Monday, April 4, 2022

Jesus Walking on Water in the Synoptic Gospels: Informed by Greco-Roman or Second Temple Literature?

 

Some scholars draw attention to the sea-walking motif in Greco-Roman literature, where not only the gods but even certain divine men are ascribed the power to walk on water . . . . There are, however, some important differences and qualifications that should be taken into account. For instance, divinity is rather loosely ascribed to Xerxes for bridging the Hellespont (Herodotus, Hist. 7.56; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 3.30-31), a technological achievement rather than a miracle . . . Unlike Jesus, Abaris requires the assistance of a magical arrow to travel over waters (Porphyry, Vit. Pyth. 29). Besides the gods themselves, the closest parallels are found in references to sons of the gods, who are more straightforwardly described walking on water: Euphemus, son of Poseidon (Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. 1.179-84); Iron, son of Poseidon (Hesiod = Ps. Eratosthenes, frg. 182); and Hercules, son of Zeus (Seneca, Herc. Fur. 322-24). Yet none of these divine men both walk upon the sea and recuse others from the sea’s perils as Jesus does in Matthew. While this does liken him more to the gods in the Greco-Roman literature in this respect (Homer, Il. 13.26-20; Virgil, Aen. 5.800-21; Hesiod, Homeric Hymns 22; Theocritus, Id. 22.1-26; Diodorus Siculus, Hist. 4.43.1-2; BGU 423.6-7 = SelPap I, 112), a number of OT resonances in Matt 14:22=233 )Heil, Jesus, 31-67) make it more likely that Jesus’s sea-walking ability is to be interpreted primarily within a Jewish context, which reserves sea-walking for Yahweh alone . . .(Ray M. Lozano, The Proskynesis of Jesus in the New Testament: A Study on the Significance of Jesus as an Object of “Proskuneo” in the New Testament Writings [Library of New Testament Studies 609; London: T&T Clark, 2020], 57 n. 18)

 

Further Reading


Peter M. Head on the High Christology of Matthew's Account of Jesus' Walking on the Water 


Blog Archive