March 9, 2004
HADDA BE DANG MUDDY:
Mathematician explains parting of Red Sea (TOM PARFITT, 2/22/04, The Scotsman)
Naum Voltsinger used differential equations to show that strong winds and a hidden underwater reef would have allowed more than half a million Jews to flee to the Promised Land - without getting their feet wet.Posted by Orrin Judd at March 9, 2004 8:11 AMScholars have long speculated that natural causes were responsible for the Old Testament story.
"This shows that God rules the world through the laws of physics," he told Scotland on Sunday. [...]
Voltsinger and his colleague Alexei Androsov based their research on earlier meteorological studies that concentrate on one of the most likely spots for the crossing of the Red Sea, a narrow stretch in the Gulf of Suez.
Titled ‘Modelling of the hydrodynamic situation during the Exodus’, their study has been published in an official bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The scientists found that certain tidal conditions combined with a steady wind speed of 30 metres per second could have exposed the hidden reef under the sea for about four hours, allowing hundreds of thousands of frightened Jews to march to safety across the tongue of raised seabed.
Besides the miraculous escape, the theory also accounts for the waters flowing back to destroy the Pharaoh’s army that chased Moses and the Jews.
"The returning wave would have been so powerful and swift as to instantly capsize and sink the pursuing Egyptian chariots," said Voltsinger, a senior researcher at the St Petersburg branch of the Russian Institute of Oceanology.
The mathematician, a Christian, stressed that his discovery was not incompatible with religious faith.
"Science does not contradict religion," he said. "The situation itself is physically explainable, and it happened. God simply influenced the course of history. The divine miracle is that the Jews arrived at the water at the moment they did."
The next step, I reckon, would be to explore the reef and see if the remains of Pharaoh's army lie buried there.
Posted by: R.W. at March 9, 2004 2:08 PMActually, the next step would be to ask how people could walk through 70 MPH winds. The chariots wouldn't have been affected by the returning water as they would all have long since been wiped out by the hurricane force wind.
Posted by: Annoying Old Guy at March 9, 2004 2:29 PMUnfortunately it is unclear what the Torah is refering to when it speaks of the yam suf (literally sea of reeds). It may be the Red Sea, more likely its north-western arm the Gulf of Suez. It may be the Great Bitter Lake or some other body of water that existed in that area and was later drained by natural or human activity.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at March 9, 2004 4:13 PMWell that, or the stories have the same credibility as those told by Homer regarding the actions of their pantheon of gods. I pick the latter. BTW, anyone who says that science does not contradict religion is clearly not a very good scientist; science is at least partly based on the notion that theories are testable and may be proven wrong - what this man is talking about is therefore not science, but philosophy.
Posted by: Gary Gunnels at March 10, 2004 1:51 AMGary, pick up a copy of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Science likes to think it works that way, but it doesn't. History is littered with the carcasses of dead scientific theories that were held as fiercely as any religion.
Gideon,
Already have a copy; I have read it several times and have used it in a course. It does not undermine or discount anything I've written. That there are philosophical dogmas which have inhabited the discourse of scientists does not indeed disprove my point; indeed, it bolsters it.
Posted by: Gary Gunnels at March 10, 2004 9:21 AMMr. Gunnels:
All science proceeds from dogma, an anti-scientific belief in the material world.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 9:24 AMoj:
A bit of an overstatement.
It's true that science is irrationally dismissive of non-quantifiable experiences or events, but one need not believe in the immaterial to describe the material very well.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 10, 2004 7:16 PMOne need believe in the material, for which there is no rational basis.
Posted by: oj at March 10, 2004 9:43 PMWhat really needs explaining is the absence of any evidence that there ever were Hebrews in Egypt.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 11, 2004 6:51 PMOr that there was a Holocaust.
Posted by: oj at March 11, 2004 7:09 PMoj:
Yes, you've shown why that's so.
However, faith isn't necessarily anti-scientific.
Regardless of how many scientists are hostile to faith, and how many of the faithful are hostile to science.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at March 12, 2004 3:18 AMWe have physical evidence of the Holocaust.
You might expect physical evidence of Hebrews in Egypt, if there were any. The presence of numerous other identifiable groups is attested.
The absence of any Hebrew artifacts is, if not exactly proof, certainly odd.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at March 12, 2004 1:30 PM