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Tonight, a deeper look at astonishing mysteries in the Book of Exodus.

The burning bush, the ten plagues, the parting of the Red Sea.

What can the modern mind make of such an incredible series of events?

Were these divinely inspired phenomena, or do they have a more earthly

explanation? The Bible explicitly says that God uses the wind to help Moses

the people.

Pyramids were destroyed.

Bodies were floating down the Nile.

Weather phenomena, climate shifts, natural disasters, all of these could

played a role in the story.

Now, we'll explore the top theories regarding three legendary events from

Old Testament.

Moses encounters what we call the burning bush.

How can a plant be on fire and not be burned up?

What could possibly have caused these ten deadly plagues in Egypt?

How could Moses and his people have walked across the Red Sea on dry land?

Is it possible some of these famous Bible legends aren't parables, but

fact?

The Old Testament Book of Exodus tells the story of Moses, the great

Hebrew prophet who led his people out of slavery in Egypt.

Exodus also depicts some of the most dramatic events in the Bible, events

have sparked the human imagination for more than 3 ,000 years.

Moses is directly involved in all of them.

The stories about Moses in the book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible are probably

the best known stories that are in the entire Bible.

Moses is born to a family that's enslaved.

The challenge is that the king, the pharaoh of Egypt, at the beginning of

story, has ordered that all male children of the Hebrews, the Israelites,

to be killed. He's worried that they're becoming too numerous, and that if they

are too numerous, that they will eventually rise up and overthrow the

So baby Moses has to be saved from Pharaoh and from the soldiers that might

to kill him.

Now Moses' mother hides him for three months, reaches a point where she can't

hide him any longer, so she builds a basket and puts him in the reeds along

banks of the Nile. She placed the basket near the place in the river that

Pharaoh's daughter typically went to bathe. And the stage is set for this

dramatic rescue.

Pharaoh's daughter comes down to the river, and she goes to bathe and hears

cry and decides to take him in.

In fact, Pharaoh's daughter decides to raise Moses as her own and even hires

real mother to help with the raising of the child.

As far as anyone is concerned, Moses is now a member of the Egyptian population.

He is raised as an Egyptian. He spends his life as a prince.

but he's also aware of his heritage.

And that becomes the tension as the story begins, the choice he has between

Egypt and his own people.

Exodus recounts a moment in Moses' life where he sees a Hebrew slave being

beaten by an Egyptian man.

He decides to take justice into his own hands and kills the Egyptian man,

essentially in cold blood.

When the Egyptian court... Found out about this, Moses knew he was going to

executed. And off he goes, out of Egypt into the wilderness.

He abandons everything that he grew up with and flees to the desert to this

place called Midian, which is in the northwestern corner of what today would

Saudi Arabia.

This is a major change of fortunes for Moses. He has gone from being an

prince to an exile. He is essentially out there in this sort of hilly

He is a shepherd. He's tending these sheep. And something dramatic happens to

him that he never would have expected.

He ends up coming to this mountain. It's Mount Horeb, which is the mountain of

God. And while there, he encounters this incredible, miraculous sight.

He sees something he cannot explain, and that's a bush that is burning without

being consumed.

And he goes a little bit closer to see what it is, and he hears God's voice

speaking to him from out of this bush.

The voice of God tells Moses that he needs to go back to Egypt and save his

people from the Egyptian pharaoh.

Moses is going to be the guy who brings the Israelites out of Egypt.

Moses returns and demands that Pharaoh let the Hebrews go.

Unsurprisingly, the Pharaoh is not particularly inclined to release the

people. God doesn't like this and sends a catastrophic series of plagues. And

after that, the Hebrews are allowed to leave.

But Pharaoh changes his mind, and he sends a massive army to recapture all of

them or kill them. This leads to the greatest miracle of all, in which God

miraculously parts, opens up a passage through the sea for all the Israelites

to cross through.

