Physics Parts the Red Sea

From Science magazine
Written by Richard Kerr
24 April 1992
Volume 256
Number 5056

For whatever reason, the Bible authors fail to mention vertically integrated nonlinear equations of motion. If they had, scholars would have realized millennia ago that God needn't have violated any laws of nature when he parted the waters for the fleeing Hebrew people.

In the first mathematical analysis of the Exodus, published in the March Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, a pair of oceanographers create their own model of that Biblical scene from equations describing the sea, the wind, and the drag of wind on sea. Lo and behold, the miracle would have been in the timing: Let the Hebrews pass during a strong blow from the north-northwest; then shift those winds just as the Pharaoh's armies get halfway across the sea bottom.

For Doron Nof of Florida State University and Nathan Paldor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to be correct, there would have to have been something like a 72-kilometer-per-hour wind blowing down the Gulf of Suez for a good 10 hours. Such a gale could have shifted the gulf's northern waterline more than a kilometer south, up to the point where the shallow sea reached 2.5 meters deep. Moses would have more than a kilometer of freshly exposed gulf bottom to make good his escape. And if the wind suddenly abated, the amount of displaced water would have been more than enough to drown the Egyptians, chariots and all.

Red Sea Articles

• Are there oceanographic explanations for the Israelites' crossing of the Red Sea?
  • [View Original Article]
• Statistics of Wind over the Red Sea with Application to the Exodus Question
  • [View Original Article]
• "Physics Parts the Red Sea", Science, Written by Richard Kerr, 4/22/92
• "Oceanographers Say Winds May Have Parted the Waters", NY Times, 3/13/92
• "Research Supports Bible's Account of Red Sea Parting", LA Times, 3/15/1992
• "Exodus By Numbers", Discover, Written by Beth Ann Meehan, 1/1993.
• Britannica 1994 Yearbook of Science and the Future

Red Sea Video Feature

Clip from a CBS program describing the Red Sea crossing theories

Discovery Channel

Discovery Channel program describing the Red Sea crossing theories