Note 298 — Chapter IX · MIRACLES OF JESUS.

But herein, it is said, consists the miracle, which in relation to the last point especially, may be called the acceleration of a natural process. That which comes to pass in the space of three quarters of a year, from seed-time to harvest, was here effected in the minutes which were required for the distribution of the food; for natural developments are capable of acceleration, and to how great an extent we cannot determine.298 It would, indeed, have been an acceleration of a natural process, if in the hand of Jesus a grain of corn had borne fruit a hundred-fold, and brought it to maturity, and if he had shaken the multiplied grain out of his hands as they were filled again and again, that the people might grind, knead, and bake it, or eat it raw from the husk in the wilderness where they were;—or if he had taken a living fish, suddenly called forth the eggs from its body, and converted them into full-grown fish, which then the disciples or the people might have boiled or roasted, this, we should say, would have been an acceleration of a natural process. But it is not corn that he takes into his hand, but bread; and the fish also, as they are distributed in pieces, must have been prepared in some way, perhaps, as in Luke xxiv. 42, comp. John xxi. 9, broiled or salted. Here then, on both sides, the production of nature is no longer simple and living, but dead and modified by art: so that to introduce a natural process of the above kind, Jesus must, in the first place, by his miraculous power have metamorphosed the bread into corn again, the roasted fish into raw and living ones; then instantaneously have effected the described multiplication; and lastly, have restored the whole from the natural to the artificial state. Thus the miracle would be composed, 1st, of a revivification, which would exceed in miraculousness all other instances in the gospels; secondly, of an extremely accelerated natural process; and thirdly, of an artificial process, effected invisibly, and likewise extremely accelerated, since all the tedious proceedings of the miller and baker on the one hand, and of the cook on the other, must have been accomplished in a moment by the word of Jesus. How then can Olshausen deceive himself and the believing reader, by the agreeably sounding expression, accelerated natural process, when this nevertheless can designate only a third part of the fact of which we are speaking?299