The Egyptian army follows them, and it's at that moment that God slams the door

shut by having the sea drown all the Egyptian soldiers that were following

After they've safely crossed the Red Sea, Moses and his people continue north

and east until they reach the Promised Land, which is now the country of

For religious followers of the Bible, they've been celebrating this story for

many millennia.

The burning bush, the ten plagues, and the parting of the Red Sea.

It's a story that has been the center of understanding God as a liberating God,

as a God of theological belief.

They believe that these are fundamentally supernatural events that

accepted on faith.

And this is rooted in the Judeo -Christian belief that God, as the

the world, also has complete dominion over all nature.

In recent years, more technological advances have allowed researchers to

investigate the Exodus mysteries through a more scientific lens.

The first miracle that we see in the story is that of the burning bush.

Is there any scientific explanation for this? Could this have actually happened?

The burning bush is really a key point in Moses' story.

This is where Moses hears for the first time the voice of God booming out of

this bush, telling Moses what he's supposed to do.

The big paradox, the big mysterious thing that happens here is how you can

a bush that's consumed by flames without...

completely being destroyed. Is there any plant that would burn without being

fully consumed?

And it turns out that there actually is one. There's a plant called Dictamus

albus.

This is a plant that's found across northern Africa, and it's called the

bush or gas plant.

And what makes it so distinct is that it can look like it's caught on fire.

In hot weather, old flowers or sea pods on the plant emit an oil that can

ignite. This results in a vapor burn, which makes it look like the plant's on

fire, even though it's perfectly harmless to the plant itself, which

way of understanding how Moses saw a bush that wasn't consumed by flame.

Others have doubts about this.

At a couple of levels. First of all, you need a source of ignition. This is not

just going to self -combust, so what is that source of ignition?

For some scientists, there's the possibility that this bush was ignited

lightning. After all, Moses hears thunder.

But another question surfaces.

This bush doesn't burn indefinitely.

It turns to ash.

And so the length of time for this bush to burn...

isn't consistent with the biblical text.

The English physicist Colin Humphreys comes up with a really interesting idea.

He says, what if it's not a gas plant? What if, in fact, there's actual natural

gas here? Because remember, Moses is in the land of Midian. That's northwest

Arabia. Arabia has some of the richest natural gas and oil deposits in the

world.

Mount Orib is located on the Arabian Plate, between the African Plate to the

west and the Eurasian Plate to the east.

When these plates collide, it can lead to all kinds of seismic and volcanic

activity. Any of these earthquakes could open up small fissures that would allow

natural gas to escape.

You've got natural gas coming out, and is there, for example, a lightning

that ignites this natural gas? So what Moses sees...

As a bush that is burning, it's a natural gas flame that's been ignited by

natural conditions.

But Humphreys believes the burning bush was not Dictamus albus, as others have

suggested. One theory that Colin Humphreys advances is that it's an

because the ways in which this tree burns.

could be very similar to what we hear in the story, that the wood becomes

carbonized, it becomes essentially like charcoal. And so you'll see an ember,

something that'll burn, something that'll glow red hot for hours.

And so this could well have been what Moses was seeing.

According to this theory, the burning bush can be traced to natural phenomena,

even if Moses himself would have seen this as miraculous and attributable to

all -powerful unseen God.

Another issue is that Moses has spent four decades out here.

He's pretty much seen the wilderness as the wilderness is. It takes a lot after

40 years to see something and go, I've never seen anything like that before.

I've got to go see what that's about. And that leads me to believe this is

something not quite on the grid of normal expectation.

In the book of Exodus, God's voice, coming from a burning bush, commands

to lead the Hebrew people out of slavery in Egypt, changing the course of Judeo

-Christian history.

But what did Moses actually experience that day on Mount Horeb?

Some scholars think Moses might have used a more traditional age -old method

contacting the divine.

For millennia, human beings have used psychoactive plans.

to enter into or encounter the spirit world.

Psychoactive plants have been around since the beginning of religion.

