The works of the Reverend and learned John Lightfoot D. D., late Master of Katherine Hall in Cambridge such as were, and such as never before were printed : in two volumes : with the authors life and large and useful tables to each volume : also three maps : one of the temple drawn by the author himself, the others of Jervsalem and the Holy Land drawn according to the author's chorography, with a description collected out of his writings.

CHAP. XVIII. Of the name of the Red Sea. (Book 18)

IN Hebrew it is called Suph: the Sea of weeds: Because (saith Kimchi) there grew abundance of weeds upon the sides of it. In Greek, Latine and English, and other Western Tongues, it is commonly called the Red Sea: Divers reasons are given by divers persons why it is so called, the best seems to me to be, from the redness of the ground about it. And so Herodotus speaks of a place thereabout called Erythrobolus or the red soil. It is thought our Country took the name of Albion, from the like occasion, but not like colour. As from the white rocks or clifts upon the Sea side. The Jews hold that Whale that swallowed Jonah, brought him into the Red Sea: and there shewed him the way that Israel passed through it, for his eyes were as two windows to Jo∣nah, that he looked out and saw all the Sea as he went. A whetstone, yet they will needs have some reason for this loud lie, and this is it, because Jonah in Chap. 2. 5. saith Suph hhabhush loroshi, which is, the weeds were wrapped about my head: which they construe, the

Read Sea was wrapped about my head. And to help the Whale thither, Rabbi Japhet saith, that the Red Sea meets with the Sea of Japho, or the Mediterranean: unless the Rabbin means that they meet under ground, guess what a Geographer he was: and if he find a way under ground, guess what a deep Scholar. A long journey it was for the Whale to go up to Hercules pillars into the Ocean, and from thence to the Red Sea in three days and nights: but the fabling Jews must find some sleight to maintain their own inventions.