DID THE SEA REALLY PART?

 

Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D

The parting of the sea is a major episode in the Hebrew Bible. According to the story, as the Israelites left Egypt in haste, they went through a watercourse that was miraculously split, and the people crossed over in dry land.

Now, we all know that seas do not split. So, what is behind this narrative? How was it explained?

The story appears in the Book of Exodus, and is referred to in many parts of the Hebrew Bible, but there are a number of problems associated with it. First, the sea is not “the Red Sea.” In Hebrew, it is called YAM SUF (The sea of suf). However, the word SUF means “reeds,” not Red. So, the Israelites did not cross the Red Sea, they crossed the “Reed Sea.” The second problem is that we do not know where this sea of reeds is located? Is it the Gulf of Aqaba? Or, is it found in one of the small lakes/marshes close to the Lake Sarbonis? We do not know.

Finally, we have at least three different descriptions of the miraculous event:

1.     According to one source in Exodus 15 (biblical scholars call it the J source, namely, the texts that refer to God as YHVH), God is the main character and there is no mention of the splitting of the sea. God simply drives back the sea itself with a strong east wind, and the Egyptians sink to the bottom of the sea.

2.     According to another source, usually assigned to the P source (namely, the texts written by priests), Moses is the main character, and the sea is always called “the sea,” not the “Red/reed sea.” Here at the command of God, Moses held his arm over the sea, and it parted (Ex.14: 21-23).

3.     In yet another source, this one also called the P source (i.e. a different priestly text), God threw the Egyptians into panic and locked the wheels of their chariots (Ex. 14: 24-25).

Over the centuries, many commentators have tried to explain this so-called miraculous event by offering, at times, fancy explanations. For example, according to the Wisdom of Solomon (1^st cent. BCE), the deliverance was the work of personified wisdom (Chap.10). The Jewish historian Josephus (1st cent. CE), stated that Moses chose the route by means of clever calculations (Ant.II, 16). For the Greek-Jewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria (1^st cent. CE), the entire episode is an allegory (Legum, Alleg. 2). The Rabbis, too, imagined various scenarios: For some, the sea did not part until the Israelites first stepped in the waters (BT Sotah 36b), or until the waters reached up to their noses (Sh’mot Rabba 21). In the medieval times, the conjectures continued: For Rashbam (11 cent. northern France), the winds dried up and coagulated the rivers (on Ex.14:21). For Maimonides (d. 1204) on the other hand, all miracles, including the parting of the sea, were built into the structure of the universe and do not represent God’s intrusion into nature (Eight Chapters, 8). Some even argued that a volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini produced a tidal wave that parted the sea.

Fancy explanations still appear in contemporary literature: In 2004, Naum Volzinger, a senior researcher at St. Petersburg’s Institute of Oceanography, and his colleague, Alexei Androsov of Hamburg, argued that the parting of the sea was caused by strong winds. Similarly, in 2010, according to Carl Drews, a mechanical engineer, the “sea” is to be located in the Lake Tanis, in the Eastern Nile Delta region, just south of the Mediterranean Sea. The parting was caused by strong winds that created wind pushes, moving the waters away.

In reality, all of these explanations are just speculations, trying to justify the biblical text that is highly elusive. Besides, in the Hebrew Bible, the story is introduced as a divine miracle. The entire episode is legendary, and highlights the fact that the Israelites must have left Egypt under difficult circumstances and yet survived. We do not know when it happened, where it happened or how it happened, but we can surmise that the purpose of the story was to praise God and Moses for the Israelites’ glorious escape from servitude, which left an indelible mark on the historical views of the ancient tribes. The Exodus finally became the rationale for the injunction of not to wrong the resident aliens (Lev. 19:34).

(For more details, please see my article, “Did the Israelites Escape Through the Sea”? in my book, Did Moses Really Have Horns (2009), pp. 70-81).

DISEASE IS NOT DIVINE PUNISHMENT

 Rabbi Rifat Sonsino, Ph.D.

When I was a teenager back in Turkey, if I had a cold or was not feeling well, my Hebrew teacher would often say: “You must have done something wrong!” That infuriated me, and I would tell him, “No, I did not do anything bad.”

There is an old assumption in our western world that equates illness with sin. As Philip I. Lieberman recently wrote, “Religious people throughout history often saw plagues as the manifestation of divine will, as a punishment for sin” (In Milwaukee Independent, July 12, 2020). Thus, for example, back in 2014, John Hagee, the televangelist, claimed that the Ebola outbreak was God’s punishment for President Obama’s policies regarding Israel. Even in our time, in spite of the fact that the Pope has recently denied it, there are a number of people in the world who think that the Corona Virus represents divine displeasure.

The classical texts of the western world support this assumption, which goes back to the ancient Near Eastern literature. In “The Babylonian Theodicy,” we read, “he that bears his God’s yoke, never lacks food.” (ANET, p. 603). It is also found in many parts of the Hebrew Bible. For example, in Genesis suffering was introduced as one of the consequences of human sin, namely eating of the apple against God’s command (Gen.3:17-19). The main argument of the friends of Job is that suffering is caused by human sin. On the other hand, according to the Book of Psalms, God forgives all iniquities and heals all the diseases (103:3). Similarly, according to the author of the Book of Exodus if Israelites listen to God and do what is right, He will not put any of the Egyptian diseases upon them (Ex.15: 26). In the New Testament, divine retributive justice is behind the statement of John when Jesus says, “Do not sin anymore, so that nothing worse happens to you (5:14).” It is also found in the Quran: when people disbelieved Noah, “We opened the gates of heaven with pouring rain and  caused the earth to burst with gushing springs” (Surah, 54).  The connection between sin and illness is highlighted even in the talmudic literature which states, “there is no death without sin” (Shab.55a) and that zaraat (a type of skin eruption) is punishment for gossip (Lev. Rabba 16:1-6).

How is this theological idea justified? The belief is that the almighty and merciful God rewards the faithful and punishes the wicked. So, if suffering occurs, it must be because of an unknown infraction of the commandments.

In our time, we need to disassociate sin from divine punishment. We are not talking about abuses that have physical consequences, such as overeating causing medical problems for human beings or that smokers often end up with lung cancer.. Most of us would support this idea. I am more concerned about severe illnesses that affect people for reasons that we do not know. How inhuman it would be for us to tell a cancer patient or a person who suffers from Alzheimer’s that his/her illness was caused because of a breach of divine law? A person who suddenly falls and breaks his neck is not suffering because he disobeyed divine commandments. Accidents happen. God, as the energy of the universe, is manifested through the laws of nature, and when we fail nature or nature fails, illness arrives. We are all vulnerable, not because we have sinned against God, but because we were in the wrong time and place, or simply because our bodies succumbed to a disease, often for unknown reason.

To be cured, we need to turn to competent doctors and not to faith healers. In Maimonides’ (d. 1205) view, a person who despises the aid of a physician and relies solely on God’s help is “a pious fool” (Intro to Sefer Hakatzeret). According to Jewish law, the Torah has granted physicians permission to heal and this is considered a Mitzvah, a divine commandment (Shulhan Aruh, Yore Deah, 336/2).

Patients need our empathies during the time of their suffering. They don’t need to feel guilty for something they have or have not done.