Did These Scientists Confirm That Moses & Exodus Were REAL？!

Celebrities arrive for the premiere of Exodus, Gods and Kings in London's West End. It's the retelling of the dramatic flight of the Jews from slavery in Egypt under their charismatic leader Moses, played by Christian Bale. The film's director is Ridley Scott, who has his own particular take on the story. 5,000 years ago, it's very hard to find anything written down from that particular period. In fact, there isn't any. So is there any truth in the story at all, or is it just a myth? The Bible tells how the tribes of Israel are enslaved in Egypt. They beg Pharaoh to let them go, but he refuses. So God intercedes. I have heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant. God sends ten plagues to torment the Egyptians. Finally, Pharaoh submits, saying, Moses, a prophet raised as an Egyptian prince, leads the Jews into the trackless Egyptian desert. God goes ahead of them in a pillar of cloud by day and by night in a pillar of fire. But then Pharaoh changes his mind and sends an army to recapture them. On the shores of the Red Sea, it looks as though the Jews are trapped. But then, in one of the most famous miracles in the Bible, Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong wind. And the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon dry ground, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right and on their left. But as the Egyptian army follows them, the waters flood back. Pharaoh and his army are drowned. While the Jews continue to the Promised Land. It's one of the best-known stories in the Old Testament. But the trouble is, there has never been a shred of evidence any of it actually happened. Did the exodus as described in the Bible actually happen? Good question. We don't know. Archaeologists have searched for years for evidence of the biblical story. They have never found anything. There is no evidence Moses ever existed. And no evidence the Jews even lived in Egypt. One day we may be able to prove it, but for now we can't. Despite decades of excavations, that probably should have turned up evidence if there were any to be had. Above all, the Exodus story is so full of miracles and the supernatural. It defies all logic and modern science. I mean, it's such a, I don't know, preposterous story. The Bible is not a historical document. It wasn't written as a history book. It never was meant that way. Yet a molecular biologist, a prominent research scientist, and a respected climatologist, all believe they found plausible scientific explanations. The Bible could be a record of real events. Dr. Ciro Trevisanato is a molecular biologist in Toronto, Canada. He's fascinated by the story of the 10 plagues that ravish Egypt. What, he wonders, could have caused such a catastrophic chain of events? His journey of discovery begins 25 years ago, when he learns about a volcanic eruption in the Chilean Andes. The volcano, Cerro Hudson, is spewing vast quantities of dust and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. The volcanic material crossed the Andes, went in Argentina and precipitated. Trevisanato learns that clouds of sulphur dioxide are raining down on rivers, turning the water into mild sulphuric acid. Fish are dying. And in the toxic water, there are blooms of red algae, changing the colour of the water. The streams in Argentina got red, acidic and red. To Trevisanato, it sounds exactly like a description of the first plague of Egypt, when Moses turns the waters of the Nile to blood. So I began to realise that Plague 1 could have been caused by a volcanic eruption. At least there is a link there. In other words, Plague 1 could have a basis in fact. It's a remarkable idea, but it only works if he can find a volcanic eruption at the time of the plagues. Trevisanato goes back through the records. Biblical scholars date the exodus to around 2000 BCE. But there are no volcanic eruptions in Egypt at this time. Then, searching through a book on volcanoes, he finds a gigantic eruption just to the north in the Aegean Sea. It's called Thera, on an island known today as Santorini. The eruption of Thera was probably the same sort of size as the largest volcanic eruption we've seen in the last few hundred to a thousand years. Thera is so enormous, dust fills the sky and leaves traces of ash as far east as China and as far north as Iceland. The ash cloud would have covered the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt only 600 miles to the south. Trevisanato has found his volcano. Confirmation that Plague 1 could have a basis in fact. He now begins to wonder, could the remaining nine plagues also be a record of real events? He looks at accounts of the second plague. In the words of the Bible, the Lord spoke to Moses, saying... Stretch forth thine hand with thy rod over the streams, over the rivers and