The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist's Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories

by Colin Humphreys

Overview

The Real Story of the Exodus

Colin Humphreys, a world-renowned Cambridge University scientist, reveals for the first time the concrete, scientific truth behind the Exodus miracles.

• The Burning Bush: Caused by a volcanic vent that opened up under the bush.


• Crossing the Red Sea: The water was pushed back by a very strong wind blowing all night. This is a known physical phenomenon called wind setdown. The details given in the Bible mean we can pinpoint where the Red Sea crossing occurred.


• Drowning Pharaoh's Army: When the very strong wind suddenly stopped blowing, the water rushed back in the form of a rapidly returning "bore" wave, sweeping Pharaoh's army into the sea.


• Mount Sinai: The real Mount Sinai is in present-day Saudi Arabia, not the Sinai Desert as is generally assumed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060582739
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	04/13/2004
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	887,613
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.92(d)

About the Author

Colin Humpreys is a renowned Cambridge University physicist who has received considerable publicity for his ideas and research, which span many fields from computer chips to microprinting, eternal lightbulbs, and computer chips in the brain. His passion for more than 20 years has been examining the Bible in the light of science, and he is expert not only in physics but chemistry, astronomy, and geology. He is president of the Institute of Materials and Goldsmiths' Professor of Materials Science and head of the Rolls Royce University Technology Centre at Cambridge University, and chair of Christians in Science for the United Kingdom. He was recently honored by the Queen with the title of Commander, Order of the British Empire, for services to science research and communication.

Humphreys is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials. He has been awarded an Honorary D.Sc. by the University of Leicester. He has been president of the Physics section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He has published over 400 scientific papers and given plenary lectures at major international conferences throughout the world.

Table of Contents

Part 1.	Setting the Scene	1
1.	Unlocking the Secrets of the Exodus	3
2.	Crossing the River Jordan	15
3.	The Date of the Exodus	28
Part 2.	Moses and Midian	39
4.	Moses and Midian	41
5.	The Burning Bush	61
6.	The Mountain of God, the Mountain of Fire	82
Part 3.	Out of Egypt	95
7.	Mission Impossible: The Exodus Strategy	97
8.	How Many People Were in the Exodus?	103
9.	The Plagues of Egypt	111
10.	Death on the Nile	129
Part 4.	The Road to the Red Sea	151
11.	The Journey Starts: The Pillar of Cloud and the Pillar of Fire	153
12.	Where Was the Biblical Red Sea?	172
13.	The Red Sea Revealed	188
14.	The Lost Site of Etham	206
15.	Trapped by Pharaoh	224
16.	Crossing the Red Sea	244
Part 5.	Discovering Mount Sinai	261
17.	Turning Bitter Water Sweet	263
18.	From the Clue of the Dew to Water from a Rock	282
19.	The Spectacular Site of Mount Sinai	310
	Epilogue	337
	Bibliography	341
	Acknowledgments	348
	Index	351

What People are Saying About This

Robert Gordon

A simply fascinating, and extremely readable, study of the Israelites in Egypt and on the desert way to Sinai.

John Polkinghorne

A strikingly novel interpretation of the Exodus story that will interest many students of the Bible.

John Ray

This book will re-open the question of what happened when the Hebrews left Egypt for the Promised Land.

Kenneth C. Davis

Humphreys uses all the tools of science to solve one of the great mysteries of all time.

Editorial Reviews

A simply fascinating, and extremely readable, study of the Israelites in Egypt and on the desert way to Sinai.” — Professor Robert Gordon, Regius Professor of Hebrew, Cambridge University

“A strikingly novel interpretation of the Exodus story that will interest many students of the Bible.” — Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne, Templeton Prize winner, and author of Belief in God in an Age of Science

“This book will re-open the question of what happened when the Hebrews left Egypt for the Promised Land.” — John Ray, Professor of Egyptology, University of Cambridge

“Biblical history buffs will likely enjoy Humphrey’s exodian excursions.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Fascinating, highly readable...carefully researched and cogently argued. Recommended.” — Library Journal

From the Publisher

A simply fascinating, and extremely readable, study of the Israelites in Egypt and on the desert way to Sinai.

Professor Robert Gordon

A strikingly novel interpretation of the Exodus story that will interest many students of the Bible.

Rev. Dr. John Polkinghorne

This book will re-open the question of what happened when the Hebrews left Egypt for the Promised Land.

John Ray

"A strikingly novel interpretation of the Exodus story that will interest many students of the Bible."

