Scientists Look for the Physics Behind a Miracle

A six-month study by a senior researcher at St. Petersburg's Institute of Oceanology and a Hamburg, Germany, based colleague seeks to explore and detail the physics behind the Biblical account of the Jews crossing the sea during the flight from slavery in Egypt.

The study, published in the Bulletin of the Russian Academy of Sciences and reported upon today in The Moscow Times, concluded that a reef running to the north side of the Red Sea could have been the "dry land" upon which the Jews crossed the sea, provided that a 30-meter-per-second wind blew across the sea all night. The cessation of the wind would then lead to the drowning of the pursuing Egyptian forces, trapped on the reef as the waters returned, as recorded in the Bible.

The Russia-based researcher, Naum Volziger, who specializes in flooding and tidal waves, told a Moscow Times reporter, "It would take the Jews - there were 600,000 of them - four hours to cross the seven-kilometer reef that runs from one coast to another. Then, in half an hour, the waters would come back."

Volzinger said he and Hamburg-based colleague Alexei Androsov studied the issue "strictly from Isaac Newton's point of view." However, the researcher did admit, "I am convinced that God rules the Earth through the laws of physics."