Yes. Someone has mentioned in some answers there are myriads of precursor events required where no one’s free will is countermanded.
I’ve mentioned skeptical theism ←(a more prestigious source than Wikipedia) and calling God impotent, but calling Jesus superfluous isn’t too likely to help find him… or being found by him.
I think it is unequivocal that the writers of the NT wanted miracles (and I would include walking on water) to be taken literally:
1 Peter 1:16: “We did not follow cleverly invented stories [some translations use “myths”] when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.”
Acts 1:3: “After his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing [some translations use “infalliable”] proofs that he was alive…”
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Walking on Water.
I appreciate the Gospel Coalition.
The Spirit filled Jesus (Luke 4:1)
The Spirit led Jesus (Luke 4:2)
The Spirit ensures the commission he inspires will be completed
Jesus’ power is identical to the Spirit’s power (4:14) - Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit - he functioned in the power of the Spirit. Jesus was not ruled by the Spirit but operated in the sphere of the Spirit and with the power of the Spirit at his disposal, to use at his prerogative.
Jesus said, “If it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt. 12:28).
Jesus was anointed and empowered by the Spirit who would be his partner for the journey. Empowerment is an important element in the activity of the Spirit in the OT.
This association of power with the Spirit is evident in Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8. The empowering may have been for the purpose of proclamation or miracles, though the gospels infrequently record the role of the Spirit enabling Jesus to perform miracles Acts 10:38; indeed generally the concept of miraculous power is used with reference to Jesus in the absence of an association with the Spirit (Luke 4:36;5:17;6:19; 10:19;21:27)
Instead, Jesus is presented as functioning in his own authority, and it is his own power that he delegates to his disciples (Luke 9:1)
Luke does not describe Jesus as a mere man who needed the Spirit, without who he has little authority or power. Jesus is not a man adopted by the Spirit; rather, he is identified by the Spirit as the one worthy of his presence.
Jesus was always supreme, the Spirit accompanied him, affirming him as the divinely designated King of the Kingdom.
So the message is clear, If the Spirit is with Jesus, he must be authentic.
So in conclusion, Luke reveals the Spirit legitimizing Jesus, validating him as the promised Messiah, empowered by him but is primarily endorsed by him.
The Spirit leads and confirms more than he empowers Jesus. One can speak of the Spirit’s anointing not just in terms of wisdom, power and enablement, but also in terms of endorsement and confirmation.
So in conclusion again, no ordinary man could ever enjoy the unique relationship of the Spirit as He experienced it. Heaven reveals it pleasure in accompanying him in the person of the Spirit on the journey to save the world.
You provided three examples that fit your point, not that illustrate it – there’s a big difference. It’s like someone claiming that a house has hardwood floors and showing how the parlor floor is oak while neglecting the bedroom where the floor is of some unknown wood that may be hard but may not be, and the only way to tell is to study it. In this case, the “unknown wood” can be found in the first eleven chapters of Genesis: on the surface they appear to be ordinary narrative, but that’s an illusion; there are at least three different types of literature in those chapters, and they are neither just history or visions, they are literature that does not fall into either of your categories.
Okay, now you’ve added to the options, so you actually do recognize that “between the two” is a false dichotomy. But you’re still making a mistake by only listing types of writing that modern people would recognize.
It’s interesting that you include “symbolism” since that term does not mean today what it meant back then: today it means something that merely stands for something else; back then it meant something that conveyed what it portrayed, that accomplished what it showed. So, for example, when Jeremiah wandered through the streets of Jerusalem looking for a righteous man, and then bought a jar and walked with it to the Valley of Hinnom (Gehenna) and essentially held up the jar and said it was Jerusalem, and then threw the jar down and broke it, the fate of the city was sealed: its symbol had been broken, so it was broken – the only question was how long it would take to “hit the ground”.
Back to false dichotomy, only you’ve switched from “vision” to “allegory”, which aren’t the same thing at all.
Reading the text in English will not tell you what literary type it is. Imposing a false dichotomy makes it even worse.
You seem to have forgotten a little counterexample which more than tends to negate your claims to theological knowledge and prowess, so please stop trying to flaunt what you don’t have.
