| 101. Anecdotes Having Relations to the Sea. | ||||
As in general, at least according to the representations of the three first evangelists, the country around the Galilean sea was the chief theatre of the ministry of Jesus; so a considerable number of his miracles have an immediate reference to the sea. One of this class, the miraculous draught of fishes granted to Peter, has already presented itself for our consideration; besides this, there are the miraculous stilling of the storm which had arisen on rhe sea while Jesus slept, in the three Synoptics; Matthew, Mark, and John; the summary of most of those the walking of Jesus on the sea, likewise during a storm, in incidents which the appendix to the fourth gospel places after the resurrection; and lastly, the story of the coin that was to be angled for by Peter, in Matthew. | ||||
The first-named narrative (Matt. viii.23ff. parall.) is intended, according to the evangelist's own words, to represent Jesus to us as him whom the winds and the sea obey (oi( anemoi kai h qalassa upakouousin). Thus, to follow out the gradation in the miraculous which has been hitherto observed, it is here presupposed, not merely that Jesus could acton the human mind and living body in a psychological and magnetic manner; or with a revivifying power on the human organism when it was forsaken by vitality; indeed, not merely as in the story of the draught of fishes earlier examined, that he could act imme {554} diately with determinative power, on irrational yet animated existences, but that he could act thus even on inanimate nature. The possibility of finding a point of union between the alleged supernatural agency of Jesus, and the natural order of phenomena, here absolutely ceases; here, at the latest, there is an end to miracles in the wider and now more favoured sense; and we come to those which must be taken in the narrowest sense, or to the miracle proper. The purely supernaturalistic view is therefore the first to suggest itself. Olshausen has justly felt, that such a power over external nature is not essentially connected with the destination of Jesus for the human race and for the salvation of man; from which he was led to place the natural phenomenon which is here controlled by Jesus in a relation to sin, and therefore to the office of Jesus. Storms, he says, are the spasms and convulsions of nature, and as such the consequences of sin, the fearful effects of which are seen even on the physical side existence. But it is only that limited observation of nature which in noting the particular forgets the general, that can regard storms, tempests, and similar phenomena, (which in connection with the whole have their necessary place and beneficial influence,) as evils and departure from original law: and a theory of the world in which it is seriously upheld, that before the fall there were no storms and -tempests, as, on the other hand, no beasts of prey and poisonous plants, partakes-one does not know whether to say, of the fanatical, or of the childish. But to what purpose, if the above explanation will not hold, could Jesus be gifted with such a power over nature? As a means of awakening faith in him, it was inadequate and superfluous: because Jesus found individual adherents without any demonstration of a power of this kind, and general acceptance even this did not procure him. As little can it be regarded as a type of the original dominion of man over external nature, a dominion which he is destined to re-attain; for the value of this dominion consists precisely in this, that it is a mediate one, achieved by the progressive reflection and the united efforts of ages, not an immediate and magical dominion, which costs no more than a word. Hence in relation to that part of nature of which we are here speaking, the compass and the steam-vessel are an incomparably truer realization of man's dominion over the ocean, than the allaying of the waves by a mere word. But the subject has another aspect, since the dominion of man over nature is not merely external and practical, but also immanent or theoretical; that is, man even when externally he is subjected to the might of the elements, yet is not internally conquered by them; but, in the conviction that the powers of physical nature can only destroy in him that which belongs to his physical existence, is elevated in the self-certainty of the spirit above the possible destruction of the body. This spiritual power, it is said, was exhibited by Jesus, for he slept tranquilly in the boat beside by his trembling disciples, and {P.555} inspired them with courage by his words. But for courage to be shown, real danger must be apprehended: now for Jesus, supposing him to be conscious of an immediate power over nature, danger could in no degree exist: therefore he could not here give any proof of this theoretical power. | ||||
