It seems inevitable that from time to time a study is published that tries to offer a scientific explanation of certain supernatural phenomena described in the Bible. There are many works, more or less serious, that provide supposed scientific evidence to try to understand how extraordinary episodes such as the universal flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the ten plagues of Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, could have happened. the appearance of manna in the desert or the fall of the walls of Jericho, among many others.
We will begin by commenting on one of them, which analyzes the issue of the plagues of Egypt described in Exodus 7, 12. Its authors are Joel Ehrenkranz, professor emeritus of the Florida Consortium for infection control, and Deborah Sampson, professor at the University of Michigan , and the result of their research was published in the prestigious Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine. Their conclusions are forceful, since they claim to have discovered what phenomenon is hidden behind the legend of the plagues.
In their article, Ehrenkranz and Sampson start from complex paleoclimatic models that, theoretically, allow them to know more or less precisely what the environmental conditions in Egypt must have been around the 13th century BC. C., when, supposedly, the episode of the Exodus starring Moses and the Hebrews took place.
Both authors consider that the phenomenon known as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) occurred at that time, which consists of a drastic variation in oceanic and atmospheric temperatures in the western Pacific area. Said oscillation would have triggered climatic alterations in different areas of the Earth, although its effects would be especially intense in the eastern Mediterranean.
According to the study by Ehrenkranz and Sampson, ENSO specifically caused extraordinary climate warming in Egypt (more than 10 ºC with respect to the average temperature) and prolonged (lasted about three months). That exceptional situation created the ideal conditions for the progressive development of a series of natural phenomena that are very similar to those described in Exodus 7, 12.
One of the first reactions that, always according to Ehrenkranz and Sampson, must have caused global warming was the increase in the temperature of the Nile water. This facilitated the massive growth of red algae (Euglena anguÃnea), whose toxins would have caused the death of Lots of river fish. Those red waters and the massive death of fish are what would have inspired the first of the plagues of Moses, described in Exodus 7, 14-24.
In addition, as a consequence of the high toxicity of the water, the Nile frogs (Rana ridibunda) left the river and sought refuge in the nearest houses. However, due to their inevitable dehydration, the amphibians ended up dying, and the decomposition of their bodies caused a terrible stench throughout the country, as described in Exodus 8, 10 regarding the second plague.
As it is easy to suppose, global warming favored the proliferation of insects (flies, mosquitoes, horseflies, etc.) in many of Egypt’s swampy areas and irrigation canals. There we find, therefore, the origin of the third and fourth plagues. The mosquito epidemic must have been especially problematic, which would have acted as transmitters of diseases such as Rift Valley fever or West Nile virus, which would have spread among cattle, infecting the vast majority of herds, as described in Exodus 9, 1-7.
Likewise, the climate warming studied by Ehrenkranz and Sampson also offers the perfect scenario to explain the sixth plague. In this sense, the incredible proliferation of insects caused many females to deposit their eggs in people and animals, so the larvae ended up growing in the subcutaneous tissue of their hosts and caused the so-called furuncular myiasis, that is, the annoying sores mentioned in Exodus 9, 8-12.
On the other hand, the continued and persistent increase in the temperature of the water in the Mediterranean would have favored the development of catastrophic storms known as supercells. The clash of the abnormally warm and humid air coming from the Mediterranean with the cold and dry air of the interior gave rise to that extreme atmospheric phenomenon. One of these supercells would be found after the devastating hailstorm described in Exodus 9, 13-35, which caused the destruction of crops and famine in the country.
In turn, said supercell would also be directly responsible for the eighth and ninth plagues. Thus, strong east-west wind gusts transported authentic swarms of locusts (Schistocerca gregaria) from the Arabian desert to the Nile valley. In fact, this is a relatively recurring phenomenon in Egypt, even today.
For its part, the darkness described in Exodus 10, 21-29 would have been caused by a dense fog formed after the storm, when warm sea winds laden with moisture replaced the mass of fresh air created by the supercell.
Finally, Ehrenkranz and Sampson are convinced that their model, based on global warming caused by the ENSO phenomenon, also serves to explain the tenth plague, that is, the death of the Egyptian firstborn (Exodus 12, 20). Thus, after a prolonged period of coexistence with mosquitoes and infected herds, Rift Valley fever and West Nile virus would have been transmitted to human communities.
