tells us. The tale is either a greatly exaggerated retelling of some rather innocent event, or it didn’t happen at all.

For one of the most famous stories of mankind, the crossing of the Sea of Reeds is a pretty sloppy piece of prose. Read it, and you’ll notice some strange peculiarities:

The Israelites cross the sea two times (in Exodus 14:22 and 14:29)
The Egyptian army is destroyed twice (14:27-28)
The sea is ‘divided’ but also ‘driven back by a strong east wind’ (14:21)
The Egyptians drown because they were ‘fleeing toward’ the sea (14:27) but also because the water ‘flowed back’ on them (14:28)

The reason for this is that the story was written by at least two authors. By meticulously sifting through the Hebrew texts, theologists even have figured out which is which.

What they’ve discorvered is truly mind-blowing!

The now famous ‘Hollywood version’, with the sea dividing into two walls of water, was only added later. In its most ancient, original version, the crossing of the Sea of Reed was far less spectacular. It went like this:

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. During the last watch of the night the LORD looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. And the Egyptians said, "Let's get away from the Israelites! The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt."

And at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the LORD swept them into the sea. That day the LORD saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians.

That means: no “wall of water on their right and on their left”, no “horses and chariots and horsemen” following the Israelites into the sea, and no God saying “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen”. All that was added later!

Of course, many scientists have tried to find a natural explanation for the miracle.

(a) The Israelites escaped during low tide
That would seem odd. The Egyptian army would have been pretty stupid to follow them a day later, when it was flood again.
(b) The Egyptian army was lost in a swamp or in quicksand

Indeed, the place where the passage is set is a swampy area, full of quicksand, as you can read elsewhere on this site.

According to this interpretation, Moses knew his way around – and the pharaoh obviously didn’t. It would explain why the Egyptians were "fleeing toward it".
(c) There was a tsunami involved

That would explain for the retracting sea and the subsequent drowning of the Egyptian army.

But the Israelites would have had only a few minutes to make their escape. And the bible makes it clear that there was plenty of time.
(d) Wind pushed back the sea
The by far most popular explanation. After all, the bible explicitly mentions that there was a ‘strong east wind’ all night.

According to the University of Cambridge professor Colin Humphreys, that says it all. The wind would have pushed back the sea, perhaps over a natural sand bank, exposing a big strip of seabed. This is a well-known phenomenon called a ‘wind tide’ or a ‘wind setdown’.

Later on, the wind would have turned, resulting in an unusually high tide, and drowning the pharaoh’s army.

Humphreys calculated that if the wind suddenly stopped, the water would flow back with speeds reaching up to 20 kilometers per hour – enough to knock a man off of his horse.

 

But there’s also a very different way of looking at things. Perhaps nothing happened at all!

Moses is by no means the only lad who traveled through water. In the Old Testament, the Lord does it all the time. In Isaiah 51 for example, we read of the Lord:

Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made a road in the depths of the sea
so that the redeemed might cross over? (51:10)

(And no, that’s not a reference to Moses! It's a very old hymn.)

This suggests that the famous voyage through the Sea of Reeds was put in Exodus for a specific literary reason: to show how divine Moses really was.

There are many interesting clues that the passage of the sea was indeed intended as a religious story, instead of real history.

First, there are some errors in it.

According to the bible, Moses went into the desert to avoid the land of the Philistines – a people that didn’t exist yet. Elsewhere on this site, we’ve already pointed out that most serious scholars are convinced that Moses’ Exodus didn’t really happen the way the bible tells us.

What's more, the passage of the sea is full of religious symbolism and subtle literary tricks.

For example: the Israelites reached safety on the 17th day of the month – the same day as Noah reached dry ground after the Deluge.

Or take the Sea of Reeds itself. According to Egyptian mythology, the evil god Set is buried there. A bad place for Egyptians, the bible only means to say.

Whatever the truth - the voyage through the sea has become one of the most famous book tales ever. That’s almost as big an achievement as splitting up a sea!

There are clues that Jews in biblical times were well aware that Exodus had been made up.

In the second century BC, the Jewish writer Artapanos noted that among religious Jews, there were two versions of the sea passage. In one version, the sea formed “walls of water”, while other Jews believed that Moses simply crossed the sea by low tide!

That's exactly what modern day theologists have found out, too.

Colin Humphreys, “The miracles of Exodus” (2003)

Marcel Hulspas: "En de zee spleet in tweeen" (2006)

Finkelstein and Silberman: "The bible unearthed" (2003)