The Parting of the Red Sea: Myth, Miracles, and Message with Psalm 66

In this episode, we discuss the Red Sea crossing and the scientific evidence that proves it may have occurred.  It's an episode that asks us to notice the miracles in our lives and the Spirit of Love's subtle nudges to glean meaning from everyday life.

Books mentioned in this episode:

Epic of Gilgamesh
Angels in My Hair by Lorna Byrne
No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus - The Washington Post

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

 Hello and welcome to Loving the Imperfect. I'm your host, Brianne Turczynski. Today's psalm is Psalm 66. It was written by an anonymous writer. It was written after a great victory in battle. So, when I read this, listen to the shouts of joy and praise from this psalmist. who probably prayed for victory and was overjoyed when his prayer was answered.

Anyone who has felt like they had to battle through something and prayed for victory will understand the tone of enthusiasm in this psalm. 

A reading from Psalm 66: 

 “Shout for joy to God all the earth. Sing the glory of His name. Make His praise glorious. Say to God, how awesome are your deeds? So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you. They sing praise to you. They sing the praises of your name. Come and see what God has done. His awesome deeds for mankind. He turned the sea into dry land. 

They pass through the waters on foot. Come, let us rejoice in him. He rules forever by his power. His eyes watch the nations. Let not the rebellious rise up against him.

Praise our God, all peoples. Let the sound of his praise be heard. He has preserved our lives and kept our feet from slipping. Amen. For you, God, tested us. You refined us like silver. You brought us into prison and laid burdens on our backs. You let people ride over our heads. We went through fire and water, but you brought us to a place of abundance.

I will come to your temple with burnt offerings and fulfill my vows to you, vows my lips promised and my mouth spoke when I was in trouble. I will sacrifice fat animals to you and the offering of rams. I will offer bulls and goats.

Come and hear all you who fear God. Let me tell you what he has done for me. I cried out to him with my mouth. His praise was on my tongue. If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But God has surely listened and has heard my prayer. Praise be to God who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me.”

Okay.

Out of the 150 Psalms. 10 Psalms talk about or mention the Exodus. That doesn't include Psalm 114, which is a bit iffy—so, 11 if you count 114—and seven of these psalms mention the Red Sea crossing. It shows how big of a deal that story was and how much it resonated with who the Israelites were as a people. Most stories were told through oral histories. So, from the beginning of time before there was written language, people have been telling stories with their mouths and they've memorized these stories and they've been passed down from generation to generation. 

And even when we did have books and written language, much of society was illiterate. We have cave drawings, and we have icons, and paintings, and this is what told stories to people 

who were illiterate. They would gaze at the picture and would glean meaning from the images they were seeing. And that picture, that image, was supposed to tell a story of a people or an event. And for those who could read the written language, books were written and these stories, these oral histories, were written down and passed from generation to generation that way.

For Judaism and Christianity, the Exodus is a big deal. Because this was such an important event, this story would have been told and retold from generation to generation. The whole event of the Exodus is a story of the birth or rebirth of a people. I would consider it a rebirthing of the Israelite people. So, there are two creation stories in Genesis, technically two, I would consider the Exodus story arguably the third creation story.

The Exodus begins with the Israelite's enslavement in Egypt and Moses gets this message from God that says he wants his people, the Israelites, to be free from Egypt. So, it's Moses's job to get them out of there and free them. And take them on this journey to the promised land. There are several interactions with the pharaoh, all these plagues happen, and finally, the pharaoh releases them. The Israelite people dared to follow this guy Moses through the desert, and this journey of many hardships for 40 years, molded their ways, refined them,  bonded their community, and formed family clans, units, positions, tasks, traditions, and rituals that would be passed down from generation to generation. 

Otherwise, if they had stayed in Egypt, all of that would have been lost and a people, the Israelites probably would have faded into the past and possibly never remembered. 

So, they dared to follow Moses into the desert. 

The Egyptians began to pursue them, and they came to, what the Bible calls the Red Sea. To make it across, Moses waves his hands over the water, and the water parts and makes a dry pathway, so the Israelites can cross over. Once they got to the other side, Moses waved his hand over the water again, and the water went back to normal, and all the Egyptians that were in the middle of the lake in their pursuit were drowned, according to scripture. 

This story of the Red Sea parting, scientists and scholars are telling us was a mistranslation. When it says the Red Sea, the Hebrew was mistranslated, and it's supposed to be the Sea of Reeds. 

Some scholars and scientists speculate the parting of the waters is possible with a wind gust from the east which would have “lifted the water or pushed it away from the shore and exposed a path at the narrowest passage” of this lake”.[1] And it would have taken wind gusts over 60 miles an hour. I'm taking this from Chris Mooney's Washington Post article from 2014, which reiterates all of Carl Drew’s University of Colorado thesis, which was later promoted by his employer, the National Center for Atmospheric Research. I'll put the link in the information for this podcast. 

 According to Carl Drews, who is a software engineer of all things, it was in the Lake of Tauris, he says, “where the Eastern Nile Delta makes its way into the Mediterranean”.[2] Lake Tauris was a “shallow brackish lagoon”, as quoted in Mooney's article, and was ideal for papyrus to grow.[3] Thus, the name Sea of Reeds. If the right wind gust had occurred, it would have piled the waters to expose a four-kilometer or roughly 2.5 miles of land bridge.

