Riddles of the Bible s01e03 Episode Script
Exodus Revealed
Exodus.
A biblical tale of miracles, catastrophes, history changed by the hand of God.
From the burning bush to the death of the first-born, scholars and enthusiasts pursue natural explanations for supernatural events in laboratories, desert sands and on volcanoes.
Will these theories provide proof that the miracles actually happened? What's the real story of Exodus? ls it possible that it never happened at all? Exodus,.
a 3,000-year-old biblical story .
.
of terrible plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the lsraelites freed from slavery in Egypt.
The Book of Exodus is central to Judaism, Christianity, and lslam - the faith of billions.
A story endlessly retold around ancient campfires, in sacred texts and on film.
The question is.
.
Did Exodus really happen as the Old Testament describes? I beIieve the events recorded in the Book of Exodus are true events.
There is no scientific proof for the story of the Exodus.
I don't have proof, but I do have evidence.
The stakes are high.
The conflict over lands in the Middle East can be traced all the way back to the Old Testament.
For centuries, the epic events of Exodus have driven people to search for explanations, for evidence.
Scientists and enthusiasts have attempted to decipher miracles using techniques from the traditional to the bizarre.
But the evidence remains tantalisingly slim.
Ruins unearthed in Egypt reveal that ancestors of the lsraelites may have lived there before the time of Exodus.
Then an Egyptian engraving from 1 207 BC placed the lsraelites in Canaan, present-day lsrael.
What happened in between is unclear except in the Old Testament.
3,000 years ago, Egypt is at the height of its power.
Pharaoh has enslaved the lsraelites.
Now they must build Egypt's cities and great monuments.
He fears the growing lsraelite population.
He decrees that their first-born sons shall be put to death.
A desperate mother tries to save her child.
(Angry shouting and screaming) One day, Moses defends a slave from a vicious beating by killing his overseer.
Nowhe must flee for his life.
Years pass, and then, alone in the desert, he witnesses a wondrous event.
A bush burns, but is not consumed.
From the bush comes the voice of God.
God commands Moses to confront Pharaoh and demand freedom for the slaves.
Moses walks through the desert, alone, to challenge Pharaoh, the most powerful person on Earth.
Moses demands freedom for his people.
Pharaoh says no.
ln response, the god of the lsraelites unleashes an apocalypse of natural disasters and disease upon the Egyptians.
To save Egypt, Pharaoh is forced to free the slaves.
God guides the lsraelites out of Egypt parting the Red Sea, raining manna from heaven and delivering them to the promised land, changing the course of history.
Could this ancient epic be historically accurate? Could these miracles be real? There is a long tradition of investigators searching for scientific explanations for biblical miracles.
Cambridge physicist Colin Humphreys is among them.
He thinks he can demystify the burning bush.
The BibIe describes Moses as seeing a bush that was burning and the bush wasn't consumed.
So there must have been some externaI source of energy.
I have a theory this might have been due to a naturaI gas Ieak underneath the burning bush, because we know naturaI gas is common in the MiddIe East.
We'II see if we can reproduce the burning bush Moses saw with this naturaI gas experiment.
So I'm going to turn on the naturaI gas.
Humphreys begins the demonstration.
Starter button here.
And you see the fIames have Iit up in the barbecue and they're Ieaping through the bush aIready.
The most common bush in the desert is the acacia bush, and we know that if you burn an acacia bush, you get charcoaI.
Rather than crumbling, charcoal retains its shape.
So this is reaIIy good.
Even though the fIames are Ieaping round it, the branches are stiII keeping their shape.
I think they'II graduaIIy turn to charcoaI.
And so, if this bush turns to charcoaI when you burn it, then it retains its shape for a Iong time, and so I beIieve that was the burning bush that Moses saw.
We've reproduced scientificaIIy what Moses may have seen.
Plausible, perhaps, but hardly proof.
When it comes to the miracles of Exodus, explanations abound - from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Perhaps one of the most daunting tasks for biblical investigators.
.
finding natural causes for the plagues that fell upon the Egyptians like hammer blows.
When Pharaoh refused to free the lsraelites, heaven's wrath descended.
The ten plagues began.
''The water shaII turn to bIood, and the fish that are in the river shaII die.
'' The description sounds familiar to epidemiologist John Marr.
He's seen millions of fish die in red waters from a profusion of microscopic algae called red tide.
When you Iook at it, you don't see the individuaI aIgae, which are microscopic, but coIIectiveIy they turn the water red.
They occur today, around the globe.
But they're almost always associated with salt water.
Marr had no leads.
Then, in 1 995, something strange happened in a coastal river in North Carolina.
A billion fish dead.
The waterred.
The cause unknown.
But then researchers found the culprit, a deadly micro-organism called Pfiesteria.
Pfiesteria was IabeIIed the ceII from heII because it kiIIed miIIions if not biIIions of fish.
If that occurred in North CaroIina, in the 1 990s, why couIdn't it have occurred in Egypt 3,000 years ago? For some who believe that science can explain the plagues, the red waters mark the beginning of a seemingly logical chain of events.
''BehoId I wiII smite aII thy borders with frogs, into thine house and into thy bedchamber, and into thine ovens.
'' (Croaking) What explanation could there be for this population explosion? A naturaI check on frog popuIations are fish.
Now if the fish were to die, frogs wouId have come onto the Iand at the same time - miIIions of them.
The Bible says the frogs were everywhere.
And then they died.
''And they gathered them together upon heaps; and the Iand stank.
'' (Buzzing) God had just begun to unleash his fury.
More plagues were yet to come.
Did each one set the stage for the next.
.
a chain of misery, illness, and death? A red Nile, leading to the death of fish and frogs, did not convince Pharaoh to free the lsraelites.
lt was a decision he would live to regret.
And then outbreaks of insects descended on the Egyptians.
The first of the insect plagues was lice.
They infested man and beast.
''AII of the dust of the Iand became Iice throughout aII the Iand of Egypt: Iice in man, and in beast.
'' But something is wrong here.
No one species of lice attacks both humans and animals, and two simultaneous outbreaks would be unlikely.
ln biblical times, the word for ''lice'' described any tiny bloodsucking insect.
What tiny insect, as small as lice, feeds on both humans and animals? For entomologist Jeff Lockwood, one particular insect stands out.
A biting midge, these guys - CuIicoides.
CuIicoides are bIood feeders.
Their mouth parts are Iike tiny swords that sIice open the tissue and cause a pooI of bIood that they feed on.
Thousands and thousands, miIIions of these wouId have driven the Egyptians crazy.
The fourth plague was an even nastier insect pest.
''There came a grievous swarm of fIies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into aII the Iand of Egypt: the Iand was corrupted by reason of the swarm of fIies.
'' For Lockwood, two consecutive insect outbreaks had to be more than a coincidence.
If we think back to the second pIague, what we have is heaps of dead frogs.
A dead frog does doubIe duty to produce a fIy outbreak.
If they're dead, they're not eating the fIies and if they're dead they're certainIy producing habitat that's good for fIies.
ln this scenario, red toxic water could have lead to dead fish and frogs, whose rotting bodies bred hordes of insects.
And then the Egyptians watched their livestock die all around them.
Cattle, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep all were destroyed.
There is no disease, or very few diseases, that couId affIict aII those Iivestock simuItaneousIy, so we have to Iook for some common cause.
If it's not a common disease, we suspect that it is a common carrier of disease.
Lockwood's prime suspect.
.
the biting midge of the third plague, a common carrier of many animal diseases.
A midge outbreak could have spread gruesome animal diseases, like blue tongue and African horse sickness, in epidemic proportions.
The midge is just an absoIuteIy ideaI expIanation, one common midge that's capabIe of transmitting diseases sufficient to sicken basicaIIy aII of the Egyptians' Iivestock.
Lockwood sees a pattern emerging.
The plagues may be connected.
Dead fish, then frogs, then insects, and now dead livestock.
Each plague may have emerged from the previous one.
EcoIogicaI pieces are now faIIing into pIace.
Lockwood looks to the sixth plague, a disease that affects both humans and animals, to see if it, too, was triggered by an earlier plague.
''It shaII be a boiI breaking forth with bIains upon man, and upon beast.
