7. Jesus walking on water and its predecessors
The four books known as the Gospels were written long after the life of Jesus Christ, according to the consensus of most Bible scholars, and were authored by Hellenistic Jews in the Greek language. They were not named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, nor were they first-hand witnesses to the stories which they committed to papyrus, in Greek. Additionally, the older gospels, as well as other ancient documents, were referenced in the writing of each, explaining some, though not all, of the differences as well as the similarities they share. Some find these historical facts to be unacceptable. So be it. For those with open minds they go a long way towards explaining the impossible, as well as the improbable. The tale of Jesus walking upon the water, which appears in Mark, Matthew, and John (as well as Peter’s tentative attempt to do likewise) has a precedent, which was known to the writers of the story.
The god Orion (the Hunter), was the son of Poseidon, Greek god of the sea, and Euryale. As the son of Poseidon Orion had the ability to walk upon the surface of the sea, even when it was wrought by storms, and did so frequently. This ability, and Orion’s resorting to it when he traveled to the island of Chios and ravaged the daughter of the island’s ruler, was described in Greek legends, including by Homer in the Iliad and the Odyssey, and in greater detail by the poet Hesiod in his Astronomy, fully seven centuries before the life of Christ. Walking upon water was thus a behavior attributable to gods well-documented before the life of Jesus of Nazareth was described by the Hellenistic writers, and it would have been unthinkable for the Son God to lack the abilities demonstrated by the gods of the ancients. Virgil’s Aeneid, written about two decades BCE, reiterated the ability of walking upon water as exercised by Orion.