Note 263 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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 the 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;263 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 intellect, 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,264 on a pillow in the hinder part of the ship). If then that which may possibly have happened 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.265 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 ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye may say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and cast into the sea (Matt. xxi. 21), or to this tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea (Luke xvii. 6), and both shall be done (καὶ ὑπήκουσεν ἂν ὑμῖν, Luke): 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 (ὅτι καὶ τοῖς ἀνέμοις ἐπιτάσσει καὶ τῷ ὕδατι, καὶ ὑπακούουσιν αὐτῷ, Luke). If we now take into account what even Olshausen remarks, and Schneckenburger has shown,266 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 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.267