Ashamed Alumnus


Today I read this article in the New York times about a "finding" done by a professor of my alma mater, and I am ashamed to call it so.


"In the night that followed the miracle of the loaves and fishes, as St. Mark tells the story in the New Testament, Jesus further astonished his disciples by walking on water.

It was a stormy night on the Sea of Galilee and the disciples were out in a boat, battling a contrary wind, when they saw Jesus approaching, as if a spirit. 'And he went up to them into the ship; and the wind ceased,' it is written in Mark 6:51. 'And they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered.'

Doron Nof also wondered, in a measured, scientific way. A professor of oceanography at Florida State University, he conducted an inquiry and found what might be a natural explanation: ice.

Writing in The Journal of Paleolimology, Dr. Nof and his colleagues point out that unusual freezing processes probably occurred in the region in the last 12,000 years, icing over parts of freshwater Galilee. This has not happened in recent history, but there were much colder stretches 1,500 to 2,500 years ago.

The scientists note that Galilee has warm, salty springs along the western shore, an area Jesus frequented. The water above the springs does not convect when it is cold. If air temperatures dipped below freezing, as sometimes happened then, surface ice could have formed thick enough to support human weight and inspire the biblical story.

From a distance, the scientists suggested, a person on the ice might appear to be walking on water, particularly if it had just rained and left a smoothed-out watery coating on the ice.

In a bow to biblical literalists and other skeptics, Dr. Nof's group concluded, 'Whether this happened or not is an issue for religion scholars, archaeologists, anthropologists and believers to decide on.'"

Notice that Nof (and I leave out 'Dr.' on purpose, because he doesn't deserve the title) doesn't mention anything about Peter falling into the water. I'm pretty sure that if there was ice, Peter would have known. Also, if there was ice, I wonder if Jesus had his ice skates on so he could walk across it without slipping.

Another thing to think of is that the some of the Apostles in the boat were Galilean fisherman. So they would be familiar with the Sea in which they fished. Don't you think they would have known that if the Sea iced over, they would not be able to take a boat across.

I wonder if Mr. Nof even thought about any of this before he started his research to disprove Jesus's miracle. Or if he went in with an anti-Christian bias and try to explain it away any way he could.

If my alma mater, Florida State, is going to regain any of it's credibility, it will fire Nof and make a statement dissociating itself with this man and his shoddy research.

Lastly, Nof says, "Whether this happened or not is an issue for religion scholars, archaeologists, anthropologists and believers to decide on."

Then why is an oceanographer trying to decide it?