For a genuinely crass explanation of the news, Sordel is usually a one-stop-shopper: generally, the BBC will be good enough. In order to illustrate the mind-numbing crassness of today's news, however, I must quote from The Belfast Telegraph.
The report of this particular "news" story actually appears in The Telegraph online, where the first paragraph reads "One of the most dramatic episodes in the Old Testament, the parting of the Red Sea, may actually have happened, new research has shown."
Like a smaller brother copying homework from his nerdish sibling, however, The Belfast Telegraph sexes up this paragraph with an extra thought: "One of the most dramatic episodes in the Old Testament, the parting of the Red Sea, may actually have happened, research has shown – although the event described in the Book of Exodus was more likely caused by freak weather conditions than the hand of Jehovah."
Evidently quoting from one source is plagiarism but quoting from one source and then adding an oafish commentary of your own passes for journalism.
The scientific research in question (on the off-chance that you are too busy to click through those links) creates a scenario where, at a particular point close the the Red Sea, an Easterly wind blowing for 63mph for 12 hours could have created a temporary land bridge. The story of the Israelites' escape into the wilderness (well, the part that isn't about a rain of frogs, plague of boils and the Angel of Death slaying the First Born of Egypt) might therefore be literally true.
As The Belfast Telegraph kindly demonstrates, however, this story is not about how one small portion of The Bible could be literally true, but how every other part of it might be literally false.
Because, if Science can explain the parting of the Red Sea can be explained in scientific terms, then clearly "the hand of Jehovah" had very little part to play.
So, let's take a look at this story in the light of this bombshell.
Moses leads the Israelites out of Egypt and the Egyptians give chase. Oddly - and in a display of leadership not equalled until the days of Mrs. Brown's Little Boy - he chooses an escape route that leads to an impassable body of water.
Now, if you could establish that fishermen of the area knew full well that, say, a sandbank in the area was generally revealed during low tide or something, so Moses might have been talking things over with them in the preceding days and discovered this, then - fair enough - the escape doesn't seem like much of a miracle.
But - according to the latest scientific conjecture - what now happened is that an Easterly wind of 63 mph sprang up and was sustained for 12 hours.
(What's more, this isn't a regular occurrence. If it were, in the succeeding several thousand years someone would have seen this happen and said "hey, that looks a bit like the parting of the Red Sea!")
Now, if something that has never apparently happened again happens at the one time when it would be essential to allow passage for the Israelites ... wouldn't that count as a miracle?
And, if not, what would?
1 comment:
I had seen the news that a freak weather occurrence could have cause the Red Sea parting, but not the Belfast Telegraph's take on it. No-one seems to have addressed the question of quicksand - surely an area that had been under water since time immemorial (or at least since the last freak weather occurrence) would be boggy in the extreme? Or did the convenient wind also blow-dry the recently revealed passage? As Private Eye are fond of saying, I think we should be told.
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