It would take almost a cubic meter of water to hold up an ordinary human (~70kg) in perfectly calm conditions; for stability it would have to be about 2m by 2m by 25cm. To maintain integrity in tossing waves the thickness needs to be at least double; to maintain sufficient stability that the person on it can keep balance the width and length both should also be doubled, making an area of 16m^3; for a circular slab that means a radius of 2.26m. Since Jesus is walking, though, not standing still, this means a strip of ice, but since a longer piece of ice requires greater thickness to remain intact in the turbulence, so (working from memory of sledding and driving cars and truck on jumbled ice on a river) increase the thickness by another 50% to 75cm – so 12m^3 of ice centered on each step He took. [Of course this completely ignores the fact that He’d need spiked shoes in order to walk on the ice since in a storm it is getting splashed with water constantly)
To make this work with ice, then, we’re looking at something that would appear to be a stone causeway washed by water; so it wouldn’t look like He was walking on water at all (Heck even the pictures my roommate in grad school took of me “walking on water” when we’d just had two inches of rain that was stuck on top of the school’s frozen lake only looked like I was walking on water if you didn’t look close). To avoid this we could postulate a slab that extends itself forward and withdraw behind Him as He moves, but that really just makes it worse since then it would appear He was walking on a stone raft. Yet there’s no indication of anything of the sort in the text.
And this isn’t even addressing how much energy would be involved in freezing that much ice in a place that just doesn’t get freezing weather and in choppy surface conditions that make it harder for water to freeze in the first place!
Compared to the ice idea, this starts to look plausible:
After doing the above calculations, not in the least! If He walked even 25m, it wouldn’t be humanly possible to carry enough liquid nitrogen to freeze the water ahead of Him, and even if He could He wouldn’t be walking, He’d be inching forward… besides the fact that the disciples would have been asking, “What is He WEARING?!?” because He’d need a massive backpack rig to carry even a fraction of the liquid nitrogen needed.
There are no feasible natural explanations to Jesus walking on water. I even considered shoes made of pumice, but just as with ice the structural integrity and stability issues male it ridiculous; one has to introduce more miracles just to make it work.
It’s actually more reasonable to recall that we are informed that “on Him all things hold together”, which the church since its first years has taken to mean that in effect He is creating the universe completely anew every moment of time that passes and say that He just changed the ‘rules’ locally. Walking steadily on a stormy surface just requires coordinating the wave action so He’s in effect walking on a stable surface, and walking on water just requires altering the strength of hydrogen bonds for the brief moments His feet touch each little bit of water – the first is simple choreography, the second is ‘programming’ that boils down to making the appropriate water molecules “hold together” a bunch more tightly in the spots dictated by the choreography.
That would be both massive and dynamic to keep it going long enough. If I still remembered what I learned in meteorology and in Physics of Light and Color in university I’d give a shot at doing some calculations…
But that’s an interesting one since the root word for “stand still” is the one used in the ancient near east to refer to a solar eclipse, something some researchers made us of: https://www.timesofisrael.com/3224-years-later-scientists-see-first-ever-recorded-eclipse-in-joshuas-battle/. Either way it was a natural event with divine timing.
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I am talking about a miracle accomplished by God, while you seem to be talking about people accomplishing this.
But even so, as a mere human being, I can think up solutions to all the problems you have concocted. And that is without even spending a great deal of time and thought on it. The ice doesn’t have to be pure ice any more than the water of the sea was pure water, and impurities can alter any of the relevant properties of the ice to as required to match what the story describes. Nothing requires the ice to have been small or even floating. And it doesn’t require engineering, because astounding thing happen in nature like this.
I was making the simple observation that walking is something you do on a solid surface. Jesus is not described as bobbing on the surface of stormy water or flying above the surface of the water. So if he was walking on water then it was on a solid surface below the stormy surface of the water and when water is solid that is what we call ice. There is absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel.
What is your objective anyway??? Is it to advocate a superhero Jesus with superpowers (which you haven’t explained to match the description in the story), is it to defend a mystery rug you want to sweep it all under, or is it the most foolish intent to claim this is impossible like all the numskulls ridiculing the Wright Brothers?
Of course, it doesn’t have to be ice. Salt might work. And with the Dead Sea nearby….
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A concise description of one of God’s most frequent M.O.s. 
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Per Google maps:
From sea to shrinking sea – I stopped short a couple miles since the Dead Sea was significantly larger than recently. (It would have been TMI to query ChatGPT and ask how much smaller. And no, 63 miles is not the length of the arrow – the little black circle is the south end of the distance vector. ; - )
That’s a long way as the raven flies and a huge distance over rugged terrain to haul salt! All very salty tongue in cheek, of course.
