Part 1: The Ancient Evidence 19
P a r t 1 The Ancient Evidence T here is a general consensus among scholars of early Christianity that Jesus was a miracle worker. Claims of miracles were common in antiquity, but these claims took different forms. Most people sought divine help at healing sanctuaries; public individual miracle workers were not nearly so common in this period, and those who did perform wonders rarely specialized in healings. Nevertheless, comparisons with the latter category help us understand better both how Jesus and his early followers could have been understood by their contemporaries and how they would have stood out in ways that appeared distinctive.
I will address these introductory questions only briefly, compared with the attention I will give to later questions in the book. That is because these subjects are familiar to both scholars and students of early Christianity and have been addressed at length elsewhere. This introductory discussion is important, however, because it helps set the groundwork for later questions in the book. Such questions will include: Granted that Jesus was viewed as a miracle worker, is it plausible in principle for specific claims about miracles to derive from eyewitnesses? In considering explanations for these miracles, what range of options should be open to consideration? Should supernatural as well as natural causes be entertained as possibilities?
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims Thus, from the standpoint of the gospels, the mighty deeds of Jesus, healings and exorcisms alike, were the product of the power which flowed through him as a holy man. His powers were charismatic, the result of his having become a channel for the power of the other realm, that which Jesus and his contemporaries also called
Spirit. —Marcus Borg1 I hold, in summary, that Jesus, as a magician and miracle worker, was a very problematic and controversial phenomenon not only for his enemies but even for his friends. —John Dominic Crossan2 A powerful healer of the physically and mentally sick, . . . he was . . . unconditionally given over to the rescue, not of communities, but of persons in need. —Geza Vermes3
[Jesus] probably saw his miracles as indications that the new age was at hand. He shared the evangelists' view that he fulfilled the hopes of the prophets—or at least that these hopes were about to be fulfilled. —E. P. Sanders (emphasis his)4
[Jesus's] healings and exorcisms were an intrinsic part of his proclamation of the kingdom (or rule) of God. The mighty deeds and the proclamation must go together; neither can be understood without the other. —Craig Evans5
H istorians offer historical reconstructions on the basis of testimony, sometimes artifacts, and frequently additional critical evaluation based on context, intrinsic probability, and the weighing of evidence. Two issues thus confront
1. Borg, Vision, 67.
2. Crossan, Historical Jesus, 311.
3. Vermes, Religion, 206.
4. Sanders, Figure, 168.
5. Evans, Fabricating Jesus, 141.
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a historian's discussion of miracles in early Christianity. First, the nature of the evidence involves some testimony but no first-century artifacts. Second, the probability argument must engage the long-standing albeit declining Western philosophic assumption that miracles do not occur, or at least must be evaluated with a bar of skepticism so high that no individual miracle claim could ever be accepted as valid.
This second issue does not always translate into a denial that witnesses claimed to see phenomena that could be interpreted in such terms, but it has sometimes had this effect. I will return to this philosophic question in chapters 5–6, and the analogy argument based on it in chapters 7–12, but focus at present on the question regarding the nature of the evidence.
Evidence for Jesus's Miracles Although limited in kind (i.e., no artifacts), the available evidence for Jesus as a miracle worker is substantial. Although the evidence is limited concerning most particular miracles, all of the many ancient sources that comment on the issue agree that Jesus and his early followers performed miracles: Q, Mark, special material in Matthew and Luke, John, Acts, the Epistles, Revelation, and nonChristian testimony from both Jewish and pagan sources.6 If anyone were to object that Q includes only one complete narrative about a miracle (Matt 8:5–13//
Luke 7:1–10; not including miracle summaries, in Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22; Matt 12:28//Luke 11:19), it is noteworthy that this narrative comprises perhaps half or all the narrative usually assigned to Q.7 Jesus's summary of his miracle working in Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22 clearly indicates that he believed himself a miracle worker.8 Moreover, given the extreme unlikelihood of Jesus's later followers making up obscure sites of his ministry like Chorazin or using the early name Beth6. For Paul, see Rom 15:19; 1 Cor 12:8–10; 2 Cor 12:12; Gal 3:5; for Revelation, Rev 11:6 (cf. Rev
11:18; 19:10). Although skeptical observers may be most impressed by the non-Christian evidence, the Gospel traditions take us closer to the events than other extant sources do. I have elsewhere argued my case in greater detail for the enormous wealth of genuine information about Jesus available in these sources
(see Keener, Historical Jesus). Noting the wide range of sources, many appeal to multiple attestation to support the picture of Jesus as miracle worker (e.g., Sabourin, Miracles, 69; Boobyer, "Miracles," 40–41;
Rowland, Origins, 146–47; Sanday, "Miracles," 63–64).
7. See Robinson, "Challenge," 321. I personally allow several more possible narratives for Q (Matt
4:1–11//Luke 4:1–12; Matt 8:5–13//Luke 7:1–10). I believe that it probably also includes the narrative construction behind Mark 3:22–30, because the parallels in Matt 12:22–32, 43–45//Luke 11:14–26 include additional overlapping material [Matt 12:28; Luke 11:20] that Mark may have deleted; but these could stem from oral tradition other than Q). Yet all of these Q accounts include a supernatural element.
Eve, Healer, 84–91, doubts the Q hypothesis and therefore leans primarily on Mark alone (thus focusing on Mark's theological application of miracle stories in 92–117); this approach has invited some criticism
(e.g., Hagerland, "Review"), though a significant minority of strong scholars today share Eve's skepticism about Q (e.g., Goodacre and Perrin, Questioning).
8. Dunn, Remembered, 671, rightly notes that one need doubt this belief no more than Paul's belief that he was empowered with signs in Rom 15:19.
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims
saida, the Q material in Matt 11:21//Luke 10:13 is widely regarded as bedrock tradition,9 yet it refers to these Galilean villages being judged for not responding radically to Jesus's extraordinary miracles among them.10 Moreover, Mark would hardly have invented the idea that Jesus could not heal where faith was lacking
(Mark 6:5).11
Most scholars today working on the subject thus accept the claim that Jesus was a healer and exorcist.12 The evidence is stronger for this claim than for most other specific historical claims that we could make about Jesus or earliest Christianity. Scholars often note that miracles characterized Jesus's historical activity no less than his teaching and prophetic activities did.13 So central are miracle reports to the Gospels that one could remove them only if one regarded the Gospels as 9. See Mussner, Miracles, 19–22; Charlesworth, "Sketch," 97; Burkitt, Sources, 14; Theissen, Gospels in Context, 49–52; Witherington, Christology, 166; Keener, Historical Jesus, 183; cf. Adinolfi, "Lago"; Arav and Rousseau, "Bethsaïde"; pace Bultmann, Tradition, 112.
10. See Mussner, Miracles, 19–20. Mussner (31–36) appeals to the criterion of dissimilarity to defend
Jesus's healing of lepers, placing it in the conflict tradition; so also Jesus's healings on the Sabbath (38); but today Jesus's miracles are less controversial than the conflict tradition, which I address in Historical
Jesus, ch. 16.
11. So also Funk et al., Acts of Jesus, 85; Montefiore, Gospels, 1:119. It may be that Jesus often required faith not because he depended on it but because he wanted at least some present who would understand the point of the signs (Robinson, "Challenge," 326). Even Matthew, who may emphasize other elements, does not downplay miracles (Heil, "Aspects," passim, e.g., 276); cf. discussions of miracles in Mark (e.g.,
Lamarche, "Miracles"), Matthew (elsewhere, e.g., Légasse, "Miracles"), Luke (e.g., George, "Miracle"), and John (e.g., Léon-Dufour, "Miracles"; Johns and Miller, "Signs"; Charlier, "Notion"); Mark's miracle stories are probably older tradition (Best, "Miracles," 540). Although now more than four decades old, see the list of sixty-two articles published before 1962 on Jesus's miracles in Metzger, Index, 18–21 (some important samples are Scherer, "Miracles de Jésus"; Chadwick, "Miracles"; Young, "Value"; Delling, "Verständnis";
Foster, "Miracles"; Ropes, "Aspects").
12. For summaries of this consensus, see Blackburn, "Miracles," 362; Eve, Miracles, 16–17; Welch,
"Miracles," 360; Green, "Healing," 758; Licona and Van der Watt, "Historians and Miracles," 2; Dunn,
Remembered, 670; Hultgren, "Stories," 134–35; Davies, Healer, 44; Eddy and Beilby, "Introduction," 38;
Twelftree, "Message," 2518–19; cf. Evans, "Prophet," 1228–29; also the statement of the same consensus just over a century ago, in Wilson, "Miracles," 13. Some scholars settle for "plausibility" (e.g., Remus,
Healer, 113). Ehrman, Prophet, 197–200, notes that scholars can accept Jesus as an exorcist and healer without passing judgment on whether he acted supernaturally. Various scholars (e.g., Hunter, Work, 86;
Blessing, "Healing," 186) point out that even Bultmann accepted Jesus as healer and exorcist (citing Word,
124, 172). Some have argued that even particular descriptions in the Gospels appear reliable (Mansour,
Mehio-Sibai, Walsh et al., "Jesus and Eye," summarized in Kub, "Miracles," 1273–74; see also Wilkinson,
Healing, e.g., 122, against Bultmann).
13. See, e.g., Twelftree, "Miracles"; idem, Miracle Worker; idem, "Message," 2520–24; Richardson,
Apologetics, 170–71. Deists removing supernatural and other objectionable elements in the Gospels could delete "nearly half their text" (Woodward, Miracles, 18, on Jefferson, on whose approach see also
Brown, Thought, 280). The "Third Quest" is more respectful toward the Gospels' miracle tradition than the so-called first and second quests were (Meier, "Third Quest"). Scholars who treat Jesus as prophet and miracle worker appear to remain in the mainstream (see, e.g., Meier, "Quest"; Tan, Zion Traditions, 237;
Flusser, "Love," 154; Theissen and Merz, Guide, 113, 281–315; Kee, "Quests"; Robinson, "Challenge,"
321; Pikaza, "Jesús histórico"; Rusecki, "Kryteria"); this paradigm is not intrinsically opposed to Jesus as sage (Van Oyen, "Criteria"; see Evans, "Prophet"; Keener, Historical Jesus, 2, 34), just as sages and mystics were not incompatible (Sterling, Ancestral Philosophy, 99–113). Burton Mack's skepticism (Myth, 76) may be exceptional.
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preserving barely any genuine information about Jesus.14 Indeed, it is estimated that more than 31 percent of the verses in Mark's Gospel involve miracles in some way,15 or some 40 percent of his narrative!16 Very few critics would deny the presence of any miracles in the earliest material about Jesus.17
If followers would preserve Jesus's teachings, how much more might they, and especially those who experienced recoveries, spread reports about his extraordinary acts of power?18 Because miracle claims attach to a relatively small number of figures in antiquity (itinerant or not), there is little reason to suppose that Jesus would have developed a reputation as a wonder worker if he did not engage in such activities.19 Jesus's ministry to the afflicted also coheres with his care for the marginalized in contrast to his frequent conflicts with the elite.20 As historical
Jesus scholars Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz put it, "Just as the kingdom of God stands at the centre of Jesus's preaching, so healings and exorcisms form the centre of his activity."21
14. Pittenger, "Miracles 1," 106 (believing that the Gospels provide a valuable "if 'impressionistic' picture" of the Jesus known by the disciples); Robinson, "Challenge," 321–22; Betz, Jesus, 60; cf. also
Eder, Wundertäter (as cited in Sabourin, Miracles, 245); Dod, "Healer," 169 (noting, e.g., the summary of Jesus's ministry in Luke 13:32); Brockingham, "Miracles," 495; Wright, "Miracles," 189; Kallas, Significance,
112–13; O'Connell, "Miracles," 59; Polkinghorne, Reality, 74. Pittenger does not insist that the miracles are genuinely supernatural by the standards of today's science ("Miracles 1," 107), and he rejects, for example, the accounts of the virgin birth, which he compares with a "fairy-tale" ("Miracles 2," 147–48).
Even Schleiermacher, who approached the miracle accounts largely rationally, concludes from their role in the Gospels that they were significant in Jesus's ministry (Loos, Miracles, 17). For the centrality of exorcisms in the early sources, see, e.g., Mills, Agents (esp. summary on 136); for the centrality of healing for Jesus's mission in Luke-Acts, see Green, "Daughter of Abraham," 654.
15. Robinson, "Challenge," 321; for Mark's heavy emphasis on miracles, see, e.g., Van Wyk and Viljoen,
"Benaderings"; for his heavy emphasis on exorcism, see Finger and Swartley, "Bondage," 19 (highlighting
Mark 3:20–28; cf. Matt 12:28/Luke 11:20). Eve, Healer, 118–19, who depends primarily on Mark (92–
117), offers arguments that Mark genuinely reflects historical tradition that Jesus was a miracle worker: one does not normally write even a novel about a historical character that diverges completely from the person's known portrait (118–19), and the sorts of events matter more than individual cases (119).
16. Wilkinson, Health, 19; idem, Healing, 65. Recounting miracles requires nearly half the verses in Mark's first ten chapters (Placher, Mark, 76).
17. On this consensus, see Boobyer, "Miracles," 40–41. Some accept most of the healing accounts
(e.g., Heard, Introduction, 40).
18. Wright, "Seminar," 114 (suggesting that the reports would rapidly assume a standard form, as they were told and retold).
19. Theissen and Merz, Guide, 113. Miracles are also not widely attached to messianic figures or to the majority of prophets. Using criteria of coherence and dissimilarity, Eve, Miracles, 386, argues for the authenticity of Jesus's distinctive ministry of healing and exorcism.
20. Liberation theologians have rightly emphasized Jesus's concern for the poor and marginalized; though emphasized by Luke (e.g., Green, "Good News," esp. 66–69, 71–72), it appears throughout Gospel tradition; for healing for the marginalized in Mark, see discussion in, e.g., Gaiser, "Touch." Perhaps of relevance to the topic of this book, some see a growing confluence between liberation theology and the interest of progressive sectors of global Pentecostalism in empowering the poor in this world (Cox,
"Foreword," xix; cf. Brown, "Introduction," 12; Oblau, "Healing," 321, 324), though other sectors are sometimes myopic regarding structural issues (Brown, "Introduction," 10; cf. the mixed message of Word of Faith teaching in Sánchez Walsh, "Santidad," 151–54, 163–66).
21. Theissen and Merz, Guide, 281 (see more fully 281–315).
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims
Among non-Christian sources, the rabbis22 and Celsus are clear that Jesus performed miracles, although both sources are hostile to these miracles. (Many of these later non-Christian sources attribute the miraculous works to sorcery, which probably constitutes the earliest anti-Christian explanation for Christian miracles.23) This unanimity is striking given the conversely unanimous silence in Christian, Jewish, and even Mandean tradition concerning any miracles of respected prophetic figures like John the Baptist.24 None of the ancient sources respond to claims of Jesus's miracles by trying to deny them.
More important, the first-century Jewish historian Josephus apparently claims that Jesus was a miracle worker.25 Jewish historian Geza Vermes, a noted expert on Jesus's era, has argued that this miracle claim in Josephus is authentic, based on Josephus's style.26 In this report Josephus calls Jesus a wise man who also "worked startling deeds,"27 a designation that Josephus also applies to miracles associated with the prophet Elisha.28
It is thus not surprising that most scholars publishing historical research about Jesus today grant that Jesus was a miracle worker, regardless of their varying philosophic assumptions about divine activity in miracle claims. For example, E. P.
Sanders regards it as an "almost indisputable" historical fact that "Jesus was a Galilean who preached and healed."29 Using traditional historical-critical tools,
22. Yamauchi, "Magic," 90–91, cites b. Sanh. 43a; tos. Hul. 2:22–23; cf. Loos, Miracles, 156–67; Vermes,
Jesus the Jew, 79; Mussner, Miracles, 23; Rowland, Origins, 306; Hruby, "Perspectives Rabbiniques," 94.
23. Cf. b. Sanh. 107b; in paganism, Cook, Interpretation, 36–39, 138. Although rabbinic sources do not recite the charge before the late second century (Flusser, Judaism, 635), Sanders, Jesus and Judaism,
166, rightly notes that the charge concerning Jesus must be early; "Why answer a charge that was not levelled?" (see Matt 12:24; cf. John 8:48; Mussner, Miracles, 23).
24. See Stauffer, Jesus, 10–11; the Mandean and Islamic evidence he cites, however, is too late for actual relevance. For Jesus as a worker of miracles (attributed by his detractors to magic) in Islam, see, e.g.,
Qur'an 5.110; 61.6; from the ninth century (the earliest surviving texts), in Thomas, "Miracles," 221–22; later Islamic discussion, e.g., in Rahman, "Interpretation" (though Islam is careful to portray them as divine miracles and Jesus acting only as a prophet—Zebiri, "Understanding"). Christian influence may have contributed to the rise of miracles associated with Muhammad (Sahas, "Formation"). Still, even a few Muslim thinkers, though not ruling out miracles, had some ideas similar to those of Hume (see
Teghrarian, "Al-Ghazali"). The issue never arises clearly in Paul, except with respect to his own miracle working, though cf. Wenham, "Story," 307–8.
25. Josephus Ant. 18.63.
26. Vermes, "Notice"; idem, Jesus the Jew, 79; see also Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:621; Theissen and Merz,
Guide, 74 (arguing that Josephus seeks to report about Jesus with the same neutrality he used concerning
John and James); Voorst, Jesus, 102; Montefiore, Miracles, 99.
27. Παράδοξα; cf. Luke 5:26. The Slavonic version develops this claim but is much more questionable
(Gruson, "Josephe").
28. Ant. 9.182. Josephus often employs this term in more neutral ways (e.g., Ant. 2.91; 6.290; 8.130,
317; 12.87; 13.140; 15.261; 16.343; War 1.518; 4.238, 354; 6.102; Ag. Ap. 1.53; perhaps Ant. 14.455) but often refers to activity surprising because of divine or preternatural elements (Ant. 2.223, 267, 285,
295, 345; 3.1, 14, 30, 38; 5.28; 9.14, 58, 60, 182; 10.235; 15.379; cf. 2.347; 5.125; 6.171; 10.28; 13.282; perhaps 12.63; faked divine action in Ag. Ap. 2.114). Yet the present instance is most valuable, for the comparison with another prophet is most revealing (note also Ant. 9.58–60, also referring to Elisha).
29. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 11. Certainly the Gospels portray Jesus's miracles as "an essential part of that ministry" (Filson, History, 105). Some point to Sanders disclaiming the reality of supernatural
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John Meier finds many of Jesus's reported miracles authentic.30 Raymond Brown notes that "scholars have come to realize that one cannot dismiss Jesus's miracles simply on modern rationalist grounds, for the oldest traditions show him as a healer."31 Otto Betz regards it as "certain" that Jesus was a healer, arguing "even from the Jewish polemic which called him a sorcerer."32 The miracles, he notes, are central to the Gospels, and without them, most of the other data in the Gospels are inexplicable.33 Even Morton Smith, among the recent scholars most skeptical toward the Gospel tradition, argues that miracle working is the most authentic part of the Jesus tradition,34 though he explains it along the magical lines urged by Jesus's early detractors.35
These observations do not resolve the question of individual miracle stories in the Gospels,36 but they do challenge one basic assumption that has often lodged the burden of proof against them: against some traditional assumptions, one cannot dismiss particular stories on the basis that Jesus did not perform miracles.37 One need not, therefore, attribute stories about Jesus's miracles purely to legendary accretions.38 Nor should one expect that the church's later Christology led them to intervention for historiographic study (Martin, "Historians on Miracles," 414–15), but that caveat differs from the claim that Jesus was not a healer.
30. Marginal Jew, 2:678–772; for historical evidence supporting Jesus as a miracle worker, see Marginal
Jew, 2:617–45; see also Twelftree, Miracle Worker; Blomberg, Gospels, 127–36. Eve, "Meier," however, is less positive toward the criterion of multiple attestation. Martin, "Historians on Miracles," 417, understands
Meier as arguing that historians ought not to decide for or against the possibility of miracles, an approach that would inadvertently close off the possibility of accepting evidence for one.
31. Brown, Death, 143–44.
32. Betz, Jesus, 58.
33. Ibid., 60.
34. Smith, Magician, 16. There are both Jewish and Greek parallels, but not regarding roughly contemporary teachers or philosophers; characters of the distant past, such as Enoch and Noah in 1 Enoch, were special candidates for traditional embroidery. Even Bultmann, who emphasized later Hellenistic miracle additions to the tradition, recognizes that Palestinian Jewish Christians told stories of Jesus's marvels, but he heavily emphasized Hellenistic analogies (McGinley, Form-Criticism, 67).
35. Neusner, in "Foreword," xxvii, and New Testament, 5, 173, offers perhaps the harshest critique of Smith's magical thesis. Some recent scholars have accused Smith of forging an "ancient" gospel source
("Secret Mark"; see Jeffery, Secret Gospel; Carlson, Hoax; for varying views, see, e.g., Hedrick, "Stalemate";
Stroumsa, "Testimony"; Ehrman, "Response"), but his magician thesis has been judged wanting for reasons specific to that thesis.
36. See, e.g., the concerns expressed by Lincoln, John, 41–42 (who questions the historical authenticity of some miracles narrated in the Fourth Gospel but distinguishes these questions from belief in Jesus's resurrection or his ability to heal); Boobyer, "Miracles," 45–47; Hunter, Work, 86. Many scholars recognize that Jesus performed miracles yet profess agnosticism about the authenticity of most specific miracle accounts (R. H. Fuller and Alan Richardson, summarized in Maher, "Writings," 167). In the sixteenth century, John Locke acknowledged that the probability of particular miracle claims might be in question but argued that the cumulative weight of multiple testimony to miracles surrounding one person increased the overall probability exponentially (Burns, Debate, 68–69).
37. Against Bultmann and other predecessors, the majority of historical Jesus scholars today (e.g.,
Morna Hooker, E. P. Sanders, and most of the Third Quest) argue that whoever is making a case (whether for or against a tradition) bears the burden of proof (see esp. Winter, "Burden of Proof").
38. Dibelius, Tradition, 70–103, treats some of the miracle stories (the "tales") thus; so also Bultmann,
Tradition, 227; cf. Bultmann's willingness to compare even "Fairy stories" and "folk-songs" (ibid., 6; cf.,
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims
invent many accounts of Jesus's miracles;39 it may have influenced their interpretation and shaping of the accounts,40 but there was little reason to invent miracles for christological reasons. We lack substantial contemporary evidence that Jewish people expected a miracle-working messiah, and nonmessianic figures like Paul were also believed to be miracle workers (2 Cor 12:12). Rather than Christology causing miracle claims to be invented, claims already circulating about Jesus's miracles, once combined with other claims about Jesus, undoubtedly contributed to apologetic for a higher Christology.41 Some of the offending "Christology," moreover, could apply to Jesus as a great eschatological prophet or ruler, roles not without analogies among contemporary figures.42
The form of miracle stories typically proves less distinctive than their content.43
Granted, comparison with other ancient accounts reveals a number of common motifs, sometimes suggesting that familiar forms of narration may have helped shape how stories were recounted.44 At the same time, with regard to the basic e.g., 229, 236). Below I address the form-critical and (in subsequent chapters) comparative questions they raise, but only quite briefly, because others have addressed them far more extensively (e.g., McGinley,
Form-Criticism; Eve, Miracles). Cotter shows that the narrative function of miracle stories in the Gospels differ starkly from even the ancient narratives with which Dibelius and Bultmann compared them (Portrait,
3–4). As I shall note later in the book, even the miracle accounts in the Gospels that some scholars most readily classified as "tales" (esp. nature miracles) have some parallels in eyewitness narratives today.
39. Cf. Bultmann, Tradition, 219, 226. Rudolf Pesch treated christological interest in a Gospel account as a mark of inauthenticity, rather than allowing for later shaping of authentic tradition (see the summary in Maher, "Writings," 169–70).
40. For the Gospel writers shaping their materials in light of the literary context in which they embed them, see, e.g., Léon-Dufour, "Fonction," 329–31.
41. Maher, "Writings," 173. Bultmann, Tradition, 229, is able to marshal only the barest evidence for a miracle-working messianic expectation (some of it out of context).
42. See Keener, Historical Jesus, 238–67, 523–40. Even some sorts of higher "christological" elements may be earlier than exegetes have often supposed; see Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, passim; Keener, Historical
Jesus, 268–82, 540–49.
43. Cf., e.g., the conclusions of McGinley, Form-Criticism, 63–64, 153; formal observations in 76–95; criticism of Bultmann's anachronistic categories in Cotter, Portrait, 1–2. Some formal observations (e.g., in Funk, "Form," 90–94) seem less profound when we consider not just narrative structures more generally but also the elements expected in ancient healings and other pre-narrative characteristics (though Funk's careful analysis, distilled on 89, is noteworthy; see the helpful collection of motifs and observations about their basic organization in Léon-Dufour, "Fonction," 295–305). Robinson, "Challenge," 322, rightly concurs with Jeremias's critique of Dibelius's mostly arbitrary distinction between paradigms and novellen
(as in Dibelius, Tradition, 70–103; some accounts appear more elaborate, but we know of no "class of 'storytellers'" alongside the eyewitnesses), for all Dibelius's insights in some of his other form-critical work. For further critique of Dibelius's subjective speculation here, see McGinley, Form-Criticism, 48–59
(esp. 56–59); on narrower grounds, Wikenhauser, Introduction, 264. George Ladd attributed to Henry
Cadbury (with whom he studied) the observation that a genuine miracle story would necessarily have the same form as a fabricated one (D'Elia, Place, 26). Scholars classify Gospel miracle stories in various ways; for one fairly simple approach, see Léon-Dufour, "Fonction," 306–13; for an older article (in Metzger,
Index, 20), see Jordan, "Classification."
44. For common motifs, see especially Kahl, Miracle Stories, passim. One distinctive feature of miracle stories about Jesus is the emphasis on his rejection (ibid., 236–37). For subsequent forms, see, e.g., Stephens,
Healeth, 69–70; in some Asian churches (but far more abstract and generalized than in the Gospels), cf.
Oblau, "Healing," 322; for some transculturally frequent elements, see Duffin, Miracles, 168.
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narration of information, there are only so many ways to recount a miracle: most fundamentally, one expects at the least a statement of the problem and its cure, and a storyteller wishing to emphasize the miracle worker would naturally recount, by knowledge or presumably legitimate inference, the audience's astonishment.
