Was the ‘Miracle of feeding the 5,000’ in the Gospels a fish-kill? Yes, say scientists

Jesus Christ famously fed a multitude of 5,000 people with just five loaves of bread and two small fish, as per the canonical Gospels of Mark, Luke and John. But can this episode be explained by science?

A multi-institutional team of environmental scientists and physical limnologists feel they have the answers. Their recent research posits that the miracle could, in fact, have been a fish kill caused due to a unique phenomenon in the biblical Sea of Galilee, known as Lake Kinneret in today’s Israel.

The Sea of Galilee features in the Gospels as the site where events related to Jesus’ ministry took place.

“Several of Jesus’ disciples were local fishermen and Lake Kinneret had a prominent role in their teachings,” as per the study.

Two pivotal events during Christ’s ministry include The Miracle of Loaves and Fishes and The Miraculous Catch of Fish.

“According to the first biblical narrative, five loaves of bread and two small fish that Jesus handed out fed 5,000 people. In the second narrative, the apostles were fishing unsuccessfully until Jesus told them to try one last cast, which was rewarded with a great catch,” the paper noted.

What may have happened

The researchers found that Lake Kinneret is naturally divided into layers. Its lower levels or depths are cold. They have less levels of oxygen. The upper levels, meanwhile, are warmer and rich with oxygen. These upper layers are home to fish.

Every now and then, these two layers mixed with each other, leaving too little oxygen in the entire lake. This caused a fish die-off. The fish die and float onto the surface.

Sometimes, winds over the lake are so strong that oxygen is pulled up from the depths, leaving very little for the fish. In this case too, the fish die off and rise slowly to the surface of the lake.

The researchers used a coupled three-dimensional atmosphere-lake model to test their hypothesis.

They found that “the types of fish most abundant in the lake during die-offs typically wind up along the shore, where they could be easily collected by a hungry populace. They also found that lake conditions during the time of Jesus were similar to those that lead to modern fish die-offs, suggesting the miracles were merely coincidental events,” the portal Phys.org noted.

The northwestern shore of Lake Kinneret, Tabgha, may have been the spot where the miracles done by Christ may have taken place, as per the researchers.