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I can’t find a single example of Θάλασσα (thalassa) used to mean the seashore, though I’ll admit that my TDNT isn’t accessible at the moment so I don’t have the ultimate tool at hand. There’s a perfectly good word for seashore that all the Gospel writers use, αἰγιαλός (aig-ee-ah-LOS), and it isn’t used here. If the text had περί (pe-REE) instead of ἐπί (eh-PEE) a case could be made here since περί can indicate “along” or “around”, .e.g. “περι τὴν πόλιν” (pe-REE tayn PO-lin), “around the city” and thus “περι τὴν θάλασσαν”, “around the sea”, which could mean along the edge.
I did find one that could be construed as “sea bottom”, but not “seashore”.
Oh, indubitably! Just from the Psalms – 65, 77, 89, 95, 107 – there would have been plenty going through the disciples’ minds, and the Jews who were the majority in the church for a long time would have recognized them as well.
A number of scholars have observed that in the Incarnation, as one of my professors put it, “the veil is removed”, i.e. miracles are done more openly. Given that God Himself is present in the flesh that makes sense. “You are a God Who hides Himself”, the Psalmist says, but when walking about on His own feet, breathing with His own lungs, He is not so hidden.
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If you can’t find it just go to Biblehub and look it up.
Some have noted that in the Roman version of βίος, (BEE-ohs) – from which we get “biography” – having someone walk on water is the sort of “marvel” a writer might include to indicate some connection to the gods. On the other hand, no Roman Bios ever included so many marvels, so even it this one was thrown in as a nod to Roman notions it is overwhelmed by the others; further, there is plenty of attestation from non-Christian sources that Jesus was regarded as an actual “wonder-worker”, so even if only the Signs and other miracles just recorded by John are authentic it is more than enough to make the case that He was Who He repeatedly declared Himself to be: Ruler of the Storm, Lord of the Sabbath, Greater than the Temple, and I AM.
It depends on what you mean by “literary device”. If you mean a fiction meant to make a point, then no, it isn’t a literary device; but if you mean an analogy, an illustration, a model of something that was actually done, then yes – because while He did far more than “pay for our sins”, but He most assuredly never did less than that.
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Yes.
Indeed the sacrificial system of the Temple was a masterful example of symbol in the ancient meaning – something that conveys what it portrayed. It portrayed the forgiveness of sins by the shedding of blood, the making of peace by reconciliation, and the rest, and it conveyed those not because the symbols had any power in themselves but because they were founded on Christ and the Cross. “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin”, but that should be written, “Without the shedding of His Blood there is no forgiveness of sin”: it was not the blood of bulls and sheep, but the Blood of Christ that stood behind them as the Promise that forgave sins.
Indeed the ultimate ceremony of Israel, the Passover, is the same: it is a symbol that conveyed what it portrayed – the sacrifice not of a lamb, but of The Lamb. [So those theologians who ask if the Lord’s Supper is based on the Passover have it backwards: the Passover was based on the Lord’s Supper!]
Interestingly, almost all people believe that! Humans recognize deep down in our being that we are utter screw-ups and that there must be an accounting; indeed we hope for it because without an accounting life doesn’t make sense. We need an accounting or we cannot be whole; we long for a purging because we know that we cannot make ourselves clean. When Paul says we have the Law written on our hearts it isn’t just ordinances and rules he means, it’s the fact that we know we have fallen short not just of the glory of God but of our own expectations and that it has to be made right.
We know also that we cannot make it right – we are still screw-ups, so all our efforts to be right just dig the hole deeper. People I’ve known who became Christians did so because they recognized in the message something they already actually knew but lacked the courage to admit to – because where was there to go? A Rescue was needed, but who could be the Rescuer when we are all equally screw-ups? The Rescue has to come from outside.
Amen!
And let all the people say, “Amen!”
They were symbol, so of course they had substance since the ancient meaning of symbol is that which conveys what it portrays.
Though the substance wasn’t their own; it was the Blood of Christ.
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Due to the bizarre editing system here, I’m having to append the following to this answer. I think that means no one will get notified because the system won’t let me post this as its own answer (which is what it should be).
- = = = = = = = = = = = + = = = = = = = = = = = +
They are only “anonymous” to scholars who love to despise tradition. That they originally may have been without attribution does not make them anonymous: each was written for a specific community where the author resided, so there was no need for a label because everyone knew the author because he lived among them. So when Mark originally wrote there was no need to put his name on the outside; everyone there knew who wrote it – but then when Matthew’s version showed up people realized they couldn’t just say “the Gospel story” any more, they had to specify which Gospel story, so the scrolls got taken out and the authors’ names put on the outsides.
