The Exodus According to G: A Unique View of the Biblical Story
And Moses—an old man, who has apparently wandered in from the eastern desert with a
message for Pharaoh.
It opens within the brooding atmosphere of an unknown environmental catastrophe that has
just begun far to the north of the land of Egypt, the effects of which will devastate all the
civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin.
It takes us through the several environmental disruptions known in the biblical account as the
Ten Plagues of Moses. It also attempts to make sense of the initial southern direction of the
Exodus, the parting of the waters, and the Sinain Sojourn.
While most of the characters in this story are fictional, the geological events have been
Far to the north of the Egyptian delta, an island was entering its terminal agony. What had
gone before had only been prelude to this, the final act of geologically visceral violence. It had
started as an ordinary volcanic eruption, if anything of this nature can be described as
ordinary. Then something changed.
The first puffs of steam and ash had alerted the island’s inhabitants to the displeasure of their
gods. Gifts and sacrifices were offered to no avail. Ever larger exhalations of steam and ash
followed, accompanied by increasingly frenzied offerings of larger and more precious
In a final desperate effort at mollification, the most prized possession of all was offered. The
future of the island community, heaped upon the altar of survival, was given up as a ransom.
The answer was plainly felt as well as heard. Earthquakes shook the island in rapid
succession. With the ground buckling under their feet and new fire-belching fissures opening
up on all sides of their beloved sacred mountain, spewing ash over everything and everyone, it
became clear to all, including those who had offered up such a precious ransom, that their
island was dying. Their awful sacrifice had been in vain.
Civil order collapsed as all means of escape from this great sea-faring island nation were
sought and fought over.
A backward glance from the desperately struggling survivors, fleeing in all directions, brought
the gristly vision of their homeland rapidly being converted to a gigantic pillar of fire.
Several times the angry seas rose up behind them as if to swallow them in midflight, then
cascading through their midst, those crashing crests brutally shoved those who had survived
each swelling rush, onward ever more swiftly.
The now almost-vacant island began to swell visibly as magma welled up from the bowels of
the earth, pouring up the roots of the mountain to refill the partially emptied vent chamber.
Ground fractures radiating from the shore allowed large volumes of the sea to pour in.
At first it immediately exploded into steam as it descended into the heat above the up-welling
magma. As the pulses of explosions were repeated, the surface of the liquid rock cooled and
became solid, forming a plug that stopped the upward advance. Pressure built up until the plug
could no longer resist.
With the force of a huge explosion driving it, this mass of volcanic rock was flung into the
heavens taking a large piece of the island with it. The explosion pushed the seas back from a