OT miracles rationalized away (Moses parting sea)

[panevino]

Disappointed in my sons catholic school where religion teacher told class that the event of Moses parting the sea in exodus 14 :16 was a way that naive uneducated people of the time understood a natural event. Ie. it was not a miracle.

I’d like to show my son that this is not orthodox Catholicism

Any recommendations on a good commentary / papal encyclical or catechism extract that discusses a Catholic world view of these events where miraculous events are affirmed.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

I’m sorry you’re having issues with a religion teacher who creates confusion in this way. I had my share of those growing up, and they were not helpful.

I think you might be better off just telling your child the facts here:

• To my knowledge, there is no independent archaelogical evidence or historical evidence relating to the parting of the Red Sea, and not even a consensus over where this actually took place (several different bodies of water have been proposed), so all we have is the Bible account, and we can’t be sure from that whether the parting was a natural event (caused by a certain wind condition etc.) or whether it was an unexplainable phenomenon. So the teacher is wrong in stating it was definitely a natural event when we have absolutely no way of knowing for sure, and just a lot of theories about this and that. It might be a natural event, and it might have been a completely unexplained “miraculous” phenomenon.
• In any event, whether it was a natural phenomena or something unusual and unexplainable and “miraculous”, the important thing is that God was looking out for his people and protecting them, right at the moment they needed help. God could certainly use natural means (such as sending a particular wind condition to part the water) to bring about His will just as easily as He could have used an unexplainable, supernatural means. It doesn’t matter what means he used, and we don’t really need to know for sure (and can’t know for sure at this time). The point is that he helped His people and His people understood that.

 

[Melodeonist]

That’s absurd. Although sadly I’m honestly not that surprised a Catholic school would teach stuff against the Church.

The solution is so simple. Nothing is impossible for God. God created the world and the laws of physics, etc. As the creator, why would he have to abide by the natural laws of the world He created? He’s literally above the laws of science because he created it.

 

[Maximilian75]

But nothing in the Bible says that the Red Sea could not have been parted through natural/apparently normal means

 

[Casilda]

It is for that exact reason I decided to put my daughter in a Lutheran school vs a Catholic one. At least she wasn’t taught anti-Biblical stuff.

She went on to go to a ‘Catholic’ university. she deeply regreted that.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

Once again, I see some people trying to limit the power of God. Who does that? People who insist that God only works directly, by intervening in the natural course of events. I think Pope Francis made fun of those people recently saying something along the lines of “God doesn’t just go ‘poof’…”

Could God work directly? Of course. Could God work indirectly, through natural forces and laws? Of course. And please keep in mind it’s not a case of “God vs. natural forces and laws.” God MADE the natural forces and laws.

Then you also have the problem of the omniscience of God. If God knows the future–because there is no time with God, God is outside time and space–then God knows that at a certain moment in time the seas would have to part for Moses and the Jews to cross the Red Sea. Why couldn’t God have “built in” natural forces that caused that to happen automatically, as it were? Why would it be necessary for God to swoop down and actively intervene to change something he created?

However, having said all that, if I were teaching a course in OT Biblical miracles, I would emphasize the fact that we don’t know how God works (“Your ways are not my ways…” Isaiah) but that we believe that God performed miracles to show his power and help people believe in him. Whether those miracles were caused by the direct intervention of God or simply God working indirectly through natural forces and laws, we don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter.

 

[De_Maria]

A boy was sitting on a park bench with one hand resting on an open Bible. He was loudly exclaiming his praise to God. “Hallelujah! Hallelujah! God is great!” he yelled without worrying whether anyone heard him or not. Shortly after, along came a man who had recently completed some studies at a local university. Feeling himself very enlightened in the ways of truth and very eager to show this enlightenment, he asked the boy about the source of his joy.

“Hey” asked the boy in return with a bright laugh, “Don’t you have any idea what God is able to do? I just read that God opened up the waves of the Red Sea and led the whole nation of Israel right through the middle.” The enlightened man laughed lightly, sat down next to the boy and began to try to open his eyes to the “realities” of the miracles of the Bible.

