Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Walter R. Mattfeld" <mattfeld12 AT charter.net>]

As many are aware a controversy exists on whether the Hebrew Yam Suph means
"Sea of Reeds" or not. The notion that reeds are suggested is drawn from Ex
2:3 by some scholars -

Exodus 2:3 RSV (Emphasis mine)

"And when she could hide him no longer she took for him a basket made of
bulrushes, and daubed it with bitumen and pitch; and she put the child in it
and placed it among reeds (SUPH) at the river's brink."

Reeds can grow in freshwater, in Moses' case, the reeds his basket is placed
among, line the banks of the freshwater Nile. Ancient traditions, Jewish,
Christian and Moslem, understand that Yam Suph is the Gulfs of Suez and
Aqaba. The Problem ? No reeds have ever been found growing in these bodies
of water. Now Professor Humpreys did find reeds "near" the modern Israeli
port city of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba, but they were not growing "in the
sea," rather, they were growing in depressions not "too far from" the
seashore, fed by freshwater runoffs, or seepage and drainage from landforms
(cf. p.192 and his photo of the reeds).

Humphreys (emphasis mine) :

"As we have noted earlier, reeds are freshwater plants. Although
salt-tolerant reeds and rushes can grow in SLIGHTLY salty lakes, marshes,
and ESTUARIES, reeds cannot and do NOTgrow in the Red Sea and its two gulfs
(Suez and Aqaba) because they are TOO salty. This is true today, and we can
resonably expect it to have been true at the time of Moses because the Red
Sea would still have been a saltwater sea." (p. 182. "Where Was the Biblical
Red Sea ? Colin Humphreys. _The Miracles of Exodus, A Scientist's Discovery
of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories_. 2003. Harper
Collins. San Francisco)

Others have noted that in Egypt, reeds can be found not only along the banks
of the Nile but at the mouth of the river where it meets the Mediterranean
Sea. Here the tidal estuary is a flux or mix of freshwaters and salt waters.

If the Gulf of Suez is Yam Suph as maintained by Jewish and Christian
traditions, and if Suph does mean "reeds," how to reconcile the "absence of
reeds" in this body of water ?

The answer may lie with the Red Sea Canal, which the Egyptologist, Professor
Breasted of the Chicago Oriental Institute (pp. 188, 276. James Henry
Breasted. _A History of Egypt_. N.Y. Scribners Sons. 1912) understood to
have been built in the 12th Dynasty by pharaoh Sesostris/Senusret III (ca.
1878-1841 BCE). That is to say, the FRESHWATERS pouring forth from the Nile
at Clysma, MIGHT have created an  _estuary-like_  environment in the
"shallow bay" adjoining and opposite Clysma (the bay is called Birkhet
Kharira on a 1930 map, 1;25,000). If, IF, Ramesses III built his fortress at
Clysma to control ships entering the 12th Dynasty Red Sea Canal (having
cleared it of sand ?), then, if the Exodus was a Ramesside event, as
maintained by some Liberal scholars, the waters in the vicinity of the
Clysma Migdol (fortress) and the nearby MOUTH of the Red Sea Canal "may
have" possessed Reeds (Suph) in the "ESTUARY-LIKE ENVIRONMENT" of
freshwaters of the Nile mingling with the salty waters of the Sea, like what
exists at the mouth of the Nile where it meets the Mediterranean Sea ?

The Suez Canal today joins the Mediterranean and Red Seas, connecting Lakes
MenzIlah, Ballah, Timsah and the two Bitter Lakes. One finds today REEDS
GROWING in these lakes. Why ? Because freshwaters from the Nile flow into
Timsah via Wadi Tumilat, and freshwaters pour into the tidal ESTUARY at
Manzilah and thence into the Suez Canal.

Regards, Walter

Walter Reinhold Warttig Mattfeld y de la Torre, M.A. Ed.

mattfeld12 AT charter.net

www.bibleorigins.net