Thus the most basic format of a miracle story is, as one would expect, a description of the circumstances of the healing, the healing itself, and its confirmation or effects on the audience.45 A number of the modern miracle stories recounted later in the book take on particular forms because of space constraints and the first two necessary, basic elements; while I have structured those accounts, however, every one of them derives from "tradition" (my interviews with or reading of sources, a significant number of them eyewitnesses or the persons cured).46 My point in offering this observation is that one cannot make ready inferences about the historical authenticity of accounts based solely on their form.
Addressing the historical claim (my primary purpose here) does not mean that other literary approaches to Jesus's miracles are unimportant. It may, however, point to an aspect of the Gospels' theology with which modern Western readers sometimes find themselves uncomfortable. Jesus presumably intended his miracles as prophetic symbolic actions, hence with some metaphoric significance from the start;47 commentators are right to find even more figurative significance on the level of the narratives in which we have these accounts. In my commentaries, I often take note of this significance,48 and one could easily devote an entire book to this discussion were that one's focus.
Yet for all their symbolic import, sometimes even as a sort of acted parables, they are introduced as straightforward narratives of events, differently from how
45. Aune, Environment, 50. For people marveling after miracles, see, e.g., Philostratus Vit. Apoll. passim. In the opening story of Luke, for example, note fear (Luke 1:12, 64–65), astonishment (Luke
1:12, 29), praise (Luke 1:42), and joy (Luke 1:58). The audience response may characterize a conventional way to report the story but would not be surprising in most cultures (cf., e.g., Hickson, Heal,
120–21, 129).
46. Including converts unaware of earlier forms. In some cases the third element also appears, though often today in terms of the doctors' amazement (see esp. observations in Duffin, Miracles, 116–17, 142–43,
185). Onlookers' amazement in instant healings may be taken for granted, whereas modern hearers are more interested in medical observations (because these are what establish a miracle for many modern critics). Yet I have no reason to doubt that most reports of surprise (from doctors or others) are authentic
(even if sometimes worded more dramatically than necessary), since anomalies by definition diverge from the norm. (Of course, not all claimed cures are genuinely anomalous, and for this reason and others doctors' views of recoveries, based on a wider sampling of cases, may differ from patients'.) I have condensed accounts and the third element is less relevant to my purpose for reciting them.
47. Baum, "Heilungswunder," strikes the right balance; cf. also Robinson, "Challenge," 330–31; Davey,
"Healing," 61; O'Connell, "Miracles," 54; Van den Berghe, "Wonderverhalen"; Ellenburg, "Review," 176,
180; symbolic significance of the feedings in Barton, "Feedings," 113; certainly John finds additional significance in his signs (see, e.g., Kim, "Significance"). On the reliability of miracle reports, see earlier
Sabourin, "Powers." Those who correctly emphasize the layers of interpretation in extant sources about miracles also often recognize historical material behind them (e.g., Pilch, "Understanding Miracles," 1211).
Earlier redaction critics, however, were often excessive in their speculation about layers (cf. Fuller, Miracles; criticisms in, e.g., Van Cangh, "Sources").
48. E.g., Keener, Matthew, 258–73 passim (e.g., 273), 288–91, 301–7.
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims
Jesus's parables are introduced.49 Modern interpreters who find exclusively nonphysical spiritual significance in these accounts, sometimes allegorizing them more than other narratives,50 may read our cultural expectations into the accounts.
We do not play down the physical dimensions of healing claims with regard to shrines of Asclepius, for example; why do we limit the theology in narratives about Jesus to what feels comfortable to us as antisupernaturalists, or even as dualists emphasizing only the soul? Accounts in shrines of Asclepius seem designed to encourage faith for further cures, and Christians in much of the Majority World read the Gospels' accounts of miracles in much the same way.51 My interest here is historical, but it may also have some implications for how we can broaden our reading of these texts.
Miracle Claims for Jesus's Early Movement If such extranormal experiences characterized the public activity of Jesus, there is no reason to doubt that they could have also characterized the activities of those viewed as his successors. Perhaps Jesus even deliberately trained his disciples as his successors, as teachers normally trained their disciples to be, expecting them to be able to perform the same activity that he did (cf. Mark 9:18–19, 28–29; 11:23;
Luke 9:40–41; 17:6). Indeed, the majority of the signs claimed in Acts, as in the Gospels, are healings and exorcisms52—precisely the claims Christian sources in later centuries also offered from contemporary eyewitnesses.53
The writers of the Gospels plainly do not include all the miracle stories available to them; often they summarize (in the Gospels, e.g., Mark 1:34; 3:10; 6:5, 56; for "Q," see Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22). Likewise in Acts, Luke cannot be reporting all of Paul's miracles, which Paul's letters indicate pervaded his public ministry (cf. Rom
15:19; 2 Cor 12:12).54 In fact, given Paul's claims that such signs characterized his
49. Noted already in Everts, "Exorcist," 360.
50. Note criticism in Judge, First Christians, 416–23 (esp. 416). The practice of deriving only spiritual applications from accounts of Jesus's healings has a long history, including in eighteenth-century cessationist
Protestantism (see Kidd, "Healing," 166). Some Majority World interpreters today, both on popular and scholarly levels, complain about this Western approach (e.g., Tari, Wind, 56; cf. Yung, Quest, 7; see further ch. 7); cf. also Catholic charismatics in Roelofs, "Thought," 227.
51. Granted, some readers (e.g., more intuitively oriented persons) identify more readily with narrative characters in healing narratives than others do (see one study in Village, "Influence").
52. In contrast to, say, commanding bedbugs to leave, as in Acts John 60–61. I leave aside discussion of Mark 16:17–18, which most scholars, including myself, regard as a later addition; see Metzger, Text,
226–29; idem, Textual Commentary, 122–26; though cf. the contrary case in Farmer, Verses, on external
(3–75) and internal (79–103) grounds.
53. I treat these later in the book. The explanation for those claims will vary in part according to one's view of nature, but that is a theological and philosophical matter, not a question of historical data per se.
Contemporary examples illustrate that people may believe that they have witnessed such phenomena
(see discussion below).
54. See Caird, Apostolic Age, 64; Williams, Miracle Stories, 6–9; and, at length, Jervell, "Paul in Acts:
Theology"; and esp. idem, Unknown Paul, 77–95 (pace Bruno Bauer's sometimes uncontested 1850 claim).
The Ancient Evidenc
evangelizing of new areas, we have greater reason to believe instead that Luke selects only a few incidents and periods in Paul's life in which to describe miracles, from a much broader base of tradition available to him. Against scholars who attribute
Luke's emphasis on the miraculous to legend and his fixation on marvels,55 a more complete narrative of Paul's ministry might have included more reports than Luke does. Like Jesus, Paul was a miracle worker, although this activity may not have characterized all periods of his ministry equally.
Thus, whereas Luke does not describe miracles in Corinth, Paul reports them as a dramatic and observable part of his ministry there (2 Cor 12:12). Whereas
Luke mentions miracles in merely several locations, Paul seems to believe that they occurred virtually wherever he preached (Rom 15:18–19).56 That Paul appeals to his audiences' eyewitness knowledge that miracles occurred through his ministry
(2 Cor 12:12; cf. Gal 3:5) argues against deliberate fabrication on his part; he genuinely believed that miracles were occurring through his ministry, and that his audiences in locations like Corinth would have agreed with him.
If one responds that, against Acts, most of the signs Paul himself claims might have been effected psychosomatically or coincidentally, one could provide the same response for most of those that Luke reports about Paul.57 That is, whatever one's philosophic approach, one need not question the historical claims that such recoveries occurred. Luke associates no nature miracles with Paul. But one should note that the expectations of both Luke and Paul concerning signs (Rom 15:19) seem to have exceeded those of their non-Christian contemporaries,58 with the possible exceptions of any signs prophets or magicians underlying the later depictions of Apollonius of Tyana and others like him.59 That Paul anticipated noticeable
Schmithals's denial (without evidence) of the normal biblical sense of "signs and wonders and miracles" in 2 Cor 12:12 should not be seriously entertained (see Borgen, "Paul to Luke," 175–76, noting also that a meaning intelligible to the "super-apostles" is necessary here; cf. extrabiblical miracle terminology, much of it interchangeable, addressed in Remus, "Terminology," 535–51). Unlike later apologists using signs to validate Christianity in general, Paul often had to validate his own (see Kelhoffer, "Paul and Justin").
55. E.g., Scott, Literature, 101. Many scholars treat many miracle stories in Acts as edited legends or reworked pagan stories (see, e.g., Kanda, "Form," passim, e.g., 547, 550–51).
56. Nor does Luke invent the cases that he reports. Despite the opportunity to parallel Paul's experience in a storm with Jesus, who stilled one (Luke 8:24–25), Luke does not bring a miraculous end to the storm, though he does recount that all miraculously survived it (Acts 27:24–26, 44, in "we" material). This is in spite of his work's heavy emphasis on paralleling characters (e.g., Ehrhardt, Acts, 12–13; Boismard and Lamouille, Actes, 2:26; O'Toole, "Parallels between Jesus and Disciples"; Verheyden, "Unity"; Malina and Pilch, Acts, 181–84; recently and in significant detail, Clark, Parallel Lives).
57. Skeptical observers and those who claim healing often differ over whether supernatural causes are at work (though some do not completely rule out the alternate explanation, e.g., Science Digest contributing editor
William Nolen in "Woman," 36–37, addressing accurate prediction of the spontaneous remission of a tumor).
58. At least, of those about whom reports remain extant. Signs workers drew dramatic attention, but usually only elite writings have survived, meaning that names in philosophic schools, which were propagated by their followers, are better attested; Jesus's movement as a genuine one founded by a miracle-working sage is distinctive.
59. Most of the extant evidence for Apollonius is significantly later (see below); Josephus's sign prophets are from a more relevant period but do not perform healings or, as far as Josephus is concerned, even their promised sign. For a cross-cultural approach to folk healers, see Pilch, "Sickness," 193–94.
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims
miraculous phenomena in the Christian communities (1 Cor 12:9–10, 28–30; Gal 3:5) distinguishes those communities from other synagogues and religious associations in antiquity (such associations contrasted with, say, temples of Asclepius, where healings were expected).60
Granted, accounts of unusual phenomena could grow over time; even a thirdgeneration oral tradition with exact attributions could report dramatically paranormal events such as apparitions,61 some of which may have grown with time.
But only a few scholars date Luke this much later than Paul,62 and certainly on the view of authorship argued in my commentary on Acts63 a three-generation duration of transmission will not do as an explanation for Luke's accounts in Acts. The same should be noted for the Gospels: Mark is replete with miracle stories and probably appears within four decades of Jesus's crucifixion.64 Contrary to assumptions that miracle stories would always grow in time, other Gospels' use of Mark shows that abbreviation was as common as development.65 Although expansion sometimes added details for good storytelling,66 ancient rhetorical practices reveal that often even these developments could appeal to common sense or other oral traditions.67 Writing within the lifetime of some witnesses and those who knew
60. For healing deities and aretalogies, see, e.g., Stambaugh and Balch, Environment, 43; Grant, Gods,
54. But as I have noted, these differ from human agents of healings such as we find in the Gospels, Acts, and Philostratus's accounts of Apollonius.
61. Eunapius Lives 459–60. Eunapius (b. ca. 345 c.e.) idealizes Neoplatonists "to compete with the biographies of Christian saints" (Matthews, "Eunapius," 569) and hence does not provide strong background for our period.
62. See Keener, Acts, introduction, ch. 10; for surveys of views from those who date Acts later yet recognize that the large majority of scholars date Acts in the first century, see Pervo, Dating Acts, 359–63;
Tyson, "Dates"; idem, Marcion, ix.
63. Treated in Keener, Acts, introduction, ch. 11; see also my excursus on the "we narratives" at Acts
16:10 in that commentary.
64. I tend to prefer a date for Mark ca. 64 (with, e.g., Bruce, "Date," 78, citing consensus), less than three and a half decades after the crucifixion; soon after 66 the warning to flee to the mountains (Mark
13:14) became irrelevant (Bruce, "Date," 80–81); for a fit after Nero's persecution, see Senior, "Swords."
Nevertheless, dating the Gospels unfortunately includes a substantial amount of guesswork. For 65–70, which may be the majority position, see, e.g., Anderson, Mark, 26; Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 289 (citing
"critical consensus"); pre-70, Hengel, Mark, 20. As Allison, Jesus of Nazareth, 16–17, notes, those who date it after 70 date it not long after (for shortly after 70, see, e.g., Juel, Messiah and Temple, 212; Theissen,
Gospels in Context, 261–62; even Smith, Magician, 11, dates it no later than 75). A smaller number prefer even substantially earlier dates (cf., e.g., Kennedy, "Source Criticism," 134–35, citing external evidence).
65. See discussion in Léon-Dufour, "Fonction," 324–26; in the Gospel tradition generally, see Sanders,
Tendencies, 19, 46–87, 88–189, 272 (effectively refuting Bultmann); cf. Stein, "Criteria," 238–40; Frye,
"Analogies in Literatures," 283–84. This pattern holds true in the second century and later: the church told the original stories less rather than more (Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition, 178, 215, 217, followed by Hultgren, "Stories," 134).
66. Cf., e.g., Plutarch Alex. 70.3.
67. For rhetorical elaboration without changing meaning, see, e.g., Rhet. Alex. 22, 1434b.8–11; Dionysius of Halicarnassus Lit. Comp. 9; Theon Progymn. 4.37–42, 80–82; Longinus Subl. 11.1; Hermogenes Progymn.
3. On Chreia, 7; Aphthonius Progymn. 3. On Chreia, 23S, 4R; 4. On Maxim, 9–10; cf. Menander Rhetor
2.3, 379.2–4. For supplementing from other sources, see, e.g., Pliny Nat. pref. 17; Eunapius Lives 494;
Kennedy, "Source Criticism," 138–39; Aune, Environment, 65. Mediterranean storytellers regularly drew on a wider range of tradition than they specify; for example, though countless allusions in Homer (e.g.,
The Ancient Evidenc
them, Mark's portrait of Jesus as miracle worker makes sense only if those who knew him believed him to be such.68
Seeking to distinguish earlier tradition from Luke's editing in the miracles Luke recounts in Acts, Benjamin Williams compares Luke's editing of miracles in Mark.
By this method he identifies consistent redactional patterns relevant to Luke's portrayal of miracles.69 Williams's approach should follow in a general way from the logical premise that Luke would value historical tradition in his second volume
(a historical monograph) no less than in his first (on its own terms a biography).70
Williams concludes that, for example, Luke both retains the substance of Mark's accounts and feels free to compose audience reactions of astonishment, fear, and so forth if Mark lacks these (though one might well infer the likelihood of such reactions from human nature). Luke especially adds acclamations of praise to God.71 He nowhere adds discourses to his miracle stories, though he could abbreviate, "improve the vocabulary, or even omit discourses altogether."72 The essential substance of the miracles themselves remains unchanged.
One might object that the nature of Luke's sources in the second volume could differ from those in the Gospels. Probably there is at least some difference; in contrast to many of his sources in the Gospel, many of his sources in Acts were probably oral, altering the character of the "editing."73 At the same time, we might
Od. 12.69–72) were developed later, they are often so incomplete by themselves that it is clear that Homer alludes to commonly known fuller stories that he does not record. I treat these issues more fully in Keener,
Historical Jesus, 126–61, 459–82 passim.
68. See Ellens, "Miracles and Process," 1–2.
69. Williams, Miracle Stories, 13, 35–54. For example (52), Luke exercises the greatest redactional liberty in reformulating the conclusion of Markan miracles; Luke reshapes Markan crowd reactions thoroughly
(e.g., in Luke 5:15, 26; 6:11; 8:47), allowing overlap with Mark only in "individual words." Their readily memorable form makes miracle stories one of early Christian tradition's most recognizable narrative forms
(Williams, 15). Still, Weissenrieder, Images, 336–37, suggests that there may be differences between the approach to healing in the Gospel and Acts; cf. also Kanda, "Form" (e.g., 230, 534, 547, though in my opinion overstated). Some might reflect the difference between Jesus as bearer of numinous power and his followers; others may reflect the new Diaspora milieu in Acts. Early Jewish writers redacted biblical miracle accounts to varying degrees (Koskenniemi, Miracle-Workers, 300).
70. On the Gospels as biography, see, e.g., Talbert, Gospel, passim; Aune, Environment, 46–76; Stanton,
Jesus of Nazareth, 117–36; Burridge, Gospels, 109–239; idem, "People," 121–22; idem, "Biography, Ancient";
Frickenschmidt, Evangelium als Biographie; Keener, Matthew, 16–24; idem, John, 11–37; idem, Historical
Jesus, 73–84; Ytterbrink, Biography; on Acts as some form of ancient historiography, see, e.g., Palmer,
"Monograph" (1992); idem, "Monograph" (1993); Johnson, Acts, 3–7; idem, "Luke-Acts," 406; Fitzmyer,
Acts, 127; Balch, "ΜΕΤΑΒΟΛΗ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΩΝ," 141–42, 149–54 (political history); idem, "Genre," passim, especially 11–19; idem, "Gospels (forms)," 948–49; Marguerat, Histoire, 49 (although noting overlap with biography); idem, "Pionnier"; Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 77–78; Flichy, "État des recherches," 28–32; further discussion in the introduction to Keener, Acts. On ancient biography of recent characters including substantial historical information, see, e.g., idem, "Otho."
71. Williams, Miracle Stories, 53.
72. Ibid., 54.
73. The exact wording of discourse was probably also fluid in oral traditions behind any written accounts even in the Gospels, with the exception of some carefully remembered sayings of Jesus (see, e.g., Dunn,
New Perspective, 112 [with 110], 118, 122; cf. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 333–34; Eddy and Boyd, Legend,
275–85). On the special question of speech material, see Keener, Acts, introduction, ch. 8.
Opening Questions about Early Christian Miracle Claims
expect Luke's historical interests in the second volume to remain analogous to those in the first74 and hence expect him, as Williams argues, to continue to shape rather than begin to fabricate his miracle stories in his second volume.75
More tellingly, whatever we might lose from the nature of Luke's sources in his second volume, we gain more. Some of his miracle reports appear in eyewitness material much closer to Luke than his Gospel sources were. That is, claims of what we might call extranormal activity, including healings and one raising, appear in his "we" narratives, usually attributed at least to an eyewitness source or (for many scholars) even to Luke as an eyewitness (Acts 20:9–12; 21:11; 27:21–26;
28:3–6, 8–9).76 Luke is clearly convinced that miracles occur; Paul is likewise convinced that they happened through his ministry (Rom 15:19; 2 Cor 12:12).
Modern scholars are also usually convinced that Jesus and many early Christians (e.g., second-century exorcists) were believed to perform miracles. If Jesus and his first followers believed that they experienced healing miracles firsthand, they witnessed recoveries that they believed to be divinely extranormal in character.
How can modern hearers relate to these claims?
Methodological Questions From a modern perspective this evidence raises two kinds of questions. First, although early Christian literature emphasizes an abundance of miracle workers not attested to this degree in other first-century movements, miracle claims in other settings were abundant in antiquity. How do the bulk of the Christian claims compare with analogous claims? Should all be explained psychosomatically, as deception, as misinterpretation, or in other nonsupernatural terms? Are some claims likelier than others, and in which circles? Must every claim be explained in the same manner?
Second, if modernist assumptions are incompatible with supernatural claims, does that conflict therefore justify ruling out a priori the possibility of such activity? Or should we consider the other alternative, reevaluating some assumptions of modernity, and thus leave open at least the possibility of nonnatural (in this
74. If anything, the second volume's character is more often regarded as ancient historiography than the first, and ancient historiography, despite its differences from its modern namesake, does involve historical interest (see Keener, Historical Jesus, ch. 7).
75. Because some forms of miracle stories, particularly exorcisms and a form of raising the dead story, characterized their Middle Eastern origin more than Hellenism (Williams, Miracle Stories, 22–26,
32), he hopes to identify the period in the Jewish missionary movement's expansion into the Hellenistic world from which some characteristics derive (32–33). Far from being primarily late forms, "the bulk of these stories mirror the needs and convictions of Christians in the first three or four decades of the new movement, during which they essentially took shape" (168).
76. See, e.g., Nock, Essays, 827; Dupont, Sources, 164–65; Fitzmyer, Acts, 103; Thornton, Zeuge; Jervell,
Apostelgeschichte, 66, 82; Fusco, "Sezioni-noi"; Hanson, Acts, 21–24; Hemer, Acts in History, 312–34; Barnett,
Birth, 190–92; Cadbury, "We in Luke-Acts"; Dibelius, Studies in Acts, 135–37; and sources mentioned in the note in the introduction to this book.
The Ancient Evidenc
case, most often theistic) explanations? Whatever answers I give to the second set of questions will not satisfy everyone, but I will not have addressed the historical question fully without at least raising them. The veracity of the events aside, the question of explanatory models remains a legitimate subject of historical inquiry, and causation, albeit especially human causation, is a common historical concern.
Nevertheless, for purely historical purposes, in the final analysis, the question of whether or not eyewitnesses claimed such phenomena does not depend on the explanations or models proposed for these phenomena. Thus, although the question of whether events happened may overlap with the question of causation (most theistic believers, certainly, treat them together), in principle I allow for these questions to be treated separately. This book focuses especially on the former question but will also repeat and offer a challenge to rethink the nature of the second one.
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity Even the gods have spoken of me as of a divine man, not only on many occasions to private individuals, but also in public. —Philostratus Ep. Apoll. 48.1
They tell of R. Hanina b. Dosa that he used to pray over the sick and say, "This one will live," or "This one will die." They said to him, "How knowest thou?" He replied,
"If my prayer is fluent in my mouth I know that he is accepted; and if it is not I know that he is rejected." —m. Ber. 5:5.2
T he Gospels and Acts belong to the biographic3 and historical4 genres, respectively, with the Gospel of Luke possibly straddling both.5 Nevertheless, they
1. Trans. F. C. Conybeare, LCL 2:445.
2. Trans. H. Danby, 6.
3. Talbert, Gospel, passim; Kennedy, "Source Criticism," 128–34; Aune, Environment, 46–76; Stanton,
Jesus of Nazareth, 117–36; idem, New People, 63–64; idem, Gospel Truth, 137 (reversing his earlier skepticism in Stanton, Gospels, 19); Robbins, Jesus the Teacher, 10; Burridge, Gospels, 109–239; idem, "People,"
121–22; idem, "Biography, Ancient"; Cross, "Genres," 402–4; Frickenschmidt, Evangelium als Biographie;
Plümacher, Geschichte, 13–14; Keener, Matthew, 16–24; idem, John, 11–37; idem, Historical Jesus, 73–84;
Ytterbrink, Biography; Crossan, "Necessary," 27. For the historical character of biographies concerning recent persons, see Keener, "Otho."
4. Dibelius, Studies in Acts, 123–37; Cadbury, Acts in History, passim; Plümacher, "Luke as Historian,"
398; idem, Lukas, 33–38 (comparing mission speeches), 137–39; idem, Geschichte, 1–32; idem, "Cicero und Lukas," 772–73; idem, "Monographie"; idem, "Historiker"; Palmer, "Monograph" (1992); idem,
"Monograph" (1993); Schmidt, "Influences," 59; Fuller, "Classics," 189 (addressing George Kennedy's comments); Petersen, "Genre"; Bovon, Theologian, 5; Johnson, Acts, 3–7; idem, "Luke-Acts," 406; Stagg, Acts,
17; Wall, "Acts," 12–13; Fitzmyer, Acts, 127; Cross, "Genres," 404–6; Tuckett, Luke, 29; Ehrman, Historical
Introduction, 142–44; deSilva, Introduction, 349–51; Balch, "ΜΕΤΑΒΟΛΗ ΠΟΛΙΤΕΙΩΝ," 141–42, 149–54
(political history); idem, "Genre," passim, especially 11–19; idem, "Gospels (forms)," 948–49; Marguerat,
Histoire, 49 (although noting overlap with biography); idem, "Pionnier"; Eckey, Apostelgeschichte, 20–31;
Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 77–78; Flichy, L'oeuvre de Luc; idem, "État des recherches," 28–32 (reviewing recent research); Rothschild, Rhetoric of History, 296; Guijarro Oporto, "Articulación literaria"; Riesner,
"Zuverlässigkeit," 39; see further discussion in Keener, Acts, the introduction.
5. Cf., e.g., Keener, "Luke-Acts and Historical Jesus"; on the possibility of mixed genres, cf. Spencer,
Acts, 13–14; Barrett, Acts, lxxviii–lxxix; for mixed genres being common in the early imperial period,
The Ancient Evidenc
report signs more often, given the amount of space available, than typical ancient biographers or historians did. Various factors help to account for this disparity, such as greater skepticism among elite readers, who account for the target audience of the bulk of extant histories, but the disparity especially reflects the different focus of the Gospels and Acts. Unlike most other works, the Gospels offer the biography of a miracle worker and Acts the history of a charismatic movement's missions thrust. Reporting sample and significant miracle accounts was thus part of the story they had chosen to recount.
Despite this relative contrast, belief in and reports of miracles were widespread in antiquity. In this chapter, I shall survey first pagan6 accounts from the GrecoRoman world and then Jewish ones, which are closer in character to the religious world of Jesus and his earliest followers. Other scholars have explored or surveyed these works in much greater detail, and my point is not to rehearse their work. In this book, as I have noted, I wish to emphasize the possibility of genuine eyewitness claims to extraordinary recoveries and the like; hence, I resort especially to socially analogous contemporary claims where there is less possibility of legendary accretion. It is nevertheless necessary, at least by way of survey, to point out claims of similar phenomena from antiquity. The appropriateness of explanations ranging from eyewitness reports to legend may vary from one example to another, composed as they were at various chronological distances from the events they depict.
Gentile Greco-Roman Miracle Accounts Greek and Roman stories of paranormal phenomena provide a context for how many early auditors, especially those from Gentile backgrounds, would have heard miracle stories in the Gospels and Acts. Nevertheless, Bultmann unfortunately sometimes exaggerated the parallels between Hellenistic and Gospel miracle stories, and certainly he exaggerated the likelihood of the former influencing the traditions in the latter.7 Indeed, as I shall note later, it is modern Western academic see Aune, "Problem of Genre," 10–11, 48; idem, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 307; Burridge, Gospels, 33–34,
56–61. Luke and Acts need not, however, belong to the same genre (cf. Palmer, "Monograph" [1993], 3;
Parsons, "Unity," esp. 45–48).
