Note 274 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

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, καὶ ἤθελε παρελθεῖν αὐτούς, 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 so 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. Not contented with the representation of his informant, that Jesus, 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 itself as one of the most striking among those by which the second Evangelist now and then approaches to the exaggerations of the apocryphal gospels.274