february morning
The four gospels of the New Testament each make a claim that Jesus walked on water.
Only Matthew's gospel troubles to mention that Peter at his own request, also walked on the water when Jesus beckoned him to, before sinking purportedly due to his lack of faith.
Some commentators suggest that a detail like Peter walking on the water is not something one would ever forget or leave out of a gospel if one had lived through such an event and were writing it down.
The implication is that the lack of a mention of Peter walking on the water in three gospels is a contradiction and points to the gospel narratives, possibly all of them, as being fictionalised and untrue.
There may be other explanations.
Police investigators of today maintain that in any contemporaneous eye witness accounts, there are always disparities.
As far as they are concerned, such things are to be expected and may not invalidate the testimonies.
Scholars believe that the apostles were with Jesus for between one and three years.
During that time they saw the dead being raised, the blind given back their sight, paralysed people getting up and walking, demoniacs freed from the domination of evil spirits, a handful of bread slices being used to feed 5000 people, Jesus in physicality becoming luminous with divine light, and so on.
The apostle John reminisced that all the books in the world could not contain all the things Jesus did.
Is it possible then, that after experiencing all these events directly themselves, mentioning Peter walking on the water, wasn't a particularly vital piece of the history or even particularly interesting for Peter's old companions and friends?
The gospel of Mark doesn't mention Peter walking on the water but we might adduce a more direct reason for that.
Mark was Peter's secretary and the gospel of Mark was written under Peter's authority.
It is not hard to conceive of Peter playing down his own importance in the narrative and omitting this gem.
The gospel of Luke was written by Paul's secretary. Paul himself was not an eye witness to the walking on water incident and only encountered Jesus after Jesus had been killed and rose from the dead.
Paul's direct knowledge of the life of Jesus is believed to have been based on his contacts with the apostles who formerly he had persecuted.
Paul has been described by the late British philosopher Anthony Flew as a "first class intellectual," and may not have thought Peter's brief moment on the water was the salient part of the story recounted to him by the apostles, the salient part being that Jesus could walk on water at will.
John's gospel was written by an eye witness, that is to say by an apostle who was there throughout Jesus public ministry.
We assume the apostle John who wrote the fourth gospel was in the boat at the time Jesus walked up to it on the lake. But he mightn't have been. Every apostle did not witness every incident. At times they were off on assignment, as it were.
Again we must ask ourselves, how important would the bit about Peter be to the overall memoir of any gospel writer? Bear in mind that we understand John to have been very old when he finally wrote his gospel down.
Matthew's gospel was traditionally believed to be the first one written.
I tend to hold to this tradition. In the present era, scholars tend to suggest Mark came first.
My instinct was always that Jesus' call to the educated, literate, numerate tax collector Matthew, connotes the possibility that Matthew was writing stuff down as it happened. If I'm correct in this, Matthew's gospel would effectively be contemporaneous with Jesus life and death and resurrection from the dead.
Scholars who tend towards my position often assert that there was an earlier version of Matthew written in Hebrew and that the present version we possess is based on a later translation of the lost Hebrew version into another language.
My point here is that if Matthew was writing contemporaneously, why yes, that may explain why he mentioned Peter walking on the water. Any of us might dwell on it if it just happened yesterday. It would have seemed splendid and wondrous and unprecedented and all the rest of it.
But it wasn't the point.
The other gospel witnesses, on mature reflection, having lived through Jesus' mission on earth, and having lived long after it, having seen and been a part of such signs and wonders everyday as never before had been seen on earth, may quite reasonably in their memoirs have been much less focussed on that strange brief moment in Peter's life.
The other gospel writers may also have thought that since Matthew had described Peter walking on water, there was no further need to mention it. The incident is not a central one to the good news of the Lord and the lesson it demonstrated had been clearly expounded already.
This leads to another perspective.
The whole purpose of each gospel witness was to impart central truths that Jesus had brought to them in his actions and his life, in his courage and his teaching, in his friendship and his love.
The central truth of the gospels is not the amazing miracles Jesus performs or enables his apostles to perform or enables his followers to perform to this day.
The central truth of the gospel is Jesus Christ dying for each one of us on a cross so that we may live, and then conquering death so that we may know he is Lord and thus live forever.
The clear guidance Jesus left to us was to love God with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls, and all our strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves.
In this context, the moment when Peter walked on the water is not the most important detail or even a very significant one for every gospel witness.