over the ponds, and cause frogs to come up upon the land of Egypt. And the frogs came up and covered the land. These frogs come up out of the Nile, even going into Pharaoh's palace, into Pharaoh's bedroom, into Pharaoh's bed. They swarm across the land, where according to the Bible... They were piled into heaps and the land reeked of them. Is there a link now to the first plague? Yes. Because, remember, the water was acidic. Frogs couldn't go back. So at some point, they ended up staying in the land. If Trevisanato's logic is right, the red toxic water has driven the frogs onto the land. Once again, there could be a link to a volcanic eruption. And the logical chain of events doesn't stop there. Rotting fish and frogs are the perfect breeding ground for plagues three and four. Swarms of biting gnats that drive the Egyptians mad with itching. And then, flies. So, so far, we have four plagues in a row, all caused by the same cause. A volcanic eruption. It all seems to make sense. But there are still six remaining plagues to account for. Can they all be explained by a volcano? The Bible relates that despite the first four plagues, the Egyptians still refused to release the Israelites from slavery. So God sends plague five. All the cattle of Egypt died. Trevisanato scours the Bible for a possible explanation for this terrible event. Usually people think about all animals, but actually, if you read the text, it will specify something very interesting. They're all herbivores. Herbivores eat grass and plants. Their food could have been contaminated by sulfuric acid in the rain from the volcano Thera. What happens is that the grass will immediately absorb this water, which is toxic. You're an herbivore. You eat, and what happens? You're eating poison. You're going to die from it. Once again, the logic seems plausible. Acid rain has killed fish. Now, it's killing animals. It also makes sense of plague six. The eruption of festering boils on the arms, legs and faces of the Egyptians. If Trevisanato is right, these are not boils at all, but acid burns. Plague six. What was it? It was a rain of mild sulfuric acid. And how do we know that? Because it caused the postures, the blisters. That leaves just four plagues to go. The Bible records that plague seven was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. The seventh plague, the plague of hail, traditionally is ice with fire inside it, is about total decimation. Dust from a huge volcanic eruption like Thera is known to dramatically alter weather patterns. You still have some of the ash up in the air. So you don't only have a big thunderstorm which rains down sulfuric acid, you can have other precipitations after that as well. That precipitation would account for plague eight also. Swarms of locusts. Rain and humidity are perfect breeding conditions for insects. A volcanic eruption would even explain plague nine when total darkness covers all Egypt. Dust and ash from volcanoes are known to block out the sun for weeks on end. This is not just darkness that occurs on a daily basis. This isn't just what one experiences before they go to bed at night. This is something of a different order, of a different magnitude. It leaves just one more plague. The most mysterious and terrible of them all. The tenth plague is the culmination of the other nine. It's the ultimate destruction. The Bible relates that the Lord said to Moses, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh that sitteth upon the throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill. To Travis Anata, there is no known mechanism by which a volcano can kill firstborn children. In fact, as a biologist, he knows it's impossible. If you have a disease that kills, for example, young people, it kills young people, not firstborn. The bacteria or the virus cannot tell the difference to the firstborn or secondborn. But then one night, thinking about the problem, he has an inspiration. The answer lies not in biology or geology, but in psychology. We have the psychological reaction in the people, who have seen the fish, who have seen the frogs. Now we get this darkness that choked us. What's going on? What's next? We can't take it anymore. The ancient Egyptians were known for practising human sacrifice. Travis Anata begins to think, could they have started to sacrifice the most precious thing of all? Regular time implies regular sacrifices. These times are not regular. We have to do different sacrifices. We have to sacrifice what is closest, what is nearest to us, our firstborn. For Travis Anata, it's the final piece of the jigsaw. He's found a plausible explanation for all ten plagues. In his view, one of the central stories of the Book of Exodus could be grounded in reality. I'm ready to put my hand on fire and swear, yes, indeed, the plagues of Egypt is based on facts. So could the rest of the Exodus