Reverend; Doctor - John Polkinghorne

"A simply fascinating, and extremely readable, study of the Israelites in Egypt and on the desert way to Sinai."

Robert Gordon

Reconstructions of biblical events by modern investigators are nothing new, but Humphreys's analysis of the Exodus reflects an unusual combination of homework, legwork and creativity. Humphreys, a materials scientist at Cambridge University, is a self-confessed amateur in the fields of archeology and biblical studies. But he emerges as the best sort of amateur, whose enthusiasm for his subject and joy in puzzle solving have a contagious appeal in spite of occasional quirkiness. As an outsider asking pesky but often astute questions, Humphreys will remind some readers of a certain physicist portrayed in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!; and like Feynman, Humphreys shows an ability to sidestep scholarly assumptions by checking facts. Humphreys runs numbers, consults disused geological charts and old explorers' memoirs, and investigates sites on foot, unearthing fragmentary but wide-ranging evidence. The book's title is somewhat misleading since Humphreys's goal is to reconstruct the whole Exodus narrative and in particular, to retrace the likeliest route of travel and identify the correct location of Mount Sinai rather than to focus on the miracles themselves. Still, Humphreys rises to a self-imposed challenge to account for the Exodus miracles in terms of natural events (some more feasible than others) that become miraculous in light of their timing and significance for the escaping Hebrews. Although many of his hypotheses have been published before, Humphreys' refinements of detail and especially his comprehensive retracing of the Exodus route will invite curiosity, debate and perhaps some new ways of approaching the Exodus story in historical terms. (Apr.) Forecast: Timed to release shortly before Passover, this walk-through-Exodus detective story is well poised to attract attention. Humphreys has already rated a major article in the Sunday London Times and could also net some big media fish on this side of the pond. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Humphreys (material science, Cambridge Univ.) has produced a fascinating, highly readable series of scientific explanations for the miracles described in the stories of ancient Israel's exodus and wanderings in the desert. For example, he attributes the stopped flow of water in the Jordan (Joshua 3:15-16) to an earthquake-induced landslide and the burning bush to a volcanic vent opened underneath the bush. He supports his conclusions by consulting with biblical scholars and historical and scientific research. In a central point, that the traditional site identified as Mt. Sinai is wrong, he asserts that accounts of what happened on the mountain point to a volcano but that there is none on the Sinai peninsula. He posits that Mt. Bedr, in Saudi Arabia, is really Mt. Sinai. He concludes that miracles are incidents of extraordinary timing, which can therefore still be called miracles. Though controversial, his work is carefully researched and cogently argued. The subject matter will attract many readers. Recommended for both public and academic libraries.-David Bourquin, California State Univ., San Bernardino Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Manna from heaven? A plague of toads? A Red Sea parted in twain? Miracle, schmiracle. Let science explain. Weird things were afoot back in Egypt land 3,000 years ago: once old Moses got it into his head to lead the people of Israel out of captivity and into the Promised Land, bushes began to burn, rocks to speak, rivers to dry up, and such like. You can read all about it in the book of Exodus, which Cambridge University physicist and biblical hobbyist Humphreys has apparently been doing lo these many years with a literalist’s eye--that of a skeptical scientist, however, not a fundamentalist. If the Bible says that the river Nile ran blood red once God got irritated with an intransigent pharaoh, Humphreys is inclined to take that as, beg pardon, gospel: but, he explains, the river did so because it had filled with dinoflagellates, toxic fish-killing protozoa. The dead fish forced frogs to flee the river, yielding the second of the plagues of Exodus; all those dead critters produced gnats, flies, and dead cattle; the flies brought with them infectious diseases that yielded boils; an exceptionally severe hailstorm brought locusts, which deposited feces on wet stores of grain and killed off the firstborn of Egypt, and just about everyone else, too. Et voilà: the plagues suddenly make sense as a connected natural sequence, just as Mount Sinai turns out to have been a Saudi Arabian volcano, the parting of the Red Sea the result of a particularly sharp offshore breeze. Explaining such phenomena, Humphreys takes a schoolmasterish tone ("Concerning the ability of ancient peoples to go on long walks and marches, I would like to make a short digression to comment on the health and fitness of ancientpopulations because there seems to be a quite widespread belief that three thousand years ago people were riddled with disease and were unfit and unhealthy") that readers will find either pleasantly meandering or maddeningly roundabout--but just about always to the point. Biblical history buffs will likely enjoy Humphreys’s exodian excursions--even if his conclusions do tend to steal some of God’s thunder.

Kirkus Reviews