Nahum 1:5-6 The mountains quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence, yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his indignation? and who can abide in the fierceness of his anger? his fury is poured out like fire, and the rocks are thrown down by him.
WAS GOD A VOLCANO? YES! GOD - ALLAH WAS A VOLCANO-VOLCANIC ACTIVITY!!!
Where did the term 'holy smoke' come from? This article suggests it's a relatively recent figure of speech.
Is that likely though given the number of smoking volcanoes there will have been around the world over the last ten thousand years? Surely, wherever there was a volcano, and before volcanoes were understood, the local inhabitants would have called the volcanic smoke 'holy smoke' as every volcano would have been a god to its surrounding people. Given the inhabitants would also have been unnerved on seeing new emissions, the term would have been punctuated with exclamation marks. Surely they would have blurted something out and what could be more fitting than 'Holy smoke!!!'?
This article has explanations for the origins of holy cow, holy mackerel and holy smoke, and it suggest holy smoke refers to the smoke from burnt offerings. Smoke/smoke clouds are of course considered 'holy' due to the tabernacle tent clouds and the cloud of smoke on Mount Sinai.
I believe the original smoke of 'Holy smoke!' was the smoke from the 'holy' volcanos. It is my guess this is in fact the first ever Abrahamic (and earlier) blasphemous curse that originated as a curse (expressing shock) and one that is used today in many countries in the world, especially those with volcanoes.
See THIS LIST of Biblical verses that suggest Yahweh, the Abrahamic god, was an imaginary volcano deity.
Exodus 19:18 'And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in
fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole
mount quaked greatly.'
I have several times seen on forums the argument that this verse disproves the volcano god theory. However, I believe it helps to prove it. The argument is that if the Lord descended upon the mountain that it proves he was a separate entity to the mountain; he was not the volcano or the magma. This is not correct because it does not take into account the ignorance of the ancient Hebrews who did not understand what volcanoes were. They did not know volcanoes were a vessel with a liquid rising up them; they thought they were solid mountains and that the fiery liquid had been put onto the top. The fiery liquid was flowing downwards and it would therefore have appeared to be coming from above. The 'pillar of smoke' was rising and they say it looked like the smoke coming out of a furnace despite not realising it was actually coming out of a type of furnace.
Their knowledge will have increased as time passed to the point at which they realised to their horror how silly it was to anthropomorphise such a natural phenomena, which may have been the cause of the name banning and wiping from memory. Discovering 'lakes of fire' obviously did not dampen their beliefs but added to the awe and wonder at the glory of their god. At this point in Exodus, however, they only knew what they could see from a distance.
How did we find out about volcanoes? Many people have argued with me that 'of course the Hebrews knew what volcanoes were silly!'. Well, considering the word 'volcano' is not used in the Bible one time and the only descriptive verses that could refer to volcanoes are also refering to 'God', I would hazard a guess they did not know what volcanoes were and that they were, in fact, in more awe of them than they should have been; they worshipped them, sacrificed animals at the foot of them to appease them and lived in fear of their imagined divine wrath.
This document by Isaac Asimou pretty much sums up how we humans found out about volcanoes. It makes complete sense but almost no-one is saying it.
I can't believe it! I have finally worked out the location of the Mountain of God!!! It's a volcano in Tanzania on the East African Rift Valley, the highly volcanic rift that also cuts through 'the holy land'. It's called 'Ol Doinyo Lengai', which in the local lingo means 'The Mountain of God'.
So there you have it......a volcano down the rift that also cuts through the Hebrew Holy Land is called The Mountain of God. This must surely be the mountain of God in the Bible.
Oh, wait a minute.....maybe there is more than one Mountain of God. Could that be? Could there be more than one God? Could there be a God for every Mountain of God in the world? Could there be a God for every volcano in the world?
Is the Pope Catholic?
