Researchers present explanation for Jesus' fishing miracle

Researchers claim to have solved the mystery of the "miraculous catch of fish" from the Gospel of John. In an article for the scientific journal"Water Resources Research" (October issue), scientists from Australia and Israel describe the fish miracle from the 21st chapter of the Gospel of John as a rare fish kill in the Sea of Galilee.

"Remarkably, today's fish kills occur in the same part of the lake where the biblical bread and fish miracle, and presumably the miraculous catch of fish, occurred," the researchers write. They collected a large amount of data on water, temperature and wind at the Sea of Galilee. According to the study, in summer the lake was divided into a cold lower layer with a low oxygen content and an upper, warmer and oxygen-rich layer. The shoals of fish live in the upper zone.

Rare natural event could have led to miracle

The researchers attributed the fish mortality to a rare mixing of the different water layers in the lake caused by strong winds. Particularly in spring, these winds caused the water to shift, causing oxygen-poor water to rise to the surface and lead to the death of many fish. As a result, masses of them appeared on the surface of the lake - an easy catch for fishermen. Tests on a 3D model of the lake have confirmed the theory.

According to the research team, however, such an event is very rare. The reason: many factors would have to coincide. Strong winds would have to swirl through the lake shortly after the onset of thermal differentiation in spring. According to the scientists, such phenomena also occur in other bodies of water. For the Sea of Galilee, they report cases from 2012, 2007 and the 1990s.

Many biblical scholars today interpret the miracle described in the Gospel of John symbolically. They do not seek scientific justification for it. (KNA)