story also be a record of real events? There are serious scientists who dare to believe it is. The Bible tells that after the tenth terrible plague, the Jews are released from slavery, and Moses leads them out into the desert. They seem to move from the northeast Nile Delta out towards the Sinai Peninsula. It's generally believed they travel down through Egypt, crossing the Red Sea and the Gulf of Suez, and then on down through the Sinai Peninsula to Mount Sinai. Here, Moses receives the Ten Commandments, the basis of Judeo-Christian morality. But in the harsh conditions of the Sinai Desert, the Israelites lose faith in God and turn to false deities. So to punish them... God made them wander in the wilderness for 40 years until the entire generation of those who had done evil in the sight of the Lord was destroyed. It's a story so familiar, generations of researchers have tried to trace the actual route, but they have never found anything. Quite realistically, what would you expect to find? This is a nomadic group camping in the wilderness, and the only thing that you leave when you pick up your tent is the holes where your tent pegs were. What are the likelihood that an archaeologist is going to be able to find the holes in which the tent pegs of the Israelites once were? Very unlikely. It's like looking for a needle in a very large desert. It's a mystery which sets one man thinking. Cambridge, England. Professor Sir Colin Humphreys is a highly respected scientist and member of the Royal Society, Britain's oldest and most distinguished academy. He's also a man of faith. In spring 1995, he travels to a place popularly regarded as the site of Mount Sinai. It's a place of pilgrimage. People were praying at the top and they were singing hymns and obviously having some emotional experience. But for Sir Colin, there's a major problem. The Sinai Peninsula is only some 250 miles from the top to the bottom. You can walk the entire length of it in a couple of weeks. Sinai Peninsula is very small and wandering around that small region for 40 years is pretty inconceivable. If you're going to get lost in a desert and wander around, it has to be a bigger area of land. Professor Humphreys begins to wonder, are all the pilgrims going to the wrong place? Did Moses and the Israelites ever come this way? And if they didn't, where did they go? In Cambridge, Sir Colin goes back to the Bible to look for new clues to the route of the Exodus. It relates they start from the city of Pyramuses in the Eastern Nile Delta and take the desert road to the Red Sea. To Sir Colin, that road is an important clue. The desert road to the Red Sea, if you look in ancient literature, was a well-known trade route which went from the top of the Gulf of Suez across the top of the Sinai Peninsula. This suggests the Jews didn't take the route most biblical scholars accept, from Pyramuses South into the Sinai Peninsula. Instead, they took a route further north, following the desert road into modern-day Saudi Arabia. To Sir Colin, this makes much more sense. The deserts of Arabia stretch for thousands of miles, the biggest empty quarter in the world, an easy place to get lost. But if he's right, Mount Sinai is not in Egypt at all, but in Saudi Arabia. The question? Where? According to the Bible, the Jews are guided through the desert by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. To Sir Colin, this seems to be another clue. As a scientist, I knew that a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire is what you get from volcanoes. The descriptions that we see in Exodus certainly can be interpreted in terms of a volcanic eruption. When I realised Mount Sinai was a volcano, I thought, this is amazing, because so much then fits together. If Sir Colin is right, his Mount Sinai is not the eruption of Thera, which is hundreds of miles to the north, but another volcano, somewhere to the south and east of Egypt, in the vast empty quarter of Arabia. Back in Cambridge, Professor Humphreys digs out reference books on volcanoes. The Middle East is a region of major seismic activity. It's just riddled with active volcanoes, and so I thought, gosh, I'm now looking for a needle in a haystack sort of problem. Once again, he goes back to the Bible for clues. In the Book of Deuteronomy, it records that after visiting Mount Sinai, it's an 11-day journey to an oasis called Kadesh Barnea. This is generally regarded as the ancient name for Ein Kudesh, an oasis on the modern-day Israel-Egyptian border. Sir Colin realises the key to finding the volcano is to work backwards. Where had the children of Israel started if it took them 11 days to reach Kadesh Barnea? I worked out the maximum length people could travel in a day, multiplied this by 11, got a maximum distance they could travel, then got a pair of compasses, drew a circle on a map and found out how