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An ancient Egyptian manuscript may prove the biblical 10 plagues described in the Book of Exodus. Known as the Ipuwer Papyrus, the document takes the form of a poetic lament attributed to a scribe named Ipuwer. It recounts widespread catastrophes and societal upheaval in ancient Egypt, describing famine, mass death and environmental disasters.... The text also echoes the biblical plagues' attacks on Egypt's gods, with the river of blood, frogs, and darkness recalling Hapi, Heqet, and Ra. It references slavery and wealth, noting precious metals and stones fastened on female slaves, reflecting the Israelites' bondage ....

Did the eruption of Thera cause the Ten Plagues of Egypt, such as the transformation of the Nile into blood?The eruption of the Minoan island of Thera, or Santorini, has popularly been linked to the legend of Atlantis. However, many researchers also attempt to connect it to another famous story: the Ten Plagues. The Bible tells the story of the Ten Plagues of Egypt in the Book of Exodus. Is it possible that the eruption of Thera really could have resulted in these famous Ten Plagues? How the eruption of Thera supposedly explains the Ten Plagues According to advocates of...

While some depict the Bible’s Passover meal and Jews’ Exodus from Egypt as a fable, archeological and other evidence squares with the Bible’s account.Tonight begins Passover, or Pasach, celebrated worldwide by Jews. As recounted in Exodus 13:3-10, this ritual meal marks their ancestors’ escape from Egyptian captivity.About three weeks earlier, Christians celebrated Easter to commemorate Jesus’ Resurrection. Judaism and Christianity share not merely monotheism, but also recount their miraculous foundations as history.Together they form the moral foundation for Western culture, a foundation that is collapsing, in part due to post-Enlightenment critiques of the historicity of these religions. But, as a...

MISCONCEPTION: Upon leaving Egypt, the Jews crossed the Yam Suf, which is translated as the Red Sea. This translation, however, is an error. Red Sea is a corruption of the correct Old English (OE) translation, Reed (Rede) Sea. (Rede is a legitimate spelling of reed in OE.)FACT: The notion that the Yam Suf is the modern-day Red Sea predates any English translation of the Bible by well over a thousand years. In fact, it seems that until the late eighteenth century no one questioned the translation and identification of Yam Suf with the Red Sea...The Septuagint (second to third century...

The remains of a burnt beetle found in a grain of wheat about 3,500 years old provided a group of researchers from Bar-Ilan University with a key to a question the Bible left without a definite answer: How did Joseph the Dreamer, who became the viceroy to the king of Egypt, succeed in preserving the grain during the seven lean years and prevent Egypt's population from starving? According to the description in the book of Genesis, during the seven years of plenty in Egypt, Joseph had all the wheat collected in silos. "And he gathered up all the food of...

An inscription dating back some 3,100 years ago bearing the name of a biblical judge Jerubbaal was uncovered in the excavations at Khirbat er-Ra‘i, near Kiryat Gat in the Southern District of Israel, the Antiquities Authority (IAA) announced on Monday.The researchers highlighted that while there cannot be any certainty on whether the inscription refers to the figure mentioned in the Book of Judges, this discovery offers important insights on the connection between the biblical text and historical reality...All the dating has been carried out through both pottery typology and radiocarbon of organic samples found in the same archaeological layer.The writing,...

That the Bible refers to these structures as "cities" instead of merely "buildings" is likely a consequence of the magnitude of these projects. The area that these depots covered sometimes exceeded the area taken up by the temple itself. Examples of storage depots can be found surrounding several mortuary temples, for example, the Ramesseum. The reason why the temples needed such storage depots was because Egypt had a barter economy that did not use money. Any temple cult only lasted as long as there was food to make offerings and feed priests. Storing food for offerings was essential for a...

The tip came from a lawyer, a faithful reader from Brooklyn named Harvey Herbert- An Egyptian hieroglyphic papyrus now in the Brooklyn Museum mentions an Asiatic slave named Shiphrah. Shiphrah, of course, is the name of one of the Hebrew midwives (the other is Puah) whom Pharaoh summoned to carry out his order that all boys born to the enslaved Israelites be killed (Exodus 1-15)... And here was an Asiatic slave with this same name mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus written in hieroglyphics... All I can do is report what to some (surely, to me) are previously unknown facts that...

Red SeaBOULDER, Colo.- From his office in Boulder, scientist Carl Drews can pinpoint the spot where his research theorizes the biblical miracle of the parting of the Red Sea took place. Although Drews has never been there, the Google Earth Pro imaging on his computer can zoom in on the place in Egypt where Moses and the Israelites escaped death when the waters parted, according to the Book of Exodus. His virtual "pushpin" comes back with images of what is now predominately agricultural land, with orchards, irrigation canals and grape fields indicating vineyards. It is in the Eastern Nile Delta,...