Once infected, many adult Egyptians, with a mature immune system, would have resisted such diseases without undue problems. In contrast, children, especially those affected by immune deficiencies, after infection would have developed liver failure and fatal hemorrhages, which would lead to the deaths described in the context of the tenth plague.
The model proposed by Ehrenkranz and Sampson offers a scientific explanation for a phenomenon that, according to the Bible, had a supernatural origin. However, that explanation in no way means that we should consider the ten plagues of Egypt an actual historical episode. The only thing that this study would show is that the author of the legend of the plagues could have been inspired by natural phenomena to build his story.
After almost two centuries of historical and archaeological research, today most authors agree that Exodus cannot be considered a history book. In fact, it is a text full of fantastic events, such as the birth of Moses, the episode of the burning bush, the opening of the waters of the Red Sea, the appearance of manna in the desert, the revelation of Yahweh’s Law in the Sinai… Actually, more than a history book, Exodus is a great legend that gathers the founding epic of the Hebrew people, and must be analyzed as such.
The arguments that deny the historicity of Exodus are solid. Thus, for example, according to the Bible, there were hundreds of thousands of Hebrews who lived enslaved in Egypt, but no document from the time of Ramses II, the presumed pharaoh of the Exodus, has been found that alludes to the presence of that immense contingent. . You have to wait until the reign of Ramses’ son, Merenptah, to find a stela mentioning a tribe called Israel. However, the text explicitly states that this tribe was in the region of Canaan, not in Egypt.
On the other hand, in Exodus 13, 17 it is affirmed that Yahweh did not want the Hebrews to flee from Egypt through a passage called “the path of the country of the Philistines”. The reality is that the Hebrews of the 13th century B.C. C. they would never have been able to flee that way.
The reason is very simple. In that century no one in Egypt had ever heard of the Philistines, an Indo-European people mentioned for the first time in the texts of the following century, as part of the second wave of sea peoples who attacked Egypt around 1177 BC. C. It is clear, then, that the route that went from the Nile delta to Canaan could not bear the name of a town that was still unknown at that time.
Likewise, although, according to Exodus, there were more than a million Hebrews who wandered through Sinai for forty years, archeology has not found the slightest trace of their presence. On the other hand, the remains left by small nomadic tribes that lived in the region long before the Israelites supposedly were there have been found.
It seems utterly unlikely that archaeologists would be able to locate the traces left by small groups of herdsmen four thousand years ago, but, on the other hand, find it impossible to find the slightest indication of the presence of hundreds of thousands of Hebrews living in that same area a thousand years later.
Taking all this into account, the most logical thing to do is to assume that the plagues were not a historical episode either, but one more legendary story within the Exodus epic. In fact, in the Bible itself we find some significant contradictions on this issue. Thus, for example, the plagues of Egypt are mentioned again in Psalm 78, but there it is stated that there were seven, and not ten, ignoring the mosquitoes, the sores and the darkness.
According to that other version, the plagues occurred in a different order from that described in Exodus: blood in the Nile, horseflies, frogs, locusts, hail, death of cattle, death of the firstborn.
To finish complicating things, Psalm 105 recovers the episode of the plagues, but it does not speak of ten or seven, but of eight epidemics, ignoring the sores and the death of cattle. In addition, he also proposes a different order: darkness, blood in the Nile, frogs, horseflies, mosquitoes, hail, locusts, death of the firstborn. These contradictions seem to suggest the existence of different literary traditions about the episode of the plagues, which must have been part of the folklore of the people of Israel.
Some authors, very suggestively, have proposed a different, metaphorical interpretation of the plagues of Egypt. According to this reading, each of the epidemics was a fable composed to describe in an allegorical way the superiority of Yahweh over the Egyptian gods.
Thus, for example, the plague of blood in the river would symbolize Yahweh’s supremacy over Hapi, the god of the flooding of the Nile; the death of the frogs would hide a reference to Yahweh’s victory over Heket, the goddess of fertility who is often depicted with the head of a frog; the death of cattle would mean the triumph of Yahweh over Hathor (cow) and Apis (bull); the darkness would demonstrate Yahweh’s superiority over Ra, the sun god, and so on.
In short, the study by Ehrenkranz and Sampson does not confirm that the plagues narrated in Exodus 7, 12 actually occurred. This and other similar works would only demonstrate that when the legend of the plagues was composed, the biblical redactor would have been inspired by a series of natural phenomena that occurred with relative frequency in the region of Egypt. Just that.
This text is part of an article published in number 662 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