The Synoptics would have been easy enough to label since they were written when there were still eyewitnesses along with others who knew the authors so they knew who wrote each one. And John’s would have been even easier; the Synoptics were already being read all over the churches, so when a new one came along they would have asked (especially seeing as how different it is), “Who wrote this one?” and the messenger who had brought it would have said, “Oh, that came from the Elder” or “That came from the Apostle” (a title used because he was the only one still living), so since the others had names on their scrolls the custom was followed and the Fourth Gospel was noted as being from John (indeed it’s likely that had it not been from “the beloved disciple” that it wouldn’t have been accepted; the churches were already getting picky about what was “read in church” – three words that weren’t just an adjectival phrase but were already a technical term for readings that had authority).
So no, the Gospels were written before 70 A.D. with the possible exception of John – almost a generation, not “at least”.
The issue from my perspective is that it has been pointed to as the sort of thing that Roman authors put into a Bios account to indicate connection with the divine. I’ve commented on that already, how it actually wouldn’t have made a difference, but I’ll add that with the one exception though the Gospels used the Bios format the authors were certainly not Romans and to expect Jewish writers to throw in a bit of “wonder worker” material to conform to that format is more than a little silly. Luke, OTOH, is clearly writing for a Gentile (most likely “God-fearers”, Gentiles who believed in the Old Testament God but who weren’t willing to submit to the entire Law, only to the moral part) audience – and notably he does not include the walking-on-the-water account. This is important because if it was a literary device following the Bios format Luke is where we should expect to find it, versus (especially not!) in Matthew or John.
So on literary grounds the account is probably something that actually happened.
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You mean scholars who take academic history seriously and are not motivated by apologetical needs? You are correct. Critical scholars are critical when it comes to doing history. You incorrectly sling made and accuse them of despising tradition, however. They spend their lives evaluating it. They just don’t blindly believe tradition when it agrees with them. Likewise, “some guy said such and such” 40 years after Mark was written is not valid historical evidence in and of itself. Since none of that author’s writing survive and we only have hearsay from hundreds of years later, it is quite difficult to assess that evidence. How many people agreed with it? How many disagreed? How many Christians used other gospels or different versions of the Gospels? Not to mention, Papias’s comments are not a really good fit for Matthew. When doing history one has to question the laurels of the author, potential the lines of transmission, countering claims, rival beliefs, political motivation etc. Critical scholars don’t actually despise tradition. This is the absurd claim of conservative exegetes who try to poison the well in their insecurity. Critical scholars are simply that: critical. They have standards of evidence that need to be satisfied before giving intellectual assent to a tradition.
Of course not. Whoever first received them probably knew who wrote them unless they were distributed anonymously intentionally. Each work has its own composition history. But we have 100s of spurious works in antiquity. Clearly the neat little theory about “everyone would have checked everything” you want me to believe is a total fabrication on your part.
Unless they were more communal documents that developed over time based on earlier traditions? You assuming one author sat down and penned the work in one shot is just a baseless assertion that fits the conservative narrative. It may be true, it may not. That there were difference versions and stages of composition for some of the works is quite plausible. We know quite a bit about the Gospels. Mark wrote first. Matthew and Luke copied him, making changes and supplementing material as they saw fit. John probably rewrote synoptic traditions more wholesale.
Do you apply the same logic to the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Judas, Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Protoevangelium of James or many other dozens of other falsely attribute works from the 1st and 2ndd century? Or do you just want me to blindly believe the tradition around canonical gospels is accurate whereas all the other works used by rival Christian communities are wrong just because you say so and you want to believe some tradition while rejecting other tradition?
You are assuming an early date. Assumptions are not arguments.
You are assuming a rapid dissemination of the canonical Gospels. This is terribly naive and each work would need to be treat individual and examined carefully. A good case can be made for Mark since it is believe to hav been used by Matthew and Luke within 20-30 years of its composition by several other authors. But exactly how far, wide and spread is difficult to know. We don’t have that complete a knowledge of the time.
Did they ask that about the many dozens of works outside the New Testament that many Christian groups used? Or do we just blindly accept the version of events that “won” in history?
This is a minority position in scholarship today and it is mostly found in conservative seminaries.
Vinnie
Hi Vinnie and @St.Roymond .
I’m currently taking a course on New Testament Studies at Regent College in Vancouver (taught by George Guthrie). We spent a bit of time on the dating/authorship of the gospels with the general conclusion that “one can’t know for sure”…and I’m agnostic on the matter with my current limited knowledge, at this point.
