Why does Peter only walk on water in Matthew's Gospel?

Answer 1

If, as traditionally believed, the four gospels were written by eyewitnesses or close associates of eyewitnesses, it is understandable that such a great miracle must surely occur in all four gospels. In order to explain why it is not, it is necessary to understand the history of the gospels.

Scholars now recognise that the gospels were not written by the disciples to whom they are attributed. It was not until later in the second century that the Church Fathers attempted to establish who write the gospels, and assigned them to the disciples by the names we now use. We do not really know who wrote the gospels, and they are recognised as having been written somewhat later than once supposed.

The first gospel was Mark's Gospel, written around 70 CE in the Greek language. Matthew and Luke followed, using Mark's Gospel as their sole source of information on the life and mission of Jesus. Whenever they contain material from Mark, they use almost exactly the same words in Greek as in Mark. Matthew and Luke also used sayings attributed to Jesus, from a hypothetical 'Q' document. However, Q did not provide any context for those sayings, so the two evangelists each added their own, different stories of the place, time and context when Jesus told the disciples these sayings, usually as parables. Finally, the author of John relied on Luke's Gospel, and to a lesser extent Mark's Gospel, changing much of the material around to suit his objectives.

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus walked on water at verses 6:45-54. This is a straight forward story, without elaboration.

The author of Luke's Gospel omitted a large block ot text known as the "Missing Block", but concatenated the verse that preceded it in Mark with the verse that followed it, without seeming to notice that this did not make much sense. It seems that his copy of Mark's Gospel had been cut into sheets and that probably thirteen of these pages had been removed or lost. Without the Missing Block, Luke knew nothing about the important miracle of Jesus walking on water, did not report it and had no reason to write of Peter walking on water.

Although the author of John's Gospel relied mainly on Luke, he clearly knew of Mark's Gospel, and therefore knew of this miracle, which was important enough to include in his Gospel. His only important elaboration was to change some minor events so that Jesus had a reason going to the mountain alone. John's Gospel takes opportunities to subtly play down the role of Peter, around whom a cult may have been forming, so there is no reason for its author to portray Peter as walking on water if this was not in Mark's Gospel.

So the only gospel in which Peter is protrayed as walking on water is Matthew's Gospel which, unlike John, always protrayed Peter as favourably as possible. And, as Ian Wilson (Jesus: The Evidence) says of Matthew's Gospel in another context, the author is "demonstrably over-fond of the miraculous." All the evidence points to elaboration by the author of Matthew. The alternatives are that somehow Matthew alone knew of Peter's incredible experience or, even more improbably, that Mark and John had reasons for not reporting it.