Credit: Lisa Kyle Young
The Bible is filled with accounts of natural phenomena that defy explanation: the parting of the Red Sea, Jesus walking on water and the flooding of the world for 40 days and nights, to name a few. If it's science's job to explain the mechanisms behind seemingly illogical events, Doron Nof, a physical oceanographer at Florida State University, is its shepherd. In 1992, Nof devised a theory to explain the parting of the Red Sea. Last month, Nof made waves again with a scientific rationalization for how Jesus may have walked on water. His answer: The son of God was supported by ice.
Nof determined that temperatures in Israel in Jesus' day were 10° F cooler than today. With the right three-day cold front, "spring ice," as he refers to it, could have formed in the Sea of Galilee. The meteorological phenomenon could have made it appear as if someone was walking on water, when they were in fact, gliding on ice.
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Seed asked Nof to discuss his theory as well as his greater brush with science and religion that it's caused.
According to your theory, Jesus didn't walk on water in the Sea of Galilee, he was just trampling on ice?
What I think is possible is that there was ice there during his lifetime. There is a very high likelihood there was ice above those salty springs—actually above the plumes generated by the salty streams, next to the village where he supposedly lived. Whether he walked on it or didn't walk on it or if it's related to the Biblical story, I don't know, but it's possible.
Courtesy Doron Nof
How does this phenomenon that you call "spring ice" come about?
The Galilee is a freshwater lake. And just as when a regular river dumps into the ocean, the [river] water floats on top because it's freshwater on top of salty water. At the Galilee, it's the opposite: the springs of salty water get into the freshwater lake. So the water from the springs sink to the bottom and form a plume, and it is only above the plume that freezing could take place—not the entire lake.
How thick would ice need to be to support a full-grown man.
It's about 6 inches or so. It would have needed to stay cold for about two to three days.
What is the likelihood of the same ice build-up to happen again?
Zero. The climate 2,500 years ago was much cooler. In today's climate, there is no way that the ice could form. On top of that, these salty springs have been diverted—they no longer empty into the Sea of Galilee. Even if they were still there—they diverted about 50 years ago—the likelihood of that ice today is literally zero.
Doesn't the fact that the ice is not likely at all to form now, and the fact that it formed only on rare occasions, make Jesus' walk at least a little miraculous?
Well, that's subject to the interpretation of the reader. I don't view it as miraculous, but maybe some other people do. We are talking about ice now—we need to distinguish between that and whatever the Biblical story is. There was a reason why the ice could have formed then and not now, and that's because the climate was cooler then. Climate changes; it doesn't stay fixed. If you look at how the climate was in the last 15,000 years, there have been tremendous fluctuations in it.