Scientists are not fishing on this.
New research has given a “plausible scientific basis” for two of Jesus Christ’s most iconic and biblically recorded miracles – as well as a timeline for one of them – which occurred at the Sea of Galilee, today known as Israel’s Lake Kinneret. Known as.
The study shows an example of a mass fish kill due to a lack of oxygen in the water – potentially allowing the historical figure Jesus Christ to perform two separate acts: his “Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” and the subsequent In “Miraculous Catch of Fish.”
“Current understanding of physical limnology [ecosystem] Lake Kinneret could provide a plausible scientific basis for those miracles,” the study authors wrote.
In both gospel-based events – on the northwest coast area of the sea around Tabgha – the holy man prepared extra fish for his disciples when they ran out of food.
The latter event – depicted in the Gospel of John after Christ’s resurrection – saw the followers’ net filled with “153 large fish, but even with so many fish the net was not broken.”
Team suggests heavy winds Lower levels of water were churned up, creating anoxic – or oxygen-deficient – conditions, which ultimately suffocated the fish, causing them to surface, easily entangled in nets – and literally die in the water. .
“The Sea of Galilee is a stratified lake. The upper layer is warm and oxygenated, while the lower layer is cold and lacking in oxygen.
Researcher Yael Amitai
Comparable modern “fishing” incidents have been occurring since the 1990s – and as recently as last year at the Tzalmon mouth of the ocean – according to researchWhich used 3D modeling to scan the lake.
The report said the natural but still rare phenomenon “could explain the presence of large numbers of fish readily gathering close to the shore described in Biblical stories.”
Similar events were observed in Lake Erie and the Neuse River estuary in North Carolina.
Regarding the story of the “loaves and fishes”, researchers believe that this revelation on the killing of the fish provides a more precise timing for the event in which, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ gathered about 5,000 followers. Five loaves of bread and two fishes had been turned into sufficient food for. ,
That miracle – the only miracle recorded in all four canonized Gospels – most likely occurred during late spring or early summer because at that time the water becomes deeper, causing rapid temperature changes and more dead fish rising to the surface. .
This report comes after unrelated research The Shroud of Turin was probably not used To wrap the mortal remains of Christ.
