Speculation Leads To Hypothesis

Scientists may howl in protest at the title of this post, but the origin of these thoughts goes back many decades. I have long been wondering - and yes, speculating - about the similarity and distinction between events described in our Christian scriptures and natural phenomena that scientists investigate using the traditional scientific methods of cause and effect.

One such series of questions arose out of the description of the ten plagues of the Exodus when Moses demanded and eventually won the freedom of the children of Israel from slavery in Egypt. (Exodus 7-12). This speculation focused on the question: Were there natural events that might be identified as the cause of the several plagues sanctified by inclusion in the Torah, the most important part of the ancient scriptures of the Jewish people?

A missed opportunity to watch a CD of the lecture on Santorini by Professor Michael E.Wysession in the series on  The World's Greatest Geological Wonders made me turn to the Internet in search of scientific information on the violent explosion of that volcano on the island of Thera (Santorini) in the Aegean Sea about 1600 BCE. What I learned only increased by desire to search further. There can be little doubt that the Santorini eruption caused great havoc all through the eastern Mediterranean region and beyond. Nor am I the first to wonder if there was any evidence in the Bible of this great disaster that is said to have ended the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete though it was some seventy miles from Thera when the eruption occurred. (http://www.decadevolcano.net/santorini/minoaneruption.htm)

This led to an initial conclusion that there were some details of the plagues of Exodus which strangely reflected what may well have been tales told for centuries by generations of Jewish ancestors which remained still fresh in living memory when the Torah took shape in written form. Nor am I the first by any means to have speculated in this way. As recently as 2006 Israeli-Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici and producer/director James Cameron created a widely broadcast documentary on the same subject.  
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Exodus_Decoded)

Of course, there has been much religious and archeological criticism of Jacobovici's work. Not the least is the argument that his datng of the destruction of the Minoan civilization was 150 years later than archeological and geological research has shown it to have actually happened (ca. 1645 BCE). But his assumption that the children of Israel of whom the Exodus story told were really the Hyksos who were thought too have been expelled from Egypt about the same time seems unwarranted

As expected there was some very erudite criticism of this documentary. Possibly the most severe was a comment by a noted scholar, Dr. Ronald Hendel, Professor of the Hebrew Bible and Jewish Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He compared The Exodus Decoded to an Indiana Jones movie or an actor-salesman in an expensive infomercial advertising a product with exaggerated claims selling "a highly dubious bundle of theories about the historical and scientific veracity of the Biblical Exodus."

This debunking of Jacobovici documentary does not  prove one way or another that elements of the Exodus story have no relationship to the Santorini /Minoan eruption. Though many biblical scholars have tried, no one has yet explained what the cause of the Exodus plagues may have been. Nor have scientifically motivated archeologists yet discovered the actual route of the Israelites out of Egypt inthe 13th century BCE.