Introduction
It may come as a surprise to many students of the Bible that in the original Hebrew text the body of water the Israelites crossed when leaving Egypt is called yam suph, "Sea of Reeds," not Red Sea (Ex 15:4, 22; Dt 11:4; Jos 2:10; 4:23; 24:6; Neh 9:9; Ps 106:7, 9, 33; 136:13, 15). Unfortunately, yam suph has been rendered "Red Sea" in nearly all of our translations, the Jerusalem Bible and the New Jewish Publication Society Hebrew Bible being notable exceptions.
The "Red Sea" phrase came into the account with the third century BC translation of the Old Testament into Greek. Called the Septuagint (abbreviated as LXX), its translators made yam suph ("Sea of Reeds") into eruthrá thálassē ("Red Sea"). The Latin Vulgate followed their lead with mari Rubro ("Red Sea") and most English versions continued that tradition.
Unfortunately, "Red Sea" was not a translation at all, and the LXX translators understood that. While we do not know their reasoning, they gave yam suph a historicized interpretation, based on their understanding of the region at the time (Kitchen 2003: 262; Hoffmeier 1996: 206; 2005: 81). When the Bible indicated the Israelites crossed a significant body of water on Egypt's eastern border, the LXX translators connected it with the body of water they knew as the Red Sea. Instead of translating the Hebrew phrase literally, they offered this historical identification as their interpretation of the text.
I suggest this is an unfortunate translation that has confused the issue for centuries and has kept us from appreciating the real historical accuracy of the Exodus and sea crossing accounts. In the late 20th century, scholars began to reestablish the meaning of the Hebrew text to its Egyptian context in a fresh way and then connect it with recent archaeological evidence (see Hoffmeier 2005: 81–85).
The Red Sea
But, you ask, what about the Red Sea? The Red Sea includes two fingers of Indian Ocean salt water that extend northward into the Biblical world and help separate the two continents of Africa and Asia. The Red Sea's eastern branch is known as the Gulf of Aqaba (Arabic) or Gulf of Elat (Hebrew), and the western branch is known as the Gulf of Suez (Arabic, and the origin of the name of the Suez Canal which connects this western branch to the Mediterranean Sea).
In classical Greek, the name Red Sea was used for both gulfs as well as the main body of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean (Kitchen 2003: 262–63; Hoffmeier 1997: 200). Unfortunately, today we do not know why these bodies of water were originally called "Red Sea" (Hoffmeier 1997: 206).
One interesting suggestion has a Biblical basis. Maybe the Red Sea received its name from the Edomites, perennial Old Testament enemies of the Israelites. The Edomites, whose name means "red" in Hebrew, controlled the Gulf of Aqaba during much of the Old Testament period. It has been suggested that later Israelites had difficulty referring to this sea by the name of their enemy (that is, the Edomite Sea), so they used the meaning of Edom ("red," Greek eruthrá) instead to identify it (Hoffmeier 1997: 206).
Another possibility is that the Gulf of Suez was already known as the Red Sea (for a presently unknown reason), and its application to the Gulf of Aqaba was a natural extension (Hoffmeier 1997: 206). Whatever the origin of the term, it was not the name of the body of water the Bible says the Israelites crossed in the Exodus.
To complicate matters more, the New Testament follows the LXX in referring to the location of the Exodus sea crossing as the "Red Sea." While a full treatment of the New Testament references is beyond the scope of this article, I will suggest that our understanding of ancient Egypt's eastern frontier and the terminologies describing it are still incomplete and that the present state of our research is like working a puzzle with a number of key pieces still missing