Note 262 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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: whence 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 ye fearful, O ye 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 (σιώπα, πεφίμωσο!)—might have been added in the propagation of the anecdote 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, Jehovah is designated as he who rebuked the Red Sea, ἐπετίμησε τῇ ἐρυθρᾷ θαλάσσῇ (Psa. cvi. 9; LXX. comp. Nahum i. 4), 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.262 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 element; 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.