xiv. 2, and signifies to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea,

that is, on the elevated sea-shore. [1433] According to the meaning of the words taken separately, this explanation is possible: its real applicability in this particular instance, however, must be determined by the context. Now this represents the disciples as having rowed twenty-five or thirty furlongs (John), or as being in the midst of the sea (Matthew and Mark), and then it is said that Jesus came towards the ship, and so near that he could speak to them, περιπατῶν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης. How could he do this if he remained on the shore? To obviate this objection, Paulus conjectures that the disciples in that stormy night probably only skirted the shore; but the words ἐν μέσῳ τῆς θαλάσσης, in the midst of the sea, though not, we grant, to be construed with mathematical strictness, yet, even taken according to the popular mode of speaking, are too decidedly opposed to such a supposition for it to be worth our further consideration. But this mode of interpretation encounters a fatal blow in the passage where Matthew says of Peter, that having come down out of the ship he walked on the water, καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ πλοίου περιεπάτησεν ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα (v. 29); for as it is said shortly after that Peter began to sink (καταποντίζεσθαι), walking merely on the shore cannot have been intended here; and if not here, neither can it have been intended in the former instance relating to Jesus, the expressions being substantially the same. [1434]

But if Peter, in his attempt to walk upon the waters, περιπατεῖν ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα, began to sink, may we not still suppose that both he and Jesus merely swam in the sea, or waded through its shallows? Both these suppositions have actually been advanced. [1435] But the act of wading must have been expressed by περιπατεῖν διὰ τῆς θαλάσσης, and had that of swimming been intended, one or other of the parallel passages would certainly have substituted the precise expression for the ambiguous one: besides, it must be alike impossible either to swim from twenty-five to thirty furlongs in a storm, or to wade to about the middle of the sea, which certainly was beyond the shallows; a swimmer could not easily be taken for a spectre; and, lastly, the prayer of Peter for special permission to imitate Jesus, and his failure in it from want of faith, point to something supernatural. [1436]

The reasoning on which the natural mode of interpretation rests here, as elsewhere, has been enunciated by Paulus in connexion with this passage in a form which reveals its fundamental error in a particularly happy manner. The question, he says, in such cases is always this: which is more probable, that the evangelical writer should use an expression not perfectly exact, or that there should be a departure from the course of nature? It is evident that the dilemma is falsely stated, and should rather be put thus: Is it more probable that the author should express himself inaccurately (rather, in direct contradiction to the supposed sense), or that he should mean to narrate a departure from the course of nature? For only what he means to narrate is the immediate point of inquiry; what really happened is, even according to the distinction of the judgment of a writer from the fact that he states, on which Paulus everlastingly insists, an altogether different question. Because according to our views a departure from the course of nature cannot have taken place, it by no means follows, that a writer belonging to the primitive age of Christianity could not have credited and narrated such a case; [1437] and therefore to abolish the miraculous, we must not explain it away from the narrative, but rather inquire whether the narrative itself, either in whole or in part, must not be excluded from the domain of history. In relation to this inquiry, first of all, each of our three accounts has peculiar features which in an historical light are suspicious.

The most striking of these features is found in Mark v. 48, where he says of Jesus that he came walking on the sea towards the disciples, and would have passed by them, καὶ ἤθελε παρελθεῖν αὐτούς, but that he was constrained by their anxious cries to take notice of them. With justice Fritzsche interprets Mark’s meaning to be, that it was the intention of Jesus, supported by divine power, to walk across the whole sea as on firm land. But with equal justice Paulus asks, Could anything have been more useless and extravagant than to perform so singular a miracle without any eye to witness it? We must not however on this account, with the latter theologian, interpret the words of Mark as implying a natural event, namely, that Jesus, being on the land, was going to pass by the disciples who were sailing in a ship not far from the shore, for the miraculous interpretation of the passage is perfectly accordant with the spirit of our Evangelist. Not contented with the representation of his informant, that Jesus, on this one occasion, adopted this extraordinary mode of progress with special reference to his disciples, he aims by the above addition to convey the idea of walking on the water being so natural and customary with Jesus, that without any regard to the disciples, whenever a sheet of water lay in his road, he walked across it as unconcernedly as if it had been dry land. But such a mode of procedure, if habitual with Jesus, would presuppose most decidedly a subtilization of his body such as Olshausen supposes; it would therefore presuppose what is inconceivable. Hence this particular of Mark’s presents itself as one of the most striking among those by which the second Evangelist now and then approaches to the exaggerations of the apocryphal gospels. [1438]

