Was Jesus Walking On Ice?

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media. This week’s item is from cnn.com, April 4, 2006, with a headline: Study Claims Ice, Not Water, Kept Jesus Afloat. The New Testament says that Jesus walked on water, but a Florida university professor believes there could be a less miraculous explanation, He walked on a floating piece of ice. Professor Doron Noff, also theorized in the early 1990[s], that Moses’ parting of the Red Sea had solid science behind it. Noff, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, said on Tuesday that his study found an unusual combination of water and atmospheric conditions in what is now Northern Israel, could have led to ice formation on the Sea of Galilee. Noff used records of the Mediterranean Sea’s surface temperatures and statistical models to examine the dynamics of the Sea of Galilee. The study found that a period of cooler temperatures in the area between 1500 and 2600 years ago could have included the decades in which Jesus lived. A drop in temperature below freezing could have caused ice thick enough to support a human, to form on the surface of the fresh water lake near the Western shore, Noff said. It might have been nearly impossible for distant observers to see a piece of floating ice surrounded by water. Noff said he offered his study, published in the April edition of the Journal of Paleontology as a possible explanation for Jesus’ walk on water. If you ask me if I believe someone walked on water, No, I don’t, Noff said. Maybe somebody walked on the ice, I don’t know. I believe that something natural was there that explains it. We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account. When he offered his theory 14 years ago that wind and sea conditions could explain the parting of the Red Sea, Noff said he received some hate mail, even though he noted that the idea could support the biblical description of the event.

Tom:

Hate mail? You know, if you’re a Christian you don’t write hate letters. You may not agree with somebody, and even laugh at some---I mean, this is ludicrous, okay. But you don’t treat somebody with an attitude that really contradicts what you claim to be, and that is a Christian, somebody who loves the Lord and would follow and do what He says. On the other hand---this is unbelievable, Jesus walked on ice! But not on solid ice, okay---Well, not on the Sea of Galilee completely frozen over, just a section of it!

Dave:

Near the shore, he says---

Tom:

Now is it the problem that---but let’s give this man the benefit of the doubt, that he’s sincere and he’s honestly trying to figure this out. Well, he’s going to have to take all of the information into account, but he’s just isolating this one aspect and trying to give an explanation based on a small part of the picture. Is that what a scientist is to do?

Dave:

Well, Tom, first of all he begins with the premise that there can be no miracles. Well, then we can’t have a resurrection either, and there can’t be a God because God can override the miracles. Well, you couldn’t do anything. He’s trying to find an ordinary explanation. Tom, I remember reading of a rabbi who became a believer. The way he became a believer was, he had always believed that there was a shallow spot through the Red Sea, and that Moses knew where it was, and he led, you know, the children of Israel through there about knee deep, and then one day it occurred to him. To drown the entire Egyptian army in water knee deep is a greater miracle than walking through the Red Sea on dry land, and the same thing here. What about when Jesus---you know, they are approaching him in a boat, and he tells Peter, “Step out” and then Peter sinks. O, I guess the ice broke! But then they go to shore - what do they have an ice breaker to get through this ice to go to shore? You get in more trouble when you try to come up with this kind of nonsense, but the basis of it is, he doesn’t believe in miracles, he’s going to try to explain everything. Now, let him explain Lazarus, dead in the grave. He stinks, he’s already decaying, and when Jesus says, “Lazarus, come forth” he is still bound hand and foot. So, you’re going to have to say, Well, these people were exaggerating. No, these are eyewitnesses. Furthermore, Tom, did we mention it last week, I can’t remember, Saul of Tarsus who became Paul the apostle, he tells us that all the apostles would have to die, that’s 1 Corinthians:4:10We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.
See All..., because they were witnesses of a special kind, not like a Muslim who blows himself up, kills other people. Oh, he’s a martyr. No, these are martyrs testifying to the facts. Why were they killed? Because they said, We cannot lie about this, Jesus rose from the dead, we’ve handled him, we know he did raise the dead, he did walk on water, he did feed five thousand with a few loaves and fishes---you can kill us if you want to, but we cannot change the story and we know that no one is fool enough to die for what he knows is a lie. So, we have a tremendous testimony to the truth of this, and these were eyewitnesses---this man wasn’t even born yet!

Tom:

Right. Dave, you know the sad thing is, some Christians, they get excited when science, so-called, comes up with an explanation as though that’s what's needed here to prove to people. But as you pointed out, this undermines the fact that God is a God of miracles, that God supernaturally intervenes in the life of men.

Dave:

Absolutely! That’s what Mary Baker Eddy tried to do, she turned Jesus into a scientist---Oh, we’ve got to have a scientific explanation of this, isn’t that wonderful. Okay, well, that’s not wonderful, that undermines the whole thing and this is partly where psychology comes in. Instead of the miraculous power of the Holy Spirit transforming my life, we’ve got to have some scientific explanation, so-called, of human behavior and how we can modify it, etc.

Tom:

Lies within the unconscious, we have to delve into the depths of man, and so on.

Dave:

And, of course, Freud was an atheist, so were all of them. So now we’re taking atheistic---and this guy is an atheist, otherwise he would believe in miracles. So, he’s not helping us. Well, I would say he is showing his ignorance of the Bible and of science, because even Einstein acknowledged that there were things beyond science. Let me quote Erwin Schrodinger, one of the greatest physicists of the last century. He said, Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is good? What is beautiful? What is life? What is death? Science has no answers to these questions. You’re going to have to look somewhere else, and this man is limiting himself to the answers that science can give, and he is missing out on reality.