'' There are several bacteria, such as anthrax, that can cause lesions and boils.
Something had to spread the bacteria among the victims, and do it quickly and efficiently.
What wouId have carried it to both humans and animaIs? Let's think back to the fourth pIague, the fIies.
lt's house flies versus stable flies in a test to find the best disease transmitter.
We are going to use this yeIIow dye to mark the house fIies.
The orange dye, the stabIe fIies.
The dye is going to substitute, in our case, for the bacteria.
Lockwood sacrifices his arm to science, testing to see if either fly will transmit the dye to his skin.
ln moments, the first stable fly attacks.
Aah! Yup, he's starting to feed there.
Ooh.
And you can imagine what the Egyptians, or I can imagine what the Egyptians wouId be suffering if they were covered in these fIies.
The stable flies leave the most powder and break the skin.
They've Ieft powder aII over the pIace; they're aII over me in biting.
The stabIe fIies are probabIy the guiIty party.
What we have is an ecoIogicaI domino effect.
Something goes wrong with the river, it drives the frogs onto Iand.
Outbreak of insects, midges, which then carry diseases to the Iivestock.
We have an outbreak of fIies, which carries boiIs to man and beast.
Some scholars think the first six plagues form a series of interconnected natural events.
But what about the rest? At this point in the story, God had severely punished Egypt.
Still, Pharaoh refused to free the slaves.
God was not done.
The next four plagues formed another chain of devastation.
Crop-destroying hail gave way to ravenous locusts.
''And the Iocusts went up aII over the Iand of Egypt, the Iand was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the Iand.
'' There wouId have been more Iocusts in a swarm than there were humans on earth at the time of Exodus.
Imagine the Egyptians; a cIoud of Iocusts descends.
Not onIy does it begin by eating the wheat, but soon the Iocusts move onto cIothing, Ieather goods, baskets.
Anything that's organic and not moving becomes food for these insects and they devour, in a sense, the countryside of Egypt.
The locusts consumed the last of the food supply.
Starvation loomed.
The ninth plague.
.
darkness.
Some speculate it was a terrifying sand storm that blocked the sun.
Then the tenth and final plague.
''At midnight, the Lord smote aII the first-born in the Iand of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon.
'' Here was death parsed out in a way that seemed to defy scientific explanation.
How could something have killed the Egyptians, on a massive scale, and spared the lsraelites? Epidemiologist Martin Blaser has a grim suspicion about what happened.
When you have a disease that affects both humans and animaIs, short time, a Iot of peopIe affected, a IethaI disease, the Iist of possibiIities is very smaII.
Bubonic pIague fits everything.
Bubonic plague is spread by the bites of fleas, carried into human homes by rats.
(Squeaking) ln the 1 4th century, Black Death wiped out one-fourth of the population of Europe.
Blaser examined old death records.
He found that in some European cities, plague killed Jews at only half the rate as the rest of the population.
He suspects the Jews had been doing something that protected them, something that had also protected them in biblical times in Egypt.
Some custom that prevented disease like the dietary laws against eating pork.
Pigs can carry a 30-foot tapeworm called Taenia that can end up in humans, causing disability and death.
Blaser focused on another ancient Jewish tradition.
Every spring, Jews were required to clean out their stored grain.
This law was so strict that even non-Jews living among them had to observe it.
The Jews were empiricaI thinkers, and a Iong time ago they figured out the reIationship between grain and pIague.
Eliminate grain, keep rats under control.
By minimising rats and fleas, Blaser believes the lsraelites may have protected themselves from plague.
The Egyptians, however, had no such ritual.
Blaser thinks this was their undoing.
The stage was set for Egypt's own Black Deathor was it? There is nothing in the Black Death scenario that would account for such selective killing - the death of the first-born only.
There is no disease that we know of that just affects the first-borns, so I take that that it's a metaphor for a disease that kiIIs one out of every three or four peopIe.
John Marr believes the biblical account may have been literal.
He set out to track down a more selective killer.
The tenth pIague was aImost inexpIicabIe.
I was stumped.
Then Marr heard about a contemporary case of children dying suddenly.
lnvestigators, at first, suspected a mould had killed the children.
This gave Marr an idea about the tenth plague.
It was due to a toxic mouId.
His theory.
.
grain saturated by hailstorms and stored in darkness would have been susceptible to mould.
Rare moulds can wreak havoc on human health and can even cause internal haemorrhaging.
With little else to eat, the Egyptians may have resorted to mouldy, toxin-laced grain.
Death would come suddenly, with no visible cause, as if the victims were touched by an angel of death.
Still, why the first-born? Marr found his answer, the final piece to the puzzle, in an Egyptian tradition.
During the times of famine, the eIdest, the oIdest Egyptian chiId, wouId be given a doubIe portion of food in order to stave off starvation.
Instead of saving them, it kiIIed them.
The Bible paints a gruesome picture.
The first-born Egyptian children died.
The rest of the population starved and was ravaged by disease.
Pharaoh was defeated.
He wanted the lsraelites and their god out of Egypt.
He told Moses to take his people and leave.
The plagues came to an end.
Using science imaginativeIy does produce some possibIe, if sIightIy far-fetched, natural scenarios for the supernatural plagues.
But did they happen at all? Why do Egyptian sources never mention them? Could something else have weakened Egypt, something that might have encouraged an Exodus? On this point the Egyptians are not silent at all.
They say that death came from across the seas.
Powerful empires decline for many reasons.
The Bible tells us the plagues ravaged Egypt and gave the lsraelites the chance to escape.
Archaeologist Eric Cline is not persuaded.
Rather than the pIagues, I wouId Iook more to human intervention.
Cline looks at the archaeological record to see what might have weakened Egypt.
Scholars have deciphered powerful evidence that Egypt was attacked by mysterious invaders from across the Mediterranean.
They call them the Sea Peoples.
The attack of the Sea PeopIes was probabIy the Egyptians' worst nightmare.
They are the fiercest warriors that the Egyptians have faced.
And the Egyptians teII us that everybody went down in the face of these Sea PeopIes.
OnIy the Egyptians were abIe to stand, and even that was a Pyrrhic victory, because the Egyptians were so weakened that they were never the same ever again.
Although the Egyptians never mentioned the plagues they did document these attacks, in pictographs on the mortuary temple of Ramses lll.
Archaeological finds match these writings.
I see no need for divine intervention when human intervention can expIain it just as weII, if not better.
Weakened by these attacks, Egypt might have lost control of the lsraelites.
But did they flee? lf so, where is the evidence? For that, we need to retrace the steps of their escape.
The Bible says that 600,000 men, and their families, travelled through the desert for 40 years.
Archaeologists would expect to find traces of such a large group.
If bibIicaI numbers are correct, then you've got two and a haIf miIIion peopIe wandering around for 40 years, I wouId want to find entire Iandscapes denuded.
I'd want to find hundreds of sheep and goat carcasses, the bones.
Even if they didn't ask for directions, wandering for 40 years, there wouId be something.
The search for a trace of this epic migration has turned up nothing.
Archaeologist Jim Hoffmeier believes the reason is that there were far fewer lsraelites than the Bible says.
And a much smaller group would have left behind much less evidence to be found later.
One of the enduring images of the movie The Ten Commandments is these miIIions of peopIe coming out of Egypt and rushing into the deserts of Sinai.
Hoffmeier attributes this misleading image to a misunderstanding of the Hebrew word ''eleph''.
The Bible says the number of men with their families who left Egypt is 600 eleph.
The word eIeph can be transIated three different ways.
It can be transIated ''thousand''.
EIeph can aIso be transIated as a cIan.
The third option is that it's a miIitary unit, which I think is a more pIausibIe scenario.
According to Hoffmeier's interpretation, instead of 600,000 men and their families, there were as few as 5,000.
We're taIking about a few tens of thousands.
CertainIy not hundreds of thousands, adding women and chiIdren, making it miIIions.
Whether tens of thousands, or millions, no evidence of their passage out of Egypt has been found.
The IsraeIites were trying to get out of there as fast as they couId; they weren't carving monuments aIong the way saying, ''foIIow our traiI''.
That rapid movement of peopIe is not going to Ieave the kind of tangibIe archaeoIogicaI evidence that one might expect.
