Miracles and the Book of Mormon - A Response

By Peter Kirby
(Spelling as per original)

You seem to have confused me with an evangelical apologist trying to prove, for example, that Jesus brought a dead girl back to life with a simple command. You write:

"I have enormous respect for Professor Sanders. What he says can be known pretty well about Jesus differs greatly from traditional Christianity."

"Why does Meier say "supposedly" miraculous events? Are we not to take miracles as really having happened if an old book, preferably by an anonymous author, says that they did?"

"So Meier basically says that there was no miracle - just a meal that stuck in people's memory."

Meier says nothing of the sort. He makes it very clear that a historian as a historian cannot answer the question of whether God was directly acting in Jesus' ministry to bring about miracles. We can only hope to establish that a miracle story goes back to an event in the ministry of Jesus rather than being entirely the invention of the post-Easter church. The decision of whether this event is a miracle is a matter of philosophy and presuppositions, not pure history. I only disagree with the position that you seemed to be taking:

"In your article "The Miracles of Jesus," you argue that the miracle stories are entirely the invention of the post-Easter church. Correct me if I am mistaken."

Some of the miracle stories go back to events in the ministry of Jesus that were considered miracles by his contemporaries. In answering this global question of whether Jesus was reputed to work miracles during his lifetime, I invoked the criteria of multiple attestation (Mark, Q, M, L, John, Josephus) and coherence (with sayings and large followings), in addition to criteria of secondary value such as discontinuity (with respect to the relatively short time span) and embarrassment (because theological difficulties were created by the exorcism stories).

"Only one miracle is common to all four Gospels. So much for multiple attestation. Josephus's words about Jesus doing startling deeds (an obvious synonym for miracles?) seem a Christian interpolation. He certainly never details any of them."

At the moment I am only trying to establish that Jesus was reputed to work miracles during his lifetime, not that individual miracle stories go back to the ministry of Jesus. As I pointed out, at least six sources - Mark, Q, M, L, John, and Josephus - independently affirm the miracle-working activities of Jesus. Although a detailed analysis of the Testimonium Flavianum does not belong here, most scholars accept a reconstruction that includes the phrase "he was a doer of startling deeds (paradoxa erga)." The phrase is not necessarily Christian, and we know that Jews such as the Talmudists accepted the miracles of Jesus (Baraitha Bab. Sanhedrin 43a). The description of miracles as "paradoxa erga," while not typically Christian, is used by Josephus of other miracle-workers such as Elijah. The phrase also fits perfectly in the context of unpacking the title of Jesus as "a wise man" and explaining why "He drew over to him both many of the Jews and the Gentiles." Thus, most contemporary scholars (including John P. Meier and J.D. Crossan) accept a reconstruction of the Testimonium including the phrase "he was a doer of startling deeds (paradoxa erga)."

I also noted the coherence of the miracles of Jesus with his sayings and his large following, which both the Four Gospels and Josephus attribute to his reputation as a teacher and miracle-worker. The objection you made to this argument was:

"If Jesus had such a large following, why does Acts say that there were only 120 believers after 3 years of Jesus's preaching?"

First, I do not have great confidence in the historicity of the first few chapters of Acts. It presents a sort of "Golden Age" of apostolic times. Mt 28, Mk 16, and Jn 21 indicate that the disciples returned to Galilee, where the first appearances took place. Luke's placement in Jerusalem reflects his theme that the apostles are to be witnesses "in Jerusalem, throughout Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). Pentecost also seems to be the invention of Luke, as no other Christian writer mentions such a momentous event and because the symbolic period of forty days of appearances contradicts the Gospel of Luke.

Second, Acts doesn't say that. One hundred and twenty is the number of disciples who were in "in the one place" of an "upper room" in Jerusalem, which would not include everyone who followed Jesus during his ministry (Acts 1:15, Acts 1:23).

"Lots of people were regarded as miracle workers in those days - including the Emperor Vespasian. The eminent historian Tacitus records hearing about Vespasian's miracles from first hand eye witnesses."

This is true; lots of people, including Jesus, were regarded as a miracle-worker in those days. But the example you cite is a far cry from the Gospel miracles: "As for Suetonius and Tacitus, their most famous narrative of miracle-working is the half-humorous account of Vespasion in Alexandria, as he is journeying back to Rome to assume the role of emperor. Vespasion is asked byy a blind man and a man with a maimed foot (or hand) to heal them both. At first Vespasian refuses, but after consultation with he entourage and with doctors, who hold out some hope for a cure in both cases, Vespasian finally decides to give it 'the old college try.' He seems to engage in a sort of Blaise-Pascal wager: he cannot lose anything by the attempt, and he might gain something. The two men are healed. Suetonius and Tacitus seem to tell the whole story with a twinkle in their eye and smiles on their lips, an attitude probably shared by Vespasian. The whole event looks like a 1st-century equivalent of a 'photo opportunity' staged by Vespasian's P.R. team to give the new emperor divine legitimacy - courtesy of god Serapion, who supposedly commanded the two men to go to Vespasian. Again, both in content in form, we are far from the miracle traditions of the Four Gospels - to say nothing of the overall pattern of Jesus' ministry into which his miracles fit." (John P. Meier, _A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus_, vol. 2., p. 625)

I also noted the almost unparalleled short time span between the earliest written documents (Q, Mark, etc.) and the alleged miracles of Jesus. It is exceedingly difficult to explain why, if Jesus wasn't reputed to work miracles during his lifetime, he so quickly became portrayed as a spectacular miracle worker! You seem to consider me inconsistent for not therefore believing that "a heifer really did give birth to a lamb in the middle of the Temple" or "Tacitus's examples of the Emperor Vespasian's miracles." At this point I would invoke some form of "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" - that Jesus or Vespasian were *reputed* to work miracles during their lifetimes, however, is not an extraordinary claim.

"Why does Meier say "supposedly" miraculous events? Are we not to take miracles as really having happened if an old book, preferably by an anonymous author, says that they did?"

Why does Meier say "the alleged miracles of Jesus' life"? Because he does not consider the question of whether God has brought about miracles in the ministry of Jesus to be resolvable by historical methods.

I also noted that the criterion of embarrassment applies to a limited degree to the exorcisms of Jesus. You sneer: "Actually, very few Christians think that Jesus really must have been in league with Satan, simply because the Bible says that Jesus's opponents alleged that." Nor was such implied. The criterion of embarrassment applies if some story created theological difficulties for the church even during the NT period (e.g., the baptism of Jesus by John seemed to make Jesus sinful and subordinate to John). "The Beelzebul dispute (Mk 3:20-30, Mt 12:22-32 par.) indicate that at times Jesus' exorcisms exposed him to the charge of being in league with the devil, a charge he proceeds to rebut with various arguments. It seems unlikely that the church would have gone out of its way to create such a story, which places Jesus, to say the least, in an ambiguous light." (ibid., p. 625)

You seem to agree that "While the Elisha story does share a number of basic elements with the primitive Gospel story, there is much in the Gospel miracle not found in and not derivable from 2Kgs 4:42-44." (ibid., p. 961)

Meier concludes: "I think the criteria of multiple attestation and coherence make it more likely than not that behind our Gospel stories of Jesus feeding the multitude lies some especially memorable communal meal of bread and fish, a meal with eschatological overtones celebrated by Jesus and his disciples with a large crowd by the Sea of Galilee." (ibid., p. 966)

"So Meier basically says that there was no miracle - just a meal that stuck in people's memory. And he can go no further than to say that this meal took place 'more likely than not'."

I have already explained that Meier only says whether the miracle story goes back to an event in the ministry of Jesus. "Historically we believe X" means no more than "X has a good chance of being historical." Of course our conclusions here, like with all ancient history, must remain probabilities. "As with the quest for the historical Jesus in general, so too with the quest for his miracles: the chasm of two millenia makes verification of what a 1st-century marginal Jew did in a marginal province at the eastern end of the Roman Empire extremely difficult." (ibid., p. 517)

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