In 1993, the carbonatite has extruded forming the white top of Oldoinyo Lengai and this white peak in the heart of the Maasailand is thought to represent the beard of the Maasai God, which is why the Maasai people call it the Mountain of God. David Maige, a senior warden at Tanzania Lake Manyara, told The Namibian this week that apart from contributing to the country’s tourism sector by drawing a lot of tourists, Oldoinyo Lengai is also a holy mountain for the Maasai people, just like Namibia’s Ovahimba people believe in their holy fire. He said the Maasai people use the mountain as a site to conduct rituals such as sacrifices and prayers. “There are many American and European scientists studying and monitoring the activity of the mountain,” said Maige. He said the mountain also offers wonderful view of Lake Natron. He said when the mountain erupts the Maasai people believe that their God is angry and they have to go to the mountain to placate him with prayers. Maige said the lower slopes of the mountain are used by the Maasai people for grazing cattle as the volcanic soil is very fertile for growing grass. Source.
Lots of anthropomorphism in that, just as there is in the early Hebrew stories.
Isaiah 30:27 See, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke; his lips are full of wrath, and his tongue is a consuming fire.
PSA 18:8 There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of his mouth devoured: coals were kindled by it.
This website shows the correlation between the ancient Egyptian poem, the Admonitions of Ipuwer, taken from the Ipuwer Papyrus, and the plagues of Egypt.
This article, about the Mount Saint Helens volcanic eruption near Washington in1980, states that even 500 miles away people were taken to hosipital suffering from sore eyes and skin rashes (Pague of Boils), there was darkness for hours over 500 miles from the volcano, fiery pumice fell like hail setting fire to things and destroying buildings, plants and animals and flattening crops, etc.....
About the Mount Saint Helens eruption...
'a hail storm of coarse pumice and rock fragments fell from the eruption cloud, blanketing the area near the volcano.' Source.
'Volcanic pumice and firey are commonly spewed from eruptions and can be felt hundreds of miles away such as with Mt St. Helens in the US.' Source.
During the hike out, it started getting darker and I could hear thunder - very strange for a sunny morning. The trail is in the forest most of the way out so there are not many clear views. I started seeing flashes of pink lightning and hearing "hail" falling through the trees. By the time I reached my car, it was more like twilight, but I was able to see that the "hail" was actually 1/2 inch shards of obsidian. Now I knew that St Helens had erupted. After a short while, the obsidian "hail" changed to gray ash "snow" and the view of Mt Rainier to the north disappeared into the darkness created by the ash cloud.
Protect yourself from pyroclastics. While you want to get to higher ground, you should also try to shield yourself from pyroclastics which are rocks and debris (sometimes red-hot) that are sent flying during an eruption. The most important thing to do is watch out for them and get out of their range. Sometimes they actually rain down, and in some types of eruptions, such as that which occurred at Mount St. Helens in 1980, these missiles can land miles from the volcano’s crater. Protect yourself by staying below the ridgelines of hills and on the side of the hill opposite the volcano. If you are caught in a hail of smaller pyroclastics, crouch down on the ground, facing away from the volcano, and protect your head with your arms, a backpack, or anything else you can find.
I've finally found the name for these little feiry hail stones.....Lapilli.
Rounded tephra balls are called "accretionary lapilli" if they consist of volcanic ash particles. Accretionary lapilli are formed in an eruption column or cloud by moisture or electrostatic forces, with the volcanic ash nucleating on some object and then accreting to it in layers before the accretionary lapillus falls from the cloud. Accretionary lapilli are like volcanic hailstones that form by the addition of concentric layers of moist ash around a central nucleus.
'Soon it became in many places theater furious explosions of deafening denotations and projections of columns of ash and lapilli fiery.'
On Versuvius...
'A mass of fiery lapilli and rain of ashes, covered men, houses and temples under a layer of 4 to 5 metres'On Exodus...
'Volcanic activity not only brings with it ash, but brimstone, and also alters the weather system, occasionally producing hail.'
King James Bible (Cambridge)....Exodus 9:23 'And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven and the LORD sent thunder and hail and the fire ran along upon the ground and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt.'
New Living Translation......Exodus 9:23 'So Moses lifted his staff toward the sky, and the LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed toward the earth. The LORD sent a tremendous hailstorm against all the land of Egypt.'