People who experience these psychoactive episodes based on these naturally

occurring plants tell of what can only be defined as spiritual encounters.

Many native cultures still use psychoactive plants today. They believe

through these plants, spiritual leaders can enter into trances, combat evil

spirits or disease.

They can even control the weather.

Cultures have made use of psychoactive materials as a way to contact the

to be in relationship with their ancestors, to rethink the relationship

natural environment.

This is the idea that...

Our physical world is paralleled in a spiritual world. And that if there's

something wrong in the spiritual world, it affects the physical world and vice

versa. If someone else can look into that spiritual world, they can see

wrong and they can tell us what to do.

Maybe out there alone in the desert, surrounded by sheep, Moses did the same

thing.

One psychologist has come up with a pretty controversial theory about how

could have seen a burning bush.

Dr. Benny Shannon at Hebrew University has suggested that this is what was

on at the burning bush with Moses. He was actually experiencing one of these

psychoactive substances and had one of these mind -altering experiences when he

thought that he was communing with God.

We call these substances entheogens, from the Greek, God within.

For cultures that use them, entheogens are believed to be the source of true

knowledge. In 2008, Dr.

Shannon writes a controversial paper comparing Moses' burning bush encounter

experiences induced by ayahuasca.

Ayahuasca is a hallucinogenic tea that's made by brewing a blend of plants that

are psychoactive when you combine them.

This has been used in mostly South American cultures as long as there's

South American religions. And it's understood to be a spiritual or divine

encounter. What Dr. Shenone has recognized is that there are two plants

Sinai Peninsula where Moses encountered the burning bush.

that can also induce powerful vision. These would be the acacia plant and

root. Is it possible that Moses out there in the desert could have been

involved with taking an entheogen?

A psychoactive substance certainly would explain the specific miracles that

Moses is asked to perform in front of the burning bush.

In the Exodus story, God gives Moses a demonstration of his power. He tells

Moses to take the walking staff, the rod in his hand, and cast it to the ground.

And when Moses does it, it turns into a snake.

Dr. Shinnom points out that experiences like visions of serpents, fire, or a

light you perceive to be God are common among cultures that use ayahuasca or

other hallucinogenic plants.

Critics of this theory know that while we have great evidence of the use of

ayahuasca among indigenous peoples in South America going back to 900 BC,

there's little evidence that Middle Easterners are making their own

hallucinogenic brews, even though the plants were available to make them.

The only evidence which...

some people could point to is there is an interesting passage in the writings

the Roman Jewish historian Josephus.

Josephus describes the ceremonial headpiece worn by the high priest of the

Jerusalem temple.

The plant depicted on this ceremonial headpiece is henbane.

It's a plant that's known to have psychoactive properties.

It's a flower that contains the powerful hallucinogenic agent scopolamine.

While there's no hard evidence that Moses is ingesting mind -altering plants

the wilderness, some believe it's the best explanation for the fantastic

and supernatural things he sees.

In the book of Exodus.

Moses wins the freedom of his enslaved people after God ravages Egypt with a

series of ten terrifying plagues. It starts with the Nile being turned to

And then the land overwhelmed by frogs. These frogs are everywhere.

Then there are midges. Then there are sable flies.

Then you have the death of the livestock.

Then you have boils on people.

After boils...

There's hailstorms like never before. After hailstorms, there's locusts.

After that, there are three days of darkness upon the land.

And finally, the tenth, probably the worst, all the firstborn sons of Egypt

Is it possible that these plagues really happened?

And if so, what might have caused them?

Beyond the Bible, there are ancient sources that document series of natural

catastrophes that did devastate the land of Egypt.

The Greek historian Herodotus dates the exile of the Hebrews from Egypt to

around 1570 to 1550 BCE.

Now, that's during the reign of an Egyptian pharaoh whose name was Amos I.

Amos I is...

someone who is known to have been the pharaoh at the time when something

the Tempus Sele was produced.