In both respects the natural explanation would find only the conceivable and the desirable attributed to Jesus in the Gospel narrative; namely, on the one hand, an intelligent observation of the state of the weather, and on the other, exalted corn-age in the presence of real peril. When we read that Jesus commanded the wind and the waves, we are to understand simply that he made some remark on the storm, or some exclamations at its violence: and his calming of the sea we are to regard only as a prognostication, founded on the observation of certain signs, that the storm would soon subside. His address to the disciples is said to have proceeded, like the celebrated saying of Caesar, from the confidence that a man who was to leave an impress on the world's history, could not so lightly be cut short in his career by an accident. That those who were in the ship regarded the subsidence of the storm as the effect of the words of Jesus, proves nothing, for Jesus nowhere confirms their inference. Bu neither does he disapprove it, although he must have observed the impression which, in consequence of that inference, the result had made on the people; he must therefore, as Venturini actually supposes, have designedly refrained from shaking their high opinion of his miraculous power, in order to attach them to him the more firmly. But, setting this altogether aside, was it likely that the natural presages of the storm should have been better understood by Jesus, who had never been occupied on the sea, than by Peter, James, and John, who had been at home on it from their youth upwards? | ||||
It remains then that, taking the incident as it is narrated by the evangelists, we must regard it as a, miracle: but to raise this from an exegetical result to a real fact, is, according to the above remarks, extremely difficult: from which there arises a suspicion against the historical character of the narrative. Viewed more nearly however, and taking Matthew's account as the basis, there is nothing to object to the narrative until the middle of v. 26. It might really have happened that Jesus in one of his frequent passages across the Galilean sea, was sleeping when a storm arose: that the disciples awaked him with alarm, while he, calm and self-possessed, said to them, Why are you afraid, O you of little faith? What follows the commanding of the waves, which Mark with his well-known fondness for such authoritative words, reproduces as if he were giving the exact words of Jesus in a Greek translation (siwpa, pefimwso) - might have {P.556} been added in the propagation of the story from one to another. There was an inducement to attribute to Jesus such a command over the winds and the sea, not only in the opinion entertained of his person, but also in certain features of the Old Testament history. Here, in poetical descriptions of the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea the Lord is designated as he who rebuked the sea (Ps. cvi.9), so that it retreated. Now, as the instrument in this partition of the Red Sea was Moses, it was natural to ascribe to his great successor, the Messiah, a similar function; accordingly we actually find from rabbinical passages, that a drying up of the sea was expected to be wrought by God in the Messianic times, doubtless through the agency of the Messiah, as formerly through that of Moses. That instead of drying up the sea Jesus is said only to produce a Calm, may be explained, on the supposition that the storm and the composure exhibited by Jesus on the occasion were historical, as a consequence of the mythical having combined itself with this historical clement; for, as according to this, Jesus and his disciples were on board a ship, a drying up of the sea would have been out of place. | ||||
Still it is altogether without any sure precedent, that a mythical addition should be engrafted on the stem of a real incident, so as to leave the latter totally unmodified. And there is one feature, even in th part hitherto assumed to be historical, which, more narrowly examined, might just as probably have been invented by the legend as have really happened. That Jesus, before the storm breaks out, is sleeping, and even when it arises, does not immediately awake, is not his voluntary deed, but chance; it. is this very chance, however, which alone gives the scene its full significance, for Jesus sleeping in the storm is by the contrast which he presents, a not less emblematical image than Ulysses sleeping when, after so many storms, he was about to land on his island home. Now that Jesus really slept at the time that a storm broke out, may indeed have happened by chance in one case out of ten; but in the nine cases also, when this did not happen, and Jesus only showed himself calm and courageous during the storm, I am inclined to think that the legend would so far have understood her interest, that, as she had represented the contrast of the tranquillity of Jesus with the raging of the elements to the intelect, by means of the words of Jesus, so she would depict it for the imagination, by means of the image of Jesus sleeping in the ship (or as Mark has it, on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship). If then that which may possibly have hap- {P.557} pened in a single case, must certainly have been invented by the legend in nine cases; the expositor must in reason prepare himself for the undeniable possibility, that we have before us one of the nine cases, instead of that single case. If then it be granted that nothing further remains as an historical foundation for our narrative, than that Jesus exhorted his disciples to show the firm courage of faith in opposition to the raging