An intriguing story from NPR’s All Things Considered:

About 3,000 years ago, according to the Book of Exodus, Moses “stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord caused the sea to go back by a strong east wind all that night, and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.” And then, according to the Bible, the Israelites were free from Pharaoh’s rule.

Fifty-five years ago, Charlton Heston stood in front of a Hollywood mock-up of the Red Sea and commanded the waters to part in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments.

Today, Carl Drews, a software engineer with the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has parted the waters again — this time with a computer.

Drews looked closely at verbiage in the biblical account given in Exodus 14:21, which describes a strong east wind blowing overnight that caused the water levels to drop and part.

“This is something that is known in meteorological science as wind set-down,” Drews tells NPR’s Guy Raz.

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