Note 276 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

But the account of the fourth gospel also is not wanting in peculiar features, which betray an unhistorical character. It has ever been a cross to harmonists, that while according to Matthew and Mark, the ship was only in the middle of the sea when Jesus reached it: according to John, it immediately after arrived at the opposite shore; that while, according to the former, Jesus actually entered into the ship, and the storm thereupon subsided: according to John, on the contrary, the disciples did indeed wish to take him into the ship, but their actually doing so was rendered superfluous by their immediate arrival at the place of disembarkation. It is true that here also abundant methods of reconciliation have been found. First, the word ἔθελον, they wished, added to λαβεῖν, to receive, is said to be a mere redundancy of expression; then, to signify simply the joyfulness of the reception, as if it had been said, ἐθέλοντες ἔλαβον; then, to describe the first impression which the recognition of Jesus made on the disciples, his reception into the ship, which really followed, not being mentioned.276 But the sole reason for such an interpretation lies in the unauthorized comparison with the synoptical accounts: in the narrative of John, taken separately, there is no ground for it, nay, it is excluded. For the succeeding sentence: εὐθέως τὸ πλοῖον ἐγένετο ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, εἰς ὑπῆγον, immediately the ship was at the land whither they went, though it is united, not by δὲ but by καὶ, can nevertheless only be taken antithetically, in the sense that the reception of Jesus into the ship, notwithstanding the readiness of the disciples, did not really take place, because they were already at the shore. In consideration of this difference, Chrysostom held that there were two occasions on which Jesus walked on the sea. He says that on the second occasion, which John narrates, Jesus did not enter into the ship, in order that the miracle might be greater ἵνα τὸ θᾶυμα μεῖζον ἐργάσηται.277 This view we may transfer to the Evangelist, and say: if Mark has aggrandized the miracle, by implying that Jesus intended to walk past the disciples across the entire sea; so John goes yet farther, for he makes him actually accomplish this design, and without being taken into the ship, arrive at the opposite shore.278 Not only, however, does the fourth Evangelist seek to aggrandize the miracle before us, but also to establish and authenticate it more securely. According to the synoptists, the sole witnesses were the disciples, who saw Jesus come towards them, walking on the sea: John adds to these few immediate witnesses, a multitude of mediate ones, namely, the people who were assembled when Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes. These, when on the following morning they no longer find Jesus on the same spot, make the calculation, that Jesus cannot have crossed the sea by ship, for he did not get into the same boat with the disciples, and no other boat was there (v. 22); while, that he did not go by land, is involved in the circumstance that the people when they have forthwith crossed the sea, find him on the opposite shore (v. 25), whither he could hardly have arrived by land in the short interval. Thus in the narrative of the fourth gospel, as all natural means of passage are cut off from Jesus, there remains for him only a supernatural one, and this consequence is in fact inferred by the multitude in the astonished question which they put to Jesus, when they find him on the opposite shore: Rabbi, when camest thou hither? As this chain of evidence for the miraculous passage of Jesus depends on the rapid transportation of the multitude, the Evangelist hastens to procure other boats ἄλλα πλοιάρια for their service (v. 23). Now the multitude who take ship (v. 22, 26 ff.) are described as the same whom Jesus had miraculously fed, and these amounted (according to v. 10) to about 5000. If only a fifth, nay, a tenth of these passed over, there needed for this, as the author of the Probabilia has justly observed, a whole fleet of ships, especially if they were fishing boats; but even if we suppose them vessels of freight, these would not all have been bound for Capernaum, or have changed their destination for the sake of accommodating the crowd. This passage of the multitude, therefore, appears only to have been invented,279 on the one hand, to confirm by their evidence the walking of Jesus on the sea; on the other, as we shall presently see, to gain an opportunity for making Jesus, who according to the tradition had gone over to the opposite shore immediately after the multiplication of the loaves, speak yet further with the multitude on the subject of this miracle.