6. I here follow the conventional nomenclature, not intended pejoratively. I am more than happy to change nomenclature once a widely understood equivalent becomes available in common usage (neither
"Gentile" nor "polytheist" quite captures the sense, and "non-Christian Gentile," while adequate, is cumbersome).
7. See Bultmann, Tradition, 236–39; idem, "Study," 36–37; Kundsin, "Christianity," 123; note the concerns in McGinley, Form-Criticism, 67–68, 73–75; Sabourin, Miracles, 67; for trends away from seeking such analogies already half a century ago, see Neil, "Nature Miracles," 370. Some scholars think that Bultmann was more cautious than to treat the Hellenistic stories as sources for the Gospel narratives, but that he regarded them as merely part of the milieu (Loos, Miracles, 136–37, summarizes and critiques this approach as a generalization that proves nothing with respect to influence); but some of his language in Tradition sounds even stronger than this. He did allow that the Palestinian church ascribed miracles to Jesus, treating the "Hellenistic" stage as later (Bultmann, Tradition, 239).
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
skepticism about superhuman phenomena that is historically idiosyncratic, so it is logically illegitimate to lump together all supernatural claims as if they reflect historical borrowing.8 Nevertheless, the Evangelists produced their gospels for a milieu in which claims of superhuman healings and other phenomena were widespread, and we must survey this context.9
Belief in miracles was alive and well in the Roman Empire.10 One could treat here a variety of paranormal claims, but some appear more relevant than others. For the sake of space, for instance, I leave aside discussion of prodigies, which appear abundantly in ancient historians but are widely agreed to differ in character from the sort of paranormal phenomena we are investigating here.11 Most ancient supernatural or suprahuman healing accounts, especially in the first century, appear to involve particular healing sanctuaries, which are not readily comparable with accounts in the Gospels and Acts. I treat these first below. But we also have some reports of Greek miracle workers, which may prove more relevant and to which I will turn afterward.
Healing Sanctuaries Deities like Asclepius and Serapis, who were believed able to provide practical benefits like healings, often supplanted more traditional, less practically benevolent deities in popular devotion.12 Although healing was particularly associated with 8. Scholars often emphasize that the Gospels belong to a nonmodern setting, when people believed in miracles (e.g., McKenzie, "Signs," 5, with examples on 8–9), often without recognizing that the modern West is what is historically and culturally more idiosyncratic. While "folk literature" may relish "extraordinary" subjects (see, e.g., Thompson, Motif-Index, 4–200, as cited in Pyysiäinen, "Fascination," 21), even a true account of the universe as we know it would have comprised "marvels" to our predecessors.
9. The soundest approach takes seriously the context in which Jesus worked without seeking to reduce him to that context (see here helpfully Mills, Agents, 12); each ancient figure had some distinctive characteristics, and this is not least true of Jesus.
10. E.g., Strelan, Strange Acts, 26 (following Theissen, Miracle Stories, 274), though noting that the relevant models are Elijah and Elisha and the closest parallels appear in Hellenistic Jewish sources (Strelan,
Strange Acts, 27–28). For a collection of sources, see Cotter, Miracles, 35–47 (for Hellenistic heroes; for biblical miracle workers, see 47–53; more briefly, idem, "Miracle Stories"); Cotter rightly warns (Miracles,
7) against abusing the collection in a way that looks for genetic sources rather than a cultural framework for understanding. More briefly, see the survey in Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition, 205–9; Van Cangh,
"Miracles grecs," 213–26; McGinley, Form-Criticism, 119–43; George, "Miracles"; earlier, see Herrlich,
Wunderkuren (as cited in Sabourin, Miracles, 250). For a concise but plentiful listing of ancient miracle stories, see Kahl, Miracle Stories, 57–61 (plus the Gospels and Acts, 61–62).
11. See Léon-Dufour, "Conclusion," 359–63. For an extensive albeit not exhaustive listing of ancient prodigy reports, see Keener, Matthew, 568–69 (including Livy 21.62.1–5; 24.10.6–11; 27.11.2–5;
33.26.7–8; 43.13.3–6; Arrian Alex. 4.15.7; Aulus Gellius 4.6.2); also, e.g., Tacitus Ann. 12.43, 64; 14.32;
15.22, 47. Prodigies could sometimes be called "signs" (Arrian Alex. 4.15.8), but for prognostication of future events rather than revelation of divine character. Collections of prodigies also appear in China from the Six Dynasties (317–589) and the T'ang eras (618–906), with about three thousand examples
(McClenon, Events, 152, citing Kao, Tales, 48), and in medieval Japanese and 1600s Korean collections
(McClenon, Events, 155).
12. See Grant, Gods, 38, 54, 66–67; Nilsson, Piety, 171; Kee, Miracle, 104. On healing deities, see Graf,
"Healing Deities"; Martins Terra, "Milagres"; for Baal, but critiquing the view that he was primarily a healing deity, see Brown, "Asclepius"; in ancient Egypt, Jansen-Winkeln, "Healing Deities"; in Roman Egypt,
Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 46–52; for a collection of sources, see Cotter, Miracles, 11–34 (Heracles,
The Ancient Evidenc
Asclepius, on whom I comment further below, it was not limited to him. Many people believed that the Egyptian deity Serapis brought healing dreams daily in Alexandria;13 he was also known for healing through dreams in his Corinthian sanctuaries.14 Some people even identified Serapis with Asclepius since both specialized in healing.15 Isis, associated with Serapis, was known as a healing deity.16
People also honored other deities17 and (increasingly over time) heroes18 associated with healing powers. The Epidauros inscriptions19 suggest that Apollo was honored alongside Asclepius;20 Apollo was also a deity traditionally associated with healing.21
Asclepius Shrines But Asclepius was the Greeks' most prominent superhuman healer. According to the usual version of the ancient myth, he was originally a mortal whom Zeus struck dead for raising too many fellow mortals or for raising particular mortals from death.22 But it was widely believed that Asclepius, now immortal, continued to heal
Asclepius, and Isis). On Asclepius and his healing cult, see Klauck, Context, 155–68; Ferguson, Backgrounds,
173–76; Wickkiser, "Asklepios"; Martin, Religions, 50–52; Kee, "Self-Definition," esp. 129–33; idem, Miracle,
78–104; Van Cangh, "Miracles grecs," 213–22; Avalos, Health Care, 49–51. On limits of comparability to the Gospels, see Sabourin, "Miracles," 296–300 (on 300 viewing the genuine cures as reflecting good care or psychosomatic factors).
13. Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.12. Yet one could also die after such a dream (Toner, Culture, 41).
14. Engels, Roman Corinth, 105. Some healing reports today remain associated with dreams (e.g.,
Shorter, Witch Doctor, 153–54; Bush and Pegues, Move, 51, 61).
15. Tacitus Hist. 4.84. But sometimes Egyptians were said to identify Asclepius instead with an ancient king with medical skills; Manetho Aeg. frg. 11 (from Syncellus, p. 104); also frg. 12a (from Syncellus, p.
106), and frg. 12b (Armenian version of Eusebius). The primary healing deity was a hybrid, ImouthesAsclepius (P. Oxy. 11.1381, lines 32–52, in Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 238), the local Imhotep being identified with Asclepius (Lewis, Life, 99). For some possible but uncertain evidence for an earlier Egyptian healing deity, see Kaiser, "Pantheon," 94.
16. E.g., Diodorus Siculus 1.25.2–3. Note also healings at the sanctuary of Isis and Serapis at Delos
(Heyob, Isis, 65), an island especially associated with Apollo. See discussion in Avalos, Health Care, 51–53.
17. Cf. perhaps the cult of Diana at Philippi (Abrahamsen, "Reliefs," 119–21); also the sanctuary at Eleusis (Burkert, Mystery Cults, 20). Cf. Asclepius's association with Hygieia in Kent, Inscriptions, #64
(plate 7, inv. 877 = Meritt #118; SEG 11.88); esp. Engels, Roman Corinth, 100.
18. E.g., Philostratus Hrk. 4.10; 16.1; 28.5; Pausanias 6.11.9. On Amphiaraus, see, e.g., Ferguson,
Backgrounds, 173. Priests at Egyptian sanctuaries were also reputed to perform magical healings (Dunand,
Religion en Égypte, 125); for magic and healing, see also PGM 18b.1–7, 1–2.
19. Archaeologists have found these, but inscriptions at the sanctuary are also mentioned in Pausanias
2.27.3. For the inscriptions, see, e.g., in Edelstein and Edelstein, Asclepius; for brief samples, see, e.g.,
George, "Miracles," 97–100.
20. Klauck, Context, 160. Asclepius's healing gift derived from his being Apollo's son (Philostratus
Vit. Apoll. 3.44).
21. E.g., Homer Il. 5.446–48; 16.526–31; Euripides Licymnius frg. 477 (from Macrobius Sat. 1.18.6);
Menander Dyskolos 192; Horace Carmen Saeculare lines 62–64; Ovid Fast. 3.827; (Ps.-Tibullus) 3.10.1–12;
Dio Chrysostom Or. 32.56–57. Narrative necessity sometimes dictated different outcomes; Apollo could not raise a dead maiden he loved (Ovid Metam. 2.617–18; cf. the sun god's inability to heal a beloved in Metam. 4.247–49).
22. Panyassis frg. 5, in Sextus Empiricus Math. 1.260; Lucian Dance 45; on him raising the dead, see also Pausanias 2.26.5. Supposedly the Muses taught this son of Apollo both healing and prophecy
(Apollonius Rhodius 2.512).
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
the sick,23 often through dreams in his temples.24 People expected him to be able to cure even blindness and hence might suggest that a blind person spend the night in Asclepius's temple.25 Some traveled to Asclepius sanctuaries to entreat deities even to heal others.26 Like other deities, however, Asclepius could also exact judgment; one who ordered this deity's sacred grove cut down to build ships was killed.27
Asclepius sanctuaries were most often situated near healthy springs.28 Because of its warmth, Epidauros's water had long been associated with healing.29 (Entirely apart from healing sanctuaries, therapeutic springs were widely appreciated,30 including in Palestine,31 and continue to be appreciated in many places.) But the healing claims associated with Asclepius were not limited to therapeutic waters.
Asclepius's cult was widespread. Strabo praises Asclepius's healing power at Epidauros, Cos, and Triccê.32 Pergamum in Asia Minor was the leading cult center for Asclepius during the period of the empire.33 Its Asclepius temple was massive,34 and it was known for the snake associated with Asclepius;35 like other sites, it featured healing through dreams.36 The sanctuary at Cos was also significant and renowned.37
23. Sophocles Phil. 1437–38 (sent by the now-deified Heracles); Suetonius Claud. 25.2; Maximus of Tyre 9.7.
24. Pausanias 2.27.2; Aelius Aristides Or. 2.30–36, 74–76; Philostratus Vit. soph. 1.25.536; 2.4.568;
Iamblichus Myst. 3.3; Herodian 4.8.3. Modern readers approach these accounts from various angles; for a psychoanalytic approach, see Rousselle, "Cults."
25. Aristophanes Plut. 410–11, 620–21. Isis was also among deities supposed to be able to heal the blind (Heyob, Isis, 65).
26. Lucian Dem. 27 (for a son).
27. Valerius Maximus 1.1.19.
28. Vitruvius Arch. 1.2.7.
29. Xenophon Mem. 3.13.3. Aelius Aristides credited a well in Asclepius's temple for bringing him healing (Or. 39.14–15).
30. E.g., Vitruvius Arch. 8.3.4; Pliny Nat. 31.31.59–61; Plutarch Sulla 26.3; also waters thereafter dedicated to Diana in Velleius Paterculus Compendium 2.25.4. For hot springs more generally, e.g., Menander
Rhetor 1.2.349, line 30; Eunapius Lives 459; Philostratus Hrk. 23.30; cool springs were thought less healthy
(Pliny Ep. 2.8.2). For hot water for health more generally, e.g., Valerius Maximus 2.4.5.
31. For the hot springs of Tiberias, see, e.g., Josephus War 2.614; 4.11; Life 85; Pliny Nat. 5.15.71;
Pesiq. Rab Kah. 11:16; Eccl. Rab. 10:8, §1 (cf. more general mention in Josephus Ant. 18.36; p. Ber. 2:7,
§3; b. Sanh. 93a; 108a; Shab. 40b; 147a; p. Ned. 6:1, §2; Gen. Rab. 76:5); in Palestine elsewhere or more generally, see Josephus War 1.657; Pliny Nat. 2.95.208; 5.15.72; Hirschfeld and Solar, "Hmrhs'wt"; idem,
"Baths"; Dvorjetski, "Healing Waters."
32. Strabo 8.6.15.
33. Klauck, Context, 157; Fronto Ad M. Caes. 3.9.1; for its importance, see also Statius Silv. 3.4.23–24;
Tacitus Ann. 3.63; Pausanias 2.26.9; Lucian Icar. 24; Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 4.11, 34; Vit. soph. 2.25.611.
It had long been famous (Homer Il. 5.446–48).
34. 425 by 360 feet (McRay, Archaeology and New Testament, 271, also providing further details on the sanctuary).
35. Statius Silv. 3.4.25; also evident on coins and other representations from there (Ramsay, Letters,
286; Koester, Introduction, 1:182; Hemer, Letters, 84–85). The snake is also associated with Epidauros, though that one was allegedly transferred to Rome (Valerius Maximus 1.8.2). The connection of snakes with healing is Eastern and pre-Greek (Kaiser, "Pantheon," 42–43).
36. E.g., Herodian 4.8.3; Philostratus Vit. soph. 1.25.536.
37. E.g., Pliny Nat. 20.100.264; Tacitus Ann. 4.14; cf. Grant, Religions, 4–6. For its architecture, see
Owens, City, 120.
The Ancient Evidenc
Closer to a center of Paul's mission, near Corinth, the sanctuary of Asclepius at Epidauros38 was similarly well known.39 The Epidauros cult even claimed that Asclepius was born at that sanctuary.40 Romans believed that Asclepius at Epidauros cured a Roman plague, for which reason the Romans enticed the god to come to Rome.41 Epidauros continued to be associated with successful healings.42
Not far from Epidauros,43 Corinth's Asklepieion, built near the city's northern wall, was one of that city's more prominent cult sites,44 situated so as to have its own water supply.45 It was not comparable to the great Asclepius sanctuaries at Epidauros, Cos, or Pergamum but resembled the more modest ones at Troezen and Athens.46 For this reason, it is likely that it was used mainly for locals; it did not house supplicants from far distances for sometimes months at a time like the great sanctuaries did.47
The Asclepius sanctuary in Ephesus venerated Asclepius and Hygieia.48 Apparently at Dor, an Apollo temple became an Asclepius temple before its later transformation into a Byzantine basilica.49 Asclepius also was said to reveal himself in dreams at his sanctuary at Aegae in Cilicia;50 similarly, he had long had a sanctuary at Agrigentum in Sicily51 and eventually had a very popular shrine on Mount Ida in Crete.52
Comparison with the Gospels How do such ancient miracle reports compare with those in the Gospels? As I have noted earlier, the form of miracle stories typically proves less distinctive than their content. Various records of cures in the Epidauros inscriptions were stylized
38. Pausanias 2.26.1–2.27.6.
39. I mention Paul as a point of reference, but Christian competition with pagan sites is not impossible even at this early period; cf. comments on "power encounters" in appendix B.
40. Klauck, Context, 158. Pausanias appears convinced (2.26.8).
41. Valerius Maximus 1.8.2.
42. Ovid Ex Ponto 1.3.21.
43. As often noted (e.g., Pliny Nat. 4.5.18); Epidauros is included (2.26.1–2.27.6) with Corinth in bk. 2 of Pausanias's Description of Greece (under the title "Corinth"), unlike the rest of Achaia (reserved for bk. 6). For Epidaurus in Corinth's inscriptions see West, Inscriptions, p. 57 on #71. Cf. the sanctuary in Pausanias 2.10.2.
44. Rothaus, Corinth, 42 (for its later history, see 47); especially Roebuck, Asklepieion (for the sacred precinct, see 23–64). It adjoined the gymnasium (Biers, Bath, plate 56; cf. Engels, Roman Corinth, 151;
Pausanias 2.4–5).
45. See Roebuck, Asklepieion, 1, 3, 96–99.
46. Ibid., 25.
47. Engels, Roman Corinth, 100–101.
48. Aurenhammer, "Sculptures," 266–67. For Asclepius worship in Ephesus, see I. Eph. 105, 1253–54
(though this is far less prominent than Zeus—I. Eph. 1239–43—and about as prominent as Dionysus or Demeter).
49. Dauphin, "Apollo and Asclepius."
50. Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 1.7, 10.
51. Cicero Verr. 2.4.43.93.
52. Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 4.34.
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
into standard forms for posterity.53 The introductory notes present in discrete accounts at Epidauros and in the Talmud would be dropped when miracle stories were incorporated into connected narratives similar to those we find in the Gospels.54
As I noted earlier, the most basic format of a miracle story is, as one would expect, a description of the circumstances of the healing, the healing itself, and its confirmation or effects on the audience.55 The exact format varies somewhat depending on the situation addressed by a particular collection's editors. A sampling of Epidauros inscriptions, for instance, could yield the following steps in the description:56
1. Statement of the suppliant's original infirmity, sometimes including the infirm person's name and home city, probably for documentation
2. The suppliant comes to the sanctuary
3. (Optional: the suppliant sometimes mocks the cures listed in the inscriptions)
4. (Usually) the suppliant sleeps in the sanctuary
5. (Usually) Asclepius appears to the suppliant in a dream
6. When day arrives, the person emerges cured Some features, such as the suppliant coming to the sanctuary and the practice of incubation (sleeping in a deity's sanctuary to receive a dream),57 specifically characterize a local healing shrine as opposed to a traveling miracle-working teacher.58 The two elements most comparable to the Gospels' miracle stories are the statement of the problem and its supernaturally effected cure—elements almost necessary for recounting miracles in narrative form, regardless of the culture or the story's historical veracity. That is, the limited parallels in form do not define for us the historical authenticity of any traditions behind the accounts. They need not even demonstrate that the Gospel writers regularly drew on Hellenistic forms to recount miracles; much less do they imply that use of these forms, even if some
53. See Dibelius, Tradition, 170.
54. Theissen, Miracle Stories, 128–29.
55. Aune, Environment, 50. For people marveling after miracles, see, e.g., Philostratus Vit. Apoll. passim.
56. Drawn from the sampling in Grant, Religions, 56–58. Pausanias 2.27.3 notes that the inscriptions list the names of the healed, their disease, and how they were cured. Cf. also records of healings in Horsley,
Documents, 2:21–25.
57. Grant, Gods, 66–67; Aelius Aristides Or. 2.30–36, 74–76 (Grant, Religions, 53–55). This practice of incubation was already in vogue probably for at least two millennia before our period; note AQHTA i,
"The Tale of Aqhat," 149–55 in ANET, 150; less relevant; KRTA i, "The Legend of King Keret," 142–49 in ANET, 143; cf. Gen 15:12; 1 Sam 3:3–15; 1 Kgs 3:4–15. For its continuance in early Christianity, see
Markschies, "Schlafkulte"; Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 23–25.
58. For the contrast between healing at the shrine at Epidauros and Jesus healing in the open air, see
Van Cangh, "Miracles grecs," 222–23. Aelius Aristides attests that Asclepius sometimes healed away from the shrine as well (Grant, Gods, 66). On other sanctuary-based healing cults, see Ferguson, Backgrounds,
173–77 (Amphiaraus); Asclepius at Cos (Grant, Religions, 4–6); possibly Diana at Philippi (Abrahamsen,
"Reliefs," 119–21); healing miracles were also attributed to Eleusis (Burkert, Mystery Cults, 20) and were associated with Apollo (Horace Carmen Saeculare 62–64). A Jewish version delegates authority over illness to Raphael (1 En. 40:9; cf. T. Sol. 18).
The Ancient Evidenc
instances were to prove borrowed, mean that the stories so shaped must have been invented by later Hellenistic Christians.
Holistic Medicine in Paganism, Judaism, and Christianity In contrast to a minority of modern healing movements (e.g., that of John Alexander Dowie), recourse to these ancient forms of supernatural healing did not entail rejection of physicians.59 Whereas Epidauros has turned up votive tablets announcing miraculous cures,60 Asclepius's shrine on Cos turned up medical instruments, suggesting that no barrier separated physicians from divine activity.61
Pliny the Elder even records an antidote for venomous bites preserved on the wall of the Asclepius temple at Cos.62 Doctors trained at Asklepieia.63
Jewish people recognized that God was ultimately the healer64 and sought his help in prayers.65 Opinions differed on the role that physicians played in healing; a popular ancient sage declared that God's word rather than medicaments heals,66 and some Jewish traditions preferred trusting God rather than physicians.67 By the late second century, R. Judah mentions physicians among socially proscribed professions; although this may be partly a matter of class division, R. Judah assigns
59. Because most people could not afford physicians, however, folk cures may have predominated.
Because perhaps 70 to 90 percent of treatments in cultures like Taiwan and the United States occur on a popular rather than medical level (Eve, Miracles, 356, following Kleinman, Healers, 50), it seems reasonable to suppose no smaller a proportion in antiquity (Eve, Miracles, 356). (Chin, "Practices," 1, suggests that 85 percent of Taiwan follows folk religion.) On the use of remedies but also physicians when needed, see
Avalos, Health Care, 77 (on health care in antiquity more generally, see passim).
60. E.g., Strabo 8.6.15; confirmed archaeologically. Some locations, like Corinth, include models of body parts healed (e.g., Klauck, Context, 165; Hill, "Temple of Asclepius"; at Delos, see Heyob, Isis,
65). The practice of votive offerings, including models of body parts, for healings continues in some
Christian traditions (cf. votive offerings in Oktavec, Prayers, esp. xvi, 55, 195–98; body parts in Duffin,
Miracles, 156).
61. Goppelt, Theology, 1:141; cf. Klauck, "Ärzten"; Markschies, "Schlafkulte"; Van Cangh, "Miracles grecs," 223. Even at Epidauros, rather than rivalry, each sphere had its place (Klauck, Context, 166–67).
Ancients did not distinguish medicine from religion as we do today; traditions linked Hippocrates with the "sons of Asclepius," physicians at healing shrines (Kee, "Hippocratic Letters," 498–99).
62. Nat. 20.100.264.
63. Engels, Roman Corinth, 101. They could gladly attribute their art's origins to deities like Apollo and Asclepius (see, e.g., Quintilian Decl. 268.21).
64. E.g., Exod 15:26; Wis 16:12; b. Pes. 68a (Raba). Sickness was sometimes associated with sin (Gen
20:7, 17; Num 12:10; 2 Kgs 5:27; 15:5; 2 Chr 26:21; Job 42:8; Sir 38:9–10; Jas 5:14–16; Rev 2:22–23;
Gen. Rab. 97, NV; Lev. Rab. 18:4; Pesiq. Rab. 22:5; cf. 4Q560 in Naveh, "Fragments"). In a possibly firstcentury document, Raphael is assigned over diseases, wounds, and (apparently) healing (1 En. 40:9); angel invocation drives away the spirits causing infirmity in T. Sol. 18.
65. A prayer in text 42.12 of the Aramaic incantation bowls (Isbell, Bowls, 101); Sir 31:17; 38:9; Jas
5:14–15; m. Ber. 5:5; b. Ber. 60b; Gen. Rab. 53:14; cf. synagogue prayers, especially the eighth benediction when applied to physical infirmities (cf. p. Taan. 2:2, §7; Song Rab. 7:2, §3). Medical help was normally sought only as a secondary line of defense (Goppelt, Theology, 1:142), and one who needed to go to a physician should pray for God's healing (b. Ber. 60a).
66. Wis 16:12.
67. 2 Chr 16:12; T. Job 38.7–8/11–13; cf. Job 13:4. Nevertheless, physicians in ancient Judah probably had more medical knowledge than we often assume (Wright, Archaeology, 171).
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
the best of them to Gehinnom.68 Nevertheless, at least some Palestinian Jews with a more cosmopolitan education made use of physicians (Josephus Life 404), and a sage whose wisdom circulated widely in the first century praised physicians and their medicine as instruments of God (Sir 38:1–9).69 The school of the secondcentury R. Ishmael held that God could work through physicians;70 even Galilean physicians could earn a great deal.71 Some thought that one should not reside in a city lacking a physician.72
Some of the rabbis appear to have been familiar with Hippocratic traditions, including about climate and health;73 some ancient doctors had some sound empirical knowledge of anatomy and physiology,74 and some scholars argue that rabbis sometimes surpassed the best Greek medicine, avoiding excessive reliance on theory.75 Nevertheless, they still faced the limitations of medical knowledge available in their era. Jewish folk medicine, like many other forms of ancient medicine, mixed what many would consider magic with scientific elements.76 Although
Galilean physicians probably lacked formal Greek training, they adopted some Greek medical practices.77 Galilean physicians, like Greek ones, mixed genuine medical knowledge78 with what we would regard as superstition.79
It is not surprising that Christians in later centuries, perhaps having learned from the earliest Christian concern for bodily as well as spiritual cures, combined both approaches no less than did some Asclepius sanctuaries and some Jewish sources. Although the church opposed medicine and medical schools in some
68. M. Kid. 4:14; cf. Ab. R. Nat. 36A.
69. Cf. also Sir 10:10. Sirach 38:15 could be directed against physicians but in context probably is directed only against sickness. For the positive view of physicians in Sirach, see McConvery, "Ancient
Physicians"; idem, "Praise." Kraemer, "Doctor," treats Sirach as transitional between the usually negative biblical tradition and more open talmudic approach. For archaeological evidence for medical and dental equipment in ancient Palestine, see Avalos, Health Care, 78.
70. B. Ber. 60a (though many voices in the text attribute healing only to God).
71. Goodman, State, 60, cites tos. B.B. 10:6. Inadequate treatments appear in Mark 5:26, but Mark is not alone in antiquity in reporting inadequate medical cures (see von Bendemann, "Arzt").
72. So p. Qid. 4:12, §2. "Honor your physician before you are sick" was a proverb for praying before trouble comes (Exod. Rab. 21:7).
