A miracle on the rocks?

Doron Nof, a professor of oceanography at Florida State University, figures it was cold enough a couple thousand years ago for there to be ice in the Sea of Galilee.

OK. The guy presumably knows about bodies of water. Let's concede that it got a little nippy back in New Testament places and times. But here's the thing: Nof figures that Jesus didn't walk on water, but stepped onto a hunk of ice floating on the water.

Now my first thought is that if all Jesus did was walk on water, then any rube could do it. Even back in the day, something that anybody could do was not considered a miracle. Even 2000 years ago, people had standards when it came to wonders and marvels and such. If it was ice, then the bigger miracle would have been that Jesus didn't slip and fall on his holy derierre.

What Nof misses with his computer models and conjectures is that the historicity of a miracle is less important than its meaning. Miracle stories are not about abracadabra and sawing a lady in half and floating in the air, but, at least in Jesus' case, saying something about the Kingdom of God: How, with the coming of Christ, the Kingdom is breaking into a world where people sink, people drown, but God can save us in spite of the laws of nature and our own stupidity, which makes folks think they can, say, walk on water or even explain away a miracle story.

See http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/wireStory?id=1805951 for more on party-pooper Nof and his theories.