The miracle of the loaves and fishes receives scientific endorsement

Nov. 4 () –

A three-dimensional model of atmosphere and lake has elucidated the mechanisms of the 2012 fish die-off in the Sea of ​​Galilee, where ‘miraculous catches’ of fish occurred 2,000 years ago.

The emergence of water with low oxygen content was identified as the mechanism of fish mortality. caused by internal wind-driven waves. Previous conditions were identified for fish mortality to occur.

At Lake Kinneret (the biblical Sea of ​​Galilee), Israel, westerly winds induce internal waves of significant amplitude. These waves give rise to an upwelling of colder, oxygen-poor water from the hypolimnetic (lower in a thermally stratified lake) and metalimnetic (transitional) layers into the surface mixed layer.

If upwelling occurs shortly after the onset of annual thermal stratification, when the surface mixed layer extends over a narrow depth range, but the lower layer is already anoxic, there is the potential for mass fish kills, as these cannot escape the anoxic water that is introduced into the surface mixed layer along the western coast.

The new study, led by Yael Amitel, of the Kinneret Limnological Laboratoryused a coupled three-dimensional atmosphere-lake model to elucidate the mechanisms behind these significant and infrequent fish kills in Lake Kinneret.

Surprisingly, currently fish mortality events They occur in the same place on the lake where the biblical miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and fishes occurred and presumably miraculous fishing two millennia before the present, which may explain the appearance of large quantities of easy-to-collect fish near the shore described in biblical narratives, according to the authors.

The study’s conclusions are published in Water Resources Research.

The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is one of the miracles of Jesus who, with a small amount of food, He was able to feed many people.

The event is recounted six times in the Gospels: the four evangelists describe the firstin which five thousand men are satisfied with five loaves and two fish; Matthew the Apostle and Mark also relate the second, in which four thousand men are fed with seven loaves and “a few fish.”