Whether millions or thousands, the fleeing lsraelites were about to encounter a seemingly impassable barrier, the Red Sea.
Pharaoh had changed his mind about letting the lsraelites go.
Pharaoh's army descended on the lsraelites and trapped them by the shore of the sea.
Across the waters was freedom, but they had no way to get there.
Again, Moses heard the voice of God.
''Lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it.
And the chiIdren of IsraeI shaII go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.
The Egyptians pursued and went into the sea after them, and the water's returned and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and aII the host of Pharaoh; there remained not even one.
'' There may be no image of God's intervention in the affairs of man more powerful than this one.
Could it have happened? Perhaps more than any other miracle in the Old Testament, the parting of the Red Sea has intrigued scientists.
Back in Cambridge, Colin Humphreys thinks he knows how the Red Sea parted.
I beIieve the parting of the Red Sea occurred as described in the BibIe and I beIieve there's a naturaI expIanation of how it happened.
And we've set up an experiment here to show how this works.
The BibIe says that Moses stretched out his hand over the Red Sea and a strong east wind forced the waters of the Red Sea back.
The IsraeIites went across with water on their right-hand side and their Ieft-hand side, and they waIked across on dry Iand.
The bibIicaI description of the parting of the Red Sea is just a very precise description of a mechanism caIIed wind setdown.
Wind setdown occurs when a strong steady wind literally blows water aside.
If there's a ridge of Iand in the water, it can expose that ridge of Iand.
Sometimes new theories require unconventional experiments.
This is the parting of the Red Sea experiment.
This Ieaf bIower represents the strong east wind, which bIew the Red Sea back.
This water trough represents the Red Sea itseIf.
And these stones represent the Iand bridge that the IsraeIites crossed.
Let's see if it works.
(Whirring) WeII, I think that's just amazing.
That was fantastic.
It worked even better than I thought it wouId.
Now that we've stopped, you can see the water compIeteIy covers the Iand bridge.
This corresponds to drowning Pharaoh's army, chariots, and horses, just as described in the BibIe.
Humphreys'theory is hardly the only explanation of how nature could have split the waters.
Geo-archaeologist Floyd McCoy is thinking bigger- much bigger.
Floyd researches tsunamis at the University of Hawaii.
He says a tsunami might have created a land passage for the lsraelites across a lagoon.
Although we think of a tsunami as a lot of water, what comes before is the disappearance of water.
Sometimes you get a warning that a tsunami is coming.
Sometimes that ocean disappears and that's caIIed drawdown.
Remember what a wave Iooks Iike.
It's sinusoidaI; bottom, top, trough, crest.
If the trough comes in first, that's drawdown, the ocean disappears.
Here's the oceaninto a broad Iagoon.
This giant wave coming ashore has a crest and a trough to it.
This is the water receding from here to here.
The Iagoon is there no more and provides ground that the Jews couId perhaps have used in their Exodus out of Egypt.
And then that wiII be foIIowed by the crest coming in and suddenIy the pIace is awash and wouId wipe out anybody pursuing the Jews.
There's drawdown.
Picture that a hundred hundred times bigger and that wave coming in much bigger.
There comes the crest of the wave.
For aII this to happen so that there's time for this group of peopIe to get across this Iagoon - it's a big Iagoon - that's got to be a pretty big tsunami.
A big tsunami needs a gigantic event to set it off.
An earthquake, an asteroid impact, a volcanic eruption.
So where did a wave Iike this come from? WeII, there's Santorini, one of the giant eruptions in human antiquity.
Santorini erupted with a force of over 24,000 mega-tons.
OK, here's Santorini.
North is this way.
Heading down this way is Crete, and that direction, Egypt.
This was an isIand.
There was a Iarge isIand that sat in here, right, right here.
So here is this big eruption pIume, rising up here, 40, 50 kiIometres up.
It coIIapses with the debris faIIing, hitting these sIopes here.
It shoots down the sIopes, into the water, pyrocIastic fIows.
- And when it enters the water? - Tsunami.
ExactIy.
Pyroclastic flows, sudden huge slides of volcanic ash and debris falling into the water, have been shown to trigger tsunamis.
Computer modelling reveals that the Santorini tsunami would have headed directly towards the Nile Delta, a possible location of the Exodusjourney.
The issue is the dates.
When did the Exodus happen and when did this eruption happen? We don't know.
And there's a timing issue here.
How wonderfuI that this suddenIy happens just when you're there to aIIow you to cross and then the crest of the tsunami comes washing in, and to take out the bad guys behind you.
That's stretching it a IittIe bit.
As an explanation for the parting of the Red Sea, a tsunami is a long shot.
But could another volcanic effect provide a more compelling answer, a smoking gun, so to speak? When it comes to the parting of the Red Sea, volcanologist Steve O'Meara has spent a lot of time thinking about lava.
For him, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is a window into the biblical past, when an underwater volcano may have been the source of the lsraelites'escape route across the sea.
The Red Sea forms part of the Great African Rift system.
The entire region has an explosive volcanic history.
AIthough we're seeing a very smaII Iava fIow, you have to in your mind scaIe this up to a massive voIcanic eruption.
3200 years ago, it enters the water.
The water boiIs; it disappears.
It's enough to choke vaIIeys and cause Iand bridges.
ln O'Meara's scenario, an underwater eruption could have created a temporary, unstable lava bridge.
The surface layer of lava cools quickly when it hits the water.
The lsraelites could have crossed over this new land.
But what's amazing about this Iava, even though it's so hot that I have to keep waIking away right at this moment, that if I'd had to, to save my Iife, I couId wait and waIk over this Iava in ten minutes.
This new unsupported land could have quickly disintegrated.
And then, when the Egyptians were on their chariots Sorry, it's very hot.
Sorry.
Oh.
The Egyptians were in their chariots and they tried to cross the same bed, the Iava gave way.
The collapse of this land bridge would have plunged Pharaoh's army into the sea.
It makes sense.
VoIcano is the onIy thing that makes sense.
The BibIe is just fiIIed with voIcanic references, and especiaIIy in Exodus, from the pIagues to the parting of the Red Sea, and seeing piIIars of fire, and mountains quaking, and the voice of God and burning bushes - aII of this in Exodus.
Just imagine, you come up here and you see this, and you are not a scientist.
There were no scientists back then.
Listen to it; it's taIking to you.
(CrackIing) It's written in the BibIe, God says, ''I am the rock.
'' There you are.
lf a volcano, a tsunami, or a gale-force wind saved the lsraelites, it still would have required miraculous timing and it still left no evidence.
For some who read the Bible as the literal word of God, the lack of evidence could simply mean we've been looking in the wrong place.
They point out that there is no agreement on the route the lsraelites took out of Egypt.
The Bible's description of the journey is vague.
''God Ied the peopIe about, through the way of the wiIderness of the Red Sea.
'' lt does state the lsraelites started in Egypt and ended up in Canaan, present-day lsrael.
Different theories about how the lsraelites crossed the sea require different routes.
Wind setdown requires a shallow body of water.
Colin Humphries proposes a route across central Sinai.
The tsunami theory only makes sense if the lsraelites took the northern route along the coast.
The lava bridge could have formed across the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqaba, the most likely place for volcanic activity in the region.
lf there are clues hidden in the desert, it would help to pin down the lsraelites'route.
Jim Hoffmeier believes most researchers are looking in the wrong place, because something got lost in the translation - literally.
The Hebrew ''yam suph'' IiteraIIy means ''sea of reeds''.
When the Greek transIators took the Hebrew yam suph and transIated it into Greek, they transIated it as Red Sea.
Red Sea instead of Reed Sea.
So we've been stuck with a fauIty transIation for over 2,000 years.
Finding this Reed Sea is no easy task.
The Nile Delta was a very different place 3,000 years ago.
Sea has become land, and land, sea.
Marshes have dried to desert.
New cities and farms are now erasing history.
But geologist Steve Moshier has discovered a window into the past.
The best tooI that we have for Iooking at the ground in ages past is imagery from the 1 960s.
RecentIy, the government decIassified spy sateIIite imagery, so these negatives were shot back in the CoId War era.
These high resolution images, taken to spy on the Egyptian Army in the 1 960s, show the desert before the recent onslaught of development.
