A question about a bit of bible trivia. All the motion pictures and stories refer to the parting of the Red Sea, when the incident (if any) took place at the Sea of Reeds.
Various scholars claim that the actual location is in doubt, but is somewhere between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, closer to the Red Sea.
I do not own a bible, so I cannot check on it. My memory suggests that the King James version actually says Red Sea, but perhaps my Sunday school classes used a different version. Perhaps my memory has been altered by the motion pictures.
I have the following questions.
Do any older English versions of the bible actually say Red Sea? I assume that modern translations have it correctly.
If older versions do not have it correctly, is the error due to the similarity of red and reed in the English language? Id est: Was the mistake made because somebody looked at Sea of Reeds in English and said to himself "I never heard of that, but I know about the Red Sea. I'll fix this mistake that somebody made."? Perhaps the mistake was made because the original Hebrew language has similar words for red and reed? What is the source of this error?
I have asked various scholars about the above. Some did not understand my question. Others did not know the answer. Many promised to research it, but either did not do the research or did not bother to tell me about it.
By the way, Isaac Asimov had a clever theory presented as scholarly research, but meant as a joke.
His theory was that the Hebrews took a normal route somewhere between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, starting a few days ahead of Pharaoh's army. About that time, the Minoan civilization was destroyed by earthquakes and/or volcanic eruptions (an actual historical fact, though probably not coincident with the Exodus). The cataclysm which destroyed the Minoans caused a tsunami which destroyed the Pharaoh's army, not bothering the Hebrews who had passed by a day or so earlier. When the army did not return, some Egyptians started to investigate. They found the army drowned in the Read Sea, having been swept there by the tsunami. Being a sparsely populated area, not much else was affected. Few knew of the gigantic wave, and divine intervention was used as an explanation.
