Reply #135: Thanks for pointing out the interesting Sneferu legend. I wonder if you can show

[struggle4progress]

in any detail a link to the Moses legend

I consider it quite plausible that such old texts may incorporate elements from older traditions, and I find it quite informative and useful when one can exhibit definitively such a linkage. Such a linkage seems well-established, for example, in the case of Noah narrative, where a number of story elements from a much older text reappear in the biblical account. But in Sneferu and Moses legends, your sole similarity seems the parting of the water; that is a pretty thin correspondence. Such a thin correspondence, of course, does not eliminate the possibility that the story element has been recycled, but to obtain a good proof (rather than a mere conjecture) one ought to do somewhat more

Sneferu dates to about 2600 BC, about a millennium and a half before Ramesses the Great, and perhaps two millennia or more before the codification of the Jewish canon. One naturally should ask whether there is evidence this Sneferu legend was known when the early versions of the Moses story circulated or when the story was finally written down. And there are other possibilities for the origin of the story of Moses parting the sea:


... According to a new computer-modeling study, wind patterns at a bend where an ancient river is believed to have merged with a coastal lagoon along the Mediterranean Sea are such that they could have pushed the waters back and created a temporary land crossing.

The researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Colorado at Boulder made their discovery as part of a larger study of wind's impact on water depths and reported their findings in a recent issue of the online peer-review journal PLoS One. They used archaeological records, satellite measurements, and current maps to reconstruct the likely locations and depths of Nile delta waterways, which have shifted considerably ...

Using 14 computer models, they found that 63mph winds, lasting for 12 hours, would have pushed back waters estimated to be 6 feet deep. This would have exposed mud flats for 4 hours, creating a dry passage about 2 to 2.5 miles long and 3 miles wide. The water would have been pushed back into a surrounding lake and river channel, creating water barriers on both sides of the exposed mud flats and thus creating a land bridge ...

September 22, 2010 2:53 PM PDT
Wind may explain Red Sea parting
by Leslie Katz
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20017313-1.html#ixzz1K7Qr8Zd4