Stripped of its modern veneer, the undisturbed land reveals its secrets.
The dark areas suggest the locations of ancient bodies of water,.
one of them could have been the sea of reeds.
To confirm his suspicions, Moshier tests soil samples from the area.
I want to try to figure out by Iooking at the texture and Iooking at the fossiI content, the sheIIs that are in it, what kind of environment it was.
Was it swamp, was it a stream, was it a Iakebed, or was it some kind of a marine Iagoon? Moshier has been collaborating with Jim Hoffmeier.
From the satellite photos and the soil tests, they discovered traces of an ancient body of water called Lake Ballah.
Hoffmeier suspects this is the Bible's sea of reeds.
This is our BaIIah, our yam suph, our hypotheticaI yam suph aII in here, aII this dark area.
The Iake itseIf may not be any oIder than 5,000 years.
- That's oId enough for our purposes.
- Sure, sure.
Although Hoffmeier has unearthed the remains of two Egyptian forts near this lakebed, he has found no lsraelite artefacts.
ls it conceivable that 3,000 years later, evidence remains hidden in the desert? Most archaeologists think not.
But one man thinks he has found something, a sort of Holy Grail of Exodus archaeology, evidence of Pharaoh's army and miracles showered down upon the lsraelites.
When it comes to Exodus, Bob Cornuke thinks he might have found that elusive Holy Grail.
.
actual artefacts.
His investigative techniques are driven by his detective skills and his faith.
I've been researching and investigating the Exodus route for about 20 years now; searching for the reaI Mount Sinai in Egypt, searching for the Ark of the Covenant, the crossing site of the Red Sea.
When I was a poIice investigator, the crime scene spoke to me.
LittIe pieces of evidence wouId teII me what happened there.
Now I Iook at the BibIe and try to figure out what happened thousands of years ago at the dawn of history.
And based on the evidence I have seen, I beIieve that it happened exactIy as the BibIe said.
We use the BibIe as a compass, as a road map, and a guide, and that gave us a pretty good indication where the route probabIy was.
Like the investigators before him, Cornuke has his own idea about the route the lsraelites travelled.
AIong the wide beach of Sinai PeninsuIa to here, turning back, and then crossing right here.
God says in Isaiah 51 : ''I wiII buiId you a roadway through the sea.
'' That's another cIue.
Right here at this Iocation, there was an underwater Iand bridge that went right to the sea.
These are shots of ships that have gone aground out there.
Cornuke believes the shallow reefs here are the most likely place for the waters to have parted.
And this is the beach.
I took a picture of where they wouId have been on the shore.
You can see where the chiIdren of IsraeI wouId have been aII bunched up and then the mountains cup around them.
They had nowhere to go except into the ocean, right here.
lf Cornuke is right, this is where Pharaoh's army would have been destroyed.
And here we hit what, for him, is the ultimate pay dirt.
We went there and started digging into the side of the cIiffs hoping to find something.
And out of the cIiffs started faIIing hundreds of pieces of bronze.
Let's say that the Egyptian Army did drown here.
This is a man-made object.
It's tubuIar in shape, kind of, you can see where it is kind of rounded.
CouId be an arrow shaft or some other cIasp that was on a soIdier's uniform, or even on a horse.
I think it's very provocative to think that this is from the Egyptian Army of Pharaoh.
Cornuke's colleagues also explored the desert where they believed lsraelites wandered.
They discovered what they believe to be handcrafted stones.
Not just a coupIe, but hundreds, aImost thousands of these were found Iaying aII over the ground.
What couId they be? The BibIe taIks about manna being ground on stones.
According to the Bible, manna is food from God.
lt rained down from the sky to feed the lsraelites in the desert.
CouId these be the very stones that ground the manna for the chiIdren of IsraeI during their sojourn in the desert? I think it's highIy possibIe.
Has he found the Holy Grail of Exodus archaeology? Actual evidence? Scientists are extremely sceptical.
Cornuke hasn't released these finds to the larger scientific community, so there's no way to judge his assertions.
Kara Cooney, an expert on ancient Egypt, has seen extraordinary claims comeand go.
I don't think there's much vaIidity to peopIe finding a piece of bronze in the Red Sea and then cIaiming, ''This is the piece of bronze that'' Or a piece of bronze that came from Pharaoh's army during the Exodus when they were wiped away.
How do you test that bronze? It's not an organic materiaI.
How are you going to date it? How are you going to tie it to Ramses' army? Any time you have a new discovery, some new information, it takes a Iong time for peopIe to shift over and start Iooking at it, and even Ionger for them to accept it.
If anybody actuaIIy found Pharaoh's army or bits and pieces of an IsraeIites' encampment, it wouId be front-page news across the worId.
The fact is, not a single artefact has been found that could be definitively linked to the biblical Exodus.
lf the parting sea, the burning bush, the plagues did happen, they appear to have left no traces.
There's no way to confirm even that the lsraelites were slaves in Egypt.
There is only one source for the story of Exodus.
.
the Bible.
For many scholars, the silence of the Egyptian sources is telling.
I want two or three separate sources before I wiII beIieve what any one source says.
And frankIy, there is no Egyptian written text saying anything about the Exodus.
Some argue that the Egyptians simply wouldn't record such an epic embarrassment.
I wouId not expect Ramses to, in any historicaI records, to say, ''Oh, by the way, I Iet these Hebrew sIaves get away because I was having some troubIes.
'' Perhaps not on monuments for public display, but the Egyptians were meticulous bureaucrats and did keep unflattering paperwork.
You do have Egyptian documentation of bad things happening, of civiI war, of unrest, of foreign incursion, of peopIe coming in and taking Egypt over.
And yet you have no evidence for this massive upheavaI of the Pharaoh and the destruction of his entire army.
You wouId expect to find that.
Looking at Exodus solely through the lens of science, we know only a few hard facts.
Ruins suggest that people of Semitic origin may have lived in Egypt around 1 600 BC.
About 400 years later, an Egyptian tablet states a people called ''lsrael'' lived in Canaan, present-day lsrael.
What happened in between, the time Exodus supposedly took place, is a mystery.
Scientific explanations offered for the many miracles of Exodus, though intriguing, take us no closer to proving it happened.
And the archaeological and historical records remain resolutely silent about these epic events.
We do not have a singIe shred of evidence to date.
There is nothing archaeoIogicaIIy to attest to anything from the bibIicaI story - no pIagues, no parting of the Red Sea, no manna from heaven, no wandering for 40 years.
The most IikeIy reason that we're not finding any evidence for the Exodus in Egypt is that it didn't happen the way that the BibIe said it did or that it didn't happen at aII.
But even sceptics admit that precious grains of truth might lie at the heart of the narrative.
Perhaps it was born among the small groups of nomadic people who travelled between Egypt and the land of Canaan.
I think there's a very good chance that what actuaIIy took pIace was a series of migrations, or waves of migrations, if you wiII, over three or four hundred years, of peopIe Ieaving Egypt and making their way up to Canaan in ones, twos, threes, maybe even tens, hundreds at the most.
The story of the nomads'journeys was perhaps told and retold, passed down from generation to generation until it became an epic.
Despite the lack of evidence, the story of Exodus endures.
lt helped shape the modern world.
The tale of the liberation of a people, and the triumph of their one God over many has resonated through the ages.
Revealed word? Revealing mythology? That truth of this story can only be answered in the heads and hearts of each individual.
But surely the questions are worth asking.
We have yet to find any indication from any kind of archaeoIogicaI source it actuaIIy took pIace.
For peopIe who have reIigious convictions, they don't need proof.
It aII boiIs down to, this is a supernaturaI event.
And you can't expIain it in any other way.
Ultimately, the power of Exodus lies more in faith than in science.
There's no reaI scientific proof that the Exodus took pIace, but as a Christian or as a Jew, you shouIdn't need scientific proof to be a person of faith.
Faith doesn't need to be scientificaIIy proven nor shouId it be.
It's faith.
Perhaps, someday, the wilderness will reveal some bit of incontrovertible evidence that Exodus happened.
But for now, the desert keeps its secrets.
A biblical tale of miracles, catastrophes, history changed by the hand of God.
