Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee. From your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. (Psalm 139:7–8)
There are Greco-Roman and Jewish parallels a-plenty. Here are four which have often been cited. Let Homer’s hymn to Castor and Pollux be first in line:
glorious children of neat-ankled Leda. . .deliverers of men on earth and of swift-going ships when stormy gales rage over the ruthless sea. Then the shipmen call upon the sons of great Zeus. . .until suddenly these two are seen darting through the air on tawny wings. Forthwith they allay the blasts of the cruel winds and still the waves upon the surface of the white sea.43
The legend is repeated in Thomas Babington Macaulay’s (1800–1859) ode to The Battle of Lake Regillus in his Lays of Ancient Rome:
Back comes the chief in triumph Who in the hour of Fight Hath seen the great Twin Brethren In harness On his right. Safe comes the ship to haven Through Billows and through gales, If once the great Twin Brethren Sit shining on the sails.44
Next, in his history of Rome, Dio Cassius (AD ca. 165–235) records an episode involving Julius Caesar during a storm at Lacus Curtius:
Wishing, therefore, to sail to Italy in person and unattended, he embarked on a small boat in disguise, saying that he had been sent by Caesar; and forced the captain to set sail, although there was a wind. When, however, they had got away from land, and the gale swept violently down upon them and the waves buffeted them terribly, so that the captain did not longer dare even under compulsion to sail farther, but undertook to return even without his passenger’s consent, then Caesar revealed himself, as if by this act he could stop the storm, and said, “Be of good cheer: you carry Caesar.”45
Third, the Babylonian Talmud contains a story of Rabban Gamaliel aboard ship during a storm that almost drowned him. The Rabban pleads with God that it was not for his honor he had exiled Eleazar ben Hyrcanus who brought ruin wherever he directed his eyes, but solely for the honor of God, “in order that disagreements do not multiply in Israel.” The plea was accepted, “the sea immediately rested from its anger.”46
Fourth and finally, the Jerusalem Talmud contains the story of a Jewish lad on a heathen ship during a great storm. After praying in vain to their gods, the heathen order the boy to pray to his, adding that Israel’s God hears his own and is mighty. The lad prays with all his might and the sea becomes silent. The story ends with quoting Deuteronomy 4:7: “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?”47
The differences between at least these four parallels and the narrative in Mark, Matthew, and John need little space. Macaulay’s words, “The gods who live forever Have fought for Rome to-day! These be the Great Twin Brethren To whom the Dorians pray,” hardly apply to the One who abhorred violence. As for Dio Cassius’ story, despite Caesar’s bidding, the storm did not cease, and the ship had to ply toward land. Again, none of the exorcisms, miracles of healing, or nature miracles reflect the quid pro quo behind Rabban Gamaiel’s plea, and as for the Jewish lad, he had to pray to achieve his end, whereas the wind and sea are suddenly quiet at Jesus’ summons. In the New Testament, the raising of Lazarus is the only event at which the miracle follows a prayer, but the prayer is not for the miracle:
Father, I thank you for having heard me. I knew that You always hear me, but I have said this for the sake Of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe That you sent me (John 11:41b-42).
Here, at least, no continuum of cause and effect.
While all four evangelists record the feeding of the five thousand Mark and Matthew record a second feeding of four thousand, Mark setting the scene in a foreign country, “the region of the Decapolis” (7:31), and Matthew setting it in Galilee (Matthew 15:29), just as his co-authors the first feeding. The two feeding narratives are so strikingly similar that they appear to be two records of the same event. For example in Mark’s narratives the site is a desert place (cf. Mark 6:31 and 8:4); in both there is reference to the crowd’s confusion and hunger (cf. Mark 6:34 and 8:2–3); in both the disciples are in a quandry (cf. Mark 6:35 and 8:4), and in both Jesus asks the disciples what is at hand to feed the crowd (Mark 6:38 and 8:5). In John, the question is addressed to Philip (John 6:5), but then, as if to forestall any suggestion of limited knowledge on the part of Jesus, John immediately adds: “He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do” (John 6:6), a reprise of the refrain in chapter two (“he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone, John 2:25), and echoed by Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb (“I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here,” John 11:42).
In the accounts of the feedings, each segment appears to reflect earliest Christianity’s celebration of the Lord’s Supper. In Mark 6:39 and 8:6 Jesus functions as presiding officer. The disciples’ distribution of the loaves and fish in Mark 6:41 and 8:6 as well as their gathering up of the frarments (Mark 6:43 and 8:8) corresponds to the duties assigned the “deacons” in primitive celebration. The blessing or thanksgiving (Mark 6:41; 8:6) and the breaking of the bread (Mark 6:41 and 8:6), in which verbs are used from which the ancient church derived its technical terms for the thanksgiving and breaking of bread (eulogeo and klao), reflect practices that have continued till the present. Even the references to the hour of the day and the arrangement of the crowds into companies of fifty and one hundred (Mark 6:35, 39–40) reflect ancient Christian practice. Mark’s reference to the “green grass” on which Jesus commands the crowds to sit (Mark 6:39) could allude to Western, Roman practice of celebrating the Supper at Passover, a springtime, April festival. Could the ancient church’s celebration have fathered the feeding narrative? Or, is the assumption of a community creation trajected back into the life and career of Jesus too heavy a burden for that community to bear? There is more: Mark 8:17–21 and Matthew 16:7–10 record the disciples’ neglecting bread for their trip to the other side of Gailee, and Jesus’ remonstrance at their having tripped over a dietary minim when infinitely more was at stake. Jesus says, “when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect. . .and the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?” (Mark 8:19–20), and to their answers replies, “do you not yet understand?” (Mark 8:21). Is this scene intended to furnish an allegorical interpretation of the feedings? To these questions John would respond with a robust denial. For this evangelist the feeding is a “sign,” the third after Cana (John 2:1–11), and the healing of the official’s son (John 4:46–54). That is, it is a tangible, palpable event calculated to point beyond itself to Jesus’ significance and power. Without that tangibility, there would be no sign, and nothing beyond it to which to point. Of course, whatever it was to which that tangible event was intended to point could be skewed, misinterpreted. And the crowd missed the point. It hailed Jesus as “the prophet who is to come into the world” and rushed to make him king (John 6:14–15). But the sign, the tangible event needed to be there for the point to be missed.
The narrative of Jesus’ walking on the water (Mark 6:45–52; Matt. 14:22–33; John 6:16–21) has led to innumerable contortions on the part of interpreters. One reckons on a wooden plank on which Jesus was balancing; another on an optical illusion of the disciples who imagined Jesus walking on the water when he was actually walking along the shore; still another opines that in ancient times Palestine experienced periods of cold which would have frozen the water close to the shore of Gennesaret, so that Jesus was walking on ice floes. Or again, another attempts to explain the event against the background of altered states of consciousness on the part of the eyewitnesses. For those who spurn such notions as hostile to the intention of the texts, there is always the expedient of appealing to Graeco-Roman parallels, according to which divine men walk by foot on the sea, a scene allegedly replicated by the evangelists intent on accenting the epiphany.48 The scene is especially vulnerable with those who oppose the transcendent or the religious, among whom naturalists and biologists may be the most ardent. Since the Enlightenment scientists have been wary of assigning to the divine what cannot be grasped by reason, since the reasonable or rational