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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 10 2014, @06:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the pillar-of-fire dept.

Bruce Parker, the former chief scientist of NOAA’s National Ocean Service and currently a visiting professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology, reports in the Wall Street Journal that there is a natural explanation for how a temporary path across the Red Sea could have been revealed that that doesn't involve biblical miracles. The explanation involves the tide, a natural phenomenon that would have fit nicely into a well-thought-out plan by Moses, because Moses would have been able to predict when it would happen. In the biblical account, the children of Israel were camped on the western shore of the Gulf of Suez when the dust clouds raised by Pharaoh’s chariots were seen in the distance. The Israelites were now trapped between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea. The dust clouds, however, were probably an important sign for Moses; they would have let him calculate how soon Pharaoh’s army would arrive at the coast. Moses had lived in the nearby wilderness in his early years, and he knew where caravans crossed the Red Sea at low tide. He knew the night sky and the ancient methods of predicting the tide, based on where the moon was overhead and how full it was. Pharaoh and his advisers, by contrast, lived along the Nile River, which is connected to the almost tideless Mediterranean Sea. They probably had little knowledge of the tides of the Red Sea and how dangerous they could be

Interestingly enough Moses was not the only leader to cross the Gulf of Suez at low tide. In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte and a small group of soldiers on horseback crossed the Gulf of Suez, the northern end of the Red Sea, roughly where Moses and the Israelites are said to have crossed. On a mile-long expanse of dry sea bottom exposed at low water, the tide suddenly rushed in, almost drowning them. When Napoleon and his forces almost drowned in 1798, the water typically rose 5 or 6 feet at high tide (and up to 9 or 10 feet with the wind blowing in the right direction). But there is evidence that the sea level was higher in Moses’ time. As a result, the Gulf of Suez would have extended farther north and had a larger tidal range. If that was indeed the case, the real story of the Israelites’ crossing wouldn’t have needed much exaggeration to include walls of water crashing down on the pursuing Egyptians.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 10 2014, @04:02PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday December 10 2014, @04:02PM (#124725) Journal

    I feel this pain, and yet I recall that Jon Katz helped take /. from a small board to a big one back in the day. So many panned his posts then, but when it came to Columbine I really felt that he contributed the right thing at the right time and helped a lot of people. Is Hugh Pickens the same here, now? Maybe. But it takes many people to build an institution, and not always in the ways that you might expect or that you might be entirely comfortable with.

    Abstract the people you like to hang out with from the people who have pushed the envelope and made the world a better place through their dysfunction. Very, very few of the people who've done the latter would qualify as people you'd like to know or even encounter in a bar. They're nuts. They're offensive. They're people who say and do things that offend your God and mother. And so often we learn that though those people made the world categorically better for everyone else through their contributions, they themselves died despised, penniless, friendless, and in despair.

    I submit, for consideration, that not everyone who can change your world for the better is somebody you'd like to know or to talk to. I submit that many of the people you imagine are nice to talk to and know, aren't.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
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  • (Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday December 10 2014, @05:21PM

    by nitehawk214 (1304) on Wednesday December 10 2014, @05:21PM (#124776)

    I disagree with you on Jon Katz... I was one of the ones happy you could block an editor's posts when they brought that in. And I disagree that Hasselton and Pickens are even Katz's league of at least being useful.

    --
    "Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
  • (Score: 1) by ghost on Wednesday December 10 2014, @07:02PM

    by ghost (4467) on Wednesday December 10 2014, @07:02PM (#124819) Journal
    Jon Katz was a /. "editor", IIRC, so you could block his shit. Just like Zonk ("Games Should Be Like Female Orgasms") and his shitty game reviews.
  • (Score: 1) by ghost on Wednesday December 10 2014, @07:06PM

    by ghost (4467) on Wednesday December 10 2014, @07:06PM (#124820) Journal
    ... although I do look forward to Hugh "picken" off a bunch of high school students with bolt-action 30-06 (or "fully automatic assault rifle", as the press will refer to it). Ponca City will never be the same.