From the burning bush to the death of the first-born, scholars and enthusiasts pursue natural explanations for supernatural events in laboratories, desert sands and on volcanoes.
Will these theories provide proof that the miracles actually happened? What's the real story of Exodus? ls it possible that it never happened at all? Exodus,.
a 3,000-year-old biblical story .
.
of terrible plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, the lsraelites freed from slavery in Egypt.
The Book of Exodus is central to Judaism, Christianity, and lslam - the faith of billions.
A story endlessly retold around ancient campfires, in sacred texts and on film.
The question is.
.
Did Exodus really happen as the Old Testament describes? I beIieve the events recorded in the Book of Exodus are true events.
There is no scientific proof for the story of the Exodus.
I don't have proof, but I do have evidence.
The stakes are high.
The conflict over lands in the Middle East can be traced all the way back to the Old Testament.
For centuries, the epic events of Exodus have driven people to search for explanations, for evidence.
Scientists and enthusiasts have attempted to decipher miracles using techniques from the traditional to the bizarre.
But the evidence remains tantalisingly slim.
Ruins unearthed in Egypt reveal that ancestors of the lsraelites may have lived there before the time of Exodus.
Then an Egyptian engraving from 1 207 BC placed the lsraelites in Canaan, present-day lsrael.
What happened in between is unclear except in the Old Testament.
3,000 years ago, Egypt is at the height of its power.
Pharaoh has enslaved the lsraelites.
Now they must build Egypt's cities and great monuments.
He fears the growing lsraelite population.
He decrees that their first-born sons shall be put to death.
A desperate mother tries to save her child.
(Angry shouting and screaming) One day, Moses defends a slave from a vicious beating by killing his overseer.
Nowhe must flee for his life.
Years pass, and then, alone in the desert, he witnesses a wondrous event.
A bush burns, but is not consumed.
From the bush comes the voice of God.
God commands Moses to confront Pharaoh and demand freedom for the slaves.
Moses walks through the desert, alone, to challenge Pharaoh, the most powerful person on Earth.
Moses demands freedom for his people.
Pharaoh says no.
ln response, the god of the lsraelites unleashes an apocalypse of natural disasters and disease upon the Egyptians.
To save Egypt, Pharaoh is forced to free the slaves.
God guides the lsraelites out of Egypt parting the Red Sea, raining manna from heaven and delivering them to the promised land, changing the course of history.
Could this ancient epic be historically accurate? Could these miracles be real? There is a long tradition of investigators searching for scientific explanations for biblical miracles.
Cambridge physicist Colin Humphreys is among them.
He thinks he can demystify the burning bush.
The BibIe describes Moses as seeing a bush that was burning and the bush wasn't consumed.
So there must have been some externaI source of energy.
I have a theory this might have been due to a naturaI gas Ieak underneath the burning bush, because we know naturaI gas is common in the MiddIe East.
We'II see if we can reproduce the burning bush Moses saw with this naturaI gas experiment.
So I'm going to turn on the naturaI gas.
Humphreys begins the demonstration.
Starter button here.
And you see the fIames have Iit up in the barbecue and they're Ieaping through the bush aIready.
The most common bush in the desert is the acacia bush, and we know that if you burn an acacia bush, you get charcoaI.
Rather than crumbling, charcoal retains its shape.
So this is reaIIy good.
Even though the fIames are Ieaping round it, the branches are stiII keeping their shape.
I think they'II graduaIIy turn to charcoaI.
And so, if this bush turns to charcoaI when you burn it, then it retains its shape for a Iong time, and so I beIieve that was the burning bush that Moses saw.
We've reproduced scientificaIIy what Moses may have seen.
Plausible, perhaps, but hardly proof.
When it comes to the miracles of Exodus, explanations abound - from the sublime to the ridiculous.
Perhaps one of the most daunting tasks for biblical investigators.
.
finding natural causes for the plagues that fell upon the Egyptians like hammer blows.
When Pharaoh refused to free the lsraelites, heaven's wrath descended.
The ten plagues began.
''The water shaII turn to bIood, and the fish that are in the river shaII die.
'' The description sounds familiar to epidemiologist John Marr.
He's seen millions of fish die in red waters from a profusion of microscopic algae called red tide.
When you Iook at it, you don't see the individuaI aIgae, which are microscopic, but coIIectiveIy they turn the water red.
They occur today, around the globe.
But they're almost always associated with salt water.
Marr had no leads.
Then, in 1 995, something strange happened in a coastal river in North Carolina.
A billion fish dead.
The waterred.
The cause unknown.
But then researchers found the culprit, a deadly micro-organism called Pfiesteria.
Pfiesteria was IabeIIed the ceII from heII because it kiIIed miIIions if not biIIions of fish.
If that occurred in North CaroIina, in the 1 990s, why couIdn't it have occurred in Egypt 3,000 years ago? For some who believe that science can explain the plagues, the red waters mark the beginning of a seemingly logical chain of events.
''BehoId I wiII smite aII thy borders with frogs, into thine house and into thy bedchamber, and into thine ovens.
'' (Croaking) What explanation could there be for this population explosion? A naturaI check on frog popuIations are fish.
Now if the fish were to die, frogs wouId have come onto the Iand at the same time - miIIions of them.
The Bible says the frogs were everywhere.
And then they died.
''And they gathered them together upon heaps; and the Iand stank.
'' (Buzzing) God had just begun to unleash his fury.
More plagues were yet to come.
Did each one set the stage for the next.
.
a chain of misery, illness, and death? A red Nile, leading to the death of fish and frogs, did not convince Pharaoh to free the lsraelites.
lt was a decision he would live to regret.
And then outbreaks of insects descended on the Egyptians.
The first of the insect plagues was lice.
They infested man and beast.
''AII of the dust of the Iand became Iice throughout aII the Iand of Egypt: Iice in man, and in beast.
'' But something is wrong here.
No one species of lice attacks both humans and animals, and two simultaneous outbreaks would be unlikely.
ln biblical times, the word for ''lice'' described any tiny bloodsucking insect.
What tiny insect, as small as lice, feeds on both humans and animals? For entomologist Jeff Lockwood, one particular insect stands out.
A biting midge, these guys - CuIicoides.
CuIicoides are bIood feeders.
Their mouth parts are Iike tiny swords that sIice open the tissue and cause a pooI of bIood that they feed on.
Thousands and thousands, miIIions of these wouId have driven the Egyptians crazy.
The fourth plague was an even nastier insect pest.
''There came a grievous swarm of fIies into the house of Pharaoh, and into his servants' houses, and into aII the Iand of Egypt: the Iand was corrupted by reason of the swarm of fIies.
'' For Lockwood, two consecutive insect outbreaks had to be more than a coincidence.
If we think back to the second pIague, what we have is heaps of dead frogs.
A dead frog does doubIe duty to produce a fIy outbreak.
If they're dead, they're not eating the fIies and if they're dead they're certainIy producing habitat that's good for fIies.
ln this scenario, red toxic water could have lead to dead fish and frogs, whose rotting bodies bred hordes of insects.
And then the Egyptians watched their livestock die all around them.
Cattle, horses, camels, oxen, and sheep all were destroyed.
There is no disease, or very few diseases, that couId affIict aII those Iivestock simuItaneousIy, so we have to Iook for some common cause.
If it's not a common disease, we suspect that it is a common carrier of disease.
Lockwood's prime suspect.
.
the biting midge of the third plague, a common carrier of many animal diseases.
A midge outbreak could have spread gruesome animal diseases, like blue tongue and African horse sickness, in epidemic proportions.
The midge is just an absoIuteIy ideaI expIanation, one common midge that's capabIe of transmitting diseases sufficient to sicken basicaIIy aII of the Egyptians' Iivestock.
Lockwood sees a pattern emerging.
The plagues may be connected.
Dead fish, then frogs, then insects, and now dead livestock.
Each plague may have emerged from the previous one.
EcoIogicaI pieces are now faIIing into pIace.
Lockwood looks to the sixth plague, a disease that affects both humans and animals, to see if it, too, was triggered by an earlier plague.
''It shaII be a boiI breaking forth with bIains upon man, and upon beast.
'' There are several bacteria, such as anthrax, that can cause lesions and boils.
