Book review - The Miracles of Exodus

Book Review - The Miracles of Exodus

Among scientists, physicists have a peculiar propensity for finding God. Perhaps it is because many deal with the most fundamental things of all that they find room – down there beyond the quarks, strangeness and charm - for a deity whose existence is otherwise looking increasingly improbable in our age of science and reason.

Colin J. Humphreys is one such scientist – a renowned Cambridge physicist who has devoted much of his non-professional energy in recent years to probing the Bible in the light of science.

His magnum opus in this area, "The Miracles of Exodus", takes on a foundation narrative of the West to discover how much can be verified as history rather than myth and then to find a scientific basis for the miracles of this journey.

Books which uncover the historical facts behind figures such as King Arthur, Robin Hood or Cleopatra often make cracking yarns and can also offer valuable contributions to scholarship.

But Humphreys is playing a bigger game. If the events of Exodus – from the flight from Egypt to the handing down of the 10 commandments – can be given a hard historical and scientific foundation then some profound questions are raised.

Humphreys, who is also the Chairman of Christians in Science for the United Kingdom, sets out to answer five key questions about the Exodus narrative: Is the story coherent and consistent; Is it factually accurate; Can we understand the miracles; Has the text been misinterpreted and can we reconstruct the Exodus route and find the true Mount Sinai?

His journey to a resoundingly positive answer to all of these questions is lengthy and argued with close attention to the Biblical text. Yet it is also curiously idiosyncratic and rather folksy. We wander adrift at times in the desert of irrelevancy.

Much of what he offers is still built on shifting sand – secondary sources and leaps of faith - but his key conclusions include a revised date for the events and the conclusion that Mount Bedr in the north of the present state of Saudi Arabia is the real Mount Sinai.

The pillar of cloud (by day) and fire (by night) that led the Israelites on was – he argues – a distant volcanic plume. The ten plagues of Egypt are also quite plausibly explained but he offers an extraordinary argument to explain the crossing of the Red Sea and the inundation of the pursuing Egyptian Army. This was a remarkable combination of wind set down and a bore wave.

How important is it to verify the accuracy of the Exodus story – the escape of the Israelites from captivity in Egypt and the miraculous events that help them to overcome all barriers? On the political level a reliable roadmap for those ancient events would have some obvious contemporary ramifications.

Humphreys believes he has established the historical truth of Exodus, that its miracles can be scientifically explained and that we can therefore take this part of the Bible as literal truth. But what of the divine cause? He concludes: "When a whole sequence of events happens at just the right moment, then it is either incredibly lucky chance or is there is a God who works in, with and through natural events to guide the affairs of destinies and nations…Chance or God? I'm not going to answer that question for you."

But his own answer is pretty clear… that this congeries of miracles is evidence of God as an intelligent designer – working through science.

Why is it necessary to try to find scientific explanations for the behaviour of a God who elsewhere acts in ways that can only be understood if we simply swallow his omnipotence? Believers "know" the Exodus story is true anyway… but I suspect others will remain unpersuaded. Are we meant now to pick and mix history from metaphor, science from myth.There is surely no scientific way to verify Noah's flood, the Adam and Eve story or the transformation of water to wine by Jesus at a wedding feast.

For his next act perhaps Professor Humphreys will present us with scientific evidence for the reality of angels?

"The Miracles of Exodus" by Colin J. Humphreys (Continuum Press ISBN 0-8264-6952-3 (HB)