'fire ran along upon the ground'became'lightning flashed toward the earth'.
(Please see earlier posts on hail to understand my thoughts on this).
King James Bible (Cambridge) Exodus 19:16 'And it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.'
So the Hebrews had a specific name for lightning, meaning the fire during the plague of hail was not lightning and later editions of the Bible are devious attempts to prevent the truth from being spotted and a total waste of paper.
This excellent article suggests very strongly that the Hebrew were originally 'Habiru', a name given to people living on the fringe of Egyptian society. That certainly would fit the Bible story and would explain why no evidence as yet has been found of the Hebrews' existence in Egypt before and during the Exodus period. Most atheists have reveled in the idea 'they weren't there!' but big stumbling blocks often have simple explanations.
It was at this point in time that I discovered the Habiru. Even though I was a professional historian, I had never heard of them until I began to study Jewish history. A hot topic in the small world of “Biblical scholarship,” their existence had remained almost completely unknown to everyone else. For 100 years, archaeologists had been unearthing clay tablets in the Middle East which made reference to a group of people variously described as “Habiru” or "Apiru” in the scholarly literature. Would the authors of the Torah have promulgated such an injunction unless they were themselves in actual fact descended, at least in part, from fugitive slaves? I doubt it, and therefore the fact that many of the Habiru were also fugitive slaves made a connection between the two groups appear highly probable in my eyes.Read more.
I believe small balls of fiery sulphur omitted from volcanoes or rifts were at first mistaken for ice hail and called hailstones or hail. Other names are given to pumice stone....snares, darts, etc., but 'hail' or 'hailstones' was sometimes used early on when there was a total lack on understanding of what was happening.
(Quoting a Jew 'Interlinear Hebrew/English. Exodus, Ch 9. And yes, it is a very accurate translation.')
Exodus 9:24 'So there was hail, and fire flashing up amidst the hail, very grievous, such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.'
It has been assumed that this fire flashing up must be lightening but I have never seen or heard about lightning that flashes upwards. Isn't that completely against the laws of eletricity, which state electricity always takes the quickest route to earth? The 'fire flashing' is not lightning up fire or flames coming from burning balls of sulphur. 'very grieveous' also suggests this 'hail' storm was not normal...so abnormal in fact one like it had not been seen in Egypt since its conception.
Exodus 9:23 'And Moses stretched forth his rod toward heaven and the LORD sent thunder and hail and the fire ran along upon the ground and the LORD rained hail upon the land of Egypt.'
Again, lightening does not run along the ground but go into it as quickly as possible.
Ez 38:22 "And I will bring him to judgment with pestilence and bloodshed; I will rain down on him, on his troops, and on the many peoples who are with him, flooding rain, great hailstones, fire, and brimstone.
Another example of the ancient Hebrews mistaking ice hail for volcanic sulphur balls, the words 'fire and brimstone' being the giveaways.
Isaiah 30:30 'The Lord will cause His glorious voice to be heard, and show the descent of His arm, with the indignation of His anger and the flame of a devouring fire, with scattering, tempest, and hailstones.'
'The flame of a devouring fire' cannot possibly be lightening, although many have begged me to believe otherwise. 'His arm' is, I believe, like his 'outstretched arm'....a lava river. Given this volcanic description, what type of hail is most likely, ice or sulphur?
The picture above shows the damage caused by sulphur balls at the Dead Sea. The orange circles are the crystalised rims of the burnt out sandstone having been hit. This demonstrates how hot the sulphur balls must have been and how they could quite feasibly create what looked like lightening sparking when they hit the ground and rolled along it 'ran along the ground' as they set fire to the crops, the houses, etc).
Isaiah 30:30 The LORD will cause men to hear his majestic voice and will make them see his arm coming down with raging anger and consuming fire, with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
Psalms 18:12 At the brightness before him his thick clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire.
Psalms 18:13 Yahweh also thundered in the sky. The Most High uttered his voice: hailstones and coals of fire.