In Matthew, the miracle is in a different manner, not so much heightened as complicated; for there, not only Jesus, but Peter also makes an experiment in walking on the sea, not indeed altogether successful. This trait is rendered suspicious by its intrinsic character, as well as by the silence of the two other narrators. Immediately on the word of Jesus, and in virtue of the faith which he has in the beginning, Peter actually succeeds in walking on the water for some time, and only when he is assailed by fear and doubt does he begin to sink. What are we to think of this? Admitting that Jesus, by means of his etherealized body, could walk on the water, how could he command Peter, who was not gifted with such a body, to do the same? or if by a mere word he could give the body of Peter a dispensation from the law of gravitation, can he have been a man? and if a God, would he thus lightly cause a suspension of natural laws at the caprice of a man? or, lastly, are we to suppose that faith has the power instantaneously to lessen the specific gravity of the body of a believer? Faith is certainly said to have such a power in the figurative discourse of Jesus just referred to, according to which the believer is able to remove mountains and trees into the sea,—and why not also himself to walk on the sea? The moral that as soon as faith falters, power ceases, could not be so aptly presented by either of the two former figures as by the latter, in the following form: as long as a man has faith he is able to walk unharmed on the unstable sea, but no sooner does he give way to doubt than he sinks, unless Christ extend to him a helping hand. The fundamental thought, then, of Matthew’s episodical narrative is, that Peter was too confident in the firmness of his faith, that by its sudden failure he incurred great danger, but was rescued by Jesus; a thought which is actually expressed in Luke xxii. 31 f., where Jesus says to Simon: Satan hath desired to have you that he may sift you as wheat; but I have prayed for thee that thy faith fail not. These words of Jesus have reference to Peter’s coming denial; this was the occasion when his faith, on the strength of which he had just before offered to go with Jesus to prison and to death, would have wavered, had not the Lord by his intercession, procured him new strength. If we add to this the above-mentioned habit of the early Christians to represent the persecuting world under the image of a turbulent sea, we cannot fail, with one of the latest critics, to perceive in the description of Peter courageously volunteering to walk on the sea, soon, however, sinking from faintheartedness, but borne up by Jesus, an allegorical and mythical representation of that trial of faith which this disciple who imagined himself so strong, met so weakly, and which higher assistance alone enabled him to surmount. [1439]