“That can all be very easily explained. Modern scholarship has shown that the Red Sea in that area was only 10-inches deep at that time. It was no problem for the Israelites to wade across.” The boy was stumped. His eyes wandered from the man back to the Bible laying open in his lap.

The man, content that he had enlightened a poor, naive young person to the finer points of scientific insight, turned to go. Scarcely had he taken two steps when the boy began to rejoice and praise louder than before. The man turned to ask the reason for this resumed jubilation.

“Wow!” exclaimed the boy happily, “God is greater than I thought! Not only did He lead the whole nation of Israel through the Red Sea, He topped it off by drowning the whole Egyptian army in 10 inches of water!”

 

[BartholomewB]

Any recommendations on a good commentary / papal encyclical or catechism extract that discusses a Catholic world view of these events where miraculous events are affirmed.

I can pass on to you a recommendation I was given on another website a few weeks ago: The Miracles of Exodus by Colin Humphreys (link below). I haven’t read the book myself, because Moses and the Exodus is not a subject I focus on. Humphreys is not a Catholic, in fact he’s on the other end of the Christian spectrum as an “evangelical Christian”. By profession he is a professor of materials science, which means he’s not likely to make the kind of mistakes that the anti-miracle dogmatists like to pick on to discredit their opponents.

https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/search?q=miracles+exodus&Gid=1

Here’s how Humphreys describes himself: “I am a Professor and Director of Research at Cambridge University, UK … I am a physicist and materials scientist, with a long-standing interest in biblical studies and the interface between science and faith…. I am a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering: these are the leading science and engineering societies in the UK. I am a Christian and a scientist and I would like to say to “new atheists” like Richard Dawkins that it is indeed possible to be both a Christian and a scientist!”

 

[Gorgias]

Disappointed in my sons catholic school where religion teacher told class that the event of Moses parting the sea in exodus 14 :16 was a way that naive uneducated people of the time understood a natural event. Ie. it was not a miracle.

Let me guess: that religion teacher is in her 60s or so, and therefore, received her theology training (whether formal or as part of growing up Catholic) about 40 years ago?

That was a popular meme back then: “the stories of the ancient Jews can’t be trusted”… “they made stuff up in order to tell good pious stories”… “these aren’t real… they’re just there to teach us about God, the same way that fairy tales teach us traditional values.”

Sadly, those who internalized these assertions haven’t caught up with contemporary Scripture scholarship.

I think you might be better off just telling your child the facts here:

Or, the OP could tell his son the history of how we got into this mess: back in the 1700s or so, the scientific revolution was in full swing. People were really enthralled by the opportunities to use science to prove all sorts of things. (Now, this is a good thing… but it’s possible to twist it and use it in ways that do more damage than good.) So, some Protestant theologians began thinking about it and saying “these so-called ‘miracles’ can’t possibly be real – we need to find real, explainable, scientifically plausible explanations for these events!” Thomas Jefferson himself actually created his own version of the Gospels, by ripping out all the miracles of Jesus and just keeping the parts that didn’t refer to the supernatural.

So, these folks started making up all sorts of pseudo-scientific explanations for the miracles in the Bible: “there was a desert wind that just happened to kick up as the Israelites approached the Red Sea, and it died down after they crossed.” or “the plagues of the Bible can be explained by ‘algae blooms’, and infestations (and their after-effects)”.

These ideas are still with us today – you see them trotted out by ‘scientists’ and certain flavors of ‘Christians’ and ‘Jews’ on shows on various cable channels.

Here’s the bottom line: some folks don’t want to believe that God actually acted miraculously among us. They’ve been teaching their ideas to many folks over the past 200-300 years, and some folks accepted their teachings… but haven’t kept up with more modern scholarship which disproves these old ideas.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

If the kid is 12 and up, then that might be a good discussion, with emphasis on the fact that without evidence, we have absolutely NO idea if it was wind, a volcano, or God making a miracle, or a combination of all three. I personally think that wind occurring “on demand” just in time to save God’s chosen people is pretty miraculous in its timing, but that’s just me.