But FYI, Guthrie pointed the class to a very recent book published in 2022 which apparently uses strict historical and textual analysis to argue for early dating of the gospels. Guthrie said that he found many of the new arguments “persuasive” and personally had come around to think early dating is most credible. So, this seems to be a book that I need to read! Wondering if either of you has heard of this scholar or the book?
here’s the jacket cover blurb:
This paradigm-shifting study is the first book-length investigation into the compositional dates of the New Testament to be published in over forty years. It argues that, with the notable exception of the undisputed Pauline Epistles, most New Testament texts were composed twenty to thirty years earlier than is typically supposed by contemporary biblical scholars. What emerges is a revised view of how quickly early Christians produced what became the seminal texts for their new movement.
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The best scholars will absolutely tell you we lack certainty. What scholars give is what they feel is the most probable dating range based on their assessment of the evidence. I have been convinced Mark dates just after the temple was destroyed. The temple just plays such a huge role in the second half of the gospel. Since I am also convinced that Matthew and Luke used Mark in their composition, they date from after this time period as well.
Irenaeus mentions all four gospels by name ca 180 and quotes them so we can be reasonably sure he meant our Gospels (the same can’t be said for Papias). Based on the crucifixion of Jesus we know he died ca. 30CE. So we can have almost 100% certainty that a form of our four canonical gospels date from 30-180CE. The more we narrow the range the less confidence we can have. We can obviously do much better than a 150 year range and have a high degree of confidence but the narrower the less certain it becomes.
I’ve heard of it and have a digital copy. Bernier puts Mark ca. 62 and Matthew and Luke shortly after. I would put Mark 70-75 and Matthew and Luke 80-100. His work created a stir in conservative circles online. Scholarly reviews have not been kind from my experience. I’ve read brief reviews by Edwards online (scathing and maybe even unprofessional), Olsen and a redditor on Academic Biblical. Its the first work really since Robinson’s Redating the NT (a work I have that) that goes this route on such a large scale. Or course, a very not conservative Crossley dated Mark to the late 30s or 40s somewhat recently as well which created a bit of a buzz.
I skimmed a few of his Epistle dates. He does give ranges for several cases. For example he gives dating ranges for 1 and 2 Peter based on whether or not Peter wrote them. That is a positive at least.
From what I am told Bernier also regurgitates the “Acts doesn’t narrate Paul’s death” argument which has not been convincing to most scholars in a long time. In fact, most believe Acts does reference Paul’s death (which means it clearly comes after it!) and a myriad of reasons have been put forth for when it doesn’t receive a long or detailed treatment. His treatment of it is odd from what I read.
It is not high on my list at the moment. But when I eventually gather all my thoughts on dating I will of course have to read and consider its appropriate sections. I think it will introduce a reader to some critical dating issues for sure by I wouldn’t only read that or read it like its some new game changer in NT studies. Its not. As Edward’s wrote:
Yet, this is less problematic than that there are passages he altogether ignores. Bernier says nothing on Mark’s story of Jesus exorcising the demon named Legion, despite the theory this story depends on post-70 knowledge of the role Legio X Fretensis played in the destruction of Jerusalem. He makes zero mention of Mark’s story of Jesus being asked about Caesar’s denarius, which has been argued as evidence the author knew the post-70 Fiscus Iudaicus. And though Bernier does tackle a few other passages in Mark regarding the destruction of the temple, insisting they could have originated before 70 CE, he fails to address the cumulative weight of all these texts when read as a unified thematic thrust by Mark’s author. Namely, why does the author spin the entire second half of his gospel around the certainty of the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple, if he was writing nearly three decades before the event happened?
But like any argument put forth in a scholarly manner, it deserves serious consideration. I would read Olsen’s treatment and even his follow up response to a very good comment on it.
Thanks for your detailed comments. When I read Bernier, I’ll keep a list of these points of debate and use them to help me frame the lay-of-the-land further. The text being used for the course I’m taking is Wright & Bird who list a “conventional” dating for Mark around 70 AD, with the other gospels being written sometime thereafter, but they leave the window open recognizing uncertainty in all arguments.
Re: the emphasis on the Temple in Mark. If a theme of the gospels was Jesus framing a “New Exodus” for Israel, and how Jesus as “A new Moses” would be doing in himself what the temple system had done previously, then it seems hardly surprizing that a “destruction of the temple” theme would feature prominently in the gospel, irrespective of whether the physical destruction of the temple had already occurred or not. Anyway, Wright and Bird point out that it is “plausible” that Mark was written around 70 AD in response to the actual event of temple destruction. However, they also say that political tensions around the temple, and conflict with the Romans over the temple were present already several years before 70 AD, so it would not have been surprising to see these Motifs turn up in Mark at the early date too.
Sigh…if only there were more firm data…
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