waves of the sea, it is certainly possible that he may once have done this in a storm at sea; but just as he said: if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you may say to this mountain, Be you removed and cast into the sea (Matt. xxi. 21), or to this tree, Be you pL cked up by the root, and be you planted in the sea (Luke xvii. 6), and both shall be done: so he might, not merely on the sea, but in any situation, make use of the figure, that to him who has faith, winds and waves shall be obedient at a word. If we now take into account what even Olshausen remarks, and Schneckenburger has shown, that the contest of the kingdom of God with the world was in the early times of Christianity commonly compared to a voyage through a stormy ocean; we see at once, how easily legend might come to frame such a narrative as the above, on the suggestions afforded by the parallel between the Messiah and Moses, the expressions of Jesus, and the conception of him as the pilot who steers the little vessel of the kingdom of God through the tumultuous waves of of the world. Setting this aside, however, and viewing the matter only generally, in relation to the idea of a miracle-worker, we find a similar power over storms and tempests, ascribed, for example, to Pythagoras. | ||||
We have a more complicated story connected with the sea, wanting in Luke, but contained in John vi. 16 if., as well as in Matt. xiv.22ff., and Mark vi,45ff., where a storm overtakes the disciples when sailing by night, and Jesus appears to their rescue, walking towards them on the sea. Here, again, the storm subsides m a marvellous manner on the entrance of Jesus into the ship; but the peculiar difficulty of the narrative lies in this, that the body of Jesus appears so entirely exempt from a law which governs all other human bodies without exception, namely, the law of gravitation, that he not only does not sink under the water, but does not even dip uito it; on the contrary, he walks erect on the waves as on firm land, it we are to represent this to ourselves, we must in some way or other, conceive the body of Jesus as an ethereal phantom, according to the opinion of the Docetai; a conception which, the Fathers of {P.558} the Church condemned as irreligious, and which we must reject as extravagant. Olshausen indeed says, that in a superior corporeality, impregnated with the powers of a higher world, such an appearance need not create surprise: but these are words to which we can attach no definite idea. If the spiritual activity of Jesus which refined and perfected his corporeal nature, instead of being conceived as that which more and more completely emancipated his body from the psychical laws of passion and sensuality, is understood as if by its means the body was exempted from the physical law of gravity: this is a materialism of which, as in a former case, it is difficult to decide whether it be more fantastical or childish. If Jesus did not sink in the water, he must have been a spectre, and the disciples in our narrative would not have been wrong in taking him for one. We must also recollect that on his baptism in the river Jordan, Jesus did not exhibit this property, but was submerged like an ordinary man. Now had he at that time also the power of sustaining himself on the surface of the water, and only refrained from using it? and did he thus increase or reduce his specific gravity by an act of his will? or are we to suppose, as Olshausen would perhaps say, that at the time of his baptism he had not attained so far in the process of subtilizing his body, as to be freely borne up by the water, and that he only reached this point at a later period? These are questions which Olshausen justly calls absurd: nevertheless they serve to open a glimpse into the abyss of absurdities in which ve are involved by the supernaturalistic interpretation, and particularly by that which this theologian gives of the narrative before us. To avoid these, the natural explanation has tried many expedients. The boldest is that, of Paulus, who maintains that the text does not state that Jesus walked on the water; and that the miracle in this passage is nothing but a philological mistake, since peripatein epi ths qalasshs is analogous to the expression stratopedeuein ein epi ths qalasshs, Exod. xiv. 2, and signifies to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea, that is, on the elevated sea-shore. 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, nepiaruv erri rrjf OaMautjc. 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 "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 decidedy opposed to such a supposition, for it to be worth our {P.559} 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, (v. 29); for as it is said shortly after that Peter "began to sink," 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. | ||||
But if Peter, in his attempt to walk upon the waters, 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. But the act of wading must have been expressed by peripatein dia ths qalasshs, 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. | ||||
