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April 13, 2006 4:00 AM PDT
Newsmaker: Did the Sea of Galilee ice over 2,000 years ago?
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Audio: Did Jesus really walk on ice?
April 5, 2006
In 1992, Nof attempted to provide an oceanographic explanation for the biblical story of the Red Sea crossing by the ancient Israelites. More recently, the Florida State University oceanographer co-published a paper (click for PDF) that offered a paleolimnological explanation for walking on water in the Sea of Galilee.
Press reports reduced the substance of his research finding to a hot headline that triggered passionate responses--including a fair share of hate mail. But Nof was careful to avoid drawing any conclusion about the New Testament account that Jesus walked on water in Lake Kinneret (known outside of Israel as the Sea of Galilee). CNET News.com recently caught up with Nof to learn more about his findings.
Q: How were you and your colleagues able to recreate the conditions that prevailed in the Galilee region 2,000 years ago?
Nof: There is now a fairly standard oceanographic technique where you can go and take cores from the bottom of the ocean--in this case, the bottom of the Mediterranean--and you look at the sediments on the bottom and you take a core that is, say, 10 meters deep--or whatever it is--and you bring it up and you look at the shells that are inside that core. And you can tell the time by where you find (items) in the core. So, you can identify shells of different animals at each depth, and you can tell from what animals the temperature of the ocean was at that time.
When you approached this question, what part of Lake Kinneret did you focus on?
Nof: Nobody drilled in the Kinneret, but people drilled in the Mediterranean, which is not that far and the air masses are very similar. We looked at some cores that were in the middle of the Mediterranean not far from Sicily...If you look at these cores, you'll see that 2,600 years ago there was a dip in temperature of several degrees. This is the temperature of the water in the Mediterranean. Now the heat capacity of water is much higher than the air. So for a drop of 4 degrees in the sea, there probably was a much larger drop in the atmosphere--at least as big.
You talk about this concept called "Springs Ice." Can you explain that?
Nof: If you look at the way that the usual river just spreads into the ocean, the river is fresh and the ocean is salty. So the river water is floating on top. That's why you see it from the air normally. With springs water it's the opposite situation: The lake is fresh and the spring is salty, so the water from the springs go to the bottom. It forms a plume on the bottom. The ice can only form above that plume--not on the entire lake. And the reason that it can form only above the plume is that the salty plume prevents convection.
When you cool fresh water from the top, usually what happens is that the water on the top gets heavier than the water below and it sinks to the bottom. So before you form ice on the top of a lake, you usually have to bring the entire lake down to fairly low temperatures.
In this particular case, you don't. The lower water can stay any temperature that it started with because nothing falls down to there. The cold temperature goes immediately to the formation of ice.
These days, the Sea of Galilee region is fairly warm. What was the average temperature during the time of Jesus?
Nof: It was probably maybe 10 degrees Fahrenheit lower than today, on average, according to these cores. I don't know how much it was. I'm telling you what we did, taking these cores to represent what happened above the Sea of Galilee.
Do you have an idea what the odds were of Springs
Ice forming in Northern Israel back then?
Nof: All we know we can say about the Kinneret is because of what we did there. We took the temperature record in the last 20 years and from that record, you know, how it varies from day to day. And we lowered the mean of that record by that temperature difference that I mentioned to you. When we lowered the mean, we got a different record, a kind of a hypothetical record, and we consider that record to be representative of what the temperature above the lake was back at that time. And from that, we computed the likelihood that there will be ice.
See more CNET content tagged:
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36 comments
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COMBINED ***** OFF.
a history of lying and changing the "facts" to try and woo more
followers, which equals more money.
Tool.
His brain is being affected by that flux capacitor helmet he's wearing.
Why not, you know, instead of complaining... Try to debunk his
information with your own facts?
agree or remain silent are normal folks. How handy for him.
Prof. Nof isn't getting negative emails because of his theory that
Springs Ice might have occasionionally formed near shore of the
Sea of Galilee 2000 years ago. The trouble is that he's using
that to "bust" the biblical account of Jesus walking on water.
That's where his science has been left behind, to be replaced
with a grade-schooler's skill-level of application. He's not
"miracle busting" as he boasted to a Washington Post reporter.
He's only busting a straw man of his own construction. That's
why he's not being taken seriously by those in serious science.
The miracle he claims to be explaining, as recorded in the the
gospels of Matthew 14, Mark 6 and John 6, all tell of high winds
and waves -- not conducive to his non-mixing plume. They also
place the action out in the middle of the lake, not near shore.
Those renaissance paintings of Jesus standing on a tranquil
ripply pond are not even close to accurate portrayls of the
recorded events.
How can someone be taken seriously for busting a miracle
account when it's clear that he's not at all well informed on the
event he's busting?
Nof is no victim of "extremists". He's just a science guy who is
publicly debunking his own flawed mental images. Perhaps his
collegues are quiet out of embarrassment for him.
extremists".
Have you been reading his e-mails? I'd think the guy reading the e-
mail would have a better opinion on if they are extremists or not
than someone chastising him for having an opinion based on
relative scientific evidence rather than a fantasy book.
It is sad that He did not take all the facts. and then proceed with his effort.
By the way I have heard that his Red Sea idea may have have better credibility. It was a strong wind and God brought them to the place he knew before had a good place to cross.
"When evening came, He was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it."
These conditions don't sound like the ones needed to form "spring ice" like Dr. Nof said.
and if you touch them you become unclean.
What REALLY doesn't add up is how people can pick and choose
what parts of the bible suit them best, and then discard everything
else.
