Parting of the Waters

I was watching the news (Date Line or something) the other evening when a commercial headline teased a story on scientific proof on the Bible story of Moses and the parting Red Sea. I remember smiling when I heard this thinking back to my grade/middle school days. I attended a Catholic school then. I remember I would constantly get in trouble because my scientific mind was always questioning the nuns on the Bible teachings, especially when it came to the 'history' of the Earth and civilization...'how could Adam and Eve be the beginning of humans...what about (Darwin's theory of) evolution?' Then I would receive detention.
All that questioning made me chase after a degree in Earth Science to which my devout Catholic-Italian grandmother does not believe is true because I was learning things in college that should not be true, based on the Bible that is.

According to the Bible, in the Book of Exodus, it is told that Moses was leading Israelites in flight from Egypt when they arrived to the shore of the Red Sea where they were being pursued by the Egyptian army. At that point, it is said that "Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused that sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry, and the waters were divided. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground: and the waters were a wall unto them in the right hand, and on their left." Then later in the passage, it is told that once all Israelites passed through, Moses turned back, stretched over his hand and that wall of water returned back on the Egyptians by morning and Israel saw the Egyptians dead along the shore.

Recent study and computer models show that there actually is some plausible accounts of Earth science history with in the Bible. The study suggested of sustained winds within the coastal lagoon where the Mediterranean and the Nile met nearly 3,000 years ago. NCAR oceanographers wrote: under a steady blowing wind of 60mph plus, "the ocean model produces an area of exposed mud flats where the river mouth opens into the lake. These mud flats represent the area of crossing, and the crossing party would observe water to the right and left." This mud flat area would remain open for hours, long enough to allow passage through the ankle-deep mud, then the water would fill back in once the winds subsided. This is called a wind setdown. It is essentially the reverse of storm surge when steady strong winds cause water to dramatically rise in some areas, and falls in other areas.

Numerial Simulations of the Wind setdown

It is just intriguing to know that are Bible accounts of Earth's physical history dating back from 3,000 years ago. We can get a better understanding of Earth if we just connect the myth and the science. Considering the history of the Earth, technology has just scratched the surface when it comes to cracking this story.

It literally did not look like this... check out the link to the video to see the computer simulation of the Red Sea parting.