I am not a geologist but could it be that small balls of sulphur could be due to a volcano spraying out lava at such a rate it comes out in smaller amounts and become spherical in transit?
Mezeray, in his History of France, says "that in Italy, in 1510, there was for some time a horrible darkness, thicker than that of night, after which the clouds broke into thunder and lightning, and there fell a shower of hail-stones which destroyed all the beasts, birds, and even fish of the country. It was attended with a strong smell of sulphur, and the stones were of a bluish color, some of them weighing one hundred pounds' weight."
Could this be documented proof that as late as 1510 in Europe, people were witnessing volcanic activity without knowing it?
By definition, the use of word 'hail' includes 'Something that falls with the force and quantity of a shower of ice and hard snow' and 'to fall like hailstones'. Maybe at the time of the Exodus the word hail was used losely to describe a shower of small hard balls. Similarly, 'Rained down' can be used to describe something that falls like rain.
I have made other posts about hail in the Bible so please go through my blog.
The article below about the Plague of Hail is by the 'Israel National News' and sums up quite nicely the ideas I've put forward regarding the Santorini eruption, the ten plagues and also the plague of hail, which was obviously not normal ice hail but small balls of fiery sulphur. Whether they traveled in a cloud to Egypt or whether they came from local volcanic eruptions is yet to be seen.
'For example, it is quite possible that the column of smoke by day and fire by night that the escaping Israelites saw after their Exodus was, in fact, the plume from a volcano. This same volcano may also have been responsible for the plagues brought upon the Egyptians due to their slavery of the Jews.
We know from recent volcanoes that a huge eruption can cause darkness over the lands for many hundreds of miles. One of the plagues was the plague of darkness. Also, the rivers turned to blood and the fish died. This too could have been caused by anextreme volcanic eruption. Some volcanoes contain iron oxide, which is red. A massive eruption could have caused the fallout ofiron oxide in the rivers of Egypt, killing off the fish.
Regarding the plague of boils, hundreds of people ended up in hospital emergency rooms with skin sores and rashes after the Mount Saint Helens eruption due to exposure to the acidic fallout ash. This same fallout caused livestock to perish or to be destroyed due illness from prolonged inhalation of the volcanic dust.
Of course, the fiery hailstorm to plague Egypt as described in Exodus is a common occurrence when a huge volcano blows. When Mount Saint Helens erupted in 1980, it caused a cloud of pellet-sized volcanic debris to fall like hail. Burning pumice from the sky set fires on the ground, destroying trees and houses. Lightning flashed all over the area, created by the enormous turbulence inside the volcanic cloud. For days, volcanic debris fell like hailstones, flattening crops for miles around.
This coincides with what is written in the Bible about what happened to Egypt.
Exodus 9:23-4: "So there was hail, and fire flashing up amidst the hail, very grievous, such as had not been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation. 4. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt all that was in the field, both man and beast; and the hail smote every herb of the field, and broke every tree of the field."
In fact, most of the plagues can be attributed to a super eruption. And it just so happens that there was a super eruption at the time of the Exodus. It was on the Greek island of Thera, which is now called Santorini.'
Santorini is a bay over six miles across that is actually a crater formed by the eruption of Thera. Evidence suggests that sometime around 1500 BCE, a gigantic volcanic eruption all but destroyed the island of Thera. Judging by the size of the crater - over thirty square miles - the Thera eruption has been estimated to have been over twenty times bigger than the Mount St. Helens eruption.
In addition, pumice samples taken from the seafloor show that the wind at the time was blowing towards Egypt. And Egypt is less than 500 miles away - certainly close enough to be severely affected by such a huge eruption.
Simultaneous inversion of P wave arrivals of 262 local earthquakes, recorded in the region of the Dead Sea, was carried out to model the velocity stratification in the underlying crust and uppermost mantle. The resulting tomographic model delineates several large magmatic domes, rising from the lower crust, at depth of approximately 20 km, and ascending more than 12 km into the overlying intermediate crust. Commonly, the domal ascent took place along the boundary faults of the Dead Sea rift. The domes are elliptical in shape, measuring nearly 5 × 15 km in diameter, and are spaced about 20 km apart. Earthquake foci are abundant around the diapirs but rare within them. The occurrence of these magmatic diapirs under the Dead Sea implies anomalously high temperatures with metastable stratification in the lower crust and suggests magmatic upwelling.