It lists the cataclysmic events that have happened in Egypt. You get it from

word Tempus.

The Tempest Delay records a series of tremendous rainstorms that cause

and destruction of the temples and of other buildings around at the time. But

it's not just that. After that, there's a period of darkness.

And after the period of darkness, the Temple Delay goes on to say that there

dead bodies floating in the Nile.

So it's an interesting thing that there are various kind of elements in the

Tempest Delay that seems to possibly tie into what we know about the plague.

There's another piece of external attestation that really supports this

of the plague, and that's a poem that's written by an Egyptian scribe by the

name of Epur.

Epur's poem dates from maybe 1600 to 1300, so it covers the right kind of

period, and it talks about a series of catastrophes that happened in the land

Egypt. The admonitions describe the river being full of blood

with dead bodies.

floating along the water. It is a tremendous period of disruption.

A catalog of natural disasters, some of which look exactly like the 10 plague

story. But many scholars wonder, if the 10 plagues were as catastrophic as the

Bible says they were, why would they simply appear in the Exodus account and

these two small sources, the tempest, Selah, and the pure papyrus?

One reason there's not more documentation of the plagues could be

himself. No leader wants to record all of the failures in their reign.

No ruler wants to say, and then these ten terrible things happened while I was

in control.

If God is on the Egyptian side, this looks really bad for the God of the

Israelites to defeat the Egyptians.

Some experts believe the first of the ten plagues is a catalyst for many of

plagues that follow.

The first of the ten plagues is known as the River of Blood. In the story, Moses

strikes the Nile and it turns to blood.

The Pure's poem notes that the river turned to blood and that there were many

dead bodies in the river.

As to whether the Nile literally turned to blood or just looked that way,

scientists have their theories.

The American epidemiologist John S. Maher has speculated that this first

was the result of a catastrophic algae bloom.

When the Nile turns red, we're probably talking about a red tide or an algae

bloom. And we have accounts of these in both ancient literature and in modern

literature. We know that when you have an algae bloom, it causes problems.

A red tide is when there's a microscopic algae bloom. The algae release

substances into the water that causes the water itself to take on a reddish

tint. Red tides are very deadly.

The algae multiply in large enough numbers that they actually manage to

oxygen out of the water.

So it's deadly for fish.

Red tides cause large fish kills around the globe.

Between March and April of 1998, a series of red tides in Hong Kong killed

,000 tons of fish, wiping out half of their fish stock in just four weeks.

Conditions in Egypt at the time may have been perfect for a red tide.

If there was a dry period in Egypt, this could cause the Nile to be a bit

sluggish, and this is what generates a red bloom, basically the formation of

this red algae, which can kill all of the fish.

The Book of Exodus talks about this plague, saying that the fish in the

died, and it smelled so bad.

This is exactly what you would expect to see when you have the red tide.

And then the horrible smell that comes off the water when you have this amount

of dead fish.

The massive amounts of dead fish could have set off a series of ecological

disasters which would match a count of the first six plagues.

The red tide might be the cause of the frogs coming up onto

land. And they can't return to the water because it's contaminated.

The frogs are ultimately going to dry out.

in Egypt, in the desert, and they're going to die. And when they die, what do

expect to happen? You're going to get these frogs beginning to decompose. And

you might expect to see gnats, and then you're going to see flies.

So plagues of gnats or plagues of flies, which were themselves kind of

contaminated or carrying toxins in their bodies, could have stung or bitten the

livestock.

causing the livestock to die, and biting or stinging humans, causing boils in

them. So the theory of the red tide could account for up to six of the

plagues. But we have four more plagues to go. What if there was a hailstorm?

That's the next plague. What if that hailstorm leaves the ground moist? All

sudden, now you have the plague of locusts breeding on the wet soil.

Recent history suggests those locusts may have led to the ninth plague, three

days of darkness.

Locust swarms are enormous. They can cover vast tracts of land.

