In Exodus, Moses leads the Israelites away from Egypt and slavery, towards the red sea, but their escape isn’t easy. The Egyptians follow Moses and his people with chariots and horses, hoping to hunt them down. How does Moses save his people? With a miraculous parting of the Red Sea. According to Exodus 14:21, Moses stretched his hand out over the sea, “and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided.”
While the historic miracle have not been disputed by many, scientists have tried to rationalize it as merely a weather event. However, below are various evidences and findings over the course of the years that proves one of the most dramatic records of divine intervention in history.
The subsequent drowning of the entire Egyptian army in the Red Sea was not an insignificant event, and confirmation of this event is compelling evidence that the Biblical narrative is truly authentic. Over the years, many divers have searched the Gulf of Suez in vain for artifacts to verify the Biblical account. But carefully following the Biblical and historical records of the Exodus brings you to Nuweiba, a large beach in the Gulf of Aqaba, as Ron Wyatt discovered in 1978.
Repeated dives in depths ranging from 60 to 200 feet deep (18m to 60m), over a stretch of almost 2.5 km, has shown that the chariot parts are scattered across the sea bed. Artifacts found include wheels, chariot bodies as well as human and horse bones. Divers have located wreckage on the Saudi coastline opposite Nuweiba as well.
Since 1987, Ron Wyatt found three 4-spoke gilded chariot wheels. Coral does not grow on gold, hence the shape has remained very distinct, although the wood inside the gold veneer has disintegrated making them too fragile to move.
According to software engineer Carl Drews, who has a master’s in atmospheric and ocean sciences from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and works for the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In a peer-reviewed journal article in PLOS One, Drews lays out the case for a wind-driven miracle. He used science to show both where and how the parting of the sea may have happened.
According to him, it did not occur in the actual “Red Sea” that we see on a map today –rather, Drews explains, the original phrase from the Hebrew translates as “Sea of Reeds”.
The parting of the “Red Sea” occurs when Moses and the Israelites are encamped by the sea “in front of Pi-hahiroth, between Migdol and the sea, in front of Baal-zephon,” but there is actually much uncertainty and scholarly debate about what these names might actually refer to today. (It doesn’t help that the Nile Delta has shifted dramatically over time.)
Drews’ research draws on archaeological attempts to follow this trail of clues and especially to identify the all important location of “Migdol,” a “Semetic term for watchtower or fort,” according to the Egyptologist and archaeologist James Hoffmeier of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Relying on the work of Hoffmeier and others, in their 2010 PLOS Onepaper, Drews and his co-author Weiqing Han provides a map, which basically amounts to their hypothesis for what a particular portion of the Eastern Nile Delta looked like, circa 1250 B.C. Going by their premises, the “Red Sea” or “sea of reeds” of Exodus was actually the Lake of Tanis. The lake “was a shallow brackish lagoon, and that was the ideal place for these papyrus reeds to grow,” says Drews. “So if you want to find a sea of reeds, even today, that’s it.” And in that location, a strong enough wind could have caused a “wind setdown,” which could part the water.
Nevertheless, Colin Humphreys, a physicist at Cambridge University, argues that reeds do grow at the head of the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea – so the “Sea of Reeds” and the “Red Sea” could be one and the same. According to scholars in Russia and Germany, high winds may have exposed an underwater reef that allowed the Israelites to cross.
Naum Volzinger, who is a senior researcher at St. Petersburg’s Institute of Oceanography, argues that the Israelites could have walked across the exposed reef in four hours, just before the winds died down and the waters surged back, swamping the Egyptians attempting to follow.
THE Gulf of Aqaba is very deep, in places over a mile (1,600m) deep. Even with the sea dried up, walking across would be difficult due to the steep grade down the sides. But there is one spot where if the water were removed, it would be an easy descent for people and animals. This is the line between Nuweiba and the opposite shore in Saudi Arabia.
Depth-sounding expeditions have revealed a smooth, gentle slope descending from Nuweiba out into the Gulf. This shows up almost like a pathway on depth-recording equipment, confirming it’s Biblical description “…a way in the sea, and a path in the mighty waters.” (Isaiah 43:16).
The Bible writers frequently refer to the miracle of the Red Sea crossing, for it was an event which finds no equal in history. The Hebrew prophets describe the sea at the crossing site as “…the waters of the great deep …the depths of the sea…” (Isaiah 51:10). Knowing the exact spot to which the Bible writers were referring, what is the depth there? The distance between Nuweiba and where artifacts have been found on Saudi coast is about 18km (11 miles).
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