Continental Sprint, as opposed to Continental Drift, refers to sudden plate movements or rifting and could explain the possible young age of the Dead Sea and the Biblical accounts of mountains sinking, sea rising, valleys changing and lots of new land being created by volcanoes or the release of magma from the mantle beneath.
'As the lower plate continues its descent, it drags the locked area down with it, bending and deforming the upper plate, and thus causing the surface above it to deform. As depicted in Figure 3b, land in the region close to the trench slowly sinks (subsides), while land further away from the boundary slowly rises (uplifts). This process builds up stress. After centuries or even thousands of years, the upper plate will suddenly break free and rebound, slipping by tens of feet (several meters) in a matter of seconds, and generating a giant earthquake. As shown in Figure 3c, this sudden displacement of the land causes islands closest to the trench to uplift in a matter of seconds, and the land further from the boundary to suddenly subside. The large, sudden upward movement of the sea floor when the locking between two plates is ruptured displaces water. If the displacement is large enough, it can cause great tsunami waves, as happened after the December 2004 Sumatran quake.'http://www.tectonics.caltech.edu/outreach/highlights/sumatra/why.html
Now those plates were moving together but if two plates were moving apart, as in the Dead Sea area, one plate would lift up gradually and then suddenly sink. The things described in the Bible, the rising of the mountains and the sinking of the sea, could be the final ripping apart of the top of the plates. The Dead Sea was not created gradually. The difference between the Dead Sea and maybe the Read Sea (and along the rest of the Great Rift...maybe also the Sea of Galilee) is that long built up stress from distorted crust can cause much greater earthquakes than where two plates move against each other with no edge.
'Extension occurs where the seafloor is being pulled apart or split along rift zones, such as along the axes of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the East Pacific Rise. This is often called "seafloor spreading," which occurs where two oceanic plates move away from each other horizontally, with new molten material from the mantle beneath rising between them to form new oceanic crust. Similar extensional splitting of a continental crustal plate can also occur, such as along the East African Rift Zone.
On the other hand, many other observations are incompatible with slow-and-gradual plate tectonics. While the seafloor surface is relatively smooth, zebra-stripe magnetic patterns are obtained when the ship-towed instrument (magnetometer) observations average over mile-sized patches. Drilling into the oceanic crust of the mid-ocean ridges has also revealed that those smooth patterns are not present at depth in the actual rocks.7 Instead, the magnetic polarity changes rapidly and erratically down the drill-holes. This is contrary to what would be expected with slow-and-gradual formation of the new oceanic crust accompanied by slow magnetic reversals. But it is just what is expected with extremely rapid formation of new oceanic crust and rapid magnetic reversal during the Flood, when rapid cooling of the new crust occurred in a highly nonuniform manner because of the chaotic interaction with ocean water.
Furthermore, slow-and-gradual subduction should have resulted in the sediments on the floors of the trenches being compressed, deformed, and thrust-faulted, yet the floors of the Peru-Chile and East Aleutian Trenches are covered with soft, flat-lying sediments devoid of compressional structures.8 These observations are consistent, however, with extremely rapid subduction during the Flood, followed by extremely slow plate velocities as the floodwaters retreated from the continents and filled the trenches with sediment.' http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/nab/catastrophic-plate-tectonics
Creationists believe the Bible talks about the break up of the continents but I believe it talks about the break up at the Great Rift, mainly the Red Sea Rift and the Great Rift Valley. 'The world' in the Bible, I believe, is not the world but their world...the world they knew. Their world was, according to the, flat.....it had four corners...so they didn't know it was a globe. Their world was small.....the Holy Land....what they knew. What occured in the Red Sea Rift and above probably reflects what occured when the world's continents moved apart, something that could have occured suddenly. Because of the similarities, Christians (and others) are now assuming the the Biblical authors knew about things that occured millions of years ago when in all likelihood they knew about what had happened in their vicinity thousands of years before.