The reasoning on which the natural mode of interpretation rests here as elsewhere, has been enunciated by Paulus in connection 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 Gospel 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 rom 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; and therefore to abolish the miraculous, we must not explain it away from the narrative, but rather inquire whether the narrative itself, either m 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 {P.560} 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, (hqele parelqein au)touj), 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 go 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. Isot contented with the representation of his informant, that esus, 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 itselt as one of the most striking among those, by which the second evangelist now and then approaches to the exaggerations of the apocryphal Gospels. | ||||
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 fin 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 etherialized 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 {561} 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 has desired, to have you that he may sift yo as wheat; but I have prayed for you that your 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. | ||||
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 term hqelen ( they wished, ) added to labein ( 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, qelontej - elabon; 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. But the sole reason for such an inter- {P.562} pretation lies in the unauthorized comparison with the synoptic accounts: in the narrative of John, taken separately, there is no ground for it, indeed, it is excluded. For the succeeding sentence: "immediately the land was at the land to which they went," though it is united, not by de but by kai 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." 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 further, for he makes him actually accomplish this design, and without being taken into the ship, arrive at the opposite shore. 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 synoptics, 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, where 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 findhim on the opposite shore: Jtabbi, when earnest ilwu li.ithei,' 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 for their service (v. 2). 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, indeed, a tenth of these passed over, there needed for this, as the author of {P.563} 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, 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 o-one 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 sa 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 story 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.8) but also that he caused a piece of iron which had fallen into the water to swim (2 Kings vi. 6.); an ascendancy over the law of gravitation which it would be imagined the miracle-worker might uc able to evince in relation to his own body also, and thus to exhibit himself, at it is said of the Lord (Job ix. 8) walking upon the sea as upon a pavement. In the time of Jesus much was told of miracle-workers who could walk on the water. Apart from conceptions exclusively {P.564} Greek, the Greco-oriental legend feigned that the hyperborean Abaris possessed an arrow, by means of which he could bear himself up in the air, and thus traverse rivers, seas, and abysses, and popular superstition attributed to many wonder-workers the power of walking on water. Hence the possibility that with all these elements and inducements existing, a similar legend should be formed concerning Jesus, appears incomparably stronger, than that a real event of this kind should have occurred: and with this conclusion we may dismiss the subject. | ||||
The fanerwsij (manifestation) of Jesus at the sea of Tiberias narrated in John xxi. has so striking a resemblance to the sea stories hitherto considered, that although the fourth gospel places it in the period after the resurrection, we are induced, as in an earlier instance we brought part of it under notice in connection with the narrative of Peter's draught of fishes, so here to institute a comparison between its other features, and the narrative of Jesus walking on the sea. In both cases, Jesus is perceived by the disciples in the twilight of early morning; only in the latter instance he does not, as in the former, walk on the sea, but stands on the shore, and the disciples are in consternation, not because of a storm, but because of the fruitlesness of their fishing. In both instances they are afraid of him; in the one, they take him for a spectre, in the other, not one of them ventures to ask him who he is, Jmovnny that it is the Lord. But especially the scenewith Peter, peculiar to the first gospel, has its corresponding one in the present passage. As there, when Jesus walking on the sea makes himself known to his disciples, Peter entreats permission to go to him on the water: so here, as soon as Jesus is recognized standing on the shore, Peter throws himself into the water that he may reach him the shortest way by swimming. Thus, that which in the earlier narrative was the miraculous act of walking on the sea, becomes in the one before us, in