Only Matthew's gospel troubles to mention that Peter at his own request, also walked on the water when Jesus beckoned him to, before sinking purportedly due to his lack of faith.
Some commentators suggest that a detail like Peter walking on the water is not something one would ever forget or leave out of a gospel if one had lived through such an event and were writing it down.
The implication is that the lack of a mention of Peter walking on the water in three gospels is a contradiction and points to the gospel narratives, possibly all of them, as being fictionalised and untrue.
There may be other explanations.
Police investigators of today maintain that in any contemporaneous eye witness accounts, there are always disparities.
As far as they are concerned, such things are to be expected and may not invalidate the testimonies.
Scholars believe that the apostles were with Jesus for between one and three years.
During that time they saw the dead being raised, the blind given back their sight, paralysed people getting up and walking, demoniacs freed from the domination of evil spirits, a handful of bread slices being used to feed 5000 people, Jesus in physicality becoming luminous with divine light, and so on.
The apostle John reminisced that all the books in the world could not contain all the things Jesus did.
Is it possible then, that after experiencing all these events directly themselves, mentioning Peter walking on the water, wasn't a particularly vital piece of the history or even particularly interesting for Peter's old companions and friends?
The gospel of Mark doesn't mention Peter walking on the water but we might adduce a more direct reason for that.
Mark was Peter's secretary and the gospel of Mark was written under Peter's authority.
It is not hard to conceive of Peter playing down his own importance in the narrative and omitting this gem.
The gospel of Luke was written by Paul's secretary. Paul himself was not an eye witness to the walking on water incident and only encountered Jesus after Jesus had been killed and rose from the dead.
Paul's direct knowledge of the life of Jesus is believed to have been based on his contacts with the apostles who formerly he had persecuted.
Paul has been described by the late British philosopher Anthony Flew as a "first class intellectual," and may not have thought Peter's brief moment on the water was the salient part of the story recounted to him by the apostles, the salient part being that Jesus could walk on water at will.
John's gospel was written by an eye witness, that is to say by an apostle who was there throughout Jesus public ministry.
We assume the apostle John who wrote the fourth gospel was in the boat at the time Jesus walked up to it on the lake. But he mightn't have been. Every apostle did not witness every incident. At times they were off on assignment, as it were.
Again we must ask ourselves, how important would the bit about Peter be to the overall memoir of any gospel writer? Bear in mind that we understand John to have been very old when he finally wrote his gospel down.
Matthew's gospel was traditionally believed to be the first one written.
I tend to hold to this tradition. In the present era, scholars tend to suggest Mark came first.
My instinct was always that Jesus' call to the educated, literate, numerate tax collector Matthew, connotes the possibility that Matthew was writing stuff down as it happened. If I'm correct in this, Matthew's gospel would effectively be contemporaneous with Jesus life and death and resurrection from the dead.
Scholars who tend towards my position often assert that there was an earlier version of Matthew written in Hebrew and that the present version we possess is based on a later translation of the lost Hebrew version into another language.
My point here is that if Matthew was writing contemporaneously, why yes, that may explain why he mentioned Peter walking on the water. Any of us might dwell on it if it just happened yesterday. It would have seemed splendid and wondrous and unprecedented and all the rest of it.
But it wasn't the point.
The other gospel witnesses, on mature reflection, having lived through Jesus' mission on earth, and having lived long after it, having seen and been a part of such signs and wonders everyday as never before had been seen on earth, may quite reasonably in their memoirs have been much less focussed on that strange brief moment in Peter's life.
The other gospel writers may also have thought that since Matthew had described Peter walking on water, there was no further need to mention it. The incident is not a central one to the good news of the Lord and the lesson it demonstrated had been clearly expounded already.
This leads to another perspective.
The whole purpose of each gospel witness was to impart central truths that Jesus had brought to them in his actions and his life, in his courage and his teaching, in his friendship and his love.
The central truth of the gospels is not the amazing miracles Jesus performs or enables his apostles to perform or enables his followers to perform to this day.
The central truth of the gospel is Jesus Christ dying for each one of us on a cross so that we may live, and then conquering death so that we may know he is Lord and thus live forever.
The clear guidance Jesus left to us was to love God with all our hearts, all our minds, all our souls, and all our strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves.
In this context, the moment when Peter walked on the water is not the most important detail or even a very significant one for every gospel witness.
posted by heelers | 5:57 AM
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