Something had to spread the bacteria among the victims, and do it quickly and efficiently.
What wouId have carried it to both humans and animaIs? Let's think back to the fourth pIague, the fIies.
lt's house flies versus stable flies in a test to find the best disease transmitter.
We are going to use this yeIIow dye to mark the house fIies.
The orange dye, the stabIe fIies.
The dye is going to substitute, in our case, for the bacteria.
Lockwood sacrifices his arm to science, testing to see if either fly will transmit the dye to his skin.
ln moments, the first stable fly attacks.
Aah! Yup, he's starting to feed there.
Ooh.
And you can imagine what the Egyptians, or I can imagine what the Egyptians wouId be suffering if they were covered in these fIies.
The stable flies leave the most powder and break the skin.
They've Ieft powder aII over the pIace; they're aII over me in biting.
The stabIe fIies are probabIy the guiIty party.
What we have is an ecoIogicaI domino effect.
Something goes wrong with the river, it drives the frogs onto Iand.
Outbreak of insects, midges, which then carry diseases to the Iivestock.
We have an outbreak of fIies, which carries boiIs to man and beast.
Some scholars think the first six plagues form a series of interconnected natural events.
But what about the rest? At this point in the story, God had severely punished Egypt.
Still, Pharaoh refused to free the slaves.
God was not done.
The next four plagues formed another chain of devastation.
Crop-destroying hail gave way to ravenous locusts.
''And the Iocusts went up aII over the Iand of Egypt, the Iand was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the Iand.
'' There wouId have been more Iocusts in a swarm than there were humans on earth at the time of Exodus.
Imagine the Egyptians; a cIoud of Iocusts descends.
Not onIy does it begin by eating the wheat, but soon the Iocusts move onto cIothing, Ieather goods, baskets.
Anything that's organic and not moving becomes food for these insects and they devour, in a sense, the countryside of Egypt.
The locusts consumed the last of the food supply.
Starvation loomed.
The ninth plague.
.
darkness.
Some speculate it was a terrifying sand storm that blocked the sun.
Then the tenth and final plague.
''At midnight, the Lord smote aII the first-born in the Iand of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh unto the first-born of the captive that was in the dungeon.
'' Here was death parsed out in a way that seemed to defy scientific explanation.
How could something have killed the Egyptians, on a massive scale, and spared the lsraelites? Epidemiologist Martin Blaser has a grim suspicion about what happened.
When you have a disease that affects both humans and animaIs, short time, a Iot of peopIe affected, a IethaI disease, the Iist of possibiIities is very smaII.
Bubonic pIague fits everything.
Bubonic plague is spread by the bites of fleas, carried into human homes by rats.
(Squeaking) ln the 1 4th century, Black Death wiped out one-fourth of the population of Europe.
Blaser examined old death records.
He found that in some European cities, plague killed Jews at only half the rate as the rest of the population.
He suspects the Jews had been doing something that protected them, something that had also protected them in biblical times in Egypt.
Some custom that prevented disease like the dietary laws against eating pork.
Pigs can carry a 30-foot tapeworm called Taenia that can end up in humans, causing disability and death.
Blaser focused on another ancient Jewish tradition.
Every spring, Jews were required to clean out their stored grain.
This law was so strict that even non-Jews living among them had to observe it.
The Jews were empiricaI thinkers, and a Iong time ago they figured out the reIationship between grain and pIague.
Eliminate grain, keep rats under control.
By minimising rats and fleas, Blaser believes the lsraelites may have protected themselves from plague.
The Egyptians, however, had no such ritual.
Blaser thinks this was their undoing.
The stage was set for Egypt's own Black Deathor was it? There is nothing in the Black Death scenario that would account for such selective killing - the death of the first-born only.
There is no disease that we know of that just affects the first-borns, so I take that that it's a metaphor for a disease that kiIIs one out of every three or four peopIe.
John Marr believes the biblical account may have been literal.
He set out to track down a more selective killer.
The tenth pIague was aImost inexpIicabIe.
I was stumped.
Then Marr heard about a contemporary case of children dying suddenly.
lnvestigators, at first, suspected a mould had killed the children.
This gave Marr an idea about the tenth plague.
It was due to a toxic mouId.
His theory.
.
grain saturated by hailstorms and stored in darkness would have been susceptible to mould.
Rare moulds can wreak havoc on human health and can even cause internal haemorrhaging.
With little else to eat, the Egyptians may have resorted to mouldy, toxin-laced grain.
Death would come suddenly, with no visible cause, as if the victims were touched by an angel of death.
Still, why the first-born? Marr found his answer, the final piece to the puzzle, in an Egyptian tradition.
During the times of famine, the eIdest, the oIdest Egyptian chiId, wouId be given a doubIe portion of food in order to stave off starvation.
Instead of saving them, it kiIIed them.
The Bible paints a gruesome picture.
The first-born Egyptian children died.
The rest of the population starved and was ravaged by disease.
Pharaoh was defeated.
He wanted the lsraelites and their god out of Egypt.
He told Moses to take his people and leave.
The plagues came to an end.
Using science imaginativeIy does produce some possibIe, if sIightIy far-fetched, natural scenarios for the supernatural plagues.
But did they happen at all? Why do Egyptian sources never mention them? Could something else have weakened Egypt, something that might have encouraged an Exodus? On this point the Egyptians are not silent at all.
They say that death came from across the seas.
Powerful empires decline for many reasons.
The Bible tells us the plagues ravaged Egypt and gave the lsraelites the chance to escape.
Archaeologist Eric Cline is not persuaded.
Rather than the pIagues, I wouId Iook more to human intervention.
Cline looks at the archaeological record to see what might have weakened Egypt.
Scholars have deciphered powerful evidence that Egypt was attacked by mysterious invaders from across the Mediterranean.
They call them the Sea Peoples.
The attack of the Sea PeopIes was probabIy the Egyptians' worst nightmare.
They are the fiercest warriors that the Egyptians have faced.
And the Egyptians teII us that everybody went down in the face of these Sea PeopIes.
OnIy the Egyptians were abIe to stand, and even that was a Pyrrhic victory, because the Egyptians were so weakened that they were never the same ever again.
Although the Egyptians never mentioned the plagues they did document these attacks, in pictographs on the mortuary temple of Ramses lll.
Archaeological finds match these writings.
I see no need for divine intervention when human intervention can expIain it just as weII, if not better.
Weakened by these attacks, Egypt might have lost control of the lsraelites.
But did they flee? lf so, where is the evidence? For that, we need to retrace the steps of their escape.
The Bible says that 600,000 men, and their families, travelled through the desert for 40 years.
Archaeologists would expect to find traces of such a large group.
If bibIicaI numbers are correct, then you've got two and a haIf miIIion peopIe wandering around for 40 years, I wouId want to find entire Iandscapes denuded.
I'd want to find hundreds of sheep and goat carcasses, the bones.
Even if they didn't ask for directions, wandering for 40 years, there wouId be something.
The search for a trace of this epic migration has turned up nothing.
Archaeologist Jim Hoffmeier believes the reason is that there were far fewer lsraelites than the Bible says.
And a much smaller group would have left behind much less evidence to be found later.
One of the enduring images of the movie The Ten Commandments is these miIIions of peopIe coming out of Egypt and rushing into the deserts of Sinai.
Hoffmeier attributes this misleading image to a misunderstanding of the Hebrew word ''eleph''.
The Bible says the number of men with their families who left Egypt is 600 eleph.
The word eIeph can be transIated three different ways.
It can be transIated ''thousand''.
EIeph can aIso be transIated as a cIan.
The third option is that it's a miIitary unit, which I think is a more pIausibIe scenario.
According to Hoffmeier's interpretation, instead of 600,000 men and their families, there were as few as 5,000.
We're taIking about a few tens of thousands.
CertainIy not hundreds of thousands, adding women and chiIdren, making it miIIions.
Whether tens of thousands, or millions, no evidence of their passage out of Egypt has been found.
The IsraeIites were trying to get out of there as fast as they couId; they weren't carving monuments aIong the way saying, ''foIIow our traiI''.
That rapid movement of peopIe is not going to Ieave the kind of tangibIe archaeoIogicaI evidence that one might expect.
