9 Scientific Explanations For Famous Bible Stories

A sudden onslaught of plagues and pestilences including rivers of blood, frogs, lice death and eternal night, how could this be anything but divine retribution?

Well, some scientists think that the 10 plagues of Egypt may well have actually happened and could have been caused by something that people are still ignoring to this day: Climate change.

There is evidence to suggest that, around 3,500 years ago, the Earth's climate fluctuated from a period of relatively warm, wet weather, during which the land around the Nile would have been lush and verdant, to a sudden dry climate of near-drought.

The dry conditions would have reduced the mighty river to a stagnant puddle of sludge, kicking off a series of catastrophic environmental disasters. The first of these, the river of blood, could have been due to a type of bacteria known as Burgundy Blood algae or Oscillatoria rubescens, which blooms in slow moving water and stains it blood red. The bloom is toxic, which could have led to the next plagues of frog, flies and lice.

Tadpoles are able to speed up their development when in danger, and the tadpoles in the now toxic river would have done this, creating a sudden boom in frog population. However, the poisonous river would have soon caused them all to die, meaning that their natural prey of lice, flies and mosquitos would have run rampant due tot he lack of predation, leading us to the next plagues: death of livestock and horrible boils. These would easily be caused by the kinds of diseases carried by the kinds of biting insects that were swarming, creating an epidemic.

At the same time, a different natural disaster hundreds of miles away would wreak further havoc on the environment. The volcano called Thera in the Mediterranean blew its top, sending tonnes of volcanic ash into the atmosphere. This ash will have clashed with weather systems and seeded huge storm clouds, creating the 7th plague of thunderous hailstorms. The high levels of precipitation will have created a nice environment for a swarm of locusts, who prefer humid climates, creating the 8th plague.

The ash cloud will have also blocked out the sun for hundreds of miles around the eruption site, plunging everyone into a perpetual night - the 9th plague.

The final 10th plague, the death of firstborns, could well have been a result of these catastrophic events. The periods of darkness and the plagues of locusts could have introduced toxic fungus to grain stores. Firstborns are given priority for food and would have been more exposed to infection from the grain. 

Young firstborns, particularly newborns, would have also been the most vulnerable to the negative effects of the disease epidemics caused by the previous plagues, meaning they would be the most likely to perish in times of natural disaster.

Whilst it's entirely possible that this series of events indeed occurred one after the other, it is more likely that they were a bit more mixed up into a general stew of disaster, which was later editorialised into a more linear narrative for the sake of storytelling.