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Judas, agent of God

Sliding over the ice

By Judi McLeod
Monday, april 10, 2006
Last Easter, it was the "death-becomes-her" George Felos dominating the news on Terri Schiavo's death by dehydration and starvation.

Felos and Company, overshadowed by the death of Pope John Paul II, went skittering back to the stage wings.

This Easter, it's Judas, agent of God in what is sure to be the movie and a Jesus who sort of slides over the ice to his waiting apostles.

Call it the imagination of this trying-to-be-Christian, but timing is everything when it comes to monumental discoveries of the secular world.

We won't go into a pre-Easter Judas the hero out of respect for Holy Week. Suffice it to say that it won't likely be anytime soon that the sheeple will stop referring to the kiss of an enemy as a "Judas Kiss".

Now sanctified science has it that Jesus not so much walked on water as he slid over the ice. Scarves, toques and mittens are thus far missing from this little tableau.

Writing in The Journal of Paleolimnology, a Canadian science journal, Doron Nof and his colleagues dabble in freezing theories. They point out for the unwashed masses that it wasn't really H20 that Jesus walked on. Unusual freezing processes probably (emphasis mine) occurred in the region of the Sea of Galilee in the last 12,000 years, icing over parts of fresh-water Galilee. Located in northern Israel, today historic Galilee is known as plain old Lake Kinneret.

according to the Nof team, this freezing has not happened in recent history. (We know, professor, it's been global warming).

But there were, say Nof and team, much colder stretches 1,500 to 2,500 years ago when the temperature on average was 3 C lower.

Like so many weathermen (er, weather people), the scientists note that Galilee has warm, salty springs feeding into the lake bottom along the western shore, an area once called Tabgha that Jesus frequented.

The heavier salt water above the springs would form a separate layer from the fresh water on the surface and not "convect," i.e. transfer its heat upwards.

If air temperatures dipped below freezing, as sometimes happened then, surface ice could have formed without the entire lake having to reach freeing temperatures, and it would have been thick enough to support a human.

Does anybody aside from the Nof boys really care about surface ice 2,000 years ago?

The scientists call their newly discovered phenomenon "springs ice". Sort of the same stuff you warn your children against in the beckoning river of your hometown.

From a distance, the scientists suggest, a person might appear to be walking on water.

"This is particularly true if it rained after the ice was formed, because rain smoothes out the ice's surface," Nof and his group reported.

Not likely the frightened apostles, who witnessed the event gave a fig whether Jesus was walking on water or what may have been ice.

Nof and scientific colleagues also have their own theory on the parting of the Red Sea. "a strong wind action caused a wind set-down which exposed a usually submerged ridge". .

That theory was problematic, says the new report, because it doesn't jibe with the wind directions described in the Bible's account of the sea's parting.

Viewing Tabgha from the distance of time, it would be difficult to decipher what took place during the last several thousand years.

"Our springs ice calculation may or may not be related to the origin of the account of Christ walking on water. The whole story may have originated in local ancient folklore which happened to be told best in the Christian Bible," is Nof's groupspeak explanation.

Meanwhile, the walking on water theories of Nof and Company should be iced.

Canada Free Press founding editor Most recent by Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. Her work has appeared on Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, Glenn Beck. Judi can be reached at: judi@canadafreepress.com


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