Whether millions or thousands, the fleeing lsraelites were about to encounter a seemingly impassable barrier, the Red Sea.
Pharaoh had changed his mind about letting the lsraelites go.
Pharaoh's army descended on the lsraelites and trapped them by the shore of the sea.
Across the waters was freedom, but they had no way to get there.
Again, Moses heard the voice of God.
''Lift thou up thy rod, and stretch out thine hand over the sea, and divide it.
And the chiIdren of IsraeI shaII go on dry ground through the midst of the sea.
The Egyptians pursued and went into the sea after them, and the water's returned and covered the chariots, and the horsemen, and aII the host of Pharaoh; there remained not even one.
'' There may be no image of God's intervention in the affairs of man more powerful than this one.
Could it have happened? Perhaps more than any other miracle in the Old Testament, the parting of the Red Sea has intrigued scientists.
Back in Cambridge, Colin Humphreys thinks he knows how the Red Sea parted.
I beIieve the parting of the Red Sea occurred as described in the BibIe and I beIieve there's a naturaI expIanation of how it happened.
And we've set up an experiment here to show how this works.
The BibIe says that Moses stretched out his hand over the Red Sea and a strong east wind forced the waters of the Red Sea back.
The IsraeIites went across with water on their right-hand side and their Ieft-hand side, and they waIked across on dry Iand.
The bibIicaI description of the parting of the Red Sea is just a very precise description of a mechanism caIIed wind setdown.
Wind setdown occurs when a strong steady wind literally blows water aside.
If there's a ridge of Iand in the water, it can expose that ridge of Iand.
Sometimes new theories require unconventional experiments.
This is the parting of the Red Sea experiment.
This Ieaf bIower represents the strong east wind, which bIew the Red Sea back.
This water trough represents the Red Sea itseIf.
And these stones represent the Iand bridge that the IsraeIites crossed.
Let's see if it works.
(Whirring) WeII, I think that's just amazing.
That was fantastic.
It worked even better than I thought it wouId.
Now that we've stopped, you can see the water compIeteIy covers the Iand bridge.
This corresponds to drowning Pharaoh's army, chariots, and horses, just as described in the BibIe.
Humphreys'theory is hardly the only explanation of how nature could have split the waters.
Geo-archaeologist Floyd McCoy is thinking bigger- much bigger.
Floyd researches tsunamis at the University of Hawaii.
He says a tsunami might have created a land passage for the lsraelites across a lagoon.
Although we think of a tsunami as a lot of water, what comes before is the disappearance of water.
Sometimes you get a warning that a tsunami is coming.
Sometimes that ocean disappears and that's caIIed drawdown.
Remember what a wave Iooks Iike.
It's sinusoidaI; bottom, top, trough, crest.
If the trough comes in first, that's drawdown, the ocean disappears.
Here's the oceaninto a broad Iagoon.
This giant wave coming ashore has a crest and a trough to it.
This is the water receding from here to here.
The Iagoon is there no more and provides ground that the Jews couId perhaps have used in their Exodus out of Egypt.
And then that wiII be foIIowed by the crest coming in and suddenIy the pIace is awash and wouId wipe out anybody pursuing the Jews.
There's drawdown.
Picture that a hundred hundred times bigger and that wave coming in much bigger.
There comes the crest of the wave.
For aII this to happen so that there's time for this group of peopIe to get across this Iagoon - it's a big Iagoon - that's got to be a pretty big tsunami.
A big tsunami needs a gigantic event to set it off.
An earthquake, an asteroid impact, a volcanic eruption.
So where did a wave Iike this come from? WeII, there's Santorini, one of the giant eruptions in human antiquity.
Santorini erupted with a force of over 24,000 mega-tons.
OK, here's Santorini.
North is this way.
Heading down this way is Crete, and that direction, Egypt.
This was an isIand.
There was a Iarge isIand that sat in here, right, right here.
So here is this big eruption pIume, rising up here, 40, 50 kiIometres up.
It coIIapses with the debris faIIing, hitting these sIopes here.
It shoots down the sIopes, into the water, pyrocIastic fIows.
- And when it enters the water? - Tsunami.
ExactIy.
Pyroclastic flows, sudden huge slides of volcanic ash and debris falling into the water, have been shown to trigger tsunamis.
Computer modelling reveals that the Santorini tsunami would have headed directly towards the Nile Delta, a possible location of the Exodusjourney.
The issue is the dates.
When did the Exodus happen and when did this eruption happen? We don't know.
And there's a timing issue here.
How wonderfuI that this suddenIy happens just when you're there to aIIow you to cross and then the crest of the tsunami comes washing in, and to take out the bad guys behind you.
That's stretching it a IittIe bit.
As an explanation for the parting of the Red Sea, a tsunami is a long shot.
But could another volcanic effect provide a more compelling answer, a smoking gun, so to speak? When it comes to the parting of the Red Sea, volcanologist Steve O'Meara has spent a lot of time thinking about lava.
For him, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is a window into the biblical past, when an underwater volcano may have been the source of the lsraelites'escape route across the sea.
The Red Sea forms part of the Great African Rift system.
The entire region has an explosive volcanic history.
AIthough we're seeing a very smaII Iava fIow, you have to in your mind scaIe this up to a massive voIcanic eruption.
3200 years ago, it enters the water.
The water boiIs; it disappears.
It's enough to choke vaIIeys and cause Iand bridges.
ln O'Meara's scenario, an underwater eruption could have created a temporary, unstable lava bridge.
The surface layer of lava cools quickly when it hits the water.
The lsraelites could have crossed over this new land.
But what's amazing about this Iava, even though it's so hot that I have to keep waIking away right at this moment, that if I'd had to, to save my Iife, I couId wait and waIk over this Iava in ten minutes.
This new unsupported land could have quickly disintegrated.
And then, when the Egyptians were on their chariots Sorry, it's very hot.
Sorry.
Oh.
The Egyptians were in their chariots and they tried to cross the same bed, the Iava gave way.
The collapse of this land bridge would have plunged Pharaoh's army into the sea.
It makes sense.
VoIcano is the onIy thing that makes sense.
The BibIe is just fiIIed with voIcanic references, and especiaIIy in Exodus, from the pIagues to the parting of the Red Sea, and seeing piIIars of fire, and mountains quaking, and the voice of God and burning bushes - aII of this in Exodus.
Just imagine, you come up here and you see this, and you are not a scientist.
There were no scientists back then.
Listen to it; it's taIking to you.
(CrackIing) It's written in the BibIe, God says, ''I am the rock.
'' There you are.
lf a volcano, a tsunami, or a gale-force wind saved the lsraelites, it still would have required miraculous timing and it still left no evidence.
For some who read the Bible as the literal word of God, the lack of evidence could simply mean we've been looking in the wrong place.
They point out that there is no agreement on the route the lsraelites took out of Egypt.
The Bible's description of the journey is vague.
''God Ied the peopIe about, through the way of the wiIderness of the Red Sea.
'' lt does state the lsraelites started in Egypt and ended up in Canaan, present-day lsrael.
Different theories about how the lsraelites crossed the sea require different routes.
Wind setdown requires a shallow body of water.
Colin Humphries proposes a route across central Sinai.
The tsunami theory only makes sense if the lsraelites took the northern route along the coast.
The lava bridge could have formed across the Red Sea at the Gulf of Aqaba, the most likely place for volcanic activity in the region.
lf there are clues hidden in the desert, it would help to pin down the lsraelites'route.
Jim Hoffmeier believes most researchers are looking in the wrong place, because something got lost in the translation - literally.
The Hebrew ''yam suph'' IiteraIIy means ''sea of reeds''.
When the Greek transIators took the Hebrew yam suph and transIated it into Greek, they transIated it as Red Sea.
Red Sea instead of Reed Sea.
So we've been stuck with a fauIty transIation for over 2,000 years.
Finding this Reed Sea is no easy task.
The Nile Delta was a very different place 3,000 years ago.
Sea has become land, and land, sea.
Marshes have dried to desert.
New cities and farms are now erasing history.
But geologist Steve Moshier has discovered a window into the past.
The best tooI that we have for Iooking at the ground in ages past is imagery from the 1 960s.
RecentIy, the government decIassified spy sateIIite imagery, so these negatives were shot back in the CoId War era.
