Researchers in Israel reckon they have scientific evidence that the Messiah could really have performed a couple of the most famous stories told in the Bible’s New Testament
Jesus Christ is known to have performed a number of alleged miracles in his time – but scientists appear to have backed up a couple of them in a study.
For the many millions of Christian believers, The Son of God has turned water into wine, walked on water and risen from the dead. The carpenter also fed 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two fish as well as helping his pals catch an enormous amount of fish after they struggled to catch any at all.
As unbelievable as these last two sound – which are known respectively in the Bible as the ‘Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes’ and the ‘Miraculous Catch of Fish’ – they might well have been possible. Both apparent events happened in the Sea of Galilee, known today as Lake Kinneret in Israel.
The Gospel of Matthew tells how Jesus miraculously transformed just five bread loaves and two fish into sufficient sustenance for approximately 5,000 of his disciples.
Researchers findings have since explained how a mass fish die-off caused by oxygen depletion in the water could have enabled him to perform these two remarkable feats.
They suggest that powerful winds stirred up the deeper water layers, stripping them of oxygen and consequently asphyxiating the fish.
This would have caused the fish to float to the surface, presenting an ideal chance to gather them as they lay lifeless in the water.
Whilst this account has remained inexplicable for centuries, this evidence might offer some scientific foundation for how events actually transpired, reports the Irish Star.
Researcher Yael Amitai, a physical limnologist from the Kinneret laboratory, explained: “The Sea of Galilee is a stratified lake. The upper layer is warm and oxygenated, while the lower layer is cold and lacks oxygen.
“When a strong westerly wind blows, it pushes the upper warmer layer of water from the lake’s west to the east, where it piles up, pressing on the existing water.
“In the west of the lake, water from the lower layer rises. In this way, fluctuations called internal waves are created in the water profile,” The Times of Israel reports.
Similar fish-killing events have occurred since, as recently discovered in the sea’s Tzalmon estuary, using 3D modelling to scan the lake.
Climate researcher Ehud Strobach from the Volcani Institute has also managed to demonstrate the phenomenon using both a dynamic lake model and an atmospheric model.
He revealed: “Using observations from the monitoring programme in the Sea of Galilee, we created short 3D lake simulations for two fish kill events.
“These simulations indicate the initiation of internal waves and upwelling of cold anoxic (oxygen-poor) water into the surface at the location and time of the fish kill events.”
Regarding the timing of the event, it appears fairly certain the supposed ‘miracle’, the only one documented in all four gospels, most probably occurred in the late spring to early summer.
This is because of the swift temperature shifts – when the water deepens during that period, it would bring more dead fish to the surface.
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