many volcanoes might be within this circle. That circle dramatically narrows the field of search. Geologists have a measure of eruptive size. The Volcanic Explosivity Index, or VEI, is a very simple, shorthand way of classifying volcanic eruptions by size that was introduced by some geologists in the late 1970s. There is only one volcano in the circle that has a significant VEI. It's called Mount Beda, and it has a VEI of two, big enough to send a volcanic plume miles into the sky. Mount Beda was an explosive eruption which would have sent a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire significant height into the atmosphere, and so I thought this has to be the only possibility. For Sir Colin, it all begins to fall into place. If Mount Beda is Mount Sinai, then it makes perfect sense of the pillar of smoke and fire. So that was a huge feeling of elation, really, to discover this. It seems to me the evidence is clear-cut that Mount Sinai was a volcano. Professor Humphrey's new interpretation of the route of the Exodus has put the story of the Israelites' 40-year journey to the Promised Land on a plausible footing. Yet another central part of the Exodus story could have a basis in fact. And yet there remain two significant unanswered questions. Western geologists have been unable to get permission from Saudi Arabia to visit the region around Mount Beda, so nobody can say whether it erupted 4,000 years ago at the time of the Exodus. Even more importantly, there remains one massive miracle unaccounted for in the Exodus story, the parting of the Red Sea. According to the Bible, as the Jews flee slavery... ..the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued after the children of Israel and overtook them, camped by the sea. The Israelites are trapped, but then something incredible happens. The parting of the Red Sea might be the most spectacular miracle in the Old Testament. Moses stretched out his hand over the sea and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong wind, and the children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon dry ground, and the waters were a wall unto them on their right and on their left. It is meant to be awe-inspiring. God doing something only the Creator, who made the waters, who made the wind, could do. The Israelites pass safely through, but when Pharaoh and his chariots attempt to follow, the waters flood back and... ..covered the chariots and the horsemen and all the host of Pharaoh that came into the sea after them. There remained not so much as one of them. It's such an extraordinary event, most people think it could never have happened. But now one scientist thinks he's found the answer. Dr Karl Drews works at the National Centre for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. Today he's a software engineer, but 20 years ago he attended a graduate class on fluid dynamics. The lecture is about how a strong wind blowing over a body of water can push the water back, lowering the surface level. I wasn't thinking of the Red Sea at all, but the professor was talking about a phenomenon where the wind blows in, let's say, this direction, and what happens is the sea moves at a 45-degree angle. So you have the wind pushing this way and the sea moves this way. It's a phenomenon known as wind set down. When shallow coastal water is pushed so far back, dry land is exposed. I said, that sounds like something I heard and read in Exodus 14. Drews, a practicing Christian, decides to make the parting of the Red Sea the subject of his graduate thesis. His first task is to find exactly where the Jews crossed the Red Sea. He goes back to the original Hebrew text and finds a reference to a place called Yam Suf. This is traditionally translated as simply Red Sea. But a more accurate translation of the Hebrew might be Reed Sea. The Hebrew is Yam Suf. Yam means a sea and suf is reeds. It's a kind of thick sea with some kind of large vegetation inside it. In his office in Boulder, Drews is puzzled. Reeds grow in shallow brackish water, not in the open sea. If this is correct, the Jews didn't cross the Red Sea at all. But if not the Red Sea, then where did the miracle take place? It seems to Drews a Reed Sea is more likely to be a large lake. It didn't seem to make any sense until I looked closely at the eastern Nile Delta. The Nile Delta is where the river breaks into dozens of small waterways before flowing into the Mediterranean Sea. It's a region of hundreds of channels and lakes. The biggest lake is called Manzala. It's 18 miles wide. Lake Manzala to this day is this huge body of water, shimmering body of water with lots of reeds in it stretching over the horizon. So if there's any place that matches the description of sea of reeds, Lake Manzala is it. If Drews is right, then the exodus follows an entirely different route from the normally accepted