relation to Jesus, the simple act of standing on the shore, in relation to Peter, the natural act of swimming; so that the latter history sounds almost like a rationalist paraphrase of the former: and there have not been wanting those who have maintained that at least the story about Peter in the first gospel, is a traditional transformation of the incident in John xxi. 7. into a miracle. Modern criticism is restrained from extending this conjecture to the story of Jesus walking on the sea, by the fact that he supposed apostolic fourth gospel itself has this feature in the earlier narrative (vi.16ff.). But from our point of view it appears quite possible, that the story in question either came to the author of this gospel in the one form, and to the author of the appendix in the other; or that it came to the one author of both in a double form, and was inserted by him in separate parts of his narrative. | ||||
{P.565} Meanwhile, if the two histories are to be compared, we ought not at once to assume that the one, John xxi., is the original, the other, Matt. xiv. parall., the secondary; we must first ask which of the two bears intrinsic marks of one or the other character. Now certainly if we adhere to the rule that the more miraculous narrative is the later, that in John xxi. appears, in relation to the manner in which Jesus approaches the disciples, and in which Peter reaches Jesus, to be the original. But this rule is connected in the closest manner with another; namely, that the simpler narrative is the earlier, the more complex one the later, as the conglomerate is a later formation than the homogeneous one; and according to this rule, the conclusion is reversed, and the narrative in John xxi. is the more traditional, for in it the particulars mentioned above are interwoven with the miraculous draught of fishes, while in the earlier narrative they form in themselves an independent whole. It is indeed true, that agreater whole may be broken up into smaller parts; but such fragments have not at all the appearance of the separate narratives of the draught of fishes and the walking on the sea, since these, on the contrary, leave the impression of being each a finished whole. From this interweaving with the miracle of the draught of fishes, to which we must add the circumstance that the entire circle of events turns upon the risen Jesus, who is already in himself a miracle, it is apparent how, contrary to the general rule, the oft-named particulars could lose their miraculous character, since by their combination with other miracles they were reduced to mere accessories, to a sort of natural scaffolding;. If then the narrative in John xxi. is entirely secondary, its historical value has already been estimated with that of the narratives which furnished its materials. | ||||
If, before we proceed further, we take a retrospect of the series of sea-stories hitherto examined, we find, it is true, that the two extreme stories are altogether dissimilar, the one relating mainly to fishing, the other to a storm; nevertheless, on a proper arrangement, each of them appears to be connected with the preceding by a common feature. The narrative of the call of the fishers of men (Matt. iv. 18 ff, par.) opens the series; that of Peter's draught of fishes (Luke v.1ff.) has in common with this the saying about tin. fishers of men, but the fact of the draught of fishes is peculiar to it; this fact reappears in John xxi., where the circumstances of Jesus standing on the shore in the morning twilight, and the swimming of Peter towards him, are added; these two circumstances are in Matt. xiv. 22 ff, parall. metamorphosed into the act of walking on the sea on the part of Jesus and of Peter, and at the same time a storm, and its cessation on the entrance of Jesus into the ship, are introdued; lastly, in Matt. viii.23ff. parall. we have an story singlular in its kind, namely, that of the stilling of the storm by Jesus. | ||||
We note {P.566} the foregoing series, in Matt. xvii.24ff. It is true that here again there is a direction of Jesus to Peter to go and fish, to which, although it is not expressly stated, we must suppose that the issue corresponded: but first, it is only one fish which is to be caught, and with an angling line; and secondly, the main point is, that in its mouth is to be found a piece of gold to serve for the payment of the temple tribute for Jesus and Peter, from the latter of whom this tax had been demanded. This narrative as it is here presented has peculiar difficulties, which Paulus well exhibits, and which Olshausen does not deny. Fritzsche justly remarks, that there are two miraculous particulars presupposed: first, that the fish had a coin in its mouth; secondly, that Jesus had a foreknowledge of this. On the one hand, we must regard the former of these particulars as extravagant, and consequently the latter also; and on the other, the whole miracle appears to have been unnecessary. Certainly, that metals and other valuables have been found in the bodies of fish is elsewhere narrated, and is not incredible; but that a fish should have a piece of money in its mouth, and keep it there while it snapped at the bait this even Dr. Schnappinger found inconceivable. Moreover, the motive of Jesus for performing such a miracle could not be want of money, for even if at that time there was no store in the common fund, still Jesus was in Capernaum, where he had many friends, and where consequently he could have obtained the needful money in a natural way. To exclude this possibility we must with Olshausen confound borrowing with begging, and regard it as inconsistent with the decorum divinum which must have been observed by Jesus. Nor after so many proofs of his miraculous power, could Jesus think this additional miracle necessary to strengthen Peter's belief in his Messiahship. | ||||
