The walking of Christ on the waters: structural, philological, historical and archaeological aspects

The article examines two exegetical questions related to the story of Christ’s walking on the waters: do the Synoptic Gospels (Mt 14:22-34; Mk 6:45-53) and the Gospel of John (Jn 6:15-24) tell about the same event, and how to explain the differences in the evangelists’ directions of the boat route? Based on the method of structural analysis, it is possible to draw a conclusion about the unity of the described history. The study of the philological aspect allows us to propose a translation option for the difficult-to-understand texts of Mk 6:45 and John 6:1, which agrees with the evangelists’ reference to Bethsaida as the point of departure. The attraction of historical information and the results of archaeological excavations (including those of the last decade) gives reason to identify Bethsaida as El Araj, the point of arrival of Capernaum as Tell Hum. As a result, it is possible to graphically display the approximate route of the boat.