I'm sure Jebus also said that drugs are bad.
or not. Why do you have to live the way somebody else decided
it? So, civil law was not enough to control the savages, so they
made this "God" the one who is in charge of your "after-life" "If
You don`t behave, You will die forever" in other words, the
powerfull thretens your trascendency, this way they don`t get
robbed, the keep the power and control of the mortals. The
prove is that all religions orders you not to kill, no to steal, no
to... the same thing (in different levels) but the scence is the
same. So there is only one god, and is the same for
everyreligion... "the all mighty power."
Wars because of god have being the fight for power, god is the
excuse that the popet master uses to justify its thirst for more
power. Even Bush included god in its war intinerary.
I do believe that everyone and each of us, have the right to
believe in whtever he or she chooses, and just the way I like to
have respect to my belief, I respect other peoples opinion, so the
autor has the right to think the way he does, now, if we believe
or not in what he says, that is our choice.
autor has the right to think the way he does, now, if we believe
or not in what he says, that is our choice."
Science claims to speak about objective facts, testable by all, not
personal opinions. Nof cites objective facts, such as temperature
and possible phenomena. He interjects those facts into an
historical event, recorded in objectively available texts. He's not
talking opinions, he's supposing an objective theory based on
facts.
The trouble is, his facts do not support his conclusion.
And, the evolution (ex nihlo) of religions from social pragmatism
is also just a theory, one which has many critics and troubles of
its own, but that's another topic.
Its a joke... speculation about Jesus is a non-starter at best, and at worst, shows anti-christian bias.
Maybe c|net would care to run some stories about the prophet Mohammed and all the reasons why he is fake... In the name of Atmospheric Science or Oceanography, of course!
I would like you to launch a new "scientific investigation" as to whether or not the prophet Mohammed is fake.
I'm sure you can get the required Climatologists, Topologists, Marine Biologists, etc.
Thanks!
How then can you even ask the Question "Is Mohammed fake?"?
We used to be Muslims, until we studied the origins and questioned the root of the faith, which I may admit, was afaith invain.
serves to fire up the lunatic fringe.
We need better from you than this.....
serves to fire up the lunatic fringe.
We need better from you than this.....
thing I have ever heard regarding the Jesus myth. Why this story
ever made it past any editor is beyond me.
I know that there is quite high mountainous regions with substantial snow in Southern Lebanon just North of the Sea of Galillee and I have been to Bethlehem and Jerusalem in January and February and I know from direct experience that it can get very cold. So I would imagine that it would be possible for the Sea of Galillee to freeze over.
I personally am interested to see any form of rational explanations offered for stories of Jesus lifetime, because essentially I see that worldwide religions are obviously related to this important historic period, but I have also learnt that the original history was a period plagued by a lot of conflict, particularly surrounding different religious beliefs.
Recently in fact I've just been reading about the Ebionite Christians, who were claimed to be Palestinian Jewish Christians who were strict adderents to the original Jewish law. They claimed to have been from the original family of Jesus, and that Jesus was a normal human being. They claimed that he was a 'perfect human and beloved of God' but they also claimed that Mary and Joseph were his natural parents and that Joseph was the true father of Jesus, and that Jesus claimed direct lineage from the Kings of Solomon and David, through the patrilineal blood line of Joseph. So therefore the claim of the Pauline Christians was instead a mythologisation, which was meant as a way to discredit the true family and blood line of Jesus, as opponents to the Herodian dynasty which had been installed by the Romans.
The Ebionites also claimed that the Pauline Christians were Greek Gentiles who were opposed to them because they wanted to change the original religion to make an adapted version that was more suitable for the Greek 'gentiles'. The Greek and Roman culture was very different to that of the locals of the region. For example the Ebionites proscribed circumcision as their forefathers had done, whereas the Greeks did not.
The Ebionites could be said to be the early Christians who were persecuted by the Greeks and Romans who then adapted the religion and claimed it for themselves. The Ebionites are said by some to have migrated East through Jordan, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, whereas other reports claim that they were said to have disappeared during the 4th century.
There is evidence that the Mandaiests, Sabians and other gnostic sects described as Jewish Christians may have gone on to influence the teachings of Mohamed through influence during his travels in Syria, where the Ebionites and other related sects are said to have migrated. Aramaic was still widely spoken in Syria and throughout the region, so therefore as Phoenica and Canaan was colonised by the Greeks and Romans, it was inevitable that anyone who was persecuted in the region would be most likely to migrate East.
Regarding the parting of the Red Sea in relation to earlier stories - I've seen another theory described to do with volcanic eruption of Vesuvius. The Italian volcano is on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, and is quite close geographically to Egypt and Sinai. It may well have contributed to a potential tsunami, in a Northern part of Sinai, where the pre-tsunami conditions would cause the sea or marsh-land or water of any channels in the coastal area to be first sucked away by a vacuum - and then later followed by a tsunami.
How long these conditions would take to occur, I do not know.
The gospels as we know them today came from translations of the Greek and Roman versions.
The Greeks also deliberately mis-translated and editted the original Aramaic gospels, because they deliberately wanted to mythologise Jesus.
The original Greek and Roman mythologies are full of virgin births. The original Aramaic gospels of the Ebionites did not include the story of the virgin birth. It was a later edition by the Greeks.
The Greek orthodox still today retained supremacy within the Christian Churches of the Middle East.
The region was in the process of being occupied by the Greeks and Romans, so therefore they were the ones who were persecuting the original Jewish Christians.
There still retain today evidence among some of the traditional Palestinian Bedouins for example, remnants of ancient Jewish practice, that they buried as they continued to be persecuted.
The reason the modern Christian faith is so different to the original Jewish faith, is because it is essentially a Roman/Greek adaptation which was mythologised in order to fit in with the Greek and Roman mythology.
Regarding the story of walking on water, I don't know about whether or not it's part of the original Aramaic scripture. I would have to find out. It could be a later addition by the Greeks/Romans.