After debating on a Jewish forum (that has now been locked by the moderator for reasons unknown to me...and all external links removed...much like the atheist forum did recently), I found the general concensus was that some Jews already knew Mount Sinai was a volcano, some Jews were open to the idea of the ancient Hebrew god being an imaginery volcano god (and they'd still carry on being religious) and some who completely denied the possibility.
Before the thread was locked, the following line was posted in the last and possibly best comment...
There is no word for "volcano" in Classical Hebrew.
So, the ancient Hebrews' volcanic holy land did not, in thousands of years, reveal god's greatest and most awesome creation....the volcano? Or is it that volcanoes featured so strongly they were not called volcanoes but Most High, the Lord's abode, his dwelling place and 'My Rock'?
Exodus 9:18-24 'Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now. Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every man and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die. […] The LORD sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the LORD rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.'
No mention of anything strange about the hail in the plague of hail story in the Old Testament.
Now from Jewish sources some addition information...
'The Chumash says that the plague of hail included both fire and hailstones in it, yet the water of the hail did not put out the fire, and the fire did not melt the hailstones.'Source.
I can't find anything in the OT about the hail being abnormal....having a fire within it and not melting or putting out fire. It does, however, appear to be known to Jewish scholars and religious writers. If possible, please let me know if I've over-looked this part of the story in the OT and, if not, where has it been removed from.
If that has been omited from the Plague of Hail story in the Old Testament, what else has been omited?
I believe we can find hints to the truth in music, films and video games, not that I watch video games (they often come up in Google searches during my work though). Here is one music video that seems to hint at additional information...
Set in a church under the steeple ('most high' part), 'hail', volcano....
and this song offers more clues...
Lars Frederiksen & The Bastards - Ten Plagues of Egypt - Lyrics...
Strictly academic no doubt about it
Like the 10 plagues of Egypt total epidemic
Israelites demand it freedom demanded
Waiting in the sand is how they planned it
Enter a series of calamites
All things considered humanities
All the days of biotech will witness
All the days of darkness
Well the river turned to blood and the fish died
The lice arrived and so did the flies
Sickness to the animals sickness to the humans
And hunger hit and the land was stripped
Hail storm the locust swarm
Civic unrest total annihilation while the evil armies march across the barren wastelands
Starvation did come
Great valleys did flood earthquakes erupt volcanoes disrupt
Masses engulfed in hostility
Plagued by disease and insanity
Clouds brought hail fire and blackness
As the world fell off of its axis
I look outside my window
All I see is scum
Surging up from the streets
All I seeHate...
There's nothing in the Old Testament plague account about floods, earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. 'Clouds brought hail fire and blackness'. There is nothing in the OT about clouds. It says it was so dark the Egyptians could feel it....volcanic ash smog?
The Wiki bio on the band says the music consists of, 'drinking, fighting, drugs, sex, prostitutes, gangs, and street life'...and original Torah Exodus facts missing from the Old Testament? Sounds like an odd combination.
Well things certainly are hotting up aren't they? The number of people who have laughed at me on forums for saying Saudi is volcanic and the number of people who have refused to believe any volcanoes in Saudi could be active, recent or even historical....it's a wonder I've carried on with this theory. My volcano! I'm not getting paid for all this either!
So, here you go....an active volcano in Saudi/Yemen waters....also showing how the Hebrew imaginery god can create land....he is the creator after all. Water cooled lava islands. The Red Sea is lined with volcanoes and those volcanoes will erupt whenever there is drift of the continents and as stated in an earlier post, this can happen suddenly. Imagine the shock and awe that sight would have on ancient nomads. Enough to inspire a religion.
This three part video is about the Santorini eruption that happened around the time of the Exodus from Egypt and is likely the cause of the ten plagues. Its aftermath was so devastating it brought to an end a Chinese dynasty. Contrary to the video, the island inhabitants had many months warning that something happened and the reason there were no bodies found is likely due to everyone being able to escape to nearby islands.
