It was proposed to Mr Niebuhr, when in Egypt, to inquire, upon the spot, Whether there were not some ridges of rocks, where the water was shallow, so that an army at particular times might pass over? Secondly, Whether the Etesian winds, which blow strongly all Summer from the north west, could not blow so violently against the sea, as to keep it back on a heap, so that the Israelites might have passed without a miracle? And a copy of these queries was left for me, to join my inquiries likewise. But I must confess, however learned the gentlemen were who proposed these doubts, I did not think they merited any attention to solve them. This passage is told us, by scripture, to be a miraculous one; and, if so, we have nothing to do with natural causes. If we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the transaction at all, seeing that it is from his authority alone we derive it. If we believe in God that he made the sea, we must believe he could divide it when he sees proper reason, and of that he must be the only judge. It is no greater miracle to divide the Red Sea, than to divide the river of Jordan. If the Etesian wind blowing from the north-west in summer, could heap up the sea as a wall, on the right, or to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain, of building the wall on the left hand, or to the north. Besides, water standing in that position for a day, must have lost the nature of fluid. Whence came that cohesion of particles, that hindered that wall to escape at the sides? This is as great a miracle as that of Moses. If the Etesian winds had done this once, they must have repeated it many a time before and since, from the same causes. Yet, [172]Diodorus Siculus says, the Troglodytes, the indigenous inhabitants of that very spot, had a tradition from father to son, from their very earliest and remotest ages, that once this division of the sea did happen there, and that after leaving its bottom sometimes dry, the sea again came back, and covered it with great fury. The words of this author are of the most remarkable kind. We cannot think this heathen is writing in favour of revelation. He knew not Moses, nor says a word about Pharaoh, and his host; but records the miracle of the division of the sea, in words nearly as strong as those of Moses, from the mouths of unbiassed, undesigning Pagans. Were all these difficulties surmounted, what could we do with the pillar of fire? The answer is, We should not believe it. Why then believe the passage at all? We have no authority for the one, but what is for the other; it is altogether contrary to the ordinary nature of things, and if not a miracle, it must be a fable. The cause of the several names of the Red Sea, is a subject of more liberal inquiry. I am of opinion, that it certainly derived its name from Edom, long and early its powerful master, that word signifying Red in Hebrew. It formerly went by the name of Sea of Edom, or Idumea; since, by that of the Red Sea.