If the kid is elementary school age, then unless he’s a small prodigy, probably that sort of explanation is going to be over his head.

It’s true that for every miracle, people will never stop trying to explain it away. Miracles make a certain segment of people very uncomfortable who believe there must absolutely be a scientific and rational explanation for everything. If these people cannot explain something, they will deny that it ever happened or try to dismiss those talking about it as ignorant, mentally deficient, mentally ill, etc. Plus, they get paid money to present new theories of this or that on TV or in a book.

I remember once reading some work of fiction that explained the Loaves and the Fishes miracle as being just a case of people who had all brought some food to the Jesus speech suddenly being inspired to take out what they had and share it all around when the apostles started sharing the five loaves and two fish. Yeah right, everybody brought a picnic lunch, if that was the case then they wouldn’t have needed to be fed in the first place as each would have eaten his own.

 

[Gorgias]

If the kid is elementary school age, then unless he’s a small prodigy, probably that sort of explanation is going to be over his head.

And, of course, the appropriate explanation might be, “some people want scientific proof for everything, and refuse to believe that God does act among us! It’s an idea that goes back to the time of the American Revolution… but current scholars think it’s a silly idea.”

I remember once reading some work of fiction that explained the Loaves and the Fishes miracle as being just a case of people who had all brought some food to the Jesus speech suddenly being inspired to take out what they had and share it all around when the apostles started sharing the five loaves and two fish. Yeah right, everybody brought a picnic lunch, if that was the case then they wouldn’t have needed to be fed in the first place as each would have eaten his own.

Sadly, it’s not a fictional account. The German Protestant theologians came up with this interpretation a couple hundred years ago. Now, think about it for a minute: German theologians. A story about how it would take a miracle for Jews to share. A story about how it would take the Son of God to get them to share what was in their own pockets. Smell any anti-Semitism there?

 

[ErraticFaith]

I find the premise a little amusing in some ways.

I.e;

Jesus was bodily resurrected from the dead (a belief requirement for divinity); but the same God can’t manage to do something, that humans alone are capable of (just build a dam perhaps?).

Seems highly laughable. If you study language and different genres of writing (as for example C.S Lewis did) you can indentify that the event wasn’t written down in a way detailing myth or parable - but as a literal event.

It’s not surprising it requires faith; because unfortunately Joshua didn’t have his IPhone on him at the time and neglected to post video to Facebook and Twitter.

But more to the point, why bother inserting the event at all at that point in the journey? It clearly has a historical reference of some kind. We’ll never know.

In the end though your faith must be very shaky indeed if you think that a deity who created an entire universe ex nihilo, has issues parting a small body of water.

 

[adamhovey1988]

I see some things on here that really bother me, because if you are a Christian, and especially if you are a Catholic, it’s supposed to be a matter of historical record that Moses and the Exodus happen. And it bothers me when people go out and say that there’s no archaeological evidence of it, as that somehow disproves something happening in the Bible. You know, I understand not feeling very comfortable with the Exodus story, I get that but having read the Torah several times, that it makes me really upset when people would limit our God to one that is not infinite. To believe that a God can create the universe, but couldn’t cause something like this, is not a very logical belief.

 

[Tis_Bearself]

because if you are a Christian, and especially if you are a Catholic, it’s supposed to be a matter of historical record that Moses and the Exodus happen. And it bothers me when people go out and say that there’s no archaeological evidence of it, as that somehow disproves something happening in the Bible.

Not having an archaeological record of something happening doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. As I mentioned, we don’t even know the exact location where this was supposed to have happened - the text is apparently not super clear - so for all we know, people are looking for evidence in the wrong spot. This also happened many thousands of years ago, so even if there was some evidence, it may have been destroyed or dissipated over time. So I’m not sure how you are taking a comment about lack of archaeological record as being evidence of it being “disproved”. The bottom line is we have no physical evidence at all and this is a matter of faith if we wish to believe it literally, think it was wind, think it was a miracle, etc. In any event the point of the story, which is what we should be focusing on, is that God intervenes to save his people. People can reach this appropriate conclusion, i.e. the lesson of the story, in a wide variety of ways.