73. Newmyer, "Climate."
74. See discussion in Vallance, "Anatomy." For earlier forms of medicine, see, e.g., Weeks, "Medicine"; in various regions, see Avalos, "Medicine." One digested faster lying on one's right side (Pliny Nat.
28.14.54).
75. Newmyer, "Medicine."
76. See Urbach, Sages, 1:101; Safrai, "Home," 764–66; b. Bek. 44b; Pes. 111ab; Git. 68b–70b; Shab.
66b–67a; 108b–111a; cf. perhaps Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 63; 1 En. 7:1; 8:3; Brayer, "Psychosomatics."
Mixing magical and medical counsel was standard in antiquity, e.g., in Egyptian medicine (Jordan,
Egypt, 157).
77. Goodman, State, 60, includes anatomical details (such as "the number of limbs," m. Ohol. 1:8; cf. also tos. Ed. 2:10; Ab. R. Nat. 16A; Pesiq. Rab Kah. Sup. 3:2; Gen. Rab. 69:1; Lev. Rab. 12:3; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen 1:27).
78. Goodman, State, 60, lists m. Pes. 2; tos. Shab. 12(13):10–11; and cites skilled operations (m. Bek.
8:1; Ker. 3:8; tos. B.K. 6:20; Ed. 1:8; Ohol. 2:6).
79. Goodman, State, 60, lists m. Yoma 8:6; tos. Shab. 4(5):9. On ancient medical superstition, see
Keener, Acts, introduction, ch. 11.
The Ancient Evidenc
places,80 perhaps due to lingering pagan associations, monks preserved and used medical traditions.81 In ca. 350 c.e., Antioch's bishop began the use of buildings specifically devoted to caring for the sick, a model that became widespread in Christendom and constituted the beginning of hospitals as we know them;82 the Islamic world continued the Christian practice.83 Whereas much of the Western church downplayed medicine during the medieval period, Eastern Christianity remained more holistic and educated, hence accepted both miraculous healing and medicine.84 The combination has remained an appealing one through most of history.85 The traditional reputation of one of Paul's traveling companions as a 80. Dawson, Healing, 172–74. This seems odd, given the common objective of patients' wholeness, but ancient medicine was unregulated and varied in its scientific content, and connections with Asclepius in many locations probably rendered it suspect in a way not relevant to the vast majority of medical practice today.
81. Dawson, Healing, 174–77. For the positive use of medical work in Christianity, see, e.g., Gardner,
Healing Miracles, 46–60. For dependence on Greek medical writers, see, e.g., Dawtry, "Modus Medendi,"
25–27; Palmer, "Plague," 87–88; for the positive nature of Jewish interest in the body, see Kaplan,
Schwartz, and Jones, "View." Against some, Christianity did not work against ancient science (Lindberg,
"Rise").
82. Nutton, "Hospital," 525–26; Porterfield, Healing, 51–54 (including discussion of early Christian medicine); Hart, Delusions, 29–30 (cf. medical science in 70–74); Schmidt, Influence, 151–69; see
Miller, Birth (esp. 21–29); on medieval Christian hospitals, see Bird, "Medicine"; idem, "Texts"; briefly,
Koenig, Medicine, 33; cf. nursing orders in Scherzer, Healing, 40–45. Some grew quite large; Nutton notes
("Hospital," 526) that St. Sabas in Jerusalem in 550 c.e. "had over 200 beds, whilst the one of St. Sampson in Constantinople had almost double that number." Precursors existed in the Asklepieia and in Jewish hostels
(524); cf. also Dawson, Healing, 156–59, 177; Asclepieia in Constantelos, "Physician-Priests," 141–42,
149–50; the relationship to the Christian universal charity ethic in Nutton, "Medical Ethics," 555; Nutton,
"Medicine," 580. Christians started and still run hospitals in many parts of the world (Wilson, Healing, 64).
More recent Christian healing movements also have often viewed their work as compatible with medicine
(e.g., Kuhlman, Miracles, 15; Wilkerson, Beyond, 126, 131; Venter, Healing, 62). Cherry, Healing Prayer,
129–43, offers medical case histories of recoveries involving faith (sometimes using medicines but with outcomes unexpectedly positive from a natural perspective).
83. Nutton, "Hospital," 527. The medieval Islamic world initially made heavy use of the majority
Christian population in their lands, who mediated the older Greek learning, including in medicine (see
Irvin and Sunquist, History, 277–78); Muslim scholars in turn influenced Western Christians (Efron,
"Christianity," 84). Against the idea that medieval Islam was unfriendly to science, see Haq, "Culture."
84. Porterfield, Healing, 75–77; on Eastern physician-priests, see Constantelos, "Physician-Priests"
(both in early centuries, 142–44, and medieval times, 145–49); Horden, "Saints"; on the frequent complementarity of these healing modes (though not so much in the Miracles of Artemios), see Crisafulli and Nesbitt, Miracles, 44–45. Medical practice was not absent from the West: for Benedictine medical care for the sick in England, see Dawtry, "Modus Medendi"; for apparent Waldensian medical practice, see Biller, "Curate infirmos"; for medical works in the West, cf., e.g., those usually attributed to Hildegard of Bingen (e.g., in Maddocks, Hildegard, 279–81; Schipperges, Hildegard, 59, 66, 73–75, though these works, like others of their era and earlier, certainly differ from modern medical perspectives). On medieval medicine, see especially Biller and Ziegler, Medicine (for "depaganizing" earlier sources, see
Nutton, "Galen"); on science in medieval universities, see Shank, "Suppressed"; against the myth that medieval Christians thought the earth flat, see Cormack, "Flat" (against nineteenth-century propaganda noted on 28–29).
85. E.g., an eighteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury had been trained as a physician (Guy,
"Physician"); in general, see Sheils, Healing. Note especially medical missions, e.g., Williams, "Healing";
Walls, "Medical Missionary"; idem, Movement, 211–20; Grundmann, Heal (esp. early indigenous medical
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
physician (Col 4:14) cannot have hindered the welcoming of medicine alongside prayer.86
Pagan Miracle Workers Probably more relevant in Greek tradition for the Gospels and Acts than healing sanctuaries, but far less often documented for this period, are stories of individual wonder workers. I shall note significant differences, but first I must survey pagan miracle workers, including magical associations and the anachronistic "divine man" construct. One may take, for example, the later fictitious account (in a novel) of an Egyptian prophet-magician who performs a resuscitation of someone dead.87
The widely recited powers of Asclepius before as well as after his apotheosis88 refutes in advance any possible suggestion that pagans had no pre-Christian stories of healers.89 Certainly stories of the distant past abounded with regular divine interventions in heroes' lives.90 But apart from their shared supernaturalist worldview and belief that divine activity could be mediated through human agents
(more common than not among human societies in general), such stories about the mythical past offer weak parallels for biographies or historical works about recent persons. Political propagandists made good use of two healings associated missionaries in 159–62, such as, in India, Rev. Abdul Masih, 1776–1827; and in China, Kwan Ato, 1818–74, and Dr. Wong Fun in the late 1800s); the training of indigenous nurses in Mogashoa, "Survey." Medical missions became prominent starting especially in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Williams,
"Healing," 271–73), though it was initially emphasized particularly in otherwise unresponsive regions
(Walls, "Medical Missionary," 288–91; Williams, "Healing," 274–76) and reflected the cultural emphasis on benevolence (Williams, "Healing," 277–80, 283). The scale has proved massive and influential; for example, 90 percent of nurses in India were Christians in 1940, and Roman Catholics operated 205 hospitals there in 1964 (Pirouet, Christianity, 63). Note also examples of Lutheran medical missions in China (e.g., Skinsnes, "Hospital"; Kravig, "Heal"; Peterson, "Hospital"; Guldseth, "Cases"), some even after the Japanese invasion of their area (e.g., Guldseth, "Hospital"; idem, "Power," 3; Skinsnes, "Reopening").
Medical missions involved significant commitment; e.g., over a course of six years "five doctors of the Baptist Missionary Society in China, young men for the most part, died at their posts through illness or overwork" (Walls, "Medical Missionary," 291).
86. See most helpfully Weissenrieder, Images; cf. also the reading of Acts 28:8 in view of medical sources in Keener, "Fever," though the primary point is the different conceptualization of disease in antiquity.
87. Apuleius Metam. 2.28. This particular tale is probably meant to parody the telling of such tales more generally.
88. The myth appears in, e.g., Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition, 205 (citing, e.g., Apollodorus Bib.
3.10.3.5–4.1; Xenophon Cynegeticus 1.1–6; following Edelstein and Edelstein, Asclepius, 1:3, 9, 54, 56).
89. Price, Son of Man, 21, 131, thinks these the best parallels to some miracles attributed to Jesus. Yet they belong to a distant past era, and it is unlikely that Jesus's first Jewish followers (particularly disciples, normally charged with accurately representing teachers) would invent such stories without a basis in the tradition. It is inconceivable that within a generation they would so thoroughly embellish the tradition about him that healings and exorcisms would pervade every stratum of the tradition, but Price is not addressing healings and exorcisms here. Few scholars have found persuasive Price's appeal to Greek myth as background for much Jesus tradition (see, e.g., the critique in Costa, "Review").
90. Compare, for instance, the Argonautica of the second-century b.c.e. poet Apollonius Rhodius.
The Ancient Evidenc
with Vespasian.91 These might represent genuine recoveries, but these are the only two healings associated with him.92
By contrast, the most significant pagan parallels to Christian miracle-worker stories, such as the only extant literary account of Apollonius of Tyana, first appear in third-century literature,93 after Christian miracle stories had become widely known, and Christian and pagan expectations influenced each other more generally. Relevantly, the older "divine man" hypothesis for Jesus, treated in more detail below, has fallen on hard times. The primary reason that many have abandoned this view is that the combination of traits scholars once found in this composite category were blended together only in much later sources, potentially influenced by Christianity, not likely to have influenced early Christianity, and still less likely to have influenced the historical Jesus and his immediate Galilean followers.94 I discuss this problem further below.
Magical Associations Not everyone viewed all of these wonder workers in a positive vein; although miracle working tended to be public and magic secretive, miracle workers in the Greco-Roman world could easily be understood as sorcerers.95 Magicians were generally feared and usually detested (hence the antimagical apologetic in Mark 5:7,
9; Acts 8:9–11; 13:8–11; 19:13–19).96 Society usually viewed magic as subversive
91. Tacitus Hist. 4.81 (citing surviving eyewitnesses who attested the story even after it was no longer politically useful); Suetonius Vesp. 7.
92. Hume, Miracles, 41–42, cites the evidence and then simply dismisses it (in a manner that Gaskin,
Philosophy, 125, justly criticizes as "obscurantist"). Yet it is clear that both historians depend on prior material here; while the context is propagandistic and I would deem these historians' actual contact with these eyewitnesses less secure than the dominance of eyewitnesses in the formation of the Gospel tradition
(see Bauckham, Eyewitnesses; Keener, Historical Jesus), I think we should entertain the possibility (against many interpreters) that these unexpected recoveries did occur; Flew, "Introduction," 15, similarly accepts them as historically likely (though psychosomatic). (Cf. similarly Licona and Van der Watt, "Adjudication of Miracles," 5, noting that these reports appear within roughly the same span after Vespasian as Mark's
Gospel in relation to Jesus's ministry.) Although the stories predate their written form, Eve's suggestion that Mark's report of Jesus's healing spittle (see Mark 7:33; 8:23; cf. John 9:6) contrasts Jesus's messianic claim with Flavian imperial pretensions (Eve, "Spit"; idem, Healer, 45–46) would require knowledge of these stories to be widely known in Rome when Mark writes, which for other reasons (not least the likely comparative dates) I find less persuasive. Some theists allow that God permitted these miracles to confirm
Vespasian as emperor (see already John Leland in 1732 [in Burns, Debate, 117], though he prefers the explanation that the miracles were staged [Burns, Debate, 116]).
93. Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 199–204.
94. See the critique of the "divine man" hypothesis in earlier nt scholarship in Holladay, Theios Anēr;
Gallagher, Divine Man; Pilgaard, "Theios Anēr"; Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ"; Tiede, Figure; Theissen and Merz,
Guide, 305; Sabourin, "Miracles," 291–95; Twelftree, "Message," 2524–27; and other scholars and discussion cited in Keener, Spirit, 66–67; idem, John, 268–69. Individual pagan miracle workers arose especially in the first-century East and thereafter developed in competition with early Christianity (Frateantonio,
"Miracles," 53).
95. Harvey, History, 105.
96. Each of these accounts in Acts concludes with God's word spreading (Acts 8:12; 13:12; 19:20); for antimagical apologetic in Luke-Acts, see Spencer, Philip, 99–102; Trémel, "Risque de paganisation";
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
and antisocial, because it was often used for harm.97 (This perspective remains prevalent in many societies today.98) Nevertheless, many people were fascinated by stories of magic, even when it was considered malevolent.99 Thus Lucian tells of one Lucius who rejected good advice and craved magic.100 His quest is rewarded with the wrong potion, transforming him into an ass,101 with an implied consonant moral. Some officials eventually tried to suppress the flourishing private practice of magic,102 albeit unsuccessfully.
People feared magicians on account of their malevolent activity.103 Thus, for example, particular magical gestures were held to betray the activity of harmful sorcerers present during childbirth.104 Already Rome's twelve tables decreed punishments against those who cast spells against crops or did other magical harm.105
Some apparently thought it helpful to slay sorcerers if one were able to catch them.106
In novels, tremendous power was attributed to the most powerful sorcerers.107
Scholars have long labored to distinguish magic from miracle or religion, but the line between their respective common definitions is not always clear.108 One typical distinction is that magic conventionally seeks to manipulate spirits or forces, whereas religion and miracle do not.109 This distinction does not always esp. Garrett, Demise. Accusations against Christians for magical involvement (e.g., Eccl. Rab. 1:8, §4) made such apologetic all the more imperative.
97. E.g., SIG 3/985 (= LSAM 20), lines 12–15, from Asia Minor (Klauck, Context, 66); see further
Theissen, Miracle Stories, 239–42; Yamauchi, "Magic," 90; Kippenberg, "Magic"; cf. Carastro, "Divination et magie." It was thought efficacious even against good persons (Apuleius Metam. 9.30), and to employ parts of corpses (Apuleius Metam. 2.20, 30; cf. PGM 1.248–49; Pliny Nat. 28.2.4, 7; a crucifixion nail in m. Shab. 6:10). Welch, "Miracles," 369–71, argues for its illegality, but most of his primary evidence involves predictions of death.
98. "Black magic" remains antisocial in many societies, although others practiced "benevolent" magic
(see, e.g., Kadetotad, "Practices," 383–84); in many societies, it is used to kill (e.g., Tippett, Solomon Islands
Christianity, 15) and especially thought dangerous among co-wives (Stephens, Family, 68; Whisson,
"Disorders," 288); for a variety of uses, but especially harmful or selfish ones, see Mbiti, Religions, 196,
200, 203–4, 221, 258, 275, 278, 328; for societies' condemnation of witches, see, e.g., Mbiti, Religions,
209. Through medical diagnosis and rehydration, some following traditional "voodoo death" sequences have recovered (Eastwell, "Voodoo Death," esp. 5).
99. Lucian Lucius 4; Apuleius Metam. 3.19.
100. Lucius 4–5. In 56, he acknowledges the danger of his curiosity.
101. Lucius Lucius 13.
102. See Horsley, Documents 1, §12, pp. 47–51 (from a prefect in late second-century c.e. Egypt).
103. This remains true in many societies that believe that sorcery can kill, seduce, and so forth (e.g.,
Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity, 15).
104. Pliny Nat. 28.17.59.
105. Pliny Nat. 28.4.17. But Rives, "Magic in XII Tables," contends that these early laws were not originally antimagical. Certainly by the first century b.c.e., Roman law condemned it (Smith, Magician,
75–76).
106. Lucian Lucius 54. Cf. Exod 22:18; Hammurabi 2; today, Mbiti, Religions, 263, 275.
107. Apuleius Metam. 2.5; 3.15.
108. See Aune, "Magic," 1511–12; Grant, Religions, 45–46 (though noting that most magic lacked a religious interest).
109. Thus, e.g., Arnold, Power, 19; Klauck, Context, 215–18, esp. 218 ("coercion is typical of magic, and petition typical of religion"); Reimer, Miracle, 3–7 (summarizing the view), 250.
The Ancient Evidenc
hold, however,110 since even some civic religion sought to manipulate deities.111 The use of spiritual power for selfish or nonedifying purposes was another criterion for identifying magic, though again the distinction was not always observed.112
Ancients often employed a more subjective criterion,113 namely, labeling supernatural activity in alien social groups as magic, in contrast to similar activity among themselves.114 In general, public, civic activity was viewed as religion; secretive and subversive activity was viewed as magic. This prejudice could lead to negative perspectives on miracles in early Christian household associations as opposed to public temples like shrines of Asclepius. Nevertheless, another issue was more critical. Ultimately, as I have noted, a major issue was whether people believed that the power was used for personal advantage or the common good.115
Thus, for Philostratus's perspective on Apollonius,116 various criteria distinguish magic from miracle working, but most important is the issue of greed. Magical charges were common against all who did miracles, but the best accepted answer to these charges was to keep using miraculous power without seeming to desire it and without seeming greedy.117
Some magicians were recognized as charlatans.118 Skeptical intellectuals sometimes set out to expose them,119 as in the case of Lucian's opposition to Alexander the false prophet. Alexander allegedly would open sealed questions to the god and then answer them as he thought best (Lucian Alex. 20), gaining up to 80,000 obols a year by this means (Alex. 23); when a prophecy failed he changed it in the records (Alex. 27–28). He also found a way to project a voice into a serpent skin
(Alex. 26) and offered detailed oracles to people who, unknown to the audience, 110. See Remus, Conflict, 52–62; Reimer, Miracle, 7–8. Some others, like Smith, Magician, 69, go too far. In many societies today, diviners themselves use spirits to divine what spirits are causing problems (see, e.g., Berends, "African Healing Practices," 283; Ritchie, Spirit, 24–25; for protection against witchcraft,
Kapolyo, Condition, 103); shamans can use power for curing or harming (Peters, Healing in Nepal, 61,
63; Ritchie, Spirit, 28).
111. See, e.g., rain-making rituals in b. Taan. 25b; Moore, Judaism, 2:44–45 (comparing the functions of libations among pagans); Ringgren, Religion, 190; Harrelson, Cult, 69; Uval, "Streams"; I have explored this practice somewhat more fully in Keener, John, 723–24. Note also Roman concerns for exact protocol; e.g., Pliny Nat. 28.3.11–14; Plutarch Cor. 25.3.
112. See Remus, Conflict, 62–67. The purpose for which spiritual power is employed is a criterion for distinguishing good and bad power in African traditions (Mbiti, Religions, 258–59).
113. Modern anthropological approaches seek to avoid imposing modern interpreters' value judgments
(Aune, "Magic," 1509).
114. Remus, Conflict, 67–72; Remus, "Magic or Miracle?"; cf. Reimer, Miracle, 8–10 (summarizing the view, but see 10–12). For magicians as deviant from the religious community, see Reimer, Miracle, 248.
115. See Reimer, Miracle, 139–41 (emphasizing the importance of fringe status). Cf. diverging Christian and pagan interpretations of an event reported for 172 c.e. (DeFelice, "Legend").
116. Vit. Apoll. 1.34.
117. Reimer, Miracle, 246. Cf., e.g., Matt 8:20//Luke 9:58; Acts 3:6; 20:33–34.
118. The term γόης (cf. 2 Tim 3:13), which can mean "magician" (cf. T. Jud. 23:1; Plato Meno 80A, figuratively; Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 7.17; Porphyry Marc. 33.509), means "impostor" in Babrius 57.13 (cf. deception in 2 Macc 12:24). Some suspected that magic was merely "the illusion of all the greatest liars"
(Quintus Curtius 7.4.8, LCL 1:153).
119. See Plato's criticisms as well (Rep. 2.364BC).
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
did not exist (Alex. 50). Lucian and others trapped him repeatedly (Alex. 53–55), but his ilk were probably not uncommon.120 Some fraudulent healing techniques today follow quite ancient precursors.
Magic was not exclusive to the least educated. Some held the opinion that a truly well-educated person would not succumb to practicing magic.121 But while magic is thought to have circulated especially among the lower classes,122 more adept practitioners of magic had to be able to read with sufficient literacy to use and follow the right spells.123
Curse invocations were central to ancient magic.124 Virtually anything harmful could be attributed to magic.125 Erotic charms were meant to secure sexual influence.126 Some spells were to cheat in sports (e.g., a spell to overturn and wreck rival chariots).127 Other spells were for defensive magic, for protection128 (e.g., in childbirth).129 Magic could also be associated with achieving invisibility130 or 120. The translator's note in Lucian Alex. LCL 4:173 notes that inscriptions verify Alexander's widespread popularity.
121. Philostratus Vit. soph. 2.10.590.
122. Aune, "Magic," 1521; Arnold, Power, 19. Its use among those without access to other means of social power is probable, but in Egypt apparently at least it started with the priests. Kee, Miracle, 213, argues that sorcery accusations are more common in upper classes, but they may simply be more commonly preserved there. In many traditional societies, more fortunate and wealthy individuals are more often targeted by jealous witchcraft attacks (Gelfand, "Disorders," 167).
123. E.g., Lucian Lucius 11. Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 228–29, connects this literacy especially with the priesthood in Egypt. Koester, Introduction, 1:201, notes the use of magic among the well educated.
124. Klauck, Context, 223–26; Harder, "Defixio," 175; see, e.g., Jordan, "New Curse Tablets." This is also true in some more recent forms of magic (cf. Mbiti, Religions, 276; MacNutt, Power, 74–75; Peters,
Healing in Nepal, 61, 63; Lewis, "Possession," 189, 214; traditions about sorcerers "sending" spirits in Shorter, Witch Doctor, 198). On "the evil eye" (though I have listed together various conceptions of it; some mean only stinginess), see P. Oxy. 292.11–12; Aelian On Animals 11.18; Pliny Nat. 7.2.16–18; Aulus
Gellius 9.4.8; b. Ber. 20a; 55b; Sanh. 93a; Lev. Rab. 16:8; 17:3; Num. Rab. 12:4; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen 42:5;
Kern-Ulmer, "Evil Eye"; Dickie, "Evil Eye"; Elliot, "Fear"; Pilch, "Eye." Rab attributed nearly all diseases to this cause (Yamauchi, "Magic," 124). (Appearance in one translation of 4Q477 2 II, 4, 7 is reconstructed.)
Cf. the concept more recently in Kadetotad, "Practices," 384; Mbiti, Religions, 259.
125. Faraone, "Spells."
126. See, e.g., PGM 13.304; 32.1–19; 36.69–133, 187–210, 291–311, 333–60; 62.1–24; 101.1–53;
Pliny Nat. 27.35.57; 27.99.125; Philostratus Hrk. 16.2; T. Reu. 4:9; Frankfurter, "Perils"; Jordan, "Erotic
Spell"; cf. Theocritus The Spell (in Greek Bucolic Poets LCL 26–39); the charm in Horsley, Documents
1:33–34. In a novel, a witch might attract young men or other things once she had a piece of their hair
(Apuleius Metam. 3.16–18). Against novelists' emphasis on female practitioners, both genders employed these (Dickie, "Who Practised Love-Magic"; cf. the emphasis on male practitioners in Lewis, Life, 96).
Apuleius even had to defend himself against this charge (Bradley, "Apologia"). In more recent societies, see, e.g., Tippett, Solomon Islands Christianity, 15.
127. PGM 4.2211–16.
128. See some examples in Whittaker, Jews and Christians, 219–20 (along with "black magic"); today,
MacNutt, Power, 74–75.
129. E.g., Dunand, Religion en Égypte, 114.
130. E.g., PGM 1.222–31, 247–62 (esp. 1.256–57); cf. (in farce) Tibullus 1.2.58; further Keener, John,
773–74. Similarly, the ring of Midas (Pliny Nat. 33.4.8) or Gyges (Lucian Ship 42; Philostratus Vit. Apoll.
3.8). In more recent times, see, e.g., Owusu, "Strings," 146.
The Ancient Evidenc
changing one substance into another.131 Some apparently claimed to be able to procure whatever they wanted by magic.132
The means of magic differ in various cultures.133 Often in Greco-Roman antiquity magicians were thought to manipulate spirits,134 hence, from a strict early Jewish and Christian perspective, to traffic in demons.135 Beings intermediate between mortals and deities were supposed to be most common,136 though deities were also involved.137 Magic could employ drugs, that is, potions and poisons.138 Josephus interprets the biblical prohibition of witchcraft as directed against those who poison others.139 Potions could be used to make a rival infertile,140 or, in pure fiction, to turn people into beasts.141 Witches were also thought to change themselves into beasts to accomplish their harmful plans.142
The danger of magical associations affected the recounting of stories about individual miracle workers. The Pythagorean Empedocles reportedly "performed magical feats" (γοητευοντι)—a term that generally had unpleasant connotations.143
Likewise, Ferguson is probably right that "behind Philostratus are two older views of Apollonius—as a magician and charlatan or a wonder-worker."144 The magical
131. Homer Od. 10.239–40; Ovid Metam. 14.414–15; p. Hag. 2:2, §5; Sanh. 6:6, §2.
132. Lucian Dem. 23 (noting that Demonax countered this claim by insisting that he could procure what he desired by money).
133. In some societies, magic can even function by violating taboos, not just by sympathetic magic based on analogy (Makarius, "Violation," esp. 232).
134. See, e.g., PGM 1.88–89, 164–66, 179–85, 252–53; 2.52–54; 4.3043–44; Lucian Men. 9; Alex.
13; cf. Klauck, Context, 228; Nilsson, Piety, 171; Smith, Magician, 97–99; Arnold, Power, 18. For modern shamans manipulating spirits, see, e.g., Shorter, Witch Doctor, 178.
135. CD XII, 2–3 (which compares those controlled with demons to necromancers; see also Gaster,
Scriptures, 85); L.A.B. 34:2–3; b. Sanh. 67b.
136. Klauck, Context, 214. See discussion in appendix A.
137. Graf, "Initiation"; e.g., PGM 1.298 (Apollo); 2.98–117 (Osiris); 4.2626–29 (requiring a charm lest one anger Selene when invoking her); 12.67 (gods in general). For attempts to manipulate deities,
Pliny Nat. 28.4.19.