But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar features, which betray an unhistorical character. It has ever been a cross to harmonists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship was only in the middle of the sea when Jesus reached it: according to John, it immediately after arrived at the opposite shore; that while, according to the former, Jesus actually entered into the ship, and the storm thereupon subsided: according to John, on the contrary, the disciples did indeed wish to take him into the ship, but their actually doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate arrival at the place of disembarkation. It is true that here also abundant methods of reconciliation have been found. First, the word ἔθελον, they wished, added to λαβεῖν, to receive, is said to be a mere redundancy of expression; then, to signify simply the joyfulness of the reception, as if it had been said, ἐθέλοντες ἔλαβον; then, to describe the first impression which the recognition of Jesus made on the disciples, his reception into the ship, which really followed, not being mentioned. [1440] But the sole reason for such an interpretation lies in the unauthorized comparison with the synoptical accounts: in the narrative of John, taken separately, there is no ground for it, nay, it is excluded. For the succeeding sentence: εὐθέως τὸ πλοῖον ἐγένετο ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, εἰς ὑπῆγον, immediately the ship was at the land whither they went, though it is united, not by δὲ but by καὶ, can nevertheless only be taken antithetically, in the sense that the reception of Jesus into the ship, notwithstanding the readiness of the disciples, did not really take place, because they were already at the shore. In consideration of this difference, Chrysostom held that there were two occasions on which Jesus walked on the sea. He says that on the second occasion, which John narrates, Jesus did not enter into the ship, in order that the miracle might be greater ἵνα τὸ θᾶυμα μεῖζον ἐργάσηται. [1441] This view we may transfer to the Evangelist, and say: if Mark has aggrandized the miracle, by implying that Jesus intended to walk past the disciples across the entire sea; so John goes yet farther, for he makes him actually accomplish this design, and without being taken into the ship, arrive at the opposite shore. [1442] Not only, however, does the fourth Evangelist seek to aggrandize the miracle before us, but also to establish and authenticate it more securely. According to the synoptists, the sole witnesses were the disciples, who saw Jesus come towards them, walking on the sea: John adds to these few immediate witnesses, a multitude of mediate ones, namely, the people who were assembled when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes. These, when on the following morning they no longer find Jesus on the same spot, make the calculation, that Jesus cannot have crossed the sea by ship, for he did not get into the same boat with the disciples, and no other boat was there (v. 22); while, that he did not go by land, is involved in the circumstance that the people when they have forthwith crossed the sea, find him on the opposite shore (v. 25), whither he could hardly have arrived by land in the short interval. Thus in the narrative of the fourth gospel, as all natural means of passage are cut off from Jesus, there remains for him only a supernatural one, and this consequence is in fact inferred by the multitude in the astonished question which they put to Jesus, when they find him on the opposite shore: Rabbi, when camest thou hither? As this chain of evidence for the miraculous passage of Jesus depends on the rapid transportation of the multitude, the Evangelist hastens to procure other boats ἄλλα πλοιάρια for their service (v. 23). Now the multitude who take ship (v. 22, 26 ff.) are described as the same whom Jesus had miraculously fed, and these amounted (according to v. 10) to about 5000. If only a fifth, nay, a tenth of these passed over, there needed for this, as the author of the Probabilia has justly observed, a whole fleet of ships, especially if they were fishing boats; but even if we suppose them vessels of freight, these would not all have been bound for Capernaum, or have changed their destination for the sake of accommodating the crowd. This passage of the multitude, therefore, appears only to have been invented, [1443] on the one hand, to confirm by their evidence the walking of Jesus on the sea; on the other, as we shall presently see, to gain an opportunity for making Jesus, who according to the tradition had gone over to the opposite shore immediately after the multiplication of the loaves, speak yet further with the multitude on the subject of this miracle.

After pruning away these offshoots of the miraculous which are peculiar to the respective narratives, the main stem is still left, namely, the miracle of Jesus walking on the sea for a considerable distance, with all its attendant improbabilities as above exposed. But the solution of these accessory particulars, as it led us to discover the causes of their unhistorical origin, has facilitated the discovery of such causes for the main narrative, and has thereby rendered possible the solution of this also. We have seen, by an example already adduced, that it was usual with the Hebrews and early Christians, to represent the power of God over nature, a power which the human spirit when united to him was supposed to share, under the image of supremacy over the raging waves of the sea. In the narrative of the Exodus this supremacy is manifested by the sea being driven out of its place at a sign, so that a dry path is opened to the people of God in its bed; in the New Testament narrative previously considered, the sea is not removed out of its place, but only so far laid to rest that Jesus and his disciples can cross it in safety in their ship: in the anecdote before us, the sea still remains in its place as in the second, but there is this point of similarity to the first, that the passage is made on foot, not by ship, yet as a necessary consequence of the other particular, on the surface of the sea, not in its bed. Still more immediate inducements to develop in such a manner the conception of the power of the miracle-worker over the waves, may be found both in the Old Testament, and in the opinions prevalent in the time of Jesus. Among the miracles of Elisha, it is not only told that he divided the Jordan by a stroke of his mantle, so that he could go through it dry shod (2 Kings ii. 14), but also that he caused a piece of iron which had fallen into the water to swim (2 Kings