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The “sea” being crossed by Jesus
and his followers is the Sea of Galilee, so
the area they are moving on to would be the
present-day Jordan. This
wouldtake him
into territory controlled by Gentiles,
pointing to the eventual
expansionof
Jesus’ message and community beyond Jews
and to the Gentile world.During the trip
across the Sea of Galilee, a large storm
comes up — so large that the boat threatens
to sink after so much water has entered it.
How Jesus manages to stay asleep though
this is unknown, but traditional
commentaries on the passage say that he
slept deliberately in order to test the
faith of the apostles. If that is the case,
then they failed, because they were so
scared that they woke Jesus up to find out
whether he cared if they all drowned.A more
plausible explanation is that the author of
Mark has Jesus sleeping out of literary
necessity: Jesus’ calming the storm is
designed to evoke the story of Jonah. Here
Jesus is sleeping because the story of
Jonah has him sleeping down in the ship.
Accepting such an explanation, though,
requires accepting the idea that this story
is a literary creation by the author and
not an accurate historical narrative.Jesus
proceeds to end the storm and restore the
sea to calm — but why? Calming the storm
doesn’t appear to have been absolutely
necessary because he rebukes the others for
not having faith — presumably, they should
have trusted that nothing would happen to
them while he was around. So ostebsibly,
had he not stopped the storm they would
have made it across just
fine(www.atheism.about.com).
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