138. E.g., Diodorus Siculus 4.45.3; Philostratus Hrk. 25.13; Sib. Or. 5.165 (Rome's destruction for desiring φαρμακίην); T. Jos. 5:1 (deadly poisons); 6:1 (love charms in the food); cf. Guthrie, Orpheus,
17–18 (on Orpheus). Judaism opposed their use (Sib. Or. 3.225, probably second century b.c.e.; Gal 5:20; cf. the probably later curse invocation against those who secretly "poisoned" a loved one in Deissmann,
Light, 424). Roman law treated poisoning harshly (Grant, Paul, 114, citing Paulus Dig. 48.19.38.5). Drugs could impair the senses (Isaeus Astyph. 37, φαρμάκων). The more general medical sense of φάρμακον was different (Diodorus Siculus 17.31.6; Appian Hist. rom. 6.14.87).
139. Josephus Ant. 4.279.
140. Euripides Andr. 355.
141. Circe in Homer Od. 10.235–36, 290, 317, 326; Parthenius L.R. 12.2; cf. Diodorus Siculus 4.45.3.
Circe also used potions to bewitch animals (Homer Od. 10.212–13). For magic transforming substances, see, e.g., Ovid Metam. 14.414–15; p. Hag. 2:2, §5; Sanh. 6:6, §2; but deities also transformed substances
(Homer Od. 13.162–63) or persons (e.g., Hesiod Astron. frg. 3; Apollodorus Bib. 2.1.3.1; Euripides Bacch.
1330–32; Longus 1.27).
142. Lucian Lucius 54; Apuleius Metam. 2.30. In more recent magic, see Mbiti, Religions, 258 (and cf.
220); Prince, "Yoruba Psychiatry," 92; Umeh, Dibia, 132; Nanan, "Sorcerer," 82; cf. also the transformation in Zempleni, "Symptom," 99.
143. Diogenes Laertius 8.2.59, citing Satyrus's citation of Gorgias, who claimed to be a witness.
144. Ferguson, Backgrounds, 306.
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
character of some of Apollonius's deeds still frequently surfaces in Philostratus,145 although he is trying to clear Apollonius of the charge.146 I discuss Apollonius further below.
The "Divine Man"
For many Greeks, the line between humanity and divinity was much thinner than for Jewish people.147 Nevertheless, the category modern scholars have associated with a "divine man" did not make the person a deity per se but drew attention to the person's divine qualities.148 Many scholars have interpreted the nt accounts of Jesus's miracles, and sometimes those of his agents, in light of this category.149
Yet, as some other scholars point out, some structural similarities between Christian and pagan ways of recounting miracles hardly make the nt accounts representative of divine-man ideology.150 This warning is relevant for two reasons, both of which I explore more fully below. First, the applicability of the very category of "divine men" to first-century miracle workers is a matter of considerable dispute.
Second, Judaism already had a miracle-working tradition in the Elijah-Elisha cycle that it did not accentuate for Hellenistic apologetic; this relative indifference in Judaism diminishes the likelihood that the Gospels, which are less Hellenized in their content than some of our other Jewish sources, would have done so. The supposed connections between aretalogies and divine men are also inadequate.151
In the past, many scholars argued that the divine man was a composite type in antiquity with specific characteristics.152 Today, however, most scholars recognize that the various characteristics derive from many diverse sources and have been unified in a single type only by the creativity of modern scholarship.153 The ancient
145. E.g., Vit. Apoll. 4.43; 6.43; cf. also Evans, "Apollonius," 80–81.
146. Smith, Magician, 87; Klauck, Context, 169. See further Reimer, Miracle (below).
147. See, e.g., the sources in Keener, John, 178–79, 291–93.
148. Strelan, Strange Acts, 20 (noting even application of "divine" to Isaiah in Josephus Ant. 10.35 and to Moses in Philo Mos. 2.188). Some have also linked this divine man with Jesus's title, "son of God," but as I have argued elsewhere, the Gospels probably apply the title to Jesus in a Jewish sense (see Keener,
John, 291–96).
149. Reitzenstein, Religions, 207; Bultmann, Theology, 1:130; Koester, "Gospels," 230–36 (in Sabourin,
Miracles, 253); Koester, Paul and World, 118–20; Mack, Lost Gospel, 66; cf. Mills, Agents, 126. I have taken much of the material in this section from Keener, John, 268–70.
150. Kingsbury, Christology, 39; cf. Kee, "Aretalogy," 422.
151. Gallagher, Divine Man, 173–74; cf. Gundry, "Genre," 107.
152. For one example that scholars today regard as excessive, see Bieler, Theios anēr. Much more cautiously, cf. Talbert, Gospel, who relates men who achieved immortality (26–31) to theoi andres, while noting that not all theoi andres became immortal (35–38). Aune, "Problem of Genre," 19, is more skeptical of Talbert's differentiation between "eternals" and "immortals."
153. See Tiede, Figure, 99 (cf. 14–29, on Pythagorean conceptions; 71–97, Heracles); Gallagher, Divine
Man, 173; Shuler, Genre, 18; Liefeld, "Divine Man"; Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 188–91; Kingsbury, Christology,
34; Martitz, "Υἱός," 8:339–40; Sabourin, Miracles, 47; Betz, Jesus, 64; Koskenniemi, "Background,"
105–7. The "type" is especially inappropriate for the first century, when many of its features are not yet documented.
The Ancient Evidenc
use of the phrase is too broad to delineate a specific type; it can refer to a literal
"divine man," an "inspired man," a man somehow related to deity, and an "extraordinary man."154 The sense in which such a phrase appears in the third-century Life of Apollonius did not yet exist in the first century.155 Thus Kee harshly criticizes earlier advocates of the divine man type, arguing that this type is nonexistent.156
Scholars today therefore normally conclude that earlier scholars blended too many disparate features in their pictures of the "divine man."157 Those who fit the category best are Pythagoras, of whom relatively little is known historically;
Apollonius, for reports of whom we are largely dependent on third-century c.e.
Philostratus;158 and Empedocles,159 like the other two, associated with Pythagoreanism.160 Although Pythagoras and Empedocles lived centuries before early
Christianity, the attribution of wonders to them apparently derives from long after their lifetimes.
The later sources are even more problematic; as Howard Clark Kee objects, "To offer Philostratus or the Greek Magical Papyri as historical evidence for events reported by writers of the first century, who were operating within a very different life-world, such as the writers of the Gospels and Acts, is historiographically irresponsible."161 The third century c.e. particularly accentuated the ancient longing for direct intervention by the gods, as Kee notes,162 although I believe that it was more widespread in an earlier period than Kee's survey suggests. Some healing accounts had already become more detailed and began to appear in literary texts in the imperial period, a period in which magic also began to acquire greater prominence.163 Some scholars argue that "fantastic tales" and other fictitious elements in works with historical settings grew popular especially beginning in the literary revival of Nero's reign.164 Nevertheless, lavish tales of wonder workers grew in time.
That third-century miracle narratives are much more complete than accounts in earlier historians probably suggests that pagan propagandists suited their accounts to existing Christian parallels.165 Thus, parallels between first154. Holladay, Theios Anēr, 237.
155. Kee, Miracle, 37.
156. Ibid., 297–99; cf. idem, Origins, 61–62.
157. See Klauck, Context, 177.
158. In Philostratus Ep. Apoll. 48, Apollonius claims that the gods have publicly attested him as a "divine man."
159. Klauck, Context, 176.
160. Pythagorean miracle stories reflect the view "that nature's elements were rational, living forces" that responded to them (Cotter, "Miracle," 103).
161. Kee, Miracle, 288; cf. 52.
162. Ibid., 288; cf. Klauck, Context, 170. He provides evidence for miracles as propaganda in the romances (Kee, Miracle, 252–89).
163. Theissen, Miracle Stories, 269–71, 274.
164. Bowersock, Fiction as History, 22 (attributing some of this to the influence of the Jesus tradition,
27, 143; but would it have exercised such influence on Rome's aristocracy by Nero's reign?). In the second century, cf. the object of some of Lucian's satires.
165. See Lown, "Miraculous."
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
century Christian stories of Jesus raising the dead and third-century accounts of first-century Apollonius of Tyana166 doing the same may tell us more about Christian influence on paganism in late antiquity than concerning the reverse.167
To argue otherwise, in the face of the chronological evidence, is difficult to defend, unless one's agenda is to postulate early Christian borrowing from Apollonius at any cost.
Philostratus's Claims about Apollonius Of all ancient stories about miracle workers, those about Apollonius come closest to the stories about Jesus in the Gospels. Only these two figures stand out as immanent bearers of numinous power of whom multiple healing narratives are reported.168 If we ask which stories circulated first, however, it is clear that miracle stories circulated about Jesus before Apollonius flourished, and Mark wrote about Jesus's miracles well over a century before Philostratus wrote about Apollonius's.
The period between Jesus's crucifixion and Mark's Gospel, usually estimated at roughly forty years, may be less than a third of the period between Apollonius's death or disappearance and Philostratus's story about him.169
As suggested above, some, and possibly the majority of sources before Philostratus, associated Apollonius with magic.170 Philostratus seeks to counter this accusation in his portrayal. The antimagical apologetic in Philostratus resembles that in Acts and other sources: ethical and communal criteria were important in distinguishing benevolent miracles from harmful magic.171 Thus, for example, magic could seek to manipulate the divine for personal advantage.172 For Apollonius, various criteria distinguish magic from miracle working, but most important among 166. Anderson, Philostratus, 121–239, argues for the antiquity of the Apollonius traditions; Bowie,
"Apollonius," 1653–71, and idem, "Philostratus," 181–96, argues for their lateness (cf. also Bowersock's views on the priority of the Christian stories, in Fiction as History). Reimer, Miracle, 20–22, summarizes
Anderson and Bowie, and concludes that even if one rejects the narratives' antiquity, they can "illuminate shared cultural data" relevant to an earlier period (23, following Anderson, Philostratus, 121). I agree on this level and use Philostratus accordingly in my work.
167. Pélaez del Rosal, "Reanimación," may well be right that Philostratus read Luke; against Theissen,
Miracle Stories, 277; cf. Price, "Easters," who reads some Gospel signs in light of Philostratus and analogous sources. For significant contrasts between Philostratus and Luke here, see Harris, "Dead," 301–3. Narrative techniques in 1 Kgs 17:17–24 may have influenced Luke's composition (cf. Pélaez del Rosal, "Reanimación";
Brodie, "Unraveling"; Hill, Prophecy, 53), but he did not simply compose it from this source (Harris,
"Dead," 299–301; Witherington, Women, 76; against Drury, Design, 71). Dependence on 1 Kgs 17 in Luke's resuscitation accounts is in any case much likelier than dependence on the story of Apollonius. Luke locates his miracle at Nain, an insignificant village, does not report the young man's revelations about the afterlife, and is otherwise similarly unadorned, reinforcing the likelihood of the story being much earlier than the later, embellished pagan parallels (Harris, "Dead," 299).
168. Kahl, Miracle Stories, 236.
169. Over a century ago, Wilson, "Miracles," 20, suggested 140 years for this span, in contrast to the Gospels.
170. Klauck, Context, 169.
171. Reimer, Miracle, 249.
172. Ibid., 250.
The Ancient Evidenc
them, as I have noted, is the issue of greed; the most effective answer to miracle workers' critics was to keep using miraculous power without seeming to desire it or to be greedy.173 Good intermediaries might also be expected to put themselves in danger to benefit others.174 Such beliefs about ancient magic probably helped shape the apologetic of both Philostratus and the writers of the Gospels and Acts.
Philostratus's portrait suits a late secondor third-century setting (i.e., the author's own) much better than a mostly late first-century setting (i.e., Apollonius's); his accounts of Apollonius even resemble reports from Christian gospels, though especially of the "apocryphal" variety.175 This is very possibly deliberate; by the fourth century, pagan writers explicitly used Apollonius as an alternative to Jesus, claiming that the pagan world offered its own healers.176
Use of stories about Apollonius and others as rivals to Jesus invited Christian apologetic responses,177 though it may be noted that the most significant apologetic on a popular level may have been the reports of continuing miracle workers among Christians (reports that I shall address later in the book; see ch. 10). Although scholars today often doubt the nineteenth-century view that Philostratus tried to offer Apollonius as an alternative to Jesus (apart from the cases of the strongest parallels),178 it seems clear that Christian stories were at least among the serious
173. Vit. Apoll. 1.34; Reimer, Miracle, 246; cf. 139, 252. People viewed magicians as deviant, outside the religious community (248). But social marginalization was necessary and desirable for miracle workers to avoid charges of ambition (139–41, noting the apostles, and still more Apollonius and other exotic sages in Philostratus). For early miracle workers' asceticism, see Frateantonio, "Miracles," 53.
174. Reimer, Miracle, 85, comparing the apostles.
175. Klauck, Context, 170. Admittedly, stories of Jesus as miracle worker are limited in extant apocryphal gospels (Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition, 177–78; cf. Remus, Healer, 92–95). Nevertheless, miracle stories are abundant in apocryphal acts (Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition, 179–88; cf. Remus, Healer, 102–3). Miracles in the apocryphal acts fit the larger edifying framework of these works (see Bovon, "Miracles"). Secondand third-century apocryphal works conform the apostles to divine-man-type models, but canonical Gospel traditions about Jesus seem to have remained exempt (Achtemeier, "Divine Man"). Fanciful elements in Philostratus's tale (highlighted, e.g., in Purtill, "Proofs," 47) differ significantly from tamer elements in, say, Luke's history (see Keener, "Official"). Philostratus's geography is fairly accurate within the confines of the empire but depends on earlier authors and largely departs from reality in Mesopotamia and India
(Jones, "Passage").
176. Klauck, Context, 170; Conybeare, "Introduction," xi–xii. Deists, including notably Charles
Blount (1654–93), also employed this comparison regarding the Gospels (Burns, Debate, 72–74;
Cragg, Reason, 77; Lawton, Miracles, 47; Brown, Miracles, 49; idem, Thought, 204–5), a comparison that some subsequent skeptical critics also found useful (noted in Sabourin, Miracles, 45). Christian writer W. Weston countered in 1746 that Philostratus borrowed Jesus's miracles in an effort to discredit
Christianity (Burns, Debate, 116). Hume's attempted comparison of Jesus with Lucian's Alexander is plainly tendentious (see ibid., 241).
177. See, e.g., "The Treatise of Eusebius, the Son of Pamphilus, against the Life of Apollonius of Tyana written by Philostratus, occasioned by the Parallel drawn by Hierocles between him and Christ"
(found in Philostratus Vit. Apoll., LCL, 2:484–605); he notes (ch. 1) that Celsus had already required such refutation by Origen. See further Cook, Interpretation, 250–76, especially 266–68. On a popular level, Christian hagiography probably responded with yet greater tales of saints' exploits (cf. Rapp,
"Saints," 550).
178. E.g., Borzì, "L'accostamento" (not Philostratus himself, but other ancient writers). See further
Klauck, Context, 170–71, himself arguing that the case should be left open.
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
influences on his storytelling approach, including by offering literary fodder for his miracle stories.179
Thus, for example, Apollonius stops a bier and raises a dead girl180—similar to accounts about Jesus (Mark 5:41–42; Luke 7:14–15). His exorcisms reflect a different understanding of demons than the one found in the Gospels and Acts
(see appendixes A and B) and are more dramatized, but some similarities appear here as well.181 Response to Christian claims is likely in Apollonius's promise to his disciple that he will meet him at a designated location, alive, though in the disciple's view, risen from the dead.182 When he appeared to followers in a distant location183 and they supposed him a ghost, he urged them to take hold of him and see that he was not a ghost, and they embraced him.184 Some other elements are quite different, for example, getting a formerly mad dog to lick the wound it had inflicted, thereby healing the boy,185 and even incantations in some of the above stories.
Yet it is noteworthy that the parts of the story most apt to be confirmed by Apollonius's letters186 exhibit the least parallels with the Gospels. That is, elements in Philostratus's story closest to the Gospels are late elements, added based on now widely circulating stories about Jesus rather than early traditions about Apollonius. This is not to imply that Christian stories provide Philostratus's only source. Some other elements of the narratives, such as Apollonius dealing with a vampire or providing divination, are quite different from the Jesus of the Gospels.187
Besides Philostratus writing perhaps roughly 120 to 150 years after both Apollonius's death (on the shorter end) and the first extant Gospel (on the longer), he writes in a different genre. The Gospels are ancient biography, with the strongest parallels in those sources;188 Philostratus, by contrast, employs at least many novelistic elements, especially in exotic locations.189 For example, Philostratus includes geographic details that are not merely mistaken, but cannot even reflect an 179. Note also that in Nero's day Apollonius leaves Rome for Spain (Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 4.47)—like beliefs about Paul (Rom 15:24; 1 Clem. 5.7). Philostratus possibly borrows Apollonius offering wisdom to Vespasian before he becomes emperor from Josephus's earlier story (cf. also Johanan ben Zakkai), in a setting that detests the bloodshed of the Judean war (Vit. Apoll. 5.27–28).
180. Vit. Apoll. 4.45.
181. For comparisons, cf. also Wire, "Structure," 88–92; more in terms of contrast, Sabourin, "Miracles,"
284–91; idem, Miracles, 41–46.
182. Vit. Apoll. 7.41. In fact, Apollonius presents himself as an immortal spirit rather than resurrected
(Licona, Resurrection, 147, cites Vit. Apoll. 8.12.1; 8.31.1).
183. Vit. Apoll. 8.10–11. Cf. Mark 14:28; 16:7.
184. Vit. Apoll. 8.12; cf. Luke 24:39.
185. Vit. Apoll. 6.43.
186. Regardless of their authenticity (it may be doubtful), they predate Philostratus's story. The letters focus on Greek cities where Apollonius probably actually traveled (not Ethiopia, India, etc., where
Philostratus's most fanciful tales transpire).
187. Van Cangh, "Miracles grecs," 224–26 (here esp. 224).
188. See discussion in Burridge, Gospels; more briefly, Keener, Historical Jesus, 73–84.
189. Purtill, "Miracles," 201, emphasizes novelistic features like Indian snakes large enough to consume elephants; such "exotic" features of distant locations characterize novels but not historical narratives such as Luke's work (see my argument in Keener, "Official").
The Ancient Evidenc
eyewitness source (e.g., having camels cross the Caucasus to India and having the Caucasus border the Red Sea).190 Likewise, Babylonian and Indian kings implausibly discuss Greek philosophy with Apollonius.191 Such novelistic features are not surprising in this work, however; Philostratus, like the writers of the apocryphal gospels, wrote in the heyday of Greek novels.192
Jewish "Divine Men"?
The early Jesus movement was Jewish, and even the most Hellenistic firstcentury Christian reporters of signs, like Luke and Paul, regularly cite biblical sources far more than the classical ones favored by their contemporaries. If the Hellenistic "divine man" model influenced early Judaism, early Christian use of this model (via Judaism) might be more plausible.
Against the contentions of some scholars, however, it does not appear clear that Hellenistic Jewish writers accentuated the miraculous for Hellenistic audiences. Against some others,193 Jewish sources do not consistently portray
Moses as a divine man; he is a miracle worker in Artapanus and a philosopher for Philo and Josephus, but the two ideas are not brought together under a single category.194 Some scholars argue that Diaspora Jewish writers like the early third-century b.c.e. Clearchus of Soli,195 the thirdto second-century b.c.e. Artapanus,196 and others were often happy to emphasize the miraculous powers of historic Jewish heroes. While this emphasis may be true to some degree, these writers do not seem to have heightened miracle-working motifs for Hellenistic consumption; Philo even seems to diminish Moses's miracles, and Artapanus's embellishments of Moses do not focus on miracles.197 As we shall see later, Jewish historians had reasons to tone down or explain miraculous elements for elite Gentile readers.
So different are the early Jewish portraits of past heroes from Philostratus's third-century picture of Apollonius of Tyana that one is forced to question "just how attractive the miracle-worker motif was to pagans" in the first and second centuries, a fact that "may explain why this aspect of the Jesus tradition is non-existent
190. Wilson, "Miracles," 20–21, esp. 21.
191. Ibid., 21.
192. For the apocryphal gospels and acts, see Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 322.
193. E.g., Georgi, Opponents, 122–64, especially explores the Hellenistic Jewish use of the motif; cf. also 390–409.
194. Tiede, Figure, 101–240 (ch. 2, "Images of Moses in Hellenistic Judaism"). Moses was "divine" in the sense that he was affected by the deity (Josephus Ag. Ap. 1.279). Cf. the probability that Josephus presents Jesus as both teacher and miracle worker (Ant. 18.63; as noted above, Josephus employs the same term, παράδοξα, for the miracles worked by the prophet Elisha in Ant. 9.182; cf. Ant. 2.267, 285; 10.28,
235; 13.282; 15.379). Koskenniemi, Miracle-Workers, 298, likewise concludes that miracle working does not point to theios anēr in Jewish sources.
195. See Hengel, Judaism and Hellenism, 1:241, citing Josephus Ag. Ap. 1.176–83.
196. Collins, "Artapanus," 893, following Tiede, Figure, 166–74.
197. Holladay, Theios Anēr, 238–39.
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
in the apostolic fathers,"198 and why emphasis on miracle working tends to decrease as sermons in Acts become more Hellenistic.199
Jewish people had their own supernatural traditions. Thus, the cynical Lucian, a second-century rhetorician, dismisses miracles yet attests Jews who practiced them,200 and Juvenal, a second-century satirist, complains about Jewish women who tell fortunes in the name of heaven.201 Carl Holladay, who has examined in great detail the divine man question, warns:
The preoccupation to focus attention upon the miracles as primarily means of attesting the divinity of the miracle worker, either compared with the Rabbinic or the Hellenistic miracle-worker, obscures the more fundamental line of continuity with the Old Testament, and the corollary understanding of miracles in terms of Salvation-history, particularly their eschatological implications.202
The expression "divine man" never appears in the lxx or nt and is extremely rare in Jewish sources.203 Josephus's single use of the term may be roughly equivalent to "man of God";204 Philo's use is closer to a Stoic conception but is unrelated to miracles.205 Thus, if anything, Hellenization may have made Jewish conception of a "divine man" more rather than less problematic.206 Judaism's miracleworking theme derived naturally enough from the ot: God working in history especially through God's spokespersons.207 By dramatic contrast to the lack of clear allusions to any specific Hellenistic miracle-worker allusions in the Gospels, allusions to the exodus traditions and Elijah-Elisha cycles recur at various points.
Application of the title to Jesus is problematic, despite suggestions of some scholars that Mark addresses this image. It is not impossible, as some scholars argue, that the crowds in Mark followed Jesus because he was a wonder worker, and that Mark opposes reducing Jesus's ministry to such terms, insisting that the suffering aspect of his ministry must also be taken into account. While Mark is
198. Ibid., 238. It should be admitted, however, that many extant apostolic fathers aim at a philosophical rather than popular audience, whereas the Gospels do not.
199. Ibid., 239, comparing Acts 2:22; 10:38; 17:22–31 (although the last one, again, is directed toward a philosophical audience; contrast the absence in Acts 13:23–31; but cf. 1 Cor 1:22).
200. Stern, Authors, 2:221–23, citing Philopseudeis 16; Alexander Pseudopropheta 13; Tragodopodogra
171–73.
201. Juvenal Sat. 6.542–47.
202. Holladay, Theios Anēr, 239.
203. The count is from ibid., 237–38.
204. See the discussion of the passage, Ant. 3.180, in Meeks, Prophet-King, 138.
205. Tiede, Figure, 123, 240; cf. Philo Names 125–28.
206. Holladay, Theios Anēr, 238.
207. So also Kee, Origins, 62; cf. similarly Betz, Jesus, 64. For a survey of especially ot theology of healings in their ancient Near Eastern and Greek contexts, see especially Brown, Healer; on healing in the ot more briefly, see Wilkinson, Healing, 31–62; miracles in the ot, Laato, "Miracles"; for one survey of texts about healings, see Warrington, "Healing."
The Ancient Evidenc
himself charismatic rather than anticharismatic,208 it is possible that he opposes a Christology, or more likely, a pneumatology, that emphasizes Jesus's miracles above his passion. The term θεῖος ἀνήρ, however, is too broad to designate such a category helpfully.209 It is no more appropriate in the other Gospels or Acts.
Early Jewish Miracle Workers As I have been suggesting, Jewish parallels to early Christian miracles appear to offer closer models than do most Gentile analogies.210 Jewish people, after all, attributed healing to the one true God (Exod 15:26), in whom Jesus believed, and prayed to God regularly for healing Israel's sicknesses.211 Some pre-Christian Jewish parallels, especially those in the ot, likewise resemble the miracle forms used in the Gospels.212 Similarly, some miracle stories in Acts have clear intertextual links with ot accounts.213 It is intrinsically more likely that even the most Hellenized of Gospel writers, Luke, would have looked for his primary model for recounting
Jesus's miracles to the lxx, whose contents and style he knew thoroughly and which he cites regularly in explicitly marked quotations, than to inscriptions at a healing shrine or to oral reports of magicians or polytheistic miracle workers.
Granted, some analogies resemble the common model that ancients often attributed to sorcery, a model available in many Jewish circles. Jewish practitioners of magic, with which some of early Christianity's detractors polemically associated it, apparently became common in the Diaspora (cf. Acts 8:9–11; 13:8),214 espe208. Boring, Sayings, 201–2, seems wrong to suggest that Mark opposes charismatic excesses in Q;
Mark in fact apparently draws on Q at places (e.g., in his abbreviated introduction; in Mark 3:22–30). But Boring rightly points out that as a charismatic, Mark could oppose charismatic excesses (203). Kümmel,
Introduction, 93, rightly observes against Weeden that Mark does not deny Jesus's role as a wonder worker; the signs are clearly positive (Rhoads and Michie, Mark, 105; Kingsbury, Christology, 76–77), even if they must be read in view of the cross.
209. Vander Broek, "Sitz," 131–89. Lane, "Theios Anēr," 160, thinks the view might be attributable to the crowds. Weeden, Mark, 52–69, thought Mark's opponents followed a theios anēr Christology like the one some attribute to Paul's opponents in 2 Corinthians (cf. also Weeden, "Heresy"). The term "opponents" may be too strong and theios anēr too ambiguous (although they may hold "a triumphalist theology characterized by . . . miraculous acts," vii). On the Corinthian opponents, see, e.g., Keener, "Corinthian
Believers," 58; idem, Corinthians, 144–46.
