Keryg 2021: Other boats? Mark 4
35 That day when evening came, he said to his disciples, “Let us go over to the other side.” 36 Leaving the crowd behind, they took him along, just as he was, in the boat. There were also other boats with him. 37 A furious squall came up, and the waves broke over the boat, so that it was nearly swamped. 38 Jesus was in the stern, sleeping on a cushion. The disciples woke him and said to him, “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?”
39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, “Quiet! Be still!” Then the wind died down and it was completely calm.
40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?”
41 They were terrified and asked each other, “Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!”
What do you make of this sentence? In all my years of reading this story, even preaching on it, I overlooked it. Someone else pointed it out to me last Sunday. Baffled.
I wonder what happened to the other boats when the storm came up--had they already turned back? Why did they disappear?
Comments
I read somewhere that the fishing boats - usually around 27 feet long - had a crew of four (presumably needing space for nets, tackle, and the catch!), so maybe the other boats had made better time across the lake before the squall struck.
IOW, it may be that the boat Jesus was in was somewhat overcrowded, lower in the water than it would usually be, and perhaps therefore rather slower.
I'm speculating, of course.
I certainly wouldn't attempt to "spiritualise" it.
I have no idea what that reason might be in this case, though.
You might have something here. 13 people in one boat would have been dangerous. Therefore it is likely it took three or four boats for them to all get together on the other side.
My thought was that they - the 12 - were with Jesus in one rather overladen boat, which means that the *other boats* may have carried the rest of the party across the lake, perhaps more swiftly.
However there are 5 fishing in the boat at the end of John and the other verses don't back me up.
Most of the story works with a small convoy, the only issue being the singular boat in v 37
If the other boats were a little lighter then they could have been less swamped while still being there and scared. And when Jesus gets out, but if we are arguing from omission the entire disciples disappear (and Jesus was only in one boat)
The general crossing the lake pattern occurs several times, in mark 3 it is a little boat (Niv translation)
This first crossing in 5 we have boats. The return journey we have just a boat and just Jesus mentioned.
In mark 6 the disciples are in the boat. In mark 8 he gets into a boat with his disciples and a loaf.
Matthew, we have Peter and Andrew fishing (in a boat?) And James, John and Zebedee in a boat.
In the half corresponding passage to this one (interestingly Matthew and Mark seem slightly out of sync):
he gives orders to prepare to cross (from peters house? Rejects some travellers. Then he gets into The boat (which hasn't yet been mentioned explicitly)
His return journey is just in A boat.
Later on he gets into a boat and the events Mark records occur but they just moves on.
Luke they get into a boat 'one day' following the events described in mark and the other trips seem to be undescribed.
Interestingly while there are subtle variations in the events preceding. The journey in every case is tied to Legion.
In relation to the storm, to all intents and purposes those in the boat with Jesus were on their own. In the night, with the storm whipping up the waves there could have been another boat nearby, and a) no one would know it and b) even if they knew where other boats were there wouldn't be much they could do to help - a collision between two of the boats would be very likely if they tried to get close to each other, and would be almost certain to sink at least one of the boats. It takes a very special type of boat crew to be able to get alongside another boat in a storm to render aid, and there was no RNLI on that sea.
Handling an open boat in a severe squall would certainly be a hard job, especially if (as I suspect) it was rather overloaded...
When Jesus calmed the storm he rebuked them for their lack of faith despite the miracles they had witnessed and experienced in the previous days. It was all to teach them to trust him.
As for the question of the OP, it makes sense that there would be more than one boat. We know that James and John had a boat, and Peter and Andrew had a boat. As BF points out, the small boats would accommodate only a few, so more than one boat would be needed to transport them all.
*Edited to clarify the last sentence.
I note, though, that Jesus got into the boat to go across the sea (of Gallilee) to go across to the other side. Usually, the fishing boats stayed close to the shoreline because of the threats of major storms. I don't think they were designed to go trans Galilee as it were.
Whatever you think of that idea, it seems clear that Jesus was in the habit of crossing the lake on a fairly casual basis. I mean, there are several occasions where he does the trip across, then back again in what? 24 hours? and nobody makes a big deal of it. Get thrown out of the Gerasenes? no biggie, got boat, will travel back--immediately. And he does.
Given that at least four of the disciples and likely more had ties to the fishing industry, this was probably a pretty standard mode of travel for them. They were experienced (and I'm sure they had been in many squalls before, though this particular one was over expectations); they had family access to boats when needed, even to serve as a pulpit; they were apparently able to withdraw at least one boat from the service of the family business(es) to their own use without crippling those who normally used it.
I do NOT think that there were only two boats between the disciples, a la "James and John had a boat, and Peter and Andrew had a boat," because that implies that the disciples were leaving valuable boats to lie unused while they were on the road in Judea etc. (which is unlikely unless they were very rich), OR that they were regularly depriving the usual fishermen of their boat in order to ferry Jesus around. I don't see that. Much more likely that the family business(es) had several boats of different sizes, could spare at least one at any given time, and kept them in service while the disciples were elsewhere. Multiple boats also means you can have one being worked on (scraped, painted, repaired) while the others are out, which is good business sense if you can afford it--and I think they could.
Which is big, I wouldn't like to be stuck in the middle.
But at the same time there's probably a limit on commercially viable boat types.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_of_Galilee_Boat
It's just about the same size as Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.
Archaeology allows us to make some other suppositions e.g. about the size of the boats, although I think there is only one Galilean boat from that time for which we have direct archaeological evidence.
Matthew 8.23 on the face of it can be read as indicating a boat able to carry at least thirteen people, and Matthew 14.22 suggests at least twelve in a boat. Mark 6.12 again suggests a boat carrying at least thirteen.
I could go on, but I haven’t got the patience to make the links on the phone. Suffice it to say, there is consistent evidence in the Gospels of the use of boats which normally and reasonably accommodate twelve or thirteen persons.
“Rather small” then is a matter of what we use to compare it with.
There's a tradition that Mark wrote down St Peter's version of the gospel stories. The most widespread assumption these days is that Mark's gospel was written first and that Matthew and Luke had access to it. So it's just as plausible that as well as adding, they trimmed out incidentals that they didn't think were necessary.
There's also no mention of the cushion or where in the boat Jesus was in the other two accounts.
They don't add to the meaning of the story. Unless one has an unusually literal view on the nature and significance of scriptural authority, there doesn't have to be a reason to suppose there's anything significant about the other boats at all, beyond perhaps the persuasive possibility that we are dealing with an account that derives from an eye witness.
IIRC it’s a bit more complicated than that in that his description of specific incidents he is often fuller/more detailed than he other Gospel writers.
Clearly on this occasion a single boat was sufficiently large to take Jesus and all his disciples (conceivably more than just the twelve). And, however many boats from Tiberias were capable of taking a significant portion of the crowd (who, remember had the previous day numbered 5000 men). These don't sound like very small boats.
ISTM that there is very little in scripture that must be interpreted in a particular way. We meditate on a passage and find meaning for our lives in some aspects of that passage. To my mind, that is pretty close to what it means for the Lord to speak to us through scripture.
Mark has Jesus saying that the disciples should have understood the meaning of the 12 and the 7 basket fragments. (70/72 are numbers representing the gentile nations in Luke where Jesus has 70/72 apostles to the gentiles.) So it does not seem that the writer of Mark regards them as unimportant details.
Both strike me as unnecessarily spiritualised readings.