The problem comes when one person like the teacher in this case decides to tell the class this was obviously some natural phenomenon and the ignorant people didn’t understand it and so credited it to God. That is diminishing God and undermining the lesson of the story.

 

[Richca]

The Bible is the only known source about the parting of the Red Sea. And it is self evident from a plain reading of the biblical narrative that the parting of the Red Sea event is supernatural and miraculous, a divine intervention and revelation. The Israelities were not so naive that they couldn’t discern between the natural and the supernatural. It’s as simple as that.

A similar miracle occurred when the Israelites crossed the Jordon River into the promised land as well as with the prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha crossing over the Jordon River.

I don’t believe you will find much in the way of a papal encyclical or catechism extract affirming that which is self evident from the biblical text itself. I think it comes down to whether an individual believes what is written in the Bible or not. The parting of the Red Sea is a miraculous event as it is narrated in the Bible. One either believes it or they don’t. Judaism and Christianity are religions founded on divine revelation, i.e., God’s supernatural intervention in the world and the communication of himself to man by deeds such as miracles and words.

 

[stuartbrianhenlis]

Now THAT kid had Faith!!!

 

[Erikaspirit16]

it makes me really upset when people would limit our God to one that is not infinite

Read my earlier post. Aren’t you “limiting” God by saying “God has to work directly. That’s the only way he can do it. He can’t work indirectly through nature and natural laws.” It seems to me that if you take that position you are saying you know best–you are telling God how to run the universe. God can do whatever he wants, and if he wants to work indirectly, he can. To believe that is not denying the power of God, it’s recognizing it.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

And it is self evident from a plain reading of the biblical narrative that the parting of the Red Sea event is supernatural and miraculous, a divine intervention and revelation. The Israelities were not so naive that they couldn’t discern between the natural and the supernatural. It’s as simple as that.

A similar miracle occurred when the Israelites crossed the Jordon River into the promised land as well as with the prophet Elijah and his successor Elisha crossing over the Jordon River.

I don’t believe you will find much in the way of a papal encyclical or catechism extract affirming that which is self evident from the biblical text itself. I think it comes down to whether an individual believes what is written in the Bible or not. The parting of the Red Sea is a miraculous event as it is narrated in the Bible. One either believes it or they don’t.

Read pages 32-33 of the Catechism: "“In Sacred Scripture, God speaks to man in a human way. To interpret Scripture correctly, the reader must be attentive to what the human authors truly wanted to affirm and to what God wanted to reveal to us by their words.

In order to discover the sacred authors’ intention, the reader must take into account the conditions of their time and culture, the literary genres in use at that time, and the modes of feeling, speaking, and narrating then current. ‘For the fact is that truth is differently presented and expressed in the various types of historical writing, in prophetical and poetical texts, and in other forms of literary expression.’”

“One can distinguish between two senses of Scripture: the literal and the spiritual….”

If you want to stick to the literal meaning, that’s your call. However, that’s not the official Catholic point of view. A “plain reading” of the Bible is almost inevitably an erroneous reading. The Bible contradicts itself all over the place–if you want to defend a literal reading of the Bible, be my guest. But first read the account of the Resurrection in all four Gospels. If each one is taken literally, and each one is the inspired word of God, you’ve got yourself some explaining to do.

What did “the human authors truly wanted to affirm”? What’s the real message in those passages? If you think it’s that the Red Sea actually divided, and THAT’S what the author was trying to get across, I think you’re missing the point. Literally.

 

[Kei]

There are multiple different meanings of varying depth in Scripture. The first is the most important, and that is the historical meaning of what is being said.

 

[Erikaspirit16]

if there was some evidence, it may have been destroyed or dissipated over time.

So if a Pharaoh and his entire army were destroyed, the Egyptian historians would just ignore it? No records at all? Really?