You can dismiss the evidence for Jesus the miracle-worker, but if you're honest, . . .
you have to admit that the evidence does exist, whereas there is no such evidence for any other ancient miracle-workers. Why can't you just admit this, and then still dismiss it, claiming that it's still not enough evidence.
Why is it so difficult to just admit that there is this unusual body of evidence in this one case, which is unique, and then still insist that it's not enough evidence?
. . . incorrect about the developing legend of Jesus. We have plenty of evidence demonstrating that it does not take centuries for legendary development to occur.
For MIRACLE legends it requires centuries. There are no miracle legends in the ancient world -- before 1000 AD or so -- which developed in less than 100 or 200 years. Virtually all of them required centuries. We can look at the 1 or 2 possible exceptions.
There were some other factors also. E.g., a miracle is attributed to the
Emperor Vespasian, recorded only about 40-50 years later. But this is too easy to explain: Vespasian was probably the most famous and powerful figure in the world at the time, and a popular hero. We can easily explain how a miracle is attributed to a popular hero, near his lifetime, when he had a long career during which he wielded power over millions of subjects.
So that's another factor -- A popular and powerful hero figure with a wide reputation, illustrating an additional pattern in mythologizing, the wide popularity of the hero figure, perhaps allowing an exception to the long time-span rule that the miracle story emerges only after many centuries.
Another factor is the number of sources. For the miracles of Jesus we have 4 (5) sources. For the Vespasian miracle we have only 2 sources. Even so, those 2 sources make the Vespasian story more credible than if it were only one source. It's reasonable to assume something happened with Vespasian, such that someone believed he succeeded in invoking the gods to heal the 2 victims who came to him asking him to do the ancient religious ritual to heal them in the name of Serapis. The two sources,
Tacitus and
Suetonius, suggest that the 2 victims recovered from their illness. It's not clear if this recovery happened immediately or over several days or weeks afterward. So it's not very convincing. Still, probably something happened, given that we have these 2 reliable sources.
There are virtually no miracle stories, anywhere, like those of Jesus in the Gospels, where the account is reported in writing only a few decades after the reported event happened. And in 4 (5) sources? Nothing whatever. Nothing close.
Far from it, legendary development