one. It means the Israelites travel east from Pharaoh's city of Pyramuses, across Lake Manzala, and only then travel south into the Sinai Peninsula. But is Lake Manzala the sort of place a strong east wind might generate when set down? Drews, full of enthusiasm, starts to build a computer model of the region. I really couldn't tell what would happen until I created an ocean model and then ran the results. But he hits an immediate problem. The Nile Delta has changed dramatically in the last 4,000 years. Lagoons have been drained, waterways diverted. It means that contemporary data on the size and shape of Lake Manzala is irrelevant. It looks as though Carl Drews' ingenious explanation for the parting of the Red Sea will remain impossible to prove. The miracle remains just that, a miracle. But then Drews has a stroke of luck. He hears that a Greek historian called Herodotus mapped the area in the 5th century BCE. Drews goes in search of Herodotus' account. I went down into the stacks, down the deepest part of the library, which is the place I like best, and found his book. Herodotus' account contains huge amounts of data on the depth, shape, length and width of the lake. It even contains the name of a place called Magdalene. And I looked at that and said, that sounds like Migdal. Migdal is a crossing point mentioned in the Bible. Archaeologists have never been able to trace. It's just the information Carl Drews needs. He's now got a location and he's got data on the depth and width of the lake at the likely crossing point. Drews starts to build a computer simulation of the lake around Magdalene, or Migdal. He finds a headland here that juts out into the water. Only a narrow channel separates the two sides of the lake. Here is the Mediterranean Sea. Here is the shallow coastal lagoon. This area along here is a couple of shallow lagoons which formed along the Palouseac branch of the Nile. This point here is where Moses and the Israelites were trapped. But to prove he got the right place, he needs to demonstrate that wind set down could occur at this location. There are a huge number of variables, including the depth of the lake and the strength, direction and duration of the wind. Every time he runs his model, it fails. Drews has moments of doubt. You are supposed to report negative results as well as positive results. But somehow there was this idea that if I don't get Moses across, I'm not going to graduate. So these ideas go through your mind late at night when you're trying to make these things work. Finally, after weeks of frustrating work, he enters a new set of parameters. They include a wind blowing at 62 miles an hour for 12 hours from the east, the direction mentioned in the Bible. He sets it running. The model has become so complex, the computer takes all night to crunch the data. At some point it occurred to me, be like Moses. Moses had to wait in faith. I need to wait. This is my Moses moment. After a restless night, he returns through the streets of Boulder, full of anticipation. I zoomed forward in the model and yes, it worked. We have blue, which is water, green, which is low-lying land, and red, which is higher land. You'll see a brown area growing here on this side. That is the land bridge forming. After nine hours, it connects. So this is kilometers wide. There's plenty of room for as many Israelites as you want to get across. Until 12 o'clock, 12 hours into the simulation, the wind stops. The water is going to come back in from both directions. So if anybody is left here, they have just minutes to escape. The land bridge closes and the game is over. For Carl Drews, it's a moment of triumph. To make up a wild tale that's confirmed by an ocean model is just about beyond the abilities of a Bronze Age storyteller. So this really does show that this is feasible and this really happened. It would have been an arduous crossing in the teeth of a mighty storm. But Drews believes he's demonstrated the most extraordinary miracle of the Exodus could have really occurred. Three separate scientists now appear to have shown that important parts of the Exodus story could have a basis in fact. Dr. Ciro Traversanato has found that a volcano could explain the 10 plagues of Israel. Sir Colin Humphreys has discovered a different volcano could provide a clue to the 40-year wandering of the Jews in the desert. Now Carl Drews has found a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea. Yet there are still many questions. Carl Drews' data contradicts Sir Colin Humphreys' version of the Exodus. Sir Colin has the crossing point on the Gulf of Aqaba. Carl Drews has a much more northerly route. To sceptics, it underlines the lack of evidence for the Exodus story. But even so, there are those who believe that behind Ridley Scott's movie lie real stories that are just as remarkable as any Hollywood blockbuster. you