210. With, e.g., Koskenniemi, "Apollonius"; idem, "Background," 107–11; idem, Miracle-Workers,
292–93; Strelan, Strange Acts, 27 (following Weiss, Zeichen, 22–39, who supplies considerable material).
I use here material especially from Keener, John, 255–57.
211. The eighth benediction of the Amida, including both spiritual and physical sicknesses (Bonsirven,
Judaism, 131).
212. Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 199–204. Resuscitation stories were not uncommon; cf. the claim for Empedocles in Diogenes Laertius 8.2.59; 4 Bar. 7:19–20 (a resuscitation "in order that they might believe," my translation); rabbis in b. B.K. 117a; Abraham in T. Ab. 14:11–14; 18:9–11A; 14:7B.
213. See Brucker, "Wunder"; also, e.g., Jervell, Apostelgeschichte, 298; Stipp, "Vier Gestalten." Later
Christian wonder workers also followed the model of Elijah (see Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 20).
214. See Goodenough, Symbols, 12:58–63; Koester, Introduction, 1:380–81; Gaster, Studies, 1:356ff.;
Schäfer, "Magic Literature." For associations of Moses with magic, see Gager, Moses, 134–61. For Jewish
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
cially through their supposed access to the secret name of God (secret names were considered powerful in magic; cf. Acts 19:13; perhaps Mark 5:7–9).215 Although many Jewish sources, including later rabbis, were officially opposed to magic,216 magical practices infiltrated even rabbinic circles.217 By and large, however, the teachers of the law who addressed signs in a positive way emphasized miracles wrought by God for the pious, eschewing what they or others considered magic.
Judaism knew of both biblical and postbiblical miracle workers. Some biblical prophets like Elijah and Elisha were particularly emphasized as miracle workers;218 some others, like Isaiah, might be associated with healing occasionally (Isa 38:21);219 and Jewish sources continued to link miracles with many of the biblical prophets.220
According to third-century Palestinian tradition, Abraham had the gift of healing.221
Other miracle workers appeared closer to the contemporary period than the biblical characters, for example, Hanina ben Dosa, who according to tradition healed the sons of Johanan ben Zakkai and Gamaliel II.222 The Jewish historian
Geza Vermes has even gone so far as to suggest that holy men like Hanina ben Dosa dominated first-century Galilean religious experience more than the priests or scribes did;223 while this suggestion certainly goes too far, it rightly emphasizes influence in later magical texts, see, e.g., PGM 1.301–2, 305; 3.405; 4.1200–1204, 2355–56, 3040–41,
3047–48; 5.114–15; 13.327, 815–18; 35.1–42; PDM 14.1061–62; CIJ 2:373–74, §1448; Aramaic incantation bowls (cf. Levene, "Heal"; Isbell, "Story," 13). For magic among Babylonian rabbis, see Stratton,
"Imagining," 372–77.
215. For the use of names in magic, see, e.g., Lucan Bell. civ. 6.732–34; PGM 1.160–61, 167, 171–92,
216–17; 12.316; Pr. Jos. 9–12; T. Sol. 5:2, 6–9; Scholem, Gnosticism, 32–33, 45; Pulleyn, "Power of Names"; probably Mark 5:7, 9. On deities with unknown names, cf., e.g., Dionysius of Halicarnassus Ant. rom.
1.68.3; Pliny Nat. 28.4.18–19; Aune, Revelation, 926–27; Harrauer, "Agnostos Theos."
216. E.g., m. Sanh. 7:11; p. Hag. 2:2, §5; R.H. 3:8, §1; Sanh. 7:13, §2. Note also Wis 17:7; Ps.-Phoc.
149; 1 En. 65:6 (Sim.); Ascen. Isa. 2:5; 2 Bar. 60:2; 66:2; T. Reu. 4:9. For stories of hostile magicians, see, e.g., Exod 7:11, 22; 8:7, 18–19; 9:11; Jub. 48:9; CD V, 18–19; L.A.B. 34; T. Sol. 25:4; Jan. Jam. (OTP
2:428–42); Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen 49:22–23; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Exod 1:15; 7:11; 2 Tim 3:13. Rabbis would class events performed in Israel as miracles but similar events among Gentiles as magic (Signer, "Balance,"
112–13); for the development of rabbinic views of magic, including the differences between Palestine and Babylon, see Stratton, "Imagining Power" (on Palestinian rabbis in the Bavli opposing it, see 377).
217. See Goldin, "Magic"; Neusner, Sat, 80–81; b. Sanh. 65b; 67b; cf. Ab. R. Nat. 25 A (on R. Eliezer ben Hyrcanus); Basser, "Interpretations."
218. For Elijah and Elisha as examples of healing miracles in Josephus, see Betz, "Miracles in Josephus,"
219–20; as models among signs sages, see Galley, "Heilige." Note comparisons and especially contrasts between biblical narratives about Elisha and rabbinic traditions about Hanina ben Dosa in Blenkinsopp,
"Miracles," especially 70–80, noting the different social settings of the respective narratives.
219. With Cohen, Maccabees, 200. Eve, Miracles, 385, argues that the only miracle directly attributed to Isaiah in the account was the shadow going up; but Isaiah does play a role in the healing here.
220. E.g., Sir 48:13; Liv. Pr. 2.3 (on Jeremiah, in OTP 2:386–87; Schermann, 81–82, §25). On early
Jewish association of miracles with various biblical figures, see especially the survey in Koskenniemi,
"Figures"; idem, Miracle-Workers.
221. Gen. Rab. 39:11, R. Levi; later R. Huna amplified this tradition. On postbiblical miracle-working traditions for biblical characters, see Koskenniemi, Miracle-Workers.
222. B. Ber. 34b. Later reports also apply to later rabbis (cf., e.g., Rosenfeld, "Simeon b. Yohai").
223. Vermes, Jesus and Judaism, 5. By contrast, most reports of rabbinic miracles, probably fitting the predominantly halakic character of rabbinic literature, are "rule miracles," that is, signs to demonstrate the truth of one's legal teaching (Theissen, Miracle Stories, 106–12).
The Ancient Evidenc
the popular nature of charismatic leaders and the degree to which they could become influential in first-century Galilee.224 Although our sources regarding early rabbis are limited, as I shall note later, they do illustrate a continuity in expectation within Jesus's early Jewish setting.
Josephus is more interested in, though disparaging of, some purported eschatological sign prophets, some of whose promised activities may evoke Moses, in their attempts to secure eschatological deliverance.225 Signs and wonders were often associated with Moses,226 who, it was said, used "wonders and signs" to withstand kings.227 Jesus's feeding of the five thousand (Mark 6:41–42) may recall Moses
(Exod 16:12–21) as well as Elisha (2 Kgs 4:42–44). Many Jewish people probably not only expected significant signs before the final deliverance and special miracles at the end228 but also pondered the signs of the messianic era promised by Isaiah, Ezekiel, and other biblical prophets (e.g., Isa 35:5–6). Consistent with such images, later rabbis taught that signs offered by biblical signs prophets anticipated the signs that would take place in the messianic era.229
Jesus's reported miracles accord well with the Q allusion to Isa 35:5–6 (Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22),230 which could suggest an eschatological interpretation of his miracles as blessings of the future kingdom in the present.231 This conception of 224. Citing Matt 12:27//Luke 11:19, others have long suggested that other exorcists and miracle workers existed (so Dakin, "Belief," though insisting on 38 that Jesus's miracles went beyond others' claims).
225. See Keener, John, 270–71; Eve, Miracles, 115–16, 324. On these sign prophets, see initially Barnett,
"Prophets" (= idem, "Sign Prophets"); idem, "Eschatological Prophets"; and now also Gray, Figures, 112–44.
She contends, probably rightly, that (137) only the cases of Theudas and the Egyptian genuinely evoke the exodus and conquest traditions; but even these two examples offer sufficient evidence to suggest that such views circulated in first-century Judea (whether already in Jesus's day or perhaps even evoking some early views about him). Philo's miracles focus especially on "the distant Mosaic past" (Eve, Miracles, 84), like most early Jewish miracle reports (Eve, Miracles, 377, though noting that they were not cessationist).
226. Jub. 48:4; L.A.B. 9:7; Sipre Deut. 9.2.1; 4Q422 10 5; see further Meeks, Prophet-King, 162–63; Eve,
Miracles, 244. But some sources such as Ben Sira may associate miracles more with prophets subsequent to Moses (Eve, Miracles, 115–16).
227. Wis 10:16. McCasland, "Signs," 149–50, confesses that his earlier emphasis on wonders in paganism had neglected the nearer source of the nt idiom in the lxx.
228. E.g., Sir 33:1–8/36:1–8. Eve, Miracles, 263–66, 379, notes that early Jewish sources could connect miracles with eschatology (citing 4Q521; Jub. 23:23–31) but warns (266) that the association was not "automatic." 4Q521 may refer to God restoring Israel's wounded after an eschatological battle (Eve, Healer,
48–49).
229. Pesiq. Rab Kah. 9:4, Amoraic; cf. related ideas in Marmorstein, Names, 175; prodigies in the messianic era in Hruby, "Perspectives Rabbiniques," 79–80.
230. Most accept this saying as authentic; see, e.g., Bourke, "Miracle Stories," 23–24; Davies and Allison,
Matthew, 2:244; Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:130; Sanders, Figure, 94; Wink, "Reply"; Witherington, Christology,
42–43, 165.
231. Cf. Harvey, History, 115, although taking matters too far; Heil, "Aspects," 281–82; Witherington,
Christology, 171; Sanders, Figure, 167–68; Loos, Miracles, 246, 254; Mussner, Miracles, 41–42, 73–74;
Sabourin, "Healings," 157; Montague, Growth, 306; cf. Léon-Dufour, "Fonction," 344–45; Van Cangh,
"Miracles grecs," 232; Dunn, Remembered, 694–96 (Jesus viewing himself as an eschatological agent); even B. B. Warfield (in Brown, Miracles, 199). Kallas, Significance, connects Jesus's miracles inseparably with his eschatological proclamation (e.g., 112–13); some modern healing figures have also connected healing with the impending kingdom (Hickson, Bridegroom, 35, 387–88; note also Hickson's handwritten
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
an eschatological renewal of signs suits the way Luke also identifies the Christian movement from Pentecost forward (Acts 2:17–18). Most scholars recognize that in the Gospels, Jesus's miracles function as signs of the kingdom (also Matt
12:28//Luke 11:20).232 Such a perspective relates to traditional Jewish expectations while pressing beyond most of them233 in affirming that the kingdom was already active in Jesus. I emphasize some contrasts with traditional Jewish models in the next chapter.
An Authenticating Function of Miracles Charles Talbert distinguishes three basic functions of miracle stories in antiquity: legitimation, evangelization, and an opportunity for behavioral instruction.234 I focus here on the first function, legitimation or authentication. Especially since the Hellenistic period, aretalogies had used miracles as propaganda for competitive cults, not only for Greek cults like Asclepius but also for imports like Isis and Sarapis.235
Ancient writers and storytellers often used miraculous works to authenticate deities or, more often, mortal individuals.236 Such signs demonstrated that the pernote on p. v of the copy of this volume in the library of Asbury Theological Seminary). Others adapted similar Isaianic language for the eschatological inversion (1QM XIV, 6), praying for an eschatological miracle (4Q176 1–2 I, 1). Qumran also may have combined the very texts to which Jesus alluded here, perhaps suggesting a Palestinian tradition (Evans, "4Q521," 696; Le Cornu, Acts, 1388; though cf. Kvalbein,
"Wunder"; idem, "Wonders").
232. See Blackburn, "Miracles," 372–74; Mussner, Miracles, 41–49; Rowland, Origins, 147–48; Evans,
Fabricating Jesus, 141; Dod, "Healer," 169–70; Finger and Swartley, "Bondage," 19; see further Twelftree,
Miracle Worker, passim. If oral tradition developed a christological emphasis in connection with Jesus's miracles, as many argue, it presumably developed from Jesus's kingdom idea something already implicit in it (Robinson, "Challenge," 326; Mussner, Miracles, 49–50), for Jesus's version of kingdom preaching is inseparable from his own messianic consciousness (cf. Matt 19:28//Luke 22:30; see discussion in Keener, Historical Jesus, esp. 257–58; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 234). Those who argue that miracles functioned as credentials of divinity, however, inevitably must depend on Johannine interpretation (as in, e.g., Keyser, "Rationale," 359).
233. The Qumran Scrolls probably reveal realized eschatology (see Aune, Cultic Setting) and the sign prophets may have expected to show that the kingdom was present in them (though ultimately failing to work the requisite sign).
234. Talbert, John, 162, finding parallels for each of these in John's Gospel. For legitimation, he compares the case of the imperial candidate Vespasian's alleged miracles; for evangelization, Lucius's conversion to the cult of Isis after his restoration (Apuleius Metam. 11); and for instruction, Wis 16:26;
Aelian frg. 89.
235. Versnel, "Miracles." Cult officials collected them and intensified the miraculous dimension for propaganda purposes (Klauck, Context, 161, 166); they need not, however, constitute a distinct literary genre (Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 57), and they differ in genre from nt healing narratives, which belong to broader narratives rather than lists (Klauck, Context, 167; for other contrasts, 168). Overemphasizing the propaganda value of Hellenistic miracles, Hobbs, "Miracle Story," thinks secular television commercials a suitable modern analogy (on 117 rejecting modern revivalist claims as an analogy).
236. I used this material also in Keener, John, 272–74; and my forthcoming (but completed) commentary on Acts.
The Ancient Evidenc
son indeed possessed numinous authority to justify his237 claims. Patristic sources continued to use miracles and particularly exorcisms as proofs verifying their claims.238
Such authentication appears in pagan as well as biblical sources. When applied to deities, as in the case of the healing list at Epidauros, testimonies of miracles were meant to convince people to trust for themselves to be healed;239 this especially applies to Asclepius's healing of skeptics.240 Analogously, it seems likely Mark's reports of healings, in addition to symbolic functions, encourage his hearers to trust their risen Lord to act among them. Thus disciples are reproved if their own faith for miracles is inadequate
(Mark 4:38–40; 8:14–21; 9:18–29; 11:20–25),241 although the passion and suffering cast a larger shadow over Mark's narrative (Mark 3:6, 21–22; 6:14–29; 8:34–38;
12:3–8; 13:9–13, 20–22; 14–15). Mark's promises for faith, as in Mark 11:20–25, are substantially greater than those of the Epidauros inscriptions, however; the former virtually made all believers "holy persons" with direct access to God, whereas the latter sought to "cushion disappointments" as well as "increase expectations."242
Miracles came to possess such propagandistic value that Romans could employ those of the Isis cult for political propaganda.243Ancient writers report the healings attributed to Vespasian before the inauguration of his Flavian dynasty, undoubtedly a form of propaganda meant to authenticate his claim to rule.244 Any common idea of miracle-working sages, however, normally applied only to "divine" sages245 and developed only over time. First-century philosophers emphasized the divine wisdom of true sages rather than miraculous authentication; by the second century, writers like Lucian contested the growing popular ideal of such authentication; by the third century, many thinkers had capitulated to the popular ideal, portraying the intellectual heroes of the past as wonder workers as well. This trend increased as astrology, magic, and other customs from the East supplanted some of the traditional reliance on the more rationally oriented cultus of Roman religion.246
In the general sense, biblical and Jewish miracles also could authenticate persons.
Hebrew Scripture reported both miracles performed directly by God and those performed through his agents, certain kinds of prophets;247 Jewish hopes for both
237. In the vast majority of cases, these wonder workers were men, although we do encounter exceptions such as the later Sosipatra.
238. Lampe, "Miracles," esp. 215–17. For how patristic theology handled this, see also Wiles, "Miracles."
239. Also Dibelius, Tradition, 170; cf. Grant, Gods, 66. Compare the translation of some of these accounts in Grant, Religions, 55–58.
240. Inscriptions 3 and 4 (Grant, Religions, 56, 57).
241. Signs are positive if inadequate in Mark; see Rhoads and Michie, Mark, 105; Kingsbury, Christology,
76–77.
242. On this function of the Epidauros inscriptions, see Theissen, Miracle Stories, 283–84.
243. Kee, Miracle, 128–31.
244. Tiede, Figure, 91, citing Tacitus Hist. 4.81; Dio Cassius 65.8; Suetonius Vesp. 7. On Suetonius's report (Vesp. 7.2–3), see more fully Spahlinger, "Sueton-Studien II."
245. Greek biographers, in Aune, Environment, 34. Cynics, for example, show little interest in miracles
(Downing, Cynics, 222–23).
246. Tiede, Figure, 99.
247. See Kee, Miracle, 147.
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
kinds of miracles continued in the period of Christian beginnings. On a popular level, miraculous answers to prayer probably authenticated Hanina ben Dosa,248
Honi the Circle-Drawer, and the other teachers Vermes has called "charismatic rabbis."249 Because Honi was before God like a special son to a father, he was said to be able to change God's mind on matters.250 He was so highly respected that it was said, "'When Haninah ben Dosa died there were no workers of miracles left.'"251
These signs authenticated those who performed them; a holy man had power to make things happen, because he was holy.252 Such motives are important also to the later medieval hagiographic tradition.253
In similar traditions, perhaps more relevant for at least Acts, signs could attest one's message.254 Some halakists like R. Eliezer and R. Joshua also reportedly performed miracles to validate their halakah, although this story is clearly a homiletic one.255 Such stories not only glorified the signs worker but also offered a more widely applicable moral. Most accounts of such miraculous works by past rabbis, while sometimes hagiographic, made a point about piety or impiety; God hears the pious and punishes those who disregard proper teaching of the law, especially those who would not believe without miracles.256
Later rabbis were, however, more scribal than charismatic and subjective. Without ruling out supernatural activity in the present, they did not expect miracles normally on the same level as in the biblical period.257 More important, most later rabbis carefully subordinated miracles258 and even the heavenly voice259 to tradition in halakic interpretation. Prophets must be attested by signs, some later rabbis insisted, but elders as interpreters of the law may be accepted without 248. Cf. Moore, Judaism, 1:377; Strack, Introduction, 110, for his miracles in b. Ber. 33a; 34b; Taan.
24b; and that he was contemporary with Johanan ben Zakkai (m. Ab. 3:9, 10; Mek. on Exod 18:21).
249. On Honi and Hanina, see, e.g., Daube, "Enfant"; on Hanina, see Vermes, "Hanina"; for examples of Jewish miracle stories in general, see Montefiore and Loewe, Anthology, 339ff.; for discussion of early
Jewish (esp. rabbinic) views on miracles, see Hruby, "Perspectives Rabbiniques"; McGinley, Form-Criticism,
96–118. Bokser, "Wonder-Working," suggests that Palestinian tradition stressed God's protection of the pious man, whereas Babylonian stressed such a man's responsibility to others.
250. P. Taan. 3:10, §§61–63.
251. Moore, Judaism, 1:378, citing m. Sot. 9:15, "a late appendix."
252. P. Taan. 3:11, §4; cf. b. A.Z. 18a (on R. Meir); Meil. 17b (R. Simeon ben Yohai); Suk. 28a (Jonathan b. Uzziel). Cf. b. B.M. 86a in Neusner, Sat, 77–78, where signs are recorded to glorify Rabbah b. Nahmani.
253. See appendix C.
254. P. Sanh. 6:6, §2, about a man sent to Simeon ben Shetah. Cf. Acts 4:29–30; 14:3; later, Mark 16:20.
255. B. B.M. 59b, where Joshua, rather than losing the debate, finally declares that halakah is not settled by miracles; see especially Baumgarten, "Miracles," for the importance of miracles confirming halakah.
Wire, "Structure," 92–96, compares Gospel accounts intertwining both law (e.g., Sabbath controversy) and miracle.
256. Cf. also Dibelius, Tradition, 145–46; Urbach, Sages, 1:108–9.
257. See Signer, "Balance," 115–16. They also cited miracles of earlier rabbis yet seemed reticent about miracles in their own day (Signer, "Balance," 120–21). Some stories are simply literary constructs, like the Babylonian Talmud's legend of Hanukkah oil (Noam, "Miracle"; idem, "Cruse").
258. E.g., tos. Yeb. 14:6, "the rabbis" to R. Meir. Cf. Hruby, "Perspectives Rabbiniques," 89–90.
259. E.g., b. Hul. 44a; Pes. 114a; p. M.K. 3:1, §6. Cf. Hruby, "Perspectives Rabbiniques," 86–88.
The Ancient Evidenc
signs.260 Vermes thinks that charismatics like Hanina sometimes flouted rabbinic law, and while the rabbis dared not discipline them because of their divine power,261 they were wary of supernatural proof when formulating legal decisions.262 These rabbis clearly subordinate the status of miracle workers to that of halakists like themselves.263 Thus, later rabbis could complain that even Honi's prayers were delayed, and explain that this was because he failed to approach God humbly.264
The rabbis' earlier respect for rule miracles probably diminished further in response to the much greater Christian use of authenticating miracles, as some scholars have argued.265 Christian miracles authenticating Jesus were problematic for later rabbis; Urbach suggests that this may be why the rabbis stressed that one should depend on the God of Abraham, not on Abraham as a miracle worker himself.266 From Paul's letters267 through rabbinic literature,268 Christians and outsiders alike continued to perceive the early Christian movement as confirming itself with signs like those of Jesus.
The Gospel writers do wish to authenticate Jesus as well as his message, but not as one sage among others. One Gospel writer, Luke, provides a second volume about Jesus's agents. Here, in Acts, signs continue to attest Jesus more than his agents (except in the sense that it confirms that they are his agents); it is Jesus's name that heals (Acts 3:6; 4:7, 10, 30; 16:18; 19:13, 17; cf. Acts 14:3; Luke 9:49;
10:17). The Jesus who healed in the first volume thus continues to perform the signs in the second, through his agents (see esp. Acts 9:34).269 The use of signs for authentication also carries on in some later Christian sources.270
260. P. Sanh. 11:4, §1.
261. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 80–81, appealing to m. Taan. 3:8; p. Taan. 67a; b. Taan. 23a.
262. Cf. also b. B.M. 59b (cited in Longenecker, Paul, 4n17).
263. Dibelius, Tradition, 149–50 and references.
264. P. Taan. 3:9, §3.
265. Theissen, Miracle Stories, 107; cf. Guttmann, "Miracles"; Hruby, "Perspectives Rabbiniques," 90.
266. Urbach, Sages, 1:117.
267. Aune, Prophecy, 194, cites as examples Gal 3:5; Rom 15:19; 2 Cor 12:12; 1 Thess 1:5; 1 Cor 2:4 for Paul's picture of himself as a miracle worker; he clearly also believed such activities characterized the early Christian communities (1 Cor 12:8–10, 28–31). Koester, Paul and World, 25, argues against use of 1 Thess 1:5 (citing v. 6, which, however, refers to receiving the message rather than bringing it); the matter is debatable.
268. Christians healed in the name of Yeshu ben Pandira (tos. Hul. 2:22–23; see also Urbach, Sages,
1:116; Herford, Christianity, 103–11; Klausner, Jesus, 40; Pritz, Nazarene Christianity, 96–97).
269. On the idea of agency and representatives, see Keener, John, 310–15. For a related discussion of the relationship between healing in the two volumes, see Warrington, "Healing Narratives"; Shelton,
"Response." Rightly underlining parallels between Jesus and the disciples but noting that disciples do not emulate Jesus's messianic ministry, Warrington emphasizes healing's christological function ("Healing
Narratives," 195) and that healings reveal his presence ("Healing Narratives," 217); he argues that Jesus's healings are not paradigmatic for individual followers (Warrington, Healer, 160–62; cf. idem, "Response").
Shelton, who responds to Warrington, also seems right to affirm that Jesus's healings are also paradigmatic for the church ("Response," 221–22, 224), if we take that as the church as a whole (through some who are gifted). On Jesus's exorcisms as a model in Luke-Acts, see especially Twelftree, Name, 130–37.
270. E.g., Justin Dial. 35.8; cf. Ward, "Monks," 133–34; for apologetic for orthodoxy, e.g., Griffith,
"Signs" (esp. 160–61).
Ancient Miracle Claims outside Christianity
Conclusion The most common means of seeking divine healing in the ancient Mediterranean world involved healing sanctuaries, where supplicants often received healing through dreams on the sacred grounds. This method, however, has nothing more in common with Jesus and his first followers than the notion of healing by a deity, a widespread conception throughout history. More relevant, then, would be individual healers, especially those who were also sages; unfortunately, historical
Gentile examples of this category do not become common in our extant sources until a later era, when stories about Jesus were widely circulated. Jewish models may offer more fruitful comparisons from the relevant period, although some differences remain, and they are also not abundant in our extant sources for this era.
Understanding how miracle workers were viewed in the first century helps us appreciate the context of miracles in early Christianity, both where elements are comparable and where they differ noticeably. Although I have observed some differences in this chapter, I explore them more fully in the next one.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts Apollonius was built up as a rival figure to Jesus Christ on the basis of Philostratus' book: the argument was that the classical religion too had its own saviours and healers. And in fact, much in Philostratus is reminiscent of the gospels, though more the apocryphal than the canonical texts. —H. J. Klauck1
Whereas Jesus apparently actually did perform a number of miracles (healings and exorcisms at least), there is no indication that the signs prophets in fact did so (and healings and exorcisms seem not to have formed part of their repertoire). —Eric Eve2
Nowhere else are so many miracles reported of a single person as they are in the Gospels of Jesus.3 . . . The uniqueness of the miracles of the historical Jesus lies in the fact that healings and exorcisms which take place in the present are accorded an eschatological significance. . . . Nowhere else do we find a charismatic miracle worker whose miraculous deeds are meant to be the end of an old world and the beginning of a new one. —Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz4
A mong early Christians or among God-fearers steeped in the lxx, the Gospel writers' supranormal claims would hardly have seemed implausible. Elite ancient historians might well despise their emphasis on miracles as sensationalistic, given the unusual abundance of miracles and divine communications (which we would expect to this degree only in works, historical or otherwise, concerning miracle workers, as we have in the Gospels), but it fits the biblical worldview.