This phenomenon occurred in Lake Erie and the Nile Delta in 1882.[4] When wind set down occurs, it usually blows a harbor completely dry.[5] According to Carl Drew's research, the Israelites would have had about four hours to cross that path. [6]

But then the question is: how did this occur at the exact moment the Israelites needed to cross? And I don't know the answer to that. I'm not making a case for the validity of the Red Sea parting, but I will say that a peculiar thing happened to me once that's pretty similar to this.

My family and I were out on a hike, and we were about a mile or two from our car when it started to rain. It was raining steadily. It wasn't pouring yet, but you could tell it was solid rain. Luckily, we were under a canopy of trees. So, we weren't getting too wet. We had our dog with us too and the kids. My kids were younger. So as a mother, you just don't want to see everyone get soaked and miserable by the time you get back to the car because you just wanted a hike to be fun for your kids. 

We came to a large clearing, and it began to rain a little harder, and I started to pray, which I pray a lot, it’s just like a constant conversation with God that I'm having most days. And so, this was no strange thing that I started to pray for the rain to let up a bit while we crossed this clearing.

It was a pretty large clearing. Had we crossed it when it was pouring, we would have been soaked by the time we got to the end. And so, I started to pray. And, as soon as my foot crossed into the clearing, the rain turned to hail, and we crossed and were able to stay dry. 

I know some of you out there have had similar experiences to this that look like coincidences, but I don't believe in coincidences. And I think it's important to pay attention to these events in your life because it could just be God tapping you on the shoulder, trying to give you a nudge in some direction, or trying to give you some hope or encouragement. 

It's important to look for these little miracles that happen to us daily. I truly believe that there are greater forces at work. However, it is simpler for God or these greater forces to control nature than it is for God or these greater forces to control humans. People say, but why is there war? If God can answer prayers like that. And I truly think that all parties must be involved and willing and open for peace to be obtained.

Remember, as humans, we have free will, and no one, not even God, can mess with that.

God can nudge us, and that's all. Our free will is our gift and a blessing. But for some of us, it is also a curse. Those who can't seem to help themselves, but live extremely selfishly. Attached to objects and feelings, holding them back from growth and peace and a life of truth and real true beauty.

There is a woman, a Celtic Christian mystic—if you listen to my episode on Celtic spirituality, you're familiar a little bit with Celtic spirituality, which is, Christianity that stays very close to the ground, very close to the earth, very close to nature, pays attention to nature, sees God and everything in all creation. So, there is this woman, her name is Lorna Burns. Some of you I'm sure have heard of her.

She's very well known. And she sees angels. She's seen them her whole life. And just recently she has been publishing books, telling her story, and now she's opening a retreat center, I believe it's in Ireland. That would make sense, right? When I first heard her story about seeing angels I started to read her book. 

I had a hard time believing her, even though I have seen stuff, and I've had dreams, I still have moments of doubt. So, I had trouble believing her at first. I was like, really? You see that much detail and they just talk to you like normal? But then you listen to the message that she's trying to communicate, that the angels are trying to tell us something.

This message that she has for us speaks of nothing but love and peace and unity of the human race. And of all of us being accepting of other religions and that God loves all of us, no matter what religion we are, no matter what we practice, or traditions we practice.
 
 So by this, I can be open to her message because her message is purely Truth with a capital T. It’s all love. It is all unity. It is all peaceful and nonjudgmental. 

Whether or not I believe she really sees angels doesn't matter. What matters is the message that I can apply to my life. What could be relevant to life here for me and for the people in my life. 

And I think it's the same with scripture. It's not really a matter of believing every story told in the Bible, because let's face it, many are far-fetched, like a fish swallowing a man, c'mon. Not only that, but some Bible stories in the Old Testament are just different versions of different myths and different stories from other civilizations. that had been passed down also, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, from ancient Mesopotamia, it has some similarities to the Book of Genesis and from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Book of Giants. This tells us how important storytelling was and how these stories were passed down, not only from generation to generation, but these stories traveled throughout the world and influenced other civilizations. That's why storytelling is so important, because it is evidence yet again of that human condition that doesn't change, and it's so interesting and deep that you could study it forever. 
 
 It's not about believing whether or not these stories happened. It's a matter of gleaning the message from these stories and leading a better life because of the message. That's why stories exist. 

That's why oral histories are important. We have learned many practical skills through the art of storytelling. And the Bible is continuing that art form. And for us, it's written down, so we will never forget the message, which in the case of Exodus, for me, means make your escape from enslavement in your life, whatever it may be, maybe figuratively or physically, and be reborn in truth, and beauty, and inclusion, which is what Jesus will later teach us in the New Testament.
 
 So I'll leave you with a question this week. What does the story mean to you? That's it. Any story you hear, what does it mean to you? 

What message of truth and love can you glean from any story in the Bible or even from children's books that were read to you when you were a kid, or maybe from your own stories and your family, your own generational stories, and try to notice the miracles in these stories.

Pay attention to these things. Like the rain turning to hail in my story.

So, thank you for joining me today. I'll leave you with that question, and I hope you will join me again next week when we cover Psalm 73. Have a great week. Please consider sharing or subscribing to the podcast. Thank you so much. Bye bye.   

[1] Mooney, Chris, “No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus”, The Washington Post, Dec. 8th, 2014
[2] Mooney, “No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus”.
[3] Mooney, “No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus”.
[4] Mooney, “No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus”.
[5] Mooney, “No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus”.
[6]Mooney, “No, really: There is a scientific explanation for the parting of the Red Sea in Exodus”.