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.
It has been observed, indeed, that not only the Arabian Gulf, but part of the Indian Ocean[173], went by this name, though far distant from Idumea. This is true, but when we consider, as we shall do in the course of this history, that the masters of that sea were still the Edomites, who went from the one sea directly in the same voyage to the other, we shall not dispute the propriety of extending the name to part of the Indian Ocean also. As for what fanciful people[174] have said of any redness in the sea itself, or colour in the bottom, the reader may assure himself all this is fiction, the Red Sea being in colour nothing different from the Indian, or any other Ocean.
There is greater difficulty in assigning a reason for the Hebrew name, Yam Suph; properly so called, say learned authors, from the quantity of weeds in it. But I must confess, in contradiction to this, that I never in my life, (and I have seen the whole extent of it) saw a weed of any sort in it; and, indeed, upon the slightest consideration, it will occur to any one, that a narrow gulf, under the immediate influence of monsoons, blowing from contrary points six months each year, would have too much agitation to produce such vegetables, seldom found, but in stagnant waters, and seldomer, if ever, found in salt ones. My opinion then is, that it is from the[175] large trees, or plants of white coral, spread every where over the bottom of the Red Sea, perfectly in imitation of plants on land, that the sea has obtained this name. If not, I fairly confess I have not any other conjecture to make.
No sea, or shores, I believe, in the world, abound more in subjects of Natural History than the Red Sea. I suppose I have drawings and subjects of this kind, equal in bulk to the journal of the whole voyage itself. But the vast expence in engraving, as well as other considerations, will probably hinder for ever the perfection of this work in this particular.
