Ice, Ice Baby
Via Mark Shea comes this story.
The New Testament story describes Jesus walking on water in the Sea of Galilee but according to a study led by Florida State University Professor of Oceanography Doron Nof, it's more likely that he walked on an isolated patch of floating ice.
The study points to a rare combination of optimal water and atmospheric conditions for development of a unique, localized freezing phenomenon that Nof and his co-authors call "springs ice."
In what is now northern Israel, such ice could have formed on the cold freshwater surface of the Sea of Galilee -- known as Lake Kinneret by modern-day Israelis -- when already chilly temperatures briefly plummeted during one of the two protracted cold periods between 2,500 and 1,500 years ago.
A frozen patch floating on the surface of the small lake would have been difficult to distinguish from the unfrozen water surrounding it. The unfrozen water was comprised of the plumes resulting from salty springs situated along the lake's western shore in Tabgha -- an area where many archeological findings related to Jesus have been documented.
"As natural scientists, we simply explain that unique freezing processes probably happened in that region only a handful of times during the last 12,000 years," Nof said. "We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account."
This stuff always just cracks me up. It is just so ridiculous to try to cast doubts on the miracles in the Gospel in the first place. If someone doesn't believe these miracles happened then fine. Just why exactly do they have to try to find naturalistic explanations for the miracles in the first place. If they doubt the credibility of the reporting in the scriptures in the first place than why not just discount the texts completely? Do environmental scientist spend time proving why Hercules couldn't have redirected the flow of two rivers through the Augean Stables by himself?
The science on this one doesn't explain how Jesus managed to get to this patch of ice in the first place. Or how another patch of ice also happened to be next to the fishing boat for Peter to conveniently step on. Though maybe Peter had a slight weight problem causing him to crash through the ice and not Jesus.
What is even funnier about all of these scientific explanations such as snow causing a reflection creating the illusion of the Transfiguration, epilepsy and ball lightning explaining St. Paul's conversion, or this explanation of the ten plagues.
A massive bloom of deadly red algae called fysteria released toxins into the Nile contaminating the water and poisoning huge numbers of fish (plague 1). With fewer fish to feed on frog spawn, frog numbers increased dramatically and these creatures swarmed and invaded the land (plague 2). These conditions gave rise to a dramatic rise in the population of stable flies (plague 4) and gnats and these afflicted humans and animals with diseases like glanders (plagues 3 and 6), African horse sickness, and bluetongue (plague 5). Later the Egyptians fell victim to a deadly mycotoxin called Stachybotrys atra that had been produced by molds growing on their wet grain and cereal supplies, foods that had been rushed into protective storage during the onslaught of the previous plagues. It was the first-born or eldest of each family who died from this toxin (plague 10) because it was they who ate most of this stored food (owing, we are told, to their traditional privilege of receiving double the food of their younger siblings).
So if you are going to take the events of the Bible as true and yet natural then you have to account I guess for thousands of scientific coincidences to bring them all off. Which of course would be a miracle in itself. It would make much more sense with these naturalistic ideas to just totally dismiss the Bible. It seems to me that there are other motives behind these theories other then purely scientific ones. I remember as a kid going to a planetarium where they provide a natural explanation for the Star of Bethlehem. As a young atheist I remember thinking why are they giving the Bible any credence in the first place?
Though we should not be surprised that atheist or agnostic scientists would do this considering that even some believers do exactly the same thing. For example the miracle of the loaves and fishes otherwise known as the miracle of caring. As if God who created the universe just couldn't have pulled this one off without assistance. I can easily understand non-believers with this attitude, it just seems strange for believers to do the same.
Though all of this makes me fondly remember one of my first parodies where I imagined a scene where the Marx Brothers meet the Jesus Seminar called A Night at the Jesus Seminar.
Update: A reader reminds me that I came up with this very scientific understanding myself in the Night at the Jesus Seminar post. Proving once again good parody is also unfortunately often prophetic.
And of course Jesus walking on water was the result of a freak storm that caused the top layer of water to ice over. When Peter also attempted to "walk on the water", that patch of ice finally gave way and he ended up in the water. The patch of ice Jesus was on was a little thicker and he was able to help Peter out of the water. It's all so reasonable!
Known as 
It seems to me that if they are trying to explain scientifically the walking on water that they are implicitely affirming that the Gospel accounts accurately and truthfully describe a real historical event where a man at least appeared to be walking on water in front of believable witnesses.
So, Jeff, you are the real source of this story, since you proposed it 4 years ago! :)
I recently had a discussion with some Jehova Witnesses (I try to amuse myself at times) who claimed that some kind of weird thing (I can't remember what) will happen at the end of times since on that occasion Jesus will be visible to all and OBVIOUSLY Jesus cannot appear to everyone at the same time given the shape of the Earth. When I asked them if they believed in evolution and they said no, I asked them if it seemed so strange to them that God could create the Universe and then life out of nothing and then would have problems appearing to all at the same time. I have not seen them since...
If Jesus was walking on ice and not water, how would you explain the fact that the disciples were frightened to see him and thought he was a ghost?
