Dr. Kuenen was a very learned, and a very accurate, man. He could extract from almost any narrative all the meaning that was in it, and he could clearly distinguish the false from the true; but there is one short narrative in the Bible, a narrative which Sunday-school pupils often understand very well, which was a complete puzzle to him. After mentioning the crossing of the Red Sea, he says:

      What actually took place there we do not know. The only thing certain is that the Israelites remembered that they had here escaped a great danger, which threatened them from the side of the Egyptians. Even in early times their rescue was considered and celebrated as an act of Jahveh. The account which we possess in Exodus of their passage may have existed from as early as the eighth century B. C. It is undoubtedly founded on fact. But it is very difficult to distinguish the actual circumstances of the occurrence from poetical embellishments. We will not risk the attempt. For our purpose it is enough [92] to know that the deliverance of the children of Israel was completed when the Red Sea divided them from their pursuers.--The Religion of Israel, I:126.

      The way in which this learned higher critic gives up this puzzle reminds me of a conundrum said to have been propounded to a clown by a ringmaster. The conundrum was this: "Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth. Now, who was Japheth's father?" The clown studied on it a moment, and called for a repetition. He called for it a third time, and then said, "I give it up." The story of crossing the Red Sea is about as simple, but the great critic gives it up. There are none so blind as those who will not see. The scribes and Pharisees could not understand the simplest of the parables of Jesus, and the reason is given in these memorable words:

      After all, Dr. Kuenen deserves some credit for being an agnostic in regard to the Red Sea crossing. I mean credit as compared with his fellow-critics; for by confession, quoted above, he shows himself incapable of swallowing the silly interpretation which has satisfied them. He could not consent to say with them that Israel, when camped at the head of the sea and pursued by Pharaoh, did not have sense enough to make the march of three or four miles which would have led them around it, instead of waiting for the water to get out of their way. Neither could he accept the equally silly [93] notion that the wind and tide emptied the water just in front of Israel, and that when the Egyptians followed, a change of the wind and the tide overwhelmed the latter so that none of them escaped. They tell us that Napoleon had a similar experience once, during the Egyptian campaign, when he and a few of his officers, having gone to see the Springs of Moses, crossed on their return where Israel did, but came near being drowned by the inflowing tide. But then, Napoleon and his men escaped--they were only a little scared. I suppose that the French are wiser in escaping from water than the Egyptians were. Kuenen, of course, had read all that his brother critics had said in support of this and other attempts to explain away the miracle, and he could accept none of them. He had too much sense. Not having, however, enough grace to accept the truth, and being unwilling to accept a subterfuge, he fell upon the clown's device, and gave it up.

[SEBC 92-94]