In 1875, people witnessed a swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts flying

over the Great Plains. It blocks out the sun for five whole days.

You're talking about 500 square miles?

of insect invasion, insects that are eating 400 million pounds of plant

products. You're talking about an annihilation of the food resources

Egypt. Some scholars suggest that this massive damage to Egyptian food crops

could have led to the 10th plague, the death of the firstborn of Egypt.

Locusts would have left feces on already damaged plants.

Conditions were such that Egyptians would have to keep in their storehouses

damaged and wet crops.

Some scientists argue these wet crops produce mold, and that from this mold

developed mycotoxins that, when ingested, kill.

Some scholars believe this ripple effect would go on to have devastating

consequences for Egypt's firstborn son.

In patriarchal cultures such as Egypt, firstborn sons take pride of place.

They're the first who are going to inherit their family's wealth, and so

enjoy special treatment, special privileges.

The firstborn son is the one that you take care of. The firstborn son is your

heir. The firstborn son is the one that you would feed and feed first.

And so, not surprisingly, if the food supply, the grain... becomes

then the firstborn sons would be the ones who would die because they're the

first ones being fed this.

Ingesting mycotoxins can lead to death even as quickly as in a few hours.

This could have given the impression of a systematic death of the firstborn

child in every Egyptian family.

It is entirely possible that these plagues are just a series of horrible

naturally occurring ecological disasters.

But there also could be a very different kind of explanation, cataclysmic, earth

-shattering event that could be linked to all of these ten deadly plagues of

Egypt.

Thousands of years after the events in Exodus supposedly occurred, many

questions remain.

To find connections to the Exodus stories and known historical events,

scholars are turning to science and geology to explain events like Egypt's

plagues. Some believe these notorious events began with just one cataclysmic

natural disaster.

We don't actually need to go all the way back to antiquity to know how

catastrophic a volcanic eruption could be.

The best example of this was a huge eruption that took place on the

island of Krakatoa in 1883.

This volcanic eruption on Krakatoa is 10 ,000 times

more powerful than the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima.

You have five cubic miles of rock, earth, sand that is blown out

of this volcano, blasted out.

There's a vast volcanic ash cloud that covers many places on earth, blocking

the sun for long periods of time and producing these really spectacular red

sunsets. Perhaps another enormous explosion.

3 ,300 years earlier set the stage for the entire sequence of Egyptian plagues.

Somewhere between 1600 and 1500 BC, on the Greek island of

Thera, now known as Santorini, you have this extraordinarily powerful volcanic

eruption.

This eruption, known as the Minoan eruption, was five times...

more powerful than the Krakatoa eruption.

This eruption could have produced tsunamis 200 feet high, causing death

destruction.

It caused tidal waves to absolutely devastate all the surrounding areas of

the Mediterranean, wiped out cultures and civilizations.

Many experts believe this cataclysmic event could have also wreaked havoc in

ancient Egypt.

Massive clouds of ash would have been unleashed that could have floated all

way to Egypt.

These clouds could have contained cinnabar, which is a toxic mercury

that would have been extremely deadly.

This mercury sulfide would have increased the acidic nature of the Nile,

have also changed the color of the water, would have made it blood red.

And then we go back to that domino effect.

The fish die in the water because of the ash turning it acidic.

That then causes the frogs to leave. That then causes the insects to feed on

rotting carcasses of the fish and other animals in the river.

They would then go out and bite the livestock, but also biting people.

And several things could have happened based upon those bites.

Livestock could have experienced blue tongue virus.

or African horse illness, which would have killed them off.

Stable flies would have bitten animals and humans, resulting in itchy boils.

You also have the acid rain from the ash falling on the skin that has already

been exposed by these insect bites, and that leads to the boils.

This volcanic eruption...

would also account for the other plagues, because you have the hail

one of the plagues. Well, this is the volcanic rock, the ash that's falling on

the Earth, would have been the hail of the seventh plague, literally falling

from the sky.