These high resolution images, taken to spy on the Egyptian Army in the 1 960s, show the desert before the recent onslaught of development.
Stripped of its modern veneer, the undisturbed land reveals its secrets.
The dark areas suggest the locations of ancient bodies of water,.
one of them could have been the sea of reeds.
To confirm his suspicions, Moshier tests soil samples from the area.
I want to try to figure out by Iooking at the texture and Iooking at the fossiI content, the sheIIs that are in it, what kind of environment it was.
Was it swamp, was it a stream, was it a Iakebed, or was it some kind of a marine Iagoon? Moshier has been collaborating with Jim Hoffmeier.
From the satellite photos and the soil tests, they discovered traces of an ancient body of water called Lake Ballah.
Hoffmeier suspects this is the Bible's sea of reeds.
This is our BaIIah, our yam suph, our hypotheticaI yam suph aII in here, aII this dark area.
The Iake itseIf may not be any oIder than 5,000 years.
- That's oId enough for our purposes.
- Sure, sure.
Although Hoffmeier has unearthed the remains of two Egyptian forts near this lakebed, he has found no lsraelite artefacts.
ls it conceivable that 3,000 years later, evidence remains hidden in the desert? Most archaeologists think not.
But one man thinks he has found something, a sort of Holy Grail of Exodus archaeology, evidence of Pharaoh's army and miracles showered down upon the lsraelites.
When it comes to Exodus, Bob Cornuke thinks he might have found that elusive Holy Grail.
.
actual artefacts.
His investigative techniques are driven by his detective skills and his faith.
I've been researching and investigating the Exodus route for about 20 years now; searching for the reaI Mount Sinai in Egypt, searching for the Ark of the Covenant, the crossing site of the Red Sea.
When I was a poIice investigator, the crime scene spoke to me.
LittIe pieces of evidence wouId teII me what happened there.
Now I Iook at the BibIe and try to figure out what happened thousands of years ago at the dawn of history.
And based on the evidence I have seen, I beIieve that it happened exactIy as the BibIe said.
We use the BibIe as a compass, as a road map, and a guide, and that gave us a pretty good indication where the route probabIy was.
Like the investigators before him, Cornuke has his own idea about the route the lsraelites travelled.
AIong the wide beach of Sinai PeninsuIa to here, turning back, and then crossing right here.
God says in Isaiah 51 : ''I wiII buiId you a roadway through the sea.
'' That's another cIue.
Right here at this Iocation, there was an underwater Iand bridge that went right to the sea.
These are shots of ships that have gone aground out there.
Cornuke believes the shallow reefs here are the most likely place for the waters to have parted.
And this is the beach.
I took a picture of where they wouId have been on the shore.
You can see where the chiIdren of IsraeI wouId have been aII bunched up and then the mountains cup around them.
They had nowhere to go except into the ocean, right here.
lf Cornuke is right, this is where Pharaoh's army would have been destroyed.
And here we hit what, for him, is the ultimate pay dirt.
We went there and started digging into the side of the cIiffs hoping to find something.
And out of the cIiffs started faIIing hundreds of pieces of bronze.
Let's say that the Egyptian Army did drown here.
This is a man-made object.
It's tubuIar in shape, kind of, you can see where it is kind of rounded.
CouId be an arrow shaft or some other cIasp that was on a soIdier's uniform, or even on a horse.
I think it's very provocative to think that this is from the Egyptian Army of Pharaoh.
Cornuke's colleagues also explored the desert where they believed lsraelites wandered.
They discovered what they believe to be handcrafted stones.
Not just a coupIe, but hundreds, aImost thousands of these were found Iaying aII over the ground.
What couId they be? The BibIe taIks about manna being ground on stones.
According to the Bible, manna is food from God.
lt rained down from the sky to feed the lsraelites in the desert.
CouId these be the very stones that ground the manna for the chiIdren of IsraeI during their sojourn in the desert? I think it's highIy possibIe.
Has he found the Holy Grail of Exodus archaeology? Actual evidence? Scientists are extremely sceptical.
Cornuke hasn't released these finds to the larger scientific community, so there's no way to judge his assertions.
Kara Cooney, an expert on ancient Egypt, has seen extraordinary claims comeand go.
I don't think there's much vaIidity to peopIe finding a piece of bronze in the Red Sea and then cIaiming, ''This is the piece of bronze that'' Or a piece of bronze that came from Pharaoh's army during the Exodus when they were wiped away.
How do you test that bronze? It's not an organic materiaI.
How are you going to date it? How are you going to tie it to Ramses' army? Any time you have a new discovery, some new information, it takes a Iong time for peopIe to shift over and start Iooking at it, and even Ionger for them to accept it.
If anybody actuaIIy found Pharaoh's army or bits and pieces of an IsraeIites' encampment, it wouId be front-page news across the worId.
The fact is, not a single artefact has been found that could be definitively linked to the biblical Exodus.
lf the parting sea, the burning bush, the plagues did happen, they appear to have left no traces.
There's no way to confirm even that the lsraelites were slaves in Egypt.
There is only one source for the story of Exodus.
.
the Bible.
For many scholars, the silence of the Egyptian sources is telling.
I want two or three separate sources before I wiII beIieve what any one source says.
And frankIy, there is no Egyptian written text saying anything about the Exodus.
Some argue that the Egyptians simply wouldn't record such an epic embarrassment.
I wouId not expect Ramses to, in any historicaI records, to say, ''Oh, by the way, I Iet these Hebrew sIaves get away because I was having some troubIes.
'' Perhaps not on monuments for public display, but the Egyptians were meticulous bureaucrats and did keep unflattering paperwork.
You do have Egyptian documentation of bad things happening, of civiI war, of unrest, of foreign incursion, of peopIe coming in and taking Egypt over.
And yet you have no evidence for this massive upheavaI of the Pharaoh and the destruction of his entire army.
You wouId expect to find that.
Looking at Exodus solely through the lens of science, we know only a few hard facts.
Ruins suggest that people of Semitic origin may have lived in Egypt around 1 600 BC.
About 400 years later, an Egyptian tablet states a people called ''lsrael'' lived in Canaan, present-day lsrael.
What happened in between, the time Exodus supposedly took place, is a mystery.
Scientific explanations offered for the many miracles of Exodus, though intriguing, take us no closer to proving it happened.
And the archaeological and historical records remain resolutely silent about these epic events.
We do not have a singIe shred of evidence to date.
There is nothing archaeoIogicaIIy to attest to anything from the bibIicaI story - no pIagues, no parting of the Red Sea, no manna from heaven, no wandering for 40 years.
The most IikeIy reason that we're not finding any evidence for the Exodus in Egypt is that it didn't happen the way that the BibIe said it did or that it didn't happen at aII.
But even sceptics admit that precious grains of truth might lie at the heart of the narrative.
Perhaps it was born among the small groups of nomadic people who travelled between Egypt and the land of Canaan.
I think there's a very good chance that what actuaIIy took pIace was a series of migrations, or waves of migrations, if you wiII, over three or four hundred years, of peopIe Ieaving Egypt and making their way up to Canaan in ones, twos, threes, maybe even tens, hundreds at the most.
The story of the nomads'journeys was perhaps told and retold, passed down from generation to generation until it became an epic.
Despite the lack of evidence, the story of Exodus endures.
lt helped shape the modern world.
The tale of the liberation of a people, and the triumph of their one God over many has resonated through the ages.
Revealed word? Revealing mythology? That truth of this story can only be answered in the heads and hearts of each individual.
But surely the questions are worth asking.
We have yet to find any indication from any kind of archaeoIogicaI source it actuaIIy took pIace.
For peopIe who have reIigious convictions, they don't need proof.
It aII boiIs down to, this is a supernaturaI event.
And you can't expIain it in any other way.
Ultimately, the power of Exodus lies more in faith than in science.
There's no reaI scientific proof that the Exodus took pIace, but as a Christian or as a Jew, you shouIdn't need scientific proof to be a person of faith.
Faith doesn't need to be scientificaIIy proven nor shouId it be.
It's faith.
Perhaps, someday, the wilderness will reveal some bit of incontrovertible evidence that Exodus happened.
But for now, the desert keeps its secrets.