The Miraculous Crossing of the Sea: (John 6. 16–21)

Abstract

One of the more neglected pericopes in the Fourth Gospel is the so-called ‘Walking on the Water’(John 6. 16–21). Scholars have discussed the passage largely in the context of the debate concerning John's sign source or his dependence on the Synoptics, notably Mark, and have done so with an eye not so much to the substance of John's account as to its importance in the sequence of events in John 6.1Treatment of the passage in itself has occurred almost exclusively in commentaries.2The miraculous crossing of the lake has regularly been judged to be merely ‘a miracle within a miracle’, so that the main point of the passage remains Jesus' walking on the water3or his epiphanic self-manifestation (έγώ είμι).4