Any kind of a fall of volcanic ash like this... would have caused basically acid

rain. That acid rain falling down onto the crop would have caused the kind of

moist environment that was necessary for locusts to breed.

You then could very well have the darkness.

You'd either have the locusts blotting out the sun or the ash from the volcano

blotting out the sun. So either way, you have those plagues covered.

That extended period of darkness would have then caused the growth of toxins in

moldy crop, which would cause widespread childhood death. And there's the 10th

plague. So you have these plagues in the same order explained through this

volcanic eruption.

This wouldn't have been recorded in the historical record as volcanic activity.

It occurred so far from Egypt that Egyptians would have only seen the

and not have known the source.

The people who would have experienced these harrowing events would have had no

clue that this was coming from a volcano 700 miles away.

The natural inference for them is that this is a heaven -sent divine judgment.

Critics of this theory say this doesn't work out because there's real problems

with the timing here. That this eruption in Santorini actually takes place much

earlier than what happens around the events of the plague.

Actually, if you take a look at it, we think that the events of the Exodus are

taking place somewhere from like 1446 to around 1200 BCE.

The eruption at Santorini, that's maybe 1500.

Well, there's not a whole lot of difference between 1500 and 1446 BCE,

you're looking at maybe, you know, 54 years there. That's nothing in the scale

of the ancient world.

It's one of the Old Testament's greatest escapes, the parting of the Red Sea.

The parting of the Red Sea is one of the most dramatic events in the Bible.

Here's Moses and the Israelites fleeing from Pharaoh and Pharaoh's army. They

come to the sea. Well, how are they going to cross the sea?

The Israelites see the Egyptians coming and they're just thrown.

Why would Moses bring them out of Egypt only to have the Egyptians kill them?

Moses takes this concern to God and God says, not to worry. I have this under

control. You're going to take your staff and split the sea.

So Moses does as God instructs. Moses extends the staff and the water divides.

So the Israelites can walk across on dry land. The Egyptians follow them, and

once the Israelites are safe on the other side, the water collapses and

Pharaoh's army.

Some people think this is a myth. For others, this is an accurate description

the power of God.

But yet, this story we come across is so miraculous.

Because the Red Sea is massive at points 1 ,500 feet deep,

to be able to split that would require a massive amount of power.

But what if there was another explanation?

Some scientists argue there is a scientific way to understand what took

For some, the Minoan eruption... on the island we now call Santorini, doesn't

simply explain the 10 plagues. It can also be used to explain the parting of

Red Sea.

This theory is based on a rather widely held notion that there might actually be

a mistranslation in English Bible, that the parting didn't actually occur at the

Red Sea.

In Hebrew, the phrase that's usually translated as the Red Sea actually is

words, the yam soup.

Now, yam is easy. That definitely refers to a sea.

The question is whether we've gotten soup right by saying that that's red.

The other translation of soup is actually more like reed, which would

not talking about the Red Sea, but the Sea of Reeds, a body of water that was

much, much shallower.

then the Red Sea would have been.

The location of this Sea of Reeds is also subject to debate.

There is one location in Egypt which could be a candidate for something

the Sea of Reeds, and it's called Lake Balad. It actually doesn't exist anymore

because in the 19th century, with the building of the Suez Canal, it just kind

of got obliterated. But during the time of Moses, this would have been a

substantial shallow lake.

According to this theory, earthquakes triggered by the Minoan eruption would

have caused the Nile Delta to slide off the African continental plate. This

would have led to massive disruptions of land, causing shifts with water moving

from higher ground to lower ground.

So you have the people crossing over the Sea of Reeds, which is very shallow

water, and then with this catastrophic movement of this continental shelf and

the Nile -Delta waters pouring into it, that that would have caused the waters

to come rushing back in and devastate the Egyptians who were trying to cross.

And in the story, we have the Egyptian army drowned in a massive wave.

There are some geologists who think that this happened because of the Minoan

eruption.