This video shows very nicely what a waste of time it is to hold out hope your god will save you.
I got mocked by many on a forum a while ago for saying continental drift, or its effects, could occur suddenly rather than very gradually. Well, it seems I was right after all.
For the past 30 million years the Arabian tectonic plate has been moving away from the African (Nubian) plate at the Red Sea. But the rift, in which Earth's crust is being stretched and thinned, is not happening smoothly. Most of the time the plates are stuck together. But in September of last year they split apart along a 37-mile (60-kilometer) section in Afar, Ethiopia (Ethiopia map), near the southern end of the Red Sea. Read more here.
"The event was a vivid expression of the unimaginable amount of stored energy the Earth releases from time to time to split apart continents,"
Hail in the Bible, I believe, was not hail at all but small balls of white sulphur thrown out of volcanoes. I believe it was called hail because it looked like hail. It was a puzzling sight to the ancient Hebrews...
''There was hail and fire flaming amid the hail'' [Va'eira 9:24]
The Midrash states that the Plague of Hail was a miracle within a miracle: the hail did not extinguish the fire and the fire did not melt the hail. Rather, both elements joined forces in smiting the Egyptians.........So it was with the Plague of Hail. Hail and fire cannot co-exist because the nature of fire is to melt hail and the nature of hail is to extinguish fire. But in this instance, Hashem made peace between them and together they struck at the Egyptians. Read all here.
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As stated in an earlier post, I also discovered there is a place named Hail that does have volcanoes that throw out small white balls of sulphur, or at least used to. That place is in North-western Saudi Arabia.
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In Hail there are some mountains and one of them, AsSamra, is a tourist attaction that has a gas powered fire on its summit.
Human occupation in Hail goes back to prehistoric times as indicated by the numerous stone artifacts and rock drawings. Large numbers of Thamudic inscriptions can be seen in the mountains. Hail has a complex history of trade, travel, conflict and occupation - traces of which are left all over the countryside. Historically, Hail maintained cultural relations with the Assyrian, Babylonian and Levantine cultures. Assyrian and Babylonian incursions into Northern Arabia passed through Hail. Hail also acted as a trade center connecting four main roads leading to Jawf, Buraydah, Al-Najaf and Jarha.....There are numerous different types of relics. Read more of this very interesting piece here.
There is a connection somewhere here. A place in NW Saudi Arabia is named Hail, it has volcanoes that produce small white sulphar balls, it is steeped in ancient nomadic history, its original ancient landguage Thamudic (which sounds suspiciously like Talmudic and is also written right to left) also covered the Sinai and the ancient Hebrews in Egypt during the ten plagues thought balls of white sulphar thrown down in a storm due to a volcanic eruption was hail.
Did the ancient Hebrews leave Egypt during the Santorini eruption, make their way around the Sinai (leaving rock inscriptions in Thamudic), wander around the NW Arabian desert, find the volcanoes in Hail, and name the place Hail?
This discovery means that sulphar balls landed on the Egyptians during the ten plagues. Not ice hail but sulphar. This is evidence of something I had been thinking about for some time. The Santorini eruption, due to being so immense, set off a chain of volcanic events in the Gulf of Suez Rift. It's either that or the sulphar balls were carried in the wind and clouds from Santorini. Well, it's possible as it was a powerful eruption...14 000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
You can see other posts on hail in the Bible here and here.
One of the biggest arguments I get against the theory the ancient Hebrews worshipped an imaginery volcano god is that Yahweh is often assumed to be a storm god due to all the lightening, clouds, rain and darkness. Well, all those things can be produced very impressively by volcanoes. In fact, lightening displays can be more impressive on top of a volcano than in the open sky due to the ash clouds.
This article explains how volcanoes can produce massive electrical storms.
It is also worth noting for future research that there is a place called Ha'il where there are volcanoes that throw out balls of white sulphur that could look like hail, and the that could be where the word 'hail' came from. That place is in Saudi Arabia and this is one of its volcanoes.
