Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Yigal Levin" <leviny1 AT mail.biu.ac.il>]

I must admitt a certain discomfort in this kind of discussion. What is its
purpose? If one takes every detail of the biblical story literally, down to
the east wind, the "walls" of water, the reeds, the 600,000, the route to
Philistia that they didn't take and so on, then whether or not you know
where "Yam Suph" was, the whole thing is rather incredible. Of course,
that's the whole point - it was a miracle, God's victory over Israel's
enemies. This is, of course a legitimate way of looking at it. But once you
admit a miracle, why insist on "natural" explanations? What diference?
On the other hand, if the Exodus story, as we have it, is a dim recolection
of a minor event in the distand past, hyped up to serve the writer's
theological purposes, or even a mythical metaphore, then all such details
give us is the picture that the author had in his mind when he wrote this
particular version. Is that what we really want to know? Whether the author
of J, P or whatever had ever experienced a Sharqiyeh on the Great Bitter
Lake?

Yigal
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan D. Safren" <yonsaf AT beitberl.ac.il>
To: "Shoshanna Walker" <rosewalk AT concentric.net>;
<b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 12:40 PM
Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Route of the Exodus (Red Sea Crossing)


>
> Israeli geographer Menashe Harel makes a convincing case for identifying
the
> Red Sea - more properly - Reed Sea - with the Greater and Lesser Bitter
> Lakes lying East of the Nile Delta (today part of the Suez Canal) in
> Bitzaron 65 (1977), 191-193 (Hebrew). His thesis is adopted in Aharoni,
> Yohanan, Carta Atlas of the Biblical Period, second edition (revised by
> Anson Rainey), Jerusalem, Carta, 1995.
> Among the difficulties his thesis explains are:
> 1) the name of the Sea - a place where reeds grow cannot be salt water.
> 2) the statement made in Exodus that the Israelites did not take the the
> "Route to Philistia" (i.e., the main route, the Via Maris) but marched
into
> the desert (so as to skirt from the South the line of fortresses guarding
> the eastern approaches to Egypt.
> 3) the statement that the Israelites were able to reach the Sea before the
> Egyptian chariot force caught up with them - which they never would have
> been able to do, had the Reed Sea been the Red Sea or the Bardawil salient
> on the Mediterranean coast (Aharoni's original theory). The Bitter Lakes
are
> due East of the Delta and quite close to it.
> 4) the statement that an East wind blowing all night - i.e. a sharqiya,
and
> of gale force (two days ago we had 50 kph winds here, with gusts up to 100
> kph, and the Suez Canal was closed for that reason) - was able to clear a
> passage for the Israelites to cross the Sea. There was originally a
shallow
> strait connecting the two Lakes. The Greater Bitter Lake lies NW of the
> Lesser Bitter Lake, and this enabled the strong East wind to drive much
> water from the Lesser into the Greater and also dry up the channel
> connecting the two.
> 5) the statement that the waters rushed back to their original place and
> drowned the Egyptians. Once the wind had stopped blowing, the waters pent
up
> in the Greater Bitter Lake rushed int othe channel, sweeping away the
> Egyptians and their chariots.
> There are some more points cleared up by Harel but, unfortunately, I don't
> have his original article in front of me.
> Sincerely,
> Jonathan D. Safren, Editor
> Mo'ed - Annual for Jewish Studies
> Center for Jewish Culture
> Beit Berl College
> Beit Berl Post Office
> 44905 Israel
> Tel. 972-9-7476396
> Fax 972-9-7475397
> e-mail: moed AT beitberl.ac.il
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Shoshanna Walker" <rosewalk AT concentric.net>
> To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 2:20 AM
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Route of the Exodus (Red Sea Crossing)
>
>
> > Arutz Sheva News Service
> > <http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com>
> > Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004 / Tevet 27, 5764
> >
> > EXPLAINING A MIRACLE
> >
> > A six-month study by a senior researcher at St. Petersburg's
> > Institute of Oceanology and a Hamburg-based colleague seeks to
> > explore and detail the physics behind the Biblical account of the
> > Jews crossing the sea during their flight from slavery in Egypt.
> >
> > The study, published in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of
> > Sciences and reported upon today in The Moscow Times, concludes that
> > a reef running along the north side of the sea could have been the
> > "dry land" upon which the Jews crossed - providing that a
> > 30-meter-per-second (67 mph) wind blew across the sea all night,
> > leaving the reef dry.  The cessation of the wind would then lead to
> > the drowning of the pursuing Egyptian forces, trapped on the reef as
> > the waters returned, as recorded in the Bible.
> >
> > The Russia-based researcher, Naum Volziger, who specializes in
> > flooding and tidal waves, told a Moscow Times reporter, "It would
> > take the Jews - there were 600,000 of them [male Jews "aged 20 and
> > over" - ed. note] - four hours to cross the seven-kilometer reef that
> > runs from one coast to another. Then, in half an hour, the waters
> > would come back."
> >
> > Volziger said he and his colleague studied the issue "strictly from
> > Isaac Newton's point of view." However, the researcher did
> > acknowledge, "I am convinced that G-d rules the Earth through the
> > laws of physics."
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > b-hebrew mailing list
> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Shoshanna Walker" <rosewalk AT concentric.net>
> To: <b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org>
> Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2004 2:20 AM
> Subject: Re: [b-hebrew] Route of the Exodus (Red Sea Crossing)
>
>
> > Arutz Sheva News Service
> > <http://www.IsraelNationalNews.com>
> > Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2004 / Tevet 27, 5764
> >
> > EXPLAINING A MIRACLE
> >
> > A six-month study by a senior researcher at St. Petersburg's
> > Institute of Oceanology and a Hamburg-based colleague seeks to
> > explore and detail the physics behind the Biblical account of the
> > Jews crossing the sea during their flight from slavery in Egypt.
> >
> > The study, published in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of
> > Sciences and reported upon today in The Moscow Times, concludes that
> > a reef running along the north side of the sea could have been the
> > "dry land" upon which the Jews crossed - providing that a
> > 30-meter-per-second (67 mph) wind blew across the sea all night,
> > leaving the reef dry.  The cessation of the wind would then lead to
> > the drowning of the pursuing Egyptian forces, trapped on the reef as
> > the waters returned, as recorded in the Bible.
> >
> > The Russia-based researcher, Naum Volziger, who specializes in
> > flooding and tidal waves, told a Moscow Times reporter, "It would
> > take the Jews - there were 600,000 of them [male Jews "aged 20 and
> > over" - ed. note] - four hours to cross the seven-kilometer reef that
> > runs from one coast to another. Then, in half an hour, the waters
> > would come back."
> >
> > Volziger said he and his colleague studied the issue "strictly from
> > Isaac Newton's point of view." However, the researcher did
> > acknowledge, "I am convinced that G-d rules the Earth through the
> > laws of physics."
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > b-hebrew mailing list
> > b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> > http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>
> _______________________________________________
> b-hebrew mailing list
> b-hebrew AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/b-hebrew
>