Researchers say floating ice helped Jesus walk on water

Combining evidence of a cold snap 2,000 years ago with sophisticated mapping of the Sea of Galilee, Israeli and U.S. scientists have come up with an explanation of how Jesus could have walked on water.

Their answer: It was floating ice.

The scientists acknowledge that the Sea of Galilee, in what is now northern Israel, has never frozen in modern times. But they say geological core samples suggest that average temperatures were lower in Jesus' day and that there were at least two protracted cold spells in the region 1,500 to 2,500 years ago.

In addition to chilly weather, their explanation depends on a rare property of the Sea of Galilee, known to modern-day Israelis as Lake Kinneret. It is fed by salty springs along its western shore that produce plumes of dense water, thermally isolating areas that could freeze even if the entire lake did not, they assert.

"I don't know whether the story is based on someone seeing Jesus walk on ice," said Doron Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University. "All I know is that during that time, a freeze could have happened — and it could have looked like someone was walking on water, particularly if it rained after the ice formed."

According to the New Testament books of Matthew, Mark and John, Jesus' disciples were out on the Galilee at night when a storm came up. Jesus walked to the men, who thought he was a ghost, according to the accounts.

This is not the first time Nof, 61, has attempted to debunk a biblical miracle. In 1992, he and Nathan Paldor, an atmospheric scientist at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote an article proposing that strong winds across the narrow, shallow Gulf of Suez could have lowered the Red Sea by 10 feet, allowing the Israelites to cross to safety and then swallowing up an Egyptian army within minutes when the wind stopped, as described in the book of Exodus.

Nof said he hopes critics will realize he is an "equal-opportunity miracle buster" who has taken on Moses and Jesus.

"This isn't going to convince a believer not to believe, and nobody's trying to do that," he said. "I personally believe that all these biblical stories are based on some truth."

Darrell Bock, a professor of New Testament studies at the Dallas Theological Seminary, lightheartedly dismissed the idea that Jesus walked on ice.

"I'm just cold to the theory," said Bock, author of "Breaking the Da Vinci Code," which defends Christian beliefs challenged in the "Da Vinci Code."

"I tend to treat it as a real miracle," Bock said.

Other reaction to the theory has not been so restrained.

"I get hate e-mail on the average every three minutes," Nof said. One e-mail called him "the most stupid person on the planet" and closed by wishing that he "go to hell where you belong."

Nof's research appears in the April issue of the Journal of Paleolimnology, a publication on the reconstruction of lake histories. Nof's co-authors are biostatistics professor Ian McKeague of Columbia University and Paldor.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.