Well, I feel better. Since reading your first article on the plagues and then finding out some lady had a theory, I've been thinking I was corrupted by her theory somehow. (I don't know how, since I study from Dead Guys, most had to be before the 20th century, and I don't think they knew what a red tide was, once more there are many types of algae blooms.) After reading this, I believe you much more than her.
Muddy water? Pffft! I lived in Virginia and know red clay -- in and out of water. The soil needs a particular flora and fauna to get that color. Virginia's best known crop is tobacco. Even before tobacco, they had a certain selection of trees. (I found out they don't get red much in their fall foliage, because maples aren't native. Maple trees aren't a southern tree, naturally.) Georgia (another state with red clay) is best known for root crops and peaches. None of those crops were known by Egyptians, and Egyptians were bound to need what they grew, so they weren't wasting precious Nile water on unnecessary crops (like tobacco and peaches. I love both those crops, however, they're just not needed.) So, since Egypt was a fertile land, at least along the Nile, I'd think the soil would look closer to Illinois soil (blackest earth I've ever seen, and I grew up in Jersey -- the garden state, so I know good soil when I see it. lol) Red soil simply doesn't cut it in my mind.
My sources/Dead Guys, (and I don't remember if it was Barnes, Clarke or JFB, but I suspect Clarke), gave me the frog part. (If the river critters die, then nothing is eating frog eggs.) I admit I conjectured on the red tide thingy. It is poison, so does kill. It would also have to be a whopper, since it wiped out the entire Nile of the ancient world.
And, yeah, the bugs confused me, because the ancient words aren't what we know now. I think I remember three buggy plagues -- flies was one, the locust came much later, but there was another infestation that was neither flies nor locust. I don't recall the word "mosquitoes" coming into the words of the Bible. I was picturing more like fleas and chiggers, but if there are reeds, hot weather, and water, I can see mosquitoes. I think the Bible called them biting insects.
Biting insects are a give and take proposition. They give us something that causes an inflammation and take our blood. They also give us every germ and virus they pulled out of the last host, so given the land was already ravage between the bloody water and the dead frogs, I still see that as the cause and effect.
And, yes, I still see God big time!!! The people of the time of the Black Death had no idea what caused it, so couldn't stop it. If they didn't know, folks from 3000 years before certainly wouldn't know. We've got microscopes now. But, man! That timing was perfect, because God knows and God causes. He even knows more than our microscopes and studies will ever tell us.
I also don't think there are coincidences with God. I think there is physics, (even though he caused that too), but God got that huge fish into just the right spot to swallow Jonah from back on that day he created all the fish in the sea. He set into course all those fish having baby fish, who had baby fish who spread out across the globe, and he knew one particularly huge fish would be right next to a boat Jonah would be a passenger on during the height of a storm he also set into motion before. So, just because I think God uses what he set into motion, doesn't mean I don't think God didn't do it. I just like seeing the bigger picture. So, even if there was some storm elsewhere, (which is going out on a limb I don't dare climb onto), it's still God, not coincidence.
Everything he does is for his glory. Even whoever won the last Super Bowl, (and I forgot who already, since it wasn't the Eagles), was for his glory, as well as whoever lost, and even the Eagles. We'll never know that why, but he did something there that caused a multitude of other things to happen, that all lead to his glory (and quite probably a multitude of other Pharaohs along the path.)
But, my Dead Guy's theory doesn't keep it down to just fish. The Nile. They don't just have fish in there. They have crocodiles, hippos, and probably other larger critters I don't naturally worry about when I step into an American river. The vast majority of those critters died when the river turned red. Since all the rivers around there are part of the Nile, there wasn't anywhere for them to run. That's a lot of carnage and a lot of foreign bodies the bloodsuckers used before going after the humans.
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