Modern Western readers usually concur with elite ancient historians' negative estimate of popular historiography concerning wonder workers' signs and portents, but this preference may partly reflect a coinciding of our cultural bias with theirs.5
1. Klauck, Context, 170.
2. Eve, Miracles, 321.
3. Theissen and Merz, Guide, 290 4. Ibid., 309.
5. Our bias might also reflect some classical influence on some Enlightenment foundations, though not from the dominant classical tradition. Modern assumptions about prescientific thinking, however,
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
Whereas the supernatural beliefs of most ancient auditors prevented early Christian miracle accounts from seeming problematic, that very context proves a stumbling block to many modern auditors. Some scholars, pointing to the parallels between early Christian and some other ancient miracle accounts, have suggested that both are fabricated.6 While the conclusion need not follow logically from the premise—either because both kinds of accounts could often be accurate, or because the similar form could reflect cultural options for expression rather than identical activity—the implied premise (that all other ancient miracle accounts were false) may be open to some question.7 For the moment, however, I will focus on differences between most extant first-century Christian accounts and the most typical accounts of their contemporaries. Some parallels do appear, but observers must also take account of the differences among the various kinds of miracle stories, including the Christian miracle stories.
That all the accounts strike many modern Western readers as so similar may stem partly from our cultural assumptions in view of which all miracle reports diverge starkly from our construction of reality. In this perspective, it is our cultural assumptions that are unusual in the wider scope of history as well as of the world's cultures today, as I shall seek to illustrate extensively later in this book.
Differences between Early Christian and Most Pagan Miracles I began exploring differences with pagan accounts in the previous chapter, so here I confine myself to some more general observations. Each circle and body of literature (e.g., Philostratus or the rabbis) had its own distinctive traits in its miracle stories; my focus, however, is on those in the Gospels and Acts. While our earliest Christian miracle reports share some characteristics that commonly appear in other miracle stories (e.g., a problem solved and often public appreciation), differences invite comment here.8 An analysis of the miracle stories collected by are exaggerated (Sider, "Methodology," 29), as is modern dismissal of any substantive content in ancient historiography (see Keener, Historical Jesus, 95–108, 441–50).
6. Some earlier scholars also committed parallelomania: cf., e.g., Bultmann, Tradition (1963), 222:
"H. Jahnow has shown the probability . . . that the removal of the roof in Mk. 24 goes back to an exorcist custom," forgotten or changed during transmission.
7. Historians' generalizations from putative parallels also work at a much lower level of probability than generalizations from science do. See the discussion on this argument regarding miracles in Sider,
"Methodology," 32.
8. Emphasizing differences, see, e.g., McGinley, Form-Criticism, 145–52; Sabourin, "Miracles," 305
(followed in part by Maher, "Writings," 169); Sabourin, Miracles, 39–55; also others cited by Sabourin
(Albright and Mann, Matthew, cxxiv–cxxi; Zeilinger, "Wunderverständnis"). If some critics would, via an ad hominem argument, charge the acknowledgment to apologetic motives (i.e., impugning motives), one could counter that denying distinctions can be charged to a reductionism that looks at parallels without appreciating distinctions among them. Bias can occur in either direction, either the agenda of reducing or augmenting nt miracles' distinctiveness (cf. Strelan, Strange Acts, 11). If it is fair to examine analogous elements, one must also note the many great distinctions.
The Ancient Evidenc
Theissen9 shows that some motifs, especially those intrinsic to miracle narrations in any setting, were widespread. At the same time, such an analysis will reveal that some other nt miracle motifs exhibit rare, perhaps only coincidental, parallels.10
Likewise, some frequent examples of pagan workers of paranormal phenomena, albeit in sources much later than the objects of their comment, have few early Christian parallels: for example, Musaeus, Calais, Zetes, Abaris, and a Hyperborean magician in Lucian could fly,11 but the only possible first-century Christian parallel (Acts 8:39) apparently instead specifically borrows biblical language (drawing on Ezek 8:3; 11:1,
24, where, however, the experience was visionary). Similarly, one account reports that Pythagoras taught in two places at the same time;12 the instant travel of John 6:21 and the sudden disappearance of the postresurrection Lord (Luke 24:31) are the closest first-century Christian parallels one can adduce to this wonder, but even these examples are meant to transcend the limits of location, not of time. Love magic;13 a continual fast;14 a fifty-seven-year nap;15 magicians' self-transformation into animal forms;16 and revealing golden thighs17 are among the sorts of miracles unparalleled in the Gospels,18 which generally stress healings and exorcisms as benevolent acts of compassion (e.g., Mark 1:41; 6:34, 41–42; cf. 8:2, 6–8).19
9. See Theissen, Miracle Stories, 47–72.
10. Cf. the detailed comparison chart in McGinley, Form-Criticism, 145–49. The survey is overschematized, but it nevertheless balances the uncritical lumping together of all supernatural claims by Bultmann
(who includes even modern fairy tales) and others.
11. Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 190. For the text conveniently, see also Cotter, Miracles, 191. For a modern
(hearsay) claim of flying witches, see the traditional African informant in Naipaul, Masque, 123.
12. Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 190.
13. The Hyperborean (ibid., 191).
14. Abaris (ibid.). Surprisingly, such claims do persist in our own generation, where they can be tested; see "Indian man 'survives without food or water for decades,'" at http://news.bbc.co.ul/2/hi
/south_asia/8652837.stm (accessed April 29, 2010).
15. Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 191. With due respect to Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, the story line of a long nap is an ancient one (e.g., Varro Lat. Lang. 7.1.3; Pliny Nat. 7.52.175; Pausanias 1.14.4; Maximus of Tyre 10.1; 38.3; Alciphron Farm. 36 (Eudicus to Pasion), 3.38, paragraph 2; 4 Bar. 5; p. Taan. 3:9, §4).
16. Periclymneus, Nectanebus (Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 190, 193). On magicians transforming substances, see, e.g., Homer Od. 10.239–40; Ovid Metam. 14.414–15; p. Hag. 2:2, §5; Sanh. 6:6, §2; for themselves into animals, Ovid Am. 1.8.13–14; Lucian Lucius 4, 12, 54; Apuleius Metam. 2.30; Ps.Callisthenes Alex. 1.10. Various cultures today suspect witches and others of transforming themselves into animals (Mbiti, Religions, 258; Umeh, Dibia, 132; Zempleni, "Symptom," 99).
17. Pythagoras, Alexander Abonuteichos (Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 193). This is the closest these texts come to Jesus's transformation (Mark 9:2–8), a narrative far more evocative of Moses's transformation on Mount Sinai (cf. Bultmann, Tradition, 229; Glasson, Moses, 70–71; Davies, Sermon, 20–21; some commentators appeal more to general apocalyptic images).
18. Contrast also many of the supernatural acts in traditional religions, e.g., in Mbiti, Religions, 258.
On comparisons with Greek heroes, see further Blomberg, Gospels, 115–19; like Blackburn and others, he notes (116), "the majority of the miracles in Greek religion bear no resemblance to those of Jesus: humans talking with the animals and birds, and even transforming themselves into other creatures, charming rocks and trees with their music; appearing and disappearing, or appearing in two places at the same time, travelling the world without eating, or sending their souls on journeys while their bodies remained at home."
19. Benevolence dominates most of Jesus's miracles (cf. Sabourin, Miracles, 54; Dod, "Healer," 170;
LaCocque, "Competition," 97; discussion of Jesus's miracles and ancient benefaction in Neyrey, "Miracles,"
24–27); for this motivation in modern healing movements, see Lee and Poloma, Commandment.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
Some scholars have also pointed to "matter-of-fact restraint" rather than amplification in most miracle stories in the canonical Gospels,20 though this may be partly because there are so many of them to narrate in so little space. Nor do the Gospel writers write like typical epic poets or mythographers; in contrast to Virgil's Aeneid, for example, they offer no scenes explaining "what God is thinking or how God views the events unfolding in the human realm."21 The difference in genre is a key issue.22 The Gospels are ancient biography about a recent character for whom many sources remained; they are thus not analogous to collections of mythography (like those by Apollodorus or Ovid) or novels (like those by Petronius or Heliodorus).23
They do not report fictions about exotic lands, do not report internal workings of divine courts, and do not report monsters or other fabulous creatures.24 They do report healings and prophecies, but we know from Paul's writings that early
Christians truly believed that these events were genuinely occurring in their time
(Rom 15:19; 1 Cor 12–14; 2 Cor 12:12; Gal 3:5; 1 Thess 5:20), just as probably the majority of Christians in most parts of the world believe they are occurring today (see chs. 7–12). The same texts reveal that Paul believed this claim not in some theoretical sense, but that he and in some passages the churches believed that they were participating in the experience of such phenomena.
Moreover, although pagans naturally understood Jesus's works as those of a possibly malevolent magician (Mark 5:15–17),25 Jesus's miracles have little in common with magic as most frequently defined, especially the magic elaborately documented for us in the third-century magical papyri. Part of the debate about magic and Jesus's miracles turns on one's definition of "magic,"26 discussed earlier,
20. Gundry, Use, 190; Witherington, Christology, 161–62. Contrast Bultmann, who highlights expansion of miraculous elements where they occur or appear to occur (Tradition, 228, citing few sources in the Gospels but on 229 citing parallels to expansion even from German and Russian folktales). As Sanders showed (Tendencies), narratives can be either expanded or condensed; see my comments on rhetorical elaboration and condensation in antiquity in ch. 1.
21. Alexander, Context, 179, on Acts.
22. With also, e.g., Licona and Van der Watt, "Historians and Miracles," 4. Some offered this observation
(with respect to mythography) already in the eighteenth century (see Burns, Debate, 243).
23. Regarding the Gospels' genre, see far more extensive discussion and sources in Keener, Historical
Jesus, 73–94, 428–41; for the Gospels' sources, see 126–61, 459–82 (and the evaluation of much individual material in light of its Palestinian Jewish environment, 163–348, 482–590 passim); for ancient biographies of recent persons being substantially historical in character, see idem, "Otho."
24. Many of these elements were common in popular literature (cf. Penner, Praise, 134). Some scholars have sought to compare Luke's account of the African court official (Acts 8:26–40) to novels' use of exotic lands (Pervo, Dating Acts, 32), but detailed examination of the actual sources shows that such accounts are barely comparable in content (Keener, "Official").
25. See Keener, Matthew, 287–88, and sources cited there. Although Morton Smith's citation of the charge against Christians in Tacitus Ann. 15.44.3–8 as "a charge appropriate to magicians" (Smith, Magician,
51–52) is unhelpful (pagans charged Jews with the same "hatred of humanity"), he has probably correctly identified the way the earliest Gentile witnesses of Jesus's miracles would have perceived him, as well as the perception of Jesus's opponents in Mark 3:22 par.
26. Cf. Aune, "Magic," 1557; Blomberg, "Reflections," 449; discussion in the previous chapter. Thus
Hull, Magic, 54–56, 142, allows acts of will as magic, despite the lack of formulas found in magical papyri; yet his definition of "magic" seems so broad as to make this link inevitable.
The Ancient Evidenc
but to the extent that "religion" and "magic" are distinguished, the normal criteria readily distinguish Jesus's most commonly reported activity from magic.27 Granted,
Jesus was accused of magic by his detractors (Mark 3:22, probably also in Q Matt
12:24//Luke 11:15).28 This accusation was not, however, surprising, for it was the easiest charge to bring against wonder workers. In Q's temptation narrative,
Jesus rejects the temptation to transmute stones into bread (Matt 4:3–4//Luke 4:3–4); changing one substance into another,29 like changing one's own form,30 was characteristic of magicians. Luke is eager to absolve early Christians as well as Jesus from the charge, by way of contrast with those who misunderstood or opposed them (Acts 8:9–11; 13:6–8; 19:11–19).
Jesus as a Galilean sage and prophet moved in an environment quite different from the Hellenistic environment that formed the magical papyri.31 Pagan magicians typically sought to coerce deities or spirits by incantations; Jesus simply commanded as God's authoritative agent.32 Of course, pagans could also articulate such a difference between magic and divine involvement when it served their interests; thus, for example, magic turned Lucius into an ass, but Isis's transformation of him back into a human is portrayed as counter to magic.33 (Jewish rabbis also had to seek to distinguish the two.34) I have already addressed comparisons with Apollonius. But whereas the Gospel tradition provides many miracle stories, none involve incantations;35 their paranormal claims do not fit dominant forms of ancient magic in such respects.
One may also note differences among the kinds of sources claiming the performance of various nonmagical miracles. After carefully comparing the accounts
27. Kee, Miracle, 214–15; Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:537–52; Twelftree, Exorcist, 190–207; Goergen,
Mission, 173–75; Vermes, Religion, 6; Sabourin, Miracles, 54.
28. On the two-document hypothesis, agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark in the pericope (esp. Matt 12:28/Luke 11:20) suggest a common source additional to Mark. See discussion in Keener, Spirit, 104–9; Stanton, "Magician," 174–80; cf. discussion on John 7:20 in Keener, John, 714–16.
29. E.g., Homer Od. 10.239–40; Ovid Metam. 14.414–15; p. Hag. 2:2, §5; Sanh. 6:6, §2. Deities also were thought to transform substances (Homer Od. 13.162–63) or persons (Hesiod Astron., frg. 3; Aegimius
3 in Apollodorus Bib. 2.1.3.1; Euripides Bacch. 1330–32; Longus 1.27; into stone, Lucian Lucius 4).
30. Ovid Am. 1.8.13–14; Lucian Lucius 4, 12, 54; Apuleius Metam. 1.9; 2.1, 5, 30; 3.21–25; 6.22; Ps.Callisthenes Alex. 1.10. Deities could also transform themselves (Homer Od. 4.417–18; Ovid Metam.
1.548–52). See discussion in Keener, "Human Stones" (commenting on Luke 3:8).
31. With, e.g., Theissen and Merz, Guide, 306–7. The magical papyri probably also include Egyptian influences; for the influence of old Egyptian priestly religion in what others characterized as magic in the period of the Roman Empire, see especially discussion in Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt; idem, "Magic"; idem, "Curses."
32. Drane, "Background," 122–23; cf. similarly Theissen, Miracle Stories, 296; Yamauchi, "Magic,"
133; Twelftree, Exorcist, 172–73.
33. Apuleius Metam. 3.21–25; he returns to human form in Metam. bk. 11.
34. See Urbach, Sages, 1:102–3.
35. Use of Aramaic commands, that is, commands in the native language of Jesus and most of his
Galilean hearers, is not genuinely comparable, however it may have sounded to some Gentile hearers of the Gospels. Because both Jesus and his Galilean audience probably spoke Aramaic as a first language
(cf. Goodman, State, 66; Levine, Hellenism, 80–84; Millard, Reading and Writing, 85–102, esp. 91–102;
Poirier, "Linguistic Situation"), Mark's preservation of Aramaic does not represent magical words (see
Aune, "Magic," 1534–35; Riesenfeld, Tradition, 23; pace Smith, Magician, 95; Theissen, Miracle Stories, 61).
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
of Jesus's miracles with those of others, Meier concludes that "the early dating of the literary testimony to Jesus's miracles, i.e., the closeness of the dates of the written documents to the alleged miracles of Jesus's life, is almost unparalleled for the period."36 His conclusions for the Gospels' testimony to Jesus would apply a fortiori to Acts, which reports some miracles even roughly thirty years after Jesus's public ministry (Acts 28:8–9), thus within living memory of the author on the range of dates most commonly proposed for Acts.37
Comparison of Early Christian and Jewish Miracle Accounts The miracles of Jesus and his followers in the Gospels and Acts resemble especially those of Elijah, Elisha, and Moses in the HB,38 and the use of such patterns was probably deliberate for Jesus, for those who reported the tradition orally, and for those who recorded the pattern in the Gospels and Acts. For one brief example, one may illustrate some of the links between Jesus and Elijah or Elisha in a short segment of Luke's Gospel (Luke 4–10):
Activity Jesus Elijah Elisha or others Heals leprosy* Luke 5:12–13 — 2 Kgs 5:14; cf. Num 12:13–15 Raises the dead relatively privately Luke 8:51
1 Kgs 17:19–23 2 Kgs 4:33
Child's life returns Luke 8:55
1 Kgs 17:22
2 Kgs 4:35
Upper room as scene for raising (Peter in Acts 9:37–39) 1 Kgs 17:19, 23 2 Kgs 4:10, 21, 32 Multiplies food Luke 9:16–17 1 Kgs 17:16
2 Kgs 4:3–7, 42–44 "Greet no one"
Luke 10:4
— 2 Kgs 4:29
Explicit comparison Luke 4:25–27 — — *Most scholars differentiate this disease from what we call leprosy today; see e.g., Seynold and Mueller, Sickness, 138–39;
Trapnell, "Health," 459; Gundry, Commentary, 139; Matthews and Benjamin, "Leper"; Mull and Mull, "Leprosy"; Malina,
Windows, 14; Davies, Healer, 68; but cf. Zias, "Lust"; on skin diseases in the Qumran Scrolls, see Baumgarten, "Fragments."
Davies, Healer, 68–69, reads the Gospel tradition as Jesus pronouncing leprosy cured rather than curing it; but aside from contrary details in the sources themselves (Mark 1:40–42; Luke 17:14; cf. usage in Luke 4:27), why would people have had
Jesus pronounce them clean when the law required a priest to do so (Lev 13:6, 13, 17, 23, 28, 34, 37, 39; 14:2–32; Mark
1:44; Luke 17:14)? For criticism of the view that Jesus cured lepers socially but not physically, see Gaiser, Healing, 180–81, who correctly warns that such a view would make little sense for most non-Western contexts (though himself recognizing the distinction between healing and cure, 178–79).
There are also some conspicuous and undoubtedly deliberate contrasts (here I add a reference from Luke 1):
36. Meier, Marginal Jew, 2:624; see further 2:536, 576–616; Clark, "Miracles," 207.
37. See, e.g., the majority range in Pervo, Dating Acts, 359–63 (which differs from his own view).
38. See also, e.g., Strelan, Strange Acts, 27; especially Brown, "Elisha"; cf. Eve, Miracles, 377; for Elisha and the feedings, Barton, "Feedings," 113; further comment at Acts 1:9–11 in Keener, Acts; idem,
Historical Jesus, ch. 17, esp. 243–44 (also material on Elijah's expected return in idem, John, 434–36).
Elisha's miracles also evoke those of Elijah (Levine, "Twice"). Parallels were noted already by D. F.
Strauss (Kee, "Aretalogy," 419).
The Ancient Evidenc
Elijah or Elisha Jesus (Elijah honors him, Luke 9:30–35) Jesus repudiates the idea that he is a new Elijah
(Luke 9:8, 19–20) Elijah calls down fire (1 Kgs 18:37–38) Jesus refuses to call down fire (Luke 9:54–55)
Elijah permitted Elisha to bid farewell to his family (1 Kgs 19:19–21) Jesus's demands are higher than Elijah's (Luke
9:61–62) — John rather than Jesus is the new Elijah, forerunner for the Lord (who is Jesus; Luke 1:17) Some of these links could reflect Lukan adaptation, but the majority of the similarities are from Luke's source Mark, which draws less attention to the confluence of such links. Links between Elijah and Jesus in the written Gospels do not make one suspicious of their authenticity in the tradition39 if one grants that the miracle workers themselves could have looked to the earlier biblical accounts for examples. Of course, the early Christians would have viewed the correspondences as favorable, and certainly as counter to the magic charge. More to the point here,
Jesus and his early followers, like some other Jewish wonder workers,40 may have deliberately emulated these models. Unlike other models that some propose, these biblical examples are clearly earlier than our early Christian accounts and were clearly known to Jesus, his audience, and to those who told, wrote, and heard about him.
Rabbinic Miracles Nevertheless, beyond clear echoes of Elijah or Elisha in the tradition, I must also address some other comparisons that some scholars have offered.41 In some respects, comparisons of Jesus's miracles with those attributed to the rabbis are more difficult than even comparisons with some Greco-Roman accounts because of the striking differences in genre in the sources that report them. Some writers have overstated contrasts by debasing rabbinic miracles as more magical than
Jesus's,42 but despite some activities whose only parallels occur in magic, magical elements appear in only some, not the majority of, stories of rabbinic miracles.
More relevantly, although Morton Smith's contrast between the Gospel tradition's interest in a miracle worker and rabbinic tradition's interest in teachers43 is exaggerated, he is correct that the two kinds of accounts describe different kinds of 39. As Eve, Healer, 150–51, seems to argue. Eve argues (152) that behind Mark's account of the feeding lies an allusion to the Elisha narrative, though Eve is elsewhere normally suspicious of hypothetical sources (84–89).
40. As models among signs sages, see Galley, "Heilige." On attempted emulations of Moses or Joshua among sign prophets, see, e.g., Eve, Miracles, 115–16, 324.
41. Although charismatics like Honi and Hanina may have followed Elijah's model, they seem to have usually developed different aspects of it (such as rainmaker) than Jesus usually did (though many of his
Galilean followers may not have made such distinctions). For comparisons with rabbis, see, e.g., Fiebig,
"Wunder"; for refutation of Fiebig, see Schlatter, Wunder (cited in Loos, Miracles, 142–45; Sabourin,
Miracles, 247, 264; Kahl, Miracle Stories, 18–20). The real problem with Fiebig's approach is the lateness and nonanalogous genre of the rabbinic material, not a lack of miracle stories.
42. Alexander, Possession, 59.
43. Smith, "Tradition," 173–74.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
characters and communicate different sorts of information about them. At least some rabbinic miracle stories, for example, are simply homiletic illustrations. The differences between the two kinds of accounts are considerable; as Smith points out elsewhere, miracle stories are common in early Christian texts but proportionately quite rare in rabbinic texts.44
The genre question is critical. Rabbis generally related accounts of rabbis who wrought miracles to make a homiletic point concerning a teaching; the Gospels and Acts recount miracles of Jesus and his followers primarily to validate Jesus's person and mission rather than just a particular teaching.45 By implication, this pattern about signs focusing on Jesus and his mission in the Gospel tradition also applies to Paul's Gentile mission in Acts, which in Luke's theology perpetuates
Jesus's ministry to the outsider.46 Moreover, most of the leading protagonists in the Gospels and Acts (Jesus, his apostles, and some others) are miracle workers; the leading positive characters who appear most often in rabbinic literature do not work miracles, especially not characteristically or in the earliest sources about them.
Whereas genre affects the focus of miracle stories, however, their content also offers another specific contrast. Although first-century Christian texts recount other kinds of miracles, most of which also function as benevolent acts helping those in need, they especially claim healings and exorcisms. Rabbinic stories, by contrast, address the (also benevolent) procurement of rainfall (following the model of a major miracle of Elijah) more often than healing.47 (Miracles are not, however, constrained even to such biblical categories. In the Mishnah, God even temporarily expands space in the temple to accommodate the prostrated worshipers.48) Later Jewish stories often recognize the particular association of healing miracles with Christians.49
Indeed, when one surveys Jewish tradition in general, it provides few parallels to the characteristic ways that Jesus and his followers healed; perhaps the closest
44. Smith, Parallels, 84. Sabourin, "Miracles," 300–304, doubts any true, historical miracles in ancient
Jewish (esp. rabbinic, 301–3; idem, Miracles, 51–53) texts.
45. With, e.g., Eve, Miracles, 285–86. Somewhat similarly, Dibelius notes, rabbinic accounts extol saintly men; the Gospels narrate the epiphany of God's power through his agent Jesus (Dibelius, Tradition, 150–51).
46. See, e.g., Acts 9:34; cf. Warrington, "Healing Narratives."
47. Harvey, History, 100; followed also by Blomberg, "Reflections," 450–51. See, e.g., Josephus Ant.
14.22; m. Taan. 3:8; tos. Taan. 2:13 (an anonymous man, but resembling Honi); Ab. R. Nat. 6; b. Taan. 8a;
19b–20a (Naqdimon b. Gurion); 23ab (including Honi and others in 23a; and not only Abba Hilkiah but also his wife, in 23b); 24a–26a; p. Taan. 1:4, §1; 3:9, §§6–8; 3:11, §4; cf. Josephus Ant. 8.343–46; 14.22;
Empedocles in Diogenes Laertius 8.2.59–60; Aeacus's prayer in Pausanias 2.29.8; further information in Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 70, 76; for morals in the stories, cf. Schofer, "Cosmology." For the link with corporate piety, see 1 En. 101:2; Pss. Sol. 17:18; Gen. Rab. 13:14; Lev. Rab. 34:14; 35:10; Num. Rab. 3:12; cf. b. Taan.
19b; on the miraculousness of rain (included in the benediction of the resurrection), cf. b. Ber. 29a; 33a;
Taan. 2b; 7a; p. Taan. 1:1, §2; Gen. Rab. 13:6; Deut. Rab. 7:6. Rainmakers are prominent in many cultures
(e.g., Mbiti, Religions, 89, 234–37). More generally, for gods and heroes controlling wind and sea, see
Cotter, Miracles, 131–65.
48. M. Ab. 5:5; cf. Segal, "Few Contained Many."
49. Cf. Herford, Christianity, 50–51, 54–56, 211–15; Bagatti, Church, 95–96, 106–7; Manns, "Jacob."
P. Shab. 14:4, §3, may be an example but is uncertain; cf. magic in Eccl. Rab. 1:8, §4.
The Ancient Evidenc
parallel involves Jesus's rare use of saliva (Mark 7:33; John 9:6).50 Harvey points out that at least eight of Jesus's reported cures involved the deaf, mute, blind, or lame, but that such miracles, though noted at pagan healing shrines, are absent in Jewish accounts.51
Eve's Detailed Comparisons To date, the most detailed comparisons and contrasts with other early Jewish sources have been those of Eric Eve, who concludes that Jesus's healing and exorcistic ministry, while exhibiting some parallels to its general Jewish framework, differs in serious respects from other early Jewish models.52 As he notes, most of the miracles in non-Christian early Jewish sources differ in kind from those reported in early Christian sources.53 Eve notes that most of the types of miracles in Josephus differ from those in the Gospels and Acts, with little interest in healings;54 meanwhile, stories of postbiblical miracles are not very common outside Josephus,55 and healings remain particularly rare.56 Apart from some works like Lives of the Prophets, most early Jewish sources display only limited interest in miracles, far less than in our earliest Christian sources.57
The miracles that most interested early Jewish sources were miracles of national deliverance, which are not the category of miracles most often associated with Jesus's ministry.58 Meanwhile, some of the sign prophets who emerged in the decades following his ministry59 could each announce a major eschatological sign but did not perform them.60 Unlike them, Jesus "healed and exorcized, but seems not to have promised a particular spectacular sign."61
50. Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 65; cf. Van Cangh, "Miracles"; Harvey, History, 100n10. Cf., however,
Bourgeois, "Spittle," 32–33.