Others think it happened a couple of hundred years later with another

eruption in the Aegean Sea.

Experts have identified an underwater volcanic eruption near the island of

in the Aegean Sea right about the year 1450 BCE, which would also place it in

a window of time when you can imagine the exodus taking place.

So here you've got a volcanic eruption.

happening in a place at almost exactly the same time as the Exodus story.

This would have also produced significant seismic activity that would

shifted the water and would have given the impression of the lake being split.

It could have also triggered a series of tsunamis that would have drowned the

Egyptian soldiers.

So ultimately, we can say that it's a well -founded theory.

But we simply don't know if this is in fact what happened. And of course, there

are other natural forces besides earthquakes with the power to part the

The parting of the Red Sea is one of the few events in Exodus in which the Bible

explicitly states that God draws upon nature to deliver his people.

In Exodus, it says that Moses stretched out his hands over the sea, and God

caused a strong wind to come from the east to blow over the water all night

until dry land appeared.

It's this wind in the text that blows all night that separates the water,

allowing the Israelites to walk across the land.

We see that there was this massive, intensive, and somewhat prolonged event

described in the text.

In the ancient Near Eastern world, where you don't have science that is allowing

you to explain these natural phenomena, you simply yield fully to the theology.

And now I think we can do a little bit of both. And we can begin to unpack

how the manipulation of naturally occurring events, things that the

and Israelites had experienced before, create the fundamentals for this story.

Some meteorologists recently conducted a study suggesting that the parting of

the Red Sea might be attributable to something called a wind set down.

When you have a very strong wind blowing persistently for many, many hours, it

can literally take the water of a lake and displace it.

move it from one shoreline to the other so that you dry the surface on the

upwind side and pile up water on the downwind side.

You see this regularly in Lake Erie, where water levels around Toledo, Ohio,

might be 16 feet higher than around Buffalo, New York.

Atmospheric modeling of a wind set down looks exactly like the story in the book

of Exodus. The Exodus narrative talks about a strong wind and a strong wind

blows for hours, which is precisely what you would need for a wind set down.

Atmospheric researcher Carl Drews notes that there are four aspects to a wind

set down. One, it takes hours of a strong wind blowing. Two, it exposes.

the bottom of a body of water thirdly the effect is greater in shallow water

fourthly the event can be reversed in minutes they ran a computer model to see

what's the strongest wind that people can walk through because you have a

wind but you still have to be able to walk through this wind And so with a 63

mile an hour wind blowing for 12 hours, you would have the condition for people

to be able to walk across this distance that would take them approximately four

hours to escape.

We have at least one example of this wind set -down phenomenon that took

in 1882 in the Nile Delta, where folks observed sustained wind blowing the

to such a degree that one day they were fishing, and the next day it was simply

mud and almost dry land.

People end up walking on the bed of what was formerly water, right where they

had been fishing the day before.

But the parting of the sea is just half the story.

Exodus tells us... that at the end of this crossing, the waters return and the

Egyptian chariots and soldiers are completely overwhelmed and drowned.

In many ways, this is even harder to understand than other parts of the

If this is occurring at daybreak, as the story says, how is it that the Egyptian

army doesn't suddenly see massive waves coming towards them? Why don't they try

to get to safety?

And if their chariot wheels are stuck in the mud, why don't the Egyptian

soldiers just get up and run?

For some theorists, the only way to understand the Exodus account is to

that the Egyptian army didn't have time to escape.

Leading us to believe that it was a very immediate event.

You might be a religious believer or not, but science has demonstrated that

least at some critical moment, natural phenomena could produce the kinds of

things we find in the Exodus story that would have aided the liberation and

survival of an entire people.

The incredible events in the book of Exodus, full of awe and mystery, still

capture the human imagination.

Whether divine interventions, natural events, or both, they are among the most

enduring legends in human history.

I'm Lawrence Fishburne. Thank you for watching History's Greatest Mystery.