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Wednesday, April 04, 2018

Was it the resurrected Jesus walking on water?

BELATEDLY FOR EASTER: Walking on the Water, Revisited (Philip Jenkins, The Anxious Bench).
Rudolf Bultmann and others suggested that other early Resurrection appearances survive in the Gospels in the form of stories that are now associated with Jesus’ lifetime. Actually, that sort of confused reshuffling is all the more likely given what I said above about the forgotten parts of the earliest creeds. When the gospels were written, the writers had a lot of stories to deal with and didn’t exactly know what to do with some of them.

The Transfiguration (Mark 9) is the best known example of such a possible “displacement.” Here, though, I’m referring to the famous scene when Jesus is seen walking on the water (Mark 6: 47-51, Matt. 14.22-33, John 6.16-21), which is generally listed among the miracles Jesus performed during his lifetime. Plenty of scholars through history have noted the resemblances between this scene and the acknowledged post-Resurrection appearances, especially that in John 21.
Could be.

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