Chapter 2 - The Ten Plagues

Chapter 2

The ten plagues

The first plague - river water turned to blood
The second plague - frogs
The third plague - gnats
The fourth plague - flies
The fifth plague - death of livestock
The sixth plague - boils
The seventh plague - hail
The eighth plague - locusts
The ninth plague - darkness
The tenth plague - death of the firstborn

There were many theories trying to explain these ten plagues. Because there are still many parts where the plagues were not able to be explained clearly, until now, there are still many people trying to completely understand why such things actually happened.

For example the pfisteria theory, it actually has many explanations to about six of the plagues but not all. In 1999, when the catastrophe happened, people found the sudden turning of river water to blood and people working there was suddenly covered with sores.

The causes of this were found to be pollution of the pig’s farm further up from a pig farm. Pig waste was found in the water and many of them actually caused a micro-organism called pfisteria. It turns the harmless to a poison. This pollution also drove frogs to their death, leading to the outburst of flies and lice. These pests can carry and transmitted disease from livestock to us, humans.


Another theory would be the volcano theory.
On May 17th 1980, in the North West of America, Mount St Helens volcano erupted, killing everything within 20 miles. It caused so much damage that ash columns were ejected into the atmosphere, circling the globe within two weeks and causing complete darkness over a radius of 100 miles. It is believe that the volcanic ashes had fallen into the river and leads off a chain effect of the plagues. This would have explained about the first to sixth plagues also. Not only that, the volcano also emits a lot of ashes and could have caused the hail and the darkness.

Not only that, there was also the parting of the red sea which was explained as a tsunami actually scraped across the bottom of the ocean floor in the Mediterranean and disturbed the sediment. Looking at ordinary waves you can see that just before they break, the water withdraws from the shore. A mega-tsunami would siphon billions of gallons of water - not just from the shore but from connecting rivers and lakes - creating dry land for as long as two hours.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/judaism/history/moses_4.shtml

My point of view

From what I see, the plagues are actually caused by changes in the environment and caused these ten plagues. It is not by any supernatural stuff. It had scientific explanation.

19-05-2007 12.31am