Exodus explained? / Film claims earthquake, not Moses, parted the Red Sea

By Amiram Barkat, Haaretz, 05/04/2007

A volcanic eruption on the Greek island of Santorini, rare geologic phenomena in the vicinity of the Suez Canal and archaeological findings prove the historical veracity of the Exodus from Egypt, according to the Jewish-Canadian filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici, who directed and wrote the script for "The Exodus Decoded," which was released last year and broadcast recently in the United States.

Jacobovici came to public attention with an earlier documentary he made ("The Lost Tomb of Jesus") in which he claimed that Jesus and members of his family had been buried in southern Jerusalem. Just as in the case of the Jesus film, leading experts have attacked Jacobovici's theories about the Exodus. The films were said to serve Jacobovici's personal beliefs as an observant Jew.

In an interview with Haaretz during a visit to Israel, Jacobovici rejected this argument. "They said that I tried to prove the Bible in my film about the Exodus, and that in the film about Jesus, I tried to disprove the New Testament, but I just did my job," he said.

"The theological significance that people derive from my films is not of interest to me." At the same time, he admitted he was motivated by anger at the theories of those who "deny" there was an Exodus.

Jacobovici claimed his theory is based on a combination of findings from various scientific fields. "Archaeologists are used to speaking only among themselves, and that is true also of geologists," he said. "We spoke to everyone, and we did a journalistic investigation of everything. The archaeologists are not used to accepting criticism from people like me, and therefore I was attacked personally."

Jacobovici's main contention is that the Exodus from Egypt did not take place in 1270 BCE, as is accepted thinking, but rather 300 years earlier. Jacobovici claims that the Children of Israel were in fact the Hyksos tribes that ruled Egypt from 1640-1540 BCE. He bases his claim on wall paintings from the period that show the Hyksos as extremely similar to the biblical descriptions of Jacob and his sons, as well as on nine seals that bear the name Jacob, which were found in a dig at the site of the assumed Hyksos capital.

On the basis of the new dating of the expulsion of the Israelites from Egypt, Jacobovici claims the Exodus took place at the time of the volcanic eruption on the island of Santorini, which is considered one of the strongest volcanic eruptions of all time. Basing himself on geologists, he claims that "extreme seismic activity" caused the outburst, and that it led to the plague of darkness and others described in the biblical story and to the killing of the first born. He bases his theory on similar phenomena that occurred during a natural disaster at Lake Nyos in Cameroon in 1986, which was also caused by irregular seismic activity.

Jacobovici believes that seismic activity led to a parting of the Red Sea and the drowning of the Egyptian army. Basing himself on a hieroglyphic tablet on show at the museum in Ismailiya, Jacobovici claims that the Red Sea mentioned in the biblical tale is, in fact, a sweet water lake by the name of el-Bala, which dried up in the 19th century following the building of the Suez Canal.

The most damning criticism of Jacobovici was voiced by the Austrian archaeologist Manfred Bietak, who conducted excavations at Avaris and whose findings the film uses to claim the Hyksos were the Children of Israel. In an article in the Biblical Archaeological Review, Bietak says Jacobovici took his remarks out of context through biased editing. Bietak also claims there is no archaeological evidence to support the view that the Children of Israel existed before the Iron Age, that is 1200 BCE.