But as they sailed, he fell asleep. A wind storm came down on the lake, and they were taking on dangerous amounts of water. They came to him, and awoke him, saying, “Master, master, we are dying!” He awoke, and rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and they ceased, and it was calm.
A storm involving millions of tons of air and water can be stopped by verbal scolding.
Meteorology
18
passages in this field
Show this passage in
The cited passage
What current science says
A single thunderstorm cell contains about 500,000 metric tons of water vapor and generates wind speeds driven by temperature differentials across thousands of cubic kilometers. The kinetic energy in a moderate storm's wind is roughly equivalent to a 20-kiloton nuclear weapon. Human speech produces about 0.001 watts of acoustic power. You'd need roughly 10 billion people all shouting at the same storm to generate even one watt of useful energy — and the storm would still completely ignore you because sound doesn't dissipate pressure differentials.
What the text says
This comes from Luke 8:23-24. During a storm on a lake threatening to sink the boat, the wind and 'raging of the water' are 'rebuked' and immediately cease — treating massive atmospheric forces as disobedient children.
Three honest ways to read this passage
-
As history
The text records how its authors understood the world with the knowledge they had. Read this way, a difference from modern science is a window into the ancient mind, not a failure.
-
As accommodation
The text speaks to its first audience in their own terms, to make a point that isn't mainly about physics or biology. Read this way, the scientific detail is the vehicle, not the cargo.
-
As contradiction
The text makes a claim about the physical world that modern findings dispute. Read this way, the difference is a genuine factual disagreement worth naming.
GEBible doesn't pick one of these for you. Each entry shows the passage, what it says, and what current science says — nothing more.