Scientists aren’t fishing on this one.
New research has given a “plausible scientific basis” for two of Jesus Christ’s most iconic and biblically recorded miracles — along with a timeline for one of them — that occurred in the Sea of Galilee, known today as Israel’s Lake Kinneret.
The study shows a precedent of mass fish-killing — due to a lack of oxygen in the water — potentially allowing the historic figure Christ to conduct two separate acts: his “Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes” and later the “Miraculous Catch of Fish.”
“Current understanding of the physical limnology [ecosystem] of Lake Kinneret could provide a plausible scientific basis to those miracles,” study authors wrote.
Both Gospel-based events — on the northwestern shore area of the sea around Tabgha — involved the holy figure creating a surplus of fish for his disciples when they had run out of food.
The later incident — depicted in the Gospel of John after Christ’s resurrection — saw the followers’ nets “full of 153 large fish, but even with so many the net was not torn.”
The team suggests heavy winds churned lower levels of the water, leading to an anoxic — or oxygen-deprived — state that eventually suffocated the fish, making them rise to the surface, remarkably easy to net — and literally dead 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 lacks oxygen,”
researcher Yael Amitai
Comparable modern “fish kill” events have happened since the 1990s — and as recently as last year in the sea’s Tzalmon estuary — per the research, which used 3D modeling to scan the lake.
The natural but still rare phenomenon “may explain the appearance of large numbers of easy-to-collect fish close to the shore described in the biblical narratives,” the report added.
Similar happenings were observed in Lake Erie and North Carolina’s Neuse River Estuary as well.
Regarding the tale of “Loaves and Fishes,” researchers believe this revelation on fish kills offers a more precise timing for the event, in which Christ converted five bread loaves and two fish into enough food for about 5,000 followers, according to the Gospel of Matthew.
That miracle — the only one recorded in all four canonized Gospels — most likely occurred during the late spring or early summer because rapid temperature changes as the water deepens at that time would bring more dead fish to the surface.
The report comes after unrelated research that the Shroud of Turin was likely not used to wrap Christ’s mortal corpse.