I've seen these attempts to give scientific explanations to Biblical miracles. Like the tide ebbing during the parting of the Red Sea. The fact that the tide ebbed at the precise moment the Israelites had to cross, and why the tide rose after the Israelites had already made it across and when the Egyptians gave chase were probably pure coincidence. :P
So if you are going to take the events of the Bible as true and yet natural then you have to account I guess for thousands of scientific coincidences to bring them all off.
This kind of thing cracks me up too, Jeff. This is the same kind of false dichotomy that unbelievers draw between science and God (who created science). The evolution discussion goes on like it's either creation or evolution, never taking into account that it could be creation with micro-evolution as a component of ongoing creation.
So what if Jesus stepped on a localized ice patch, or maybe he had each foot on a porpoise that He summoned specifically for that purpose. And he created an ice patch under Peter also. Maybe He massively increased the density of the water at a localized place so that it would support human weight. Maybe He decreased gravity to the point that the water was able to support him in that localized spot.
The fact that there are rare scientific events known to cause this stuff does in no way (at least in my eyes) dilute the miraculous nature of these occurrances.
I'm trying to picture this in my mind. We have a bunch of FISHERMEN (very well acquainted with the particular body of water) in a boat at night. Then the CARPENTER (presumably less well-acquainted with the lake, and the general properties of objects floating on water) wants to get across the lake, in the dark, without a boat, so he conveniently finds a piece of ice right at the shore, which he proceeds to surf across the lake, steering only with his body. The FISHERMEN, meanwhile, are completely unaware that the lake occasionally gets ice on it, freak out, and somehow confuse this surfing with walking. The CARPENTER has already aqcuired such agility on his ice-surfboard that he changes course to approach the boat, and then manages to rescue one of the FISHERMEN when his own, (highly convenient) ice-surfboard apparently sinks beneath his weight. Even after standing on both his and his friend's ice-surfboard, however, the FISHERMAN and all his companions remain completely unaware of the presence of the ice, and insist the CARPENTER was walking on the water.
That really is a miracle...
You guys don't understand that the REAL miracle was that Jesus had sat down the night before and whittled some cleats for himself out of two blocks of wood he conveniently found onshore. Otherwise he'd have slipped right off that little patch of ice and drowned.
For a carpenter, Jesus must have been awfully scrawny, because in order for an icepatch to bear an adult's weight, it would need to be pretty thick. Hmm... I must have missed the part in the Gospels where the apostles strike an iceberg while fishing....
I'm bemused by the plague explanation. When frogs move inland in large numbers, insect populations plummet. If insect numbers explode, there should have followed an explosion of rodents and other animals that feed on insects - so maybe there's a missing plague. :)
That's a good one; it's almost like when they tell us that particles of dust randomly collected themselves together with no external help or direction and made planets that orbit around the sun, and have different properties, and our little dust bunny supports life.
or even better, the universe was a happy little serene place until BOOM! and planets appeared, like magic. In every documentary about planets, I've always heard, "and after the big bang, life began to evolve from the primordial soup..." like they were there and saw the world begin.
Honestly, people say the Bible has no credit? They've got nothing on these guys.
Ice, smice! Had nothing to do with temperature at all! There was no ice. It was just HARD water.
bada bing!
Peter stepped on MEDIUM water, a relatively unknown entity. It exists at the edges of HARD water and SOFT water.
Generally I try to fill my pool with SOFT water so that no one gets hurt while diving in. But, now that I've read this gem from the Oceanic guru, I'll check for ice before I dive in.
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Imagine Christ in heaven turning to St. Peter and saying "Well, now you know! I would have told you but I thought it would really impress everyone if I kept it secret. Now Doron Nof figured it out on me. I should'a said something before but it was such a good one. ....... Boy, this is an awkward moment. Wanna see any card tricks?"
excerpt: National Catholic Distorter, April 1, 2007,
Common Era
"Herr Etich, the well-known German biblical scholar, recently found the Sitz im Leben of the water-walking scene on an ancient scroll in Antarctica, written by a sect known only as the Frostics.
According to Etich, the Frostics revered Jesus as a weather forecaster (a gift misunderstood all too easily in the premodern, hierarchical Zeitgeist as implying some more general prophetic or even miraculous power). His remarkable insight into the weather permitted him to calculate exactly when and where ice would form, thus leading to the "Sea-Ice Event".
Even the canonical gospels have preserved a logion of this tradition. It is doubtless the ipsissima verba, only slightly distorted by being placed on Jesus' lips (instead of its true origin; a taunt aimed at him - probably during his public execution):
"You can read the signs of the sky, why can you not read the signs of the times?"
The self-assured results of modernist biblical scholarship points to a second incident attributable to the Jesus of History, the Fuel-ish Discourse, which indisputably occurred before (or, less plausibly, immediately after) the Sea-Ice Event.
To be sure, the logion has suffered considerable alteration and truncation. Still, it is not hard to reconstruct the poignant plaint of the itinerant carpenter/meteorologist against the inadequate wood-allotment policies of the Sadducean elite of Judaea to the oppressed anawim and amhaaretz of Galilee: "Many are cold,
but few are frozen..."