The Biblical plagues that devastated Ancient Egypt in the Old Testament were the result of global warming and a volcanic eruption, scientists have claimed. Researchers believe they have found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt, which led to Moses freeing the Israelites from slavery in the Book of Exodus in the Bible, were based. But rather than explaining them as the wrathful act of a vengeful God, the scientists claim the plagues can be attributed to a chain of natural phenomena triggered by changes in the climate and environmental disasters that happened hundreds of...

Background Wind setdown is the drop in water level caused by wind stress acting on the surface of a body of water for an extended period of time. As the wind blows, water recedes from the upwind shore and exposes terrain that was formerly underwater. Previous researchers have suggested wind setdown as a possible hydrodynamic explanation for Moses crossing the Red Sea, as described in Exodus 14. Methodology/Principal Findings This study analyzes the hydrodynamic mechanism proposed by earlier studies, focusing on the time needed to reach a steady-state solution. In addition, the authors investigate a site in the eastern...

September 21, 2010 BOULDER—The biblical account of the parting of the Red Sea has inspired and mystified people for millennia. A new computer modeling study by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) shows how the movement of wind as described in the book of Exodus could have parted the waters. The computer simulations show that a strong east wind, blowing overnight, could have pushed water back at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea. With the water...

A team of archaeologists digging at Tel-Habuwa, near the town of Qantara East and three kilometres east of the Suez Canal... chanced upon a cachet of limestone reliefs bearing names of two royal personalities and two seated statues of differing sizes. The larger statue is made of limestone and belongs to a yet unidentified personage, but from its size and features archaeologists believe that it could be a statue of Horus, the god of the city. In 2001 archaeologists unearthed remains of a mud-brick temple dedicated to this deity. The second is a headless limestone statue inscribed on the back...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen? The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor. "It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down." The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics...

Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen? The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor. "It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down." The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association. The program says...

Abraham didn't exist? The Exodus didn't happen? The Bible's Buried Secrets, a new PBS documentary, is likely to cause a furor. "It challenges the Bible's stories if you want to read them literally, and that will disturb many people," says archaeologist William Dever, who specializes in Israel's history. "But it explains how and why these stories ever came to be told in the first place, and how and why they were written down." The Nova program will premiere Nov. 18. PBS presented a clip and a panel discussion at the summer tour of the Television Critics Association. The program says...

Massive Egyptian fort discovered Mon, 23 Jul 2007 Egypt announced on Sunday the discovery of the largest-ever military city from the Pharaonic period on the edge of the Sinai desert, part of a series of forts that stretched to the Gaza border. "The three forts are part of a string of 11 castles that made up the Horus military road that went from Suez all the way to the city of Rafah on the Egyptian-Palestinian border and dates to the 18th and 19th dynasties (1560-1081 BC)," antiquities supreme Zahi Hawwas said in a statement. Teams have been digging in the...

There is a saying that when it comes to the Bible, "for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, while for those who don't believe, no explanation is possible." But what of the many people who fall somewhere between these two certainties? Such people owe it to themselves to see The Exodus Decoded, a 90-minute documentary by Canadians James Cameron (the director of Titanic, Aliens and The Terminator) and investigative journalist and producer Simcha Jacobovici. The film will be screened at 6 p.m. this evening as part of the Jerusalem Film Festival at the Jerusalem Cinematheque. The Exodus Decoded claims...

NORTH SINAI, Egypt, April 2 — On the eve of Passover, the Jewish holiday that celebrates the story of Moses leading the Israelites through this wilderness out of slavery, Egypt’s chief archaeologist took a bus full of journalists into the North Sinai to showcase his agency’s latest discovery. It didn’t look like much — some ancient buried walls of a military fort and a few pieces of volcanic lava. The archaeologist, Dr. Zahi Hawass, often promotes mummies and tombs and pharaonic antiquities that command international attention and high ticket prices. But this bleak landscape, broken only by electric pylons, excited...

For nearly a century, biblical archaeology has been a pillar of the Jewish national revival. Its professional approach, combined with its often dramatic capacity to reconstruct the history of ancient Israel, has done much to convince the world that the Bible is not mere myth, but a document that reflects the truth concerning central periods in Israel's history. Today, however, biblical archaeology has reached a crossroads. Seeking to reconstruct the historical record from scratch, a new school of Bible scholars, historians, and archaeologists has argued that nearly every major story of the Hebrew Bible is little more than a fabrication....