What does science say about the miracle of the loaves and fishes? Study gives new clues

And 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 upwelling of water with low oxygen content caused by internal waves driven by the wind was identified as the mechanism of fish mortality. 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 bottom layer is already anoxic, there is the potential for mass fish kills, as that 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 Laboratory, used a coupled three-dimensional atmosphere-lake model to elucidate the mechanisms behind these large and infrequent fish kills in Lake Kinneret.

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

The study’s findings 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, was able to feed many people.

The event is recounted six times in the Gospels: the four evangelists describe the first, in 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.”