Note 269 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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 περιπατεῖν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης is analogous to the expression στρατοπεδεύειν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης, Exod. xiv. 2, and signifies to walk, as the other to encamp, over the sea, that is, on the elevated sea-shore.269 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, περιπατῶν ἐπὶ τῆς θαλάσσης. 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 ἐν μέσῳ τῆς θαλάσσης, 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 decidedly opposed to such a supposition for it to be worth our 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, καταβὰς ἀπὸ τοῦ πλοίου περιεπάτησεν ἐπὶ τὰ ὕδατα (v. 29); for as it is said shortly after that Peter began to sink (καταποντίζεσθαι), 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.270