Hence we need not wonder that rationalist commentators have attempted to free themselves at any cost from a miracle which even Olshausen pronounces to be the most difficult in the Gospel history, and we have only to see how they proceed in this undertaking. The pith of the natural explanation of the fact lies in the interpretation of the word eu(rhseij, (you will find,) in the command of Jesus, not of an immediate discovery of a stater in the fish, but of a mediate acquisition of this sum by selling what was caught. It must be admitted that the above word may bear this signification also; but if we are to give it this sense instead of the usual one, we must in the particular instance have a clear intimation to this effect in the context. Thus, if it were said in the present passage: Take the first fine fish, carry it to the market, and there you shall find a stater, this explanation would be in place; as however instead of this, the word eu(rhseij is preceded by anoicaj to stoma au)tou, when you have opened his mouth, as, therefore, no "place of sale" but a place inside the fish, is mentioned, {P.567} as that on the opening of which the coin is to be obtained, we can only understand an immediate discovery of the piece of money in this part of the fish. Besides, to what purpose would the opening of the fish's mouth be mentioned, unless the desideratum were to be found there? Paulus sees in this only the injunction to release the fish from the hook without delay, in order to keep it alive, and thus to render it more saleable. The order to open the mouth of the fish might indeed, if it stood alone, be supposed to have the extraction of the hook as its object and consequence; but as it is followed by "you shall find a stater," it is plain that this is the immediate end of opening the mouth. The perception that, so long as the opening of the fish's mouth is spoken of in this passage, it will be inferred that the coin was to be found there, has induced the rationalist commentators to try whether they could not refer the word "mouth," to another subject than the fish, and no other reained than the fisher, Peter. But as stoma appeared to be connected with the fish by the word au)tou, which immediately followed it, Dr. Paulus, moderating or exaggerating the suggestion of a friend, who proposed to read a)nqeu(rhseij instead of au)tou, eu(rhseij allowed au)tou to remain, but took it adverbially, and translated the passage thus: "you have then only to open your mouth to offer the fish for sale, and you will on the spot receive a stater as its price." But, it would still be asked, how could a single fish fetch so high a price in Capernaum, where fish were so abundant? Hence Paulus understands the words, "take up the fish that first comes" collectively thus: continue time after time to take the fish that first comes to you, until you have caught as many as will be worth a stater. | ||||
If the series of strained interpretations which are necessary to a natural explanation of this narrative throw us back on that which allows it to contain a miracle; and if this miracle appear to us, according to our former decision, both extravagant and useless, nothing remains but to presume that here also there is a legendary clement. This view has been combined with the admission, that a real but natural fact was probably at the foundation of the legend: namely, that Jesus once ordered Peter to fish until he had caught enough to procure the amount of the temple tribute; from which the legend arose that the fish had the tribute money in its mouth, But, in our opinion, a more likely source of this story is to be found in the much-used theme of a catching of fish by Peter, on the one side, and on the other, the well-known stories of precious things having been found in the bodies of fish. Peter, as we learn from Matt, iv., Luke v., John xxi., was the fisher in the Gospel legend to whom Jesus in variou forms, first symbolically, and then literally, granted the rich draught of fishes. The value of the {P.568} capture appears here in the shape of a piece of money, which, as similar things are elsewhere said to have been found in the belly of fishes, is by an exaggeration of the marvel said to be found in the mouth of the fish. That it is the stater, required for the temple tribute, might be occasioned by a real declaration of Jesus concerning his relation to that tax; or conversely, the stater which was accidentally named in the legend of the fish angled for by Peter, might bring to recollection the temple tribute, which amounted to that sum for two persons, and the declaration of Jesus relative to this subject. | ||||
With this tale conclude the sea stories. | ||||