Jots & Tittles

Blowing Apart the Red Sea

Will scientific explanations for biblical miracles never cease? The latest theory—a scenario involving shallow reefs, high winds and 600,000 Israelite slaves fleeing Egypt—is actually not new, but a pair of Russian mathematicians connected with St. Petersburg’s Institute of Oceanology have given it new precision by working the numbers.

In an article called “Modeling the Hydrodynamic Situation During the Exodus,” published in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Naum Volzinger, of the institute, and his Hamburg-based colleague Alexei Androsov presented the results of a six-month study to determine the exact meteorological conditions necessary for the Red Sea to part long enough for the fleeing Israelites to get across.