51. Harvey, History, 115; in pagan accounts, see Blackburn, "ΑΝΔΡΕΣ," 192.
52. Eve, Miracles, passim. Cf. similarly Avery-Peck, "Charismatic," 164, especially focusing on the date of the sources.
53. The only parallels he finds are in Christian sources or some isolated depictions of an antichrist figure (Eve, Miracles, 244–45); I suspect that the latter are late, like much antichrist material (cf. Keener,
Matthew, 573–75).
54. Eve, Miracles, 52 (concluding his discussion of miracle in Josephus, 24–52). Like Josephus, Philo overlaps with the Gospels primarily in miracles of provision (Eve, Miracles, 84–85).
55. Eve, Miracles, 244. They do appear more in later Amoraic haggadah.
56. Ibid., 253, 378. He acknowledges some exorcists but questions whether they were common
(378). (Given the different focus of most of the other surviving first-century documents, it is hard to be sure.) He also notes rightly that some exorcists have magical associations (378).
57. Ibid., 243.
58. Ibid., 377; idem, Healer, 6–12.
59. Eve, Miracles, 324, emphasizes that those reported by Josephus are apparently all later than Jesus.
60. Theissen and Merz, Guide, 308–9. Many scholars have built on the category of sign prophets
(see early Barnett, "Prophets"). Eve, Miracles, 296–325 (esp. 324), thinks them a disparate group, despite
Josephus lumping them together, but he might underestimate common factors.
61. Eve, Miracles, 385, noting that healings and exorcisms were "not that essential to the prophetic role," since even most ot prophets did not perform them. On these sign prophets not performing miracles, especially healings and exorcisms, see also ibid., 321.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
While Honi (Onias) was undoubtedly known for getting answered prayer regarding rain,62 most of the details we hear about him surface only in Amoraic tradition—perhaps half a millennium after he lived.63 At the very least, much of the rabbinic characterization of Honi is later. Thus, for example, we do not know if "Honi the Circle-Drawer" actually drew a circle around himself, as in the rabbinic legend by which he acquires this name (but not in Josephus)64 or merely prayed for rain. Eve further contends that it is not clear that Honi represents a larger class of people beyond himself.65
The other example in rabbinic literature, Hanina ben Dosa, is usually assigned to the first century.66 Like Jesus, he was Galilean, though he is the only other
Galilean we know of to whom signs are attributed.67 He appears several times in early third-century sources,68 where he could tell when he prayed whether the sick would recover or not,69 and where a lizard who bit him as he prayed died.70
Later material about Hanina is much more abundant, but was transmitted and developed over the course of three or four centuries.71 Moreover, even if the tradition is reliable, it differs from Jesus in some significant respects: whereas
Jesus was itinerant, traveling widely to help people, people apparently only came to Hanina for prayer, and few of the divine interventions mentioned involve healing.72 In their respective sources, Hanina was a petitioner of numinous or divine power, whereas Jesus was its bearer.73 We cannot know much about 62. Josephus Ant. 14.22; cf. Eve, Miracles, 277–78, arguing that Josephus's focus is not on this but on his role in the war (which is also Josephus's focus). Rainmaking is the only miracle common to both
Honi and Hanina and is absent from Jesus's ministry (Blackburn, "Miracles," 378–79). Even Josephus's report about Onias's prayer for rain is perhaps one and a half centuries after the reported event (Licona and Van der Watt, "Adjudication of Miracles," 5).
63. The only Tannaitic account is m. Ta'an. 3:8 (Eve, Miracles, 274–75), and W. Scott Green and Neusner both deny reliable information even there (ibid., 275–77). The fuller account in the Jerusalem
Talmud may place Honi in the sixth century b.c.e., five centuries before Josephus places him (Licona and Van der Watt, "Adjudication of Miracles," 5), but anachronism is not uncommon in rabbinic stories (e.g., b. Ber. 3b; Gen. Rab. 74:15; Exod. Rab. 1:13; Pesiq. Rab. 11:3).
64. One could use drawing a circle for an ultimatum (Livy 45.12.5; Valerius Maximus 6.4.3; Velleius
Paterculus Compendium 1.10.1–2; for drawing circles in the ground more commonly, see Hermogenes
Inv. 4.8.195).
65. Eve, Miracles, 274 (against Vermes); idem, Healer, 13–14.
66. Eve, Miracles, 281, notes that this date is uncertain (on 282 conceding, however, that he was probably from the Second Temple period). Amoraic traditions place him in the first century (see ibid.,
287–88).
67. Blackburn, "Miracles," 378.
68. Eve, Miracles, 280–81, cites m. Ber. 5:5; Sot. 9:15 (= tos. Sot. 15:5); Ab. 3:10–11; tos. Ber. 3:20;
Mek. on Exod 18:21.
69. M. Ber. 5:5.
70. Tos. Ber. 3:20.
71. Eve, Miracles, 282–83 (four centuries, on the Bavli); idem, Healer, 14–16; Blackburn, "Miracles,"
378 (three centuries, on the Yerushalmi).
72. Eve, Miracles, 285. None involved exorcism (294).
73. Ibid., 289, 295. He also argues (292–93) that the Mishnah's category for Hanina, "men of deed"
(m. Sot. 9:15), need not specify miracle workers, noting that the semantic range of "deed" is much broader than "miracle." Petitioners and mediators of numinous power are more common in ancient accounts than
The Ancient Evidenc
other Galilean folk healers, but we have enough evidence to suggest that Jesus was no ordinary one.74
Thus, Eve concludes, early Jewish parallels do not advance the closest parallels to Jesus's signs: the biblical models of Elijah, Elisha, and (for the sea and feeding miracles) at least some links with Moses.75 He argues that the evidence "leaves
Jesus as unique in the surviving Jewish literature of his time as being portrayed as performing a large number of healings and exorcisms," and especially as a bearer, not just a mediator or petitioner, of divine power.76
Eve is not alone in his observations. Theissen and Merz appear representative of many today in concluding that while Jewish wonder workers offer closer parallels than pagan ones do, they differ significantly from Jesus, especially in working only through prayer and lacking eschatological miracles.77 No other early Jewish source reports as many miracles concerning an individual as the Gospels do regarding
Jesus,78 and Jesus stands alone among prior miracle workers in using miracles, in his case healings and exorcisms, to indicate the coming of the eschatological order.79
None of these qualifications rule out the relevance of these parallels in helping us understand how Palestinian Jews may have viewed Jesus or his first disciples.
No parallel is complete in all its aspects, and the differences do not rule out some relevance for showing some of the ways that Jesus's contemporaries may have approached him. By appealing to these parallels, Geza Vermes has helpfully shown that one need not look to more geographically distant Gentile healing traditions for the historical Jesus; though Jesus was distinctive in many ways, the possibility of benevolent divine activity working through individuals was intelligible within his own milieu.80 Moreover, the Jewish activity of Elijah is an early and widely available source, and in view of Mal 4:5–6, can be construed as eschatological as well.
Jesus may have combined relevant elements from models followed by any other claimed signs workers and eschatological prophets. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that Jesus and his followers who emulated him were also distinctive in many respects.81 bearers of it; whereas Asclepius and others filled this role in Greek tradition, Israel's God was bearer of numinous power in Jewish tradition (Kahl, Miracle Stories, 234).
74. Eve compares Mexican folk healer Pedrito Jaramillo, who stood out above other folk healers of his era (Eve, Miracles, 357–59, 379).
75. Ibid., 377. I suspect that the Mosaic emphasis in the feeding miracle may be stronger than Eve recognizes; he tends to downplay these, e.g., 324–25.
76. Ibid., 378. He argues from this both the likely authenticity of the Gospels' consistent portrait of Jesus and a Christology implicit in his activities no less than in his sayings (ibid., 386).
77. Theissen and Merz, Guide, 307–8; also Blackburn, "Miracles," 379, who notes that Jesus rarely is said to pray before working a miracle.
78. Theissen and Merz, Guide, 290.
79. Ibid., 309.
80. On Jesus as a Jewish charismatic, see further Vermes, Jesus the Jew, passim (e.g., 58–80); idem,
Jesus and Judaism, passim; idem, Religion, passim (e.g., 6, 70–74); cf. Borg, Conflict, 198, 234–37; idem,
Vision, 39–56, 150–71; idem, "Experience."
81. See again Eve, Miracles, 384–86, esp. 386.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
Parallels and the Authenticity Question Parallels in form (or even function) need not imply the inauthenticity of the accounts in the Gospels and Acts, as some have argued;82 ancient healing stories in general usually share the same form because they necessarily follow the same course. As Pierre Benoit asks, "Is there any other way of relating a miracle?" He concludes that "it is not the literary form which distinguishes one from the other; it is the substance, the external authentication, the internal probability."83 (For that matter, the substance did not always differ; presumably many supplicants at ancient healing shrines also did recover, a point I will briefly revisit below.)
As readers should recognize later in the book, a vast number of modern miracle reports follow the same basic format84 as in the Gospels and Acts; this similarity could stem in part from the literary influence of the Gospels and Acts, but again reflects the basic elements needed to recount a miraculous healing.85
Healing Sages?
The nature of the healing accounts in various kinds of sources is not altogether the same. As the survey of ancient pagan accounts above has suggested, most pagan claims fall into one of several categories: healings at healing shrines, often involving dreams; direct intervention of deities; mythographers' tales regarding the semi-prehistoric past; secretive magic; and at most perhaps occasional reports of the traveling sage-healer, a form not clearly dominant until the third century and perhaps affected in part by the growing challenge of Christian claims by that period.86 Nor in the case of healing sages is healing usually the sage's dominant supernatural activity to the extent found in the Gospels and Acts, and where we have very close parallels, some of the accounts, which are later, clearly reflect the literary influence of the Gospels and Acts (as noted above). Although we have some dream revelations and direct intervention of the deity in first-century Christian
82. Concurring with Taylor, Formation, 128; against Bousset, Kyrios Christos, 101–3; Jeremias, Theology,
88–92. Jeremias's use of parallels to question the authenticity of these miracles or to attribute them to psychosomatic activity (88–92) rests on his premise that modernity rejects the miraculous (89). One needs a better "independent standard" for separating fact from fiction than "What I can explain is fact, the rest is fiction" (Purtill, "Miracles," 203, noting the danger to logic of such an approach). For this section, see Keener, John, 260–61.
83. Benoit, Jesus, 1:34.
84. And, more commonly than in non-Christian ancient parallels, often in content as well (though the influence of the Gospels and Acts may play a significant role in this similarity).
85. Thus the dominance of the "testimony" form may be derivative; without having done a thorough comparative study, it appears to me that it is more common in Christian miracle stories than in accounts from unrelated cultures. But where others do recount paranormal healings, they still must depict at least something regarding the problem and the cure. Some elements of narrativization are transcultural.
86. The pervasive influence went both ways, as becomes obvious by the increasing dominance of, say,
Egyptian Christian exorcists; but this point is not relevant to the matter under consideration because these sources are significantly later than the Gospels and Acts.
The Ancient Evidenc
sources, by far by the vast majority of Christian "parallels" in the texts are with the last and (outside Christian sources) rarest category.
It is possible that this model, along with exorcism, was more dominant in the East in this period than our extant sources would otherwise suggest; although most Jewish parallels are later, traditions about Honi or perhaps the Jewish exorcist in a Qumran fragment87 are suggestive. Certainly Elijah's model predates Jesus and was widely known among Jewish people,88 though not focused primarily on healing. But our extant evidence does not support the claim that the Gospels and Acts imposed a preexisting pagan model on the Jesus movement's founder and early leaders.
The Supernatural Element Not a Sufficient Parallel In fact, the primary "parallel" between the earliest Christian sources and the dominant pagan models here is that both envision "supernatural"89 activity, a premise utterly unobjectionable to most societies in history.90 The apparent parallel seems striking to modern Western culture only because it is foreign to us, yet it is our culture that is most distinctive in that regard; we hardly dare assume genetic links among supernatural claims in all cultures that offer them.
In all cultures, people need health, healing, and so forth, and most cultures seek suprahuman assistance for these needs. Anyone reputed as a miracle worker or healer of some sort would be popular in most cultures (except rare ones like
Western academia) because such figures claim to meet a central felt need. The need is transcultural, and anthropological studies show that such figures (e.g., shamans) arise in cultures without any necessary external influence connecting them. Testimonies in some religious circles today include elements that we would not expect in the first century (such as restored car engines or computers), but testimonies regarding healings are not limited to a single era.
When one moves beyond such generalities, nt stories of Jesus and the apostles have more in common with earlier Elijah and Elisha stories (models available for Jesus and the apostles to imitate) than with later stories of Philostratus and others.
This observation does not rule out all value of the latter comparisons, but it does invite us to keep them in perspective.
Benoit contrasts the miracle stories of the canonical Gospels with some pagan accounts (such as the woman pregnant for five years bearing a five-year-old at
87. 4Q242 1 III, 4.
88. Eve, Miracles, 377, though skeptical of some early Jewish analogies to Jesus, readily accepts Elijah's model.
89. For that matter, pagan healers do not all claim to act in the name of a deity, though often they possess innate divinity in the generalized Greek sense; "supernatural" is a catchall phrase reflecting again modern Western assumptions (not altogether compatible with modern physics) about a closed continuum of nature.
90. This observation remains true even if we exclude Asclepius shrines and address more narrowly supernatural activity through individuals.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
Epidauros,91 though this is an exceptional case), many Jewish accounts (a reported conversation between God and the angel of the sea), and most accounts in the apocryphal gospels92 and acts.93 Of course, these other accounts are not all of a kind; some reports are not intended to depict a literal event, but some others do come closer to resembling the dominant examples in the Gospels and Acts. Nevertheless, Benoit is correct that even if we argue for parallels in narrative methods of recounting miracles, this literary form has no bearing on the authenticity of the events it reports.94
In contrast to Benoit, however, who rejects the authenticity of the pagan accounts, many early Christians, though monotheistic, would have accepted the validity of many of the pagan claims of suprahuman activity, without approving of them (cf. 1 Cor 10:20; 2 Thess 2:9; Rev 13:13; Did. 16.3–4).95 This is analogous to rabbinic and pagan criticisms of Jesus as a magician, allowing for power but attributing it to the wrong superhuman sources.96 Dunn is probably right that the Jewish accounts of Honi and Hanina are probably also rooted in genuine tradition.97 Perhaps some early Christians would have even Christianized such sages, especially pre-Christian ones, as genuine agents of God.
By purely historical means, we cannot a priori exclude the possibility of some eyewitness claims of sudden, unexpected recoveries that the beneficiaries believed were caused by deities; indeed, both inscriptions and votive offerings of body part
91. Cf. Van Cangh, "Miracles grecs," 223. Boring et al., Commentary, 65, compares this possibly fourth-century c.e. legendary embellishment of an earlier account here with the Gospel tradition, but the differences such as lapse of time and the continuance of eyewitnesses for the Gospel tradition mitigate the force of the comparison. The original votive tablet depicts only a "fantasy pregnancy," upgraded to a real one in the later interpretation (see clearly Klauck, Context, 161–62; on pseudopregnancy, sometimes with physiological effects, see Benson, Healing, 43–44, citing historic examples and Fried et al., "Pseudocyesis";
Knight, "Pregnancy").
92. Benoit, Jesus, 1:34. The conversation between God and the angel Benoit mentions is a homiletic illustration, not historical in genre. For earlier contrasts with apocryphal gospels, see, e.g., Trench, Miracles,
32–35.
93. Fabulous elements include "talking dogs" and "sky travels" (as in Acts of Peter), "obedient bed-bugs
(Acts of John), baptized lions (Acts of Paul)," and so forth (Hofmann, "Novels: Christian," 847). Apocryphal acts marshal all traits of their narrative, including miracles, to amplify divine glory (Bovon, Studies, 253–66).
Cf. "Miracles, Miracle-Workers," 54: the apocryphal gospels and acts "sought to respond in a folkloric or novelistic way to the needs of Christian circles for entertainment, edification, and glorification of the heroes of the faith, magnified miracles to the point of exuberant fabulousness." But miracle stories are much more common in the apocryphal acts than in the apocryphal gospels (Achtemeier, Miracle Tradition,
177–88). For some Jewish writers like Artapanus retelling biblical stories for entertainment value, see
Koskenniemi, Miracle-Workers, 296.
94. Benoit, Jesus, 1:33.
95. Cf. further 1 Cor 12:2; 1 John 4:1–3; Herm. 43.2–4. Some early twentieth-century Christians also made common case with spiritualists against the dominant materialist worldview (Mullin, Miracles,
219–20).
96. In contrast to public Western "magic" since the Enlightenment period, ancient magic was not limited to illusions (though it could include that; Quintus Curtius 7.4.8; Sipra Qed. pq. 6.203.2.1–2; Sipre
Deut. 171.4.1; 171.6.1; b. Sanh. 67b).
97. Dunn, "Demythologizing," 291. On Onias (Honi) in Josephus, where some aspects of his depiction resemble Elijah, see Gray, Figures, 145–47.
The Ancient Evidenc
models at some Asclepius sanctuaries indicate that many people did believe this.
We might reject the usual ancient interpretation of such an event, but that rejection involves a theological rather than a historical judgment.98 The distinctiveness of Christian accounts is indeed noteworthy, but that does not by itself rule out the more general observation that others also made some healing claims attributed to supernatural agencies.
Resolving the differences among groups, however, is not necessary to argue the basic thesis of this book: eyewitnesses and those dependent on them can report extranormal claims that they believe are genuine miracles.99 That events that observers classify as miracles occur also does not resolve the philosophic questions regarding supernatural involvement. I return to such questions later in the book.
Those who would simply dismiss early Christian accounts by insistence on ancients' credulity, however, overestimate the latter. Not only were some ancients not very credulous (see discussion in ch. 4) but also something distinctive about the cumulative force of early Christian claims rendered them more persuasive than mere myths about the past or claims about some particular folk healer. The movement did not spread simply because people liked fanciful stories, for fanciful stories were abundant elsewhere. The movement spread in part because the claims surrounded not only its founder but also many subsequent figures in the movement who claimed to represent him (see discussion in ch. 10).
Celestial Prodigies I have tried to compare with early Christian sources those on the most comparable topics of healing rather than some different categories of paranormal claims (like lightning striking temples or mutant babies) frequently offered in some Roman settings.
To redress this balance, one final kind of paranormal experience should illustrate the difference sufficiently.100 People in the ancient Mediterranean world valued prodigies and omens, of which a particular example from the nt context will illustrate the case.
Among prodigies reported before Jerusalem's fall were armies clashing in the skies and a voice declaring the "gods'" departure from the temple (Tacitus Hist. 5.13).101
Tacitus follows Josephus (War 6.297–99), who reports that people saw heavenly chariots moving through the clouds and surrounding cities (cf. 2 Kgs 6:17; 2 Macc
3:24–26; 4 Macc 4:10–11; Sib. Or. 3.805–8), and priests heard voices in the temple.
98. E.g., Sabourin, Miracles, 51, appears to believe that natural and psychosomatic cures could account for all the recoveries at Asclepius sanctuaries. If we do not presuppose that no superhuman entities could be involved, however, it seems to me that we cannot assert this position with much certainty.
99. This runs against Hume's emphasis that claims from different religions cancel one another out, a thesis I will address more fully soon.
100. Eve, Healer, 148–49, treats these as at least potentially comparable to Gospel miracles.
101. Such reports of visions of heavenly armies appear in other war reports (Pliny Nat. 2.58.148).
Similarly, people more recently have claimed to see, e.g., a cross in the sky (Sung, Diaries, 106, reporting the claims of some others; similar celestial phenomena in Wacker, Heaven, 93). But given the mutability of clouds, reports of shapes in the sky are not the same as corporate witness of recoveries or corporate visions or experiences of a person.
Comparison of Early Christian and Other Ancient Miracle Accounts
Some scholars regard these apparitions as collective fantasies,102 but in principle they could also be authentic celestial images (which we are tempted to regard as very unlikely); a misinterpretation of celestial phenomena, especially among those new to the region; the sun playing tricks on eyes at dusk; propaganda to justify Jerusalem's fall after the event, which Josephus has accepted;103 Josephus's own propaganda (he is the only extant witness concerning witnesses apart from sources dependent on him);104 or a combination of such elements.
It is not impossible that Josephus was involved in generating or making explicit such a report; as a highly rhetorical historian, he may be following a standard sort of report of such events as portents of destruction.105 Some writers engaged in poetic license on such topics,106 such as a giant Fury stalking the city and shaking the snakes in her hair;107 others were more sober historians citing reports for particular years. Portents included events such as modern interpreters might regard as natural phenomena, such as physical deformities at birth, lightning striking temples, comets, and so forth,108 but also included visions of celestial figures or armies.109 The armies were sometimes heard rather than seen;110 sights that were seen were often acknowledged as divine illusions rather than objects physically present;111 and the apparitions of armies never drew near anyone.112 Such reports were normally not verified by citing witnesses, and the historians who report them sometimes express skepticism concerning their value, at times allowing for imagination in their production113 and at times pointing out that such reports
102. Horsley and Hanson, Bandits, 182–84.
103. Somewhat similarly, Saulnier, "Josèphe," suggests that Josephus borrows the tradition from Flavian propaganda.
104. Tacitus Hist. 5.13.2–7 likely depends on Josephus War 6.288–315.
105. E.g., Aulus Gellius 4.6.2. The imagery in Mark 13:24–26, however, is not historiographic but reflects prophetic and apocalyptic motifs.
106. E.g., Lucan Bell. civ. 1.526–57; most obviously, who reported on Charybdis (1.547–48)?
107. Lucan Bell. civ. 1.572–73. Lucan writes epic poetry about historical events, not history proper, and no one would construe him as claiming literal sight of the Fury.
108. E.g., many of the portents listed in Livy 21.62.5; 24.10.7–10; 25.7.7–8; 26.23.4–5; 27.4.11–14;
27.11.2–5; 29.14.3; 29.37.1–5; 32.1.10–12; 33.26.7–8; 34.45.6–7; 35.9.2–3; 35.21.3–6; 36.37.2–3;
40.45.1–4; 41.21.12–13; 43.13.3–6; 45.16.5; Lucan Bell. civ. 1.562–63. On portents in ancient historians, see, e.g., Keener, Matthew, 568–69; in medieval chroniclers, see Daston, "Facts," 100. Eager to separate demonic and natural phenomena from divine miracles, critics increasingly explained these phenomena naturalistically (Daston, "Facts," 106–8), until by the mid-seventeenth century they lost their religious connections and assumed a different place in scientific study (108–9). Francis Bacon found such anomalies helpful for undermining Aristotelian categories (110–11).
109. E.g., Livy 21.62.4–5; 24.10.10; 42.2.4; Plutarch Them. 15.1; Herodian 8.3.8–9.
110. Appian Bell. civ. 4.1.4 (43 b.c.e.); one of the portents in Livy 24.44.8 (213 b.c.e.); Caesar Bell. civ.
3.105; Philostratus Hrk. 56.2.
111. E.g., Livy 24.10.11; 24.44.8. If I correctly interpret Livy's summaries, in some cases people reported seeing figures at another location when those present at that location could not confirm them. Sometimes what the apparition supposedly portended did not occur (Plutarch Cic. 14.3).
112. Livy 21.62.5. Contrast Josh 5:13–15 (cf. 2 Kgs 6:17)!
113. E.g., Livy 21.62.1; Herodian 8.3.8 (though he concludes that it is credible, 8.3.9). One fictitious or amplified, after-the-fact claim (e.g., Lucian Peregr. 39–40) was also sufficient rumor to provide grist
The Ancient Evidenc
fed on one another among the gullible.114 Some of what was genuinely seen at a distance may have been misconstrued; thus, for example, the report of two suns and light at night may reflect an aurora.115
In any case, claims based on construal of cloud formations and the like belong in a category different from claims to have witnessed healings and exorcisms of people in front of the witnesses, the sort of events narrated in the Gospel accounts. Ancients often accumulated prodigies that might be viewed as portending a dramatic event, but the earliest Christian writers were more interested in citing eyewitnesses committed to the veracity of a central, dramatic historical event, and stressing its bodily character (1 Cor 15:3–8). Their accounts of Jesus's healings normally reflect information that could have been known to the eyewitnesses who functioned as the tradition's chief guarantors.116
Conclusion Some features of miracle stories were culturally common ways to recount extraordinary phenomena. Nevertheless, features fairly distinctive to the early Christian accounts should also be observed. Jewish sources offer more natural comparisons than Gentile ones do, but apart from biblical antecedents they are not abundantly attested, certainly not on the level characteristic of early Christianity.
The degree to which early Christian miracle accounts were distinctive is not strictly relevant to the central question of this book, namely, whether eyewitnesses would offer miracle claims. Some ancient sources probably do depend ultimately on eyewitness reports of humanly inexplicable phenomena and recoveries attributed to deities, attested most commonly at healing sanctuaries. The sorts of healings through particular human agents such as we observe in the Gospels and Acts, however, are much less commonly attested in this period, and when they do occur usually they reflect a much longer period of transmission than what we find in the Gospels and Acts. This common difference suggests that we should generally expect less legendary accretion in these first-century Christian sources than in many of the documents to which scholars have often compared them.
Thus, without ruling out paranormal phenomena outside early Christian circles, we may also emphasize the dramatic and distinctive emphasis on miracles in the early Christian community. for such a report, in contrast to what would be necessary to supply the multiple attestation for Jesus's resurrection claims in Paul and the Gospels.
114. Livy 21.62.1; 24.10.6; 27.37.2; 29.14.2.
115. See the LCL note on Livy 29.14.3; some discussion in Strothers, "Objects." Flames seen in the sky (e.g., Livy 32.8.2); showers of "stones" (36.37.3); a rainbow in a clear sky (41.21.12); meteors (e.g.,
Livy 43.13.3); a comet shining for seven nights (Suetonius Jul. 88) and many other phenomena are also plausible in this manner. Some reports, of course, were simply fabricated by someone.
116. With, e.g., Davies, Invitation, 115–16; at greater length, see Keener, Historical Jesus, ch. 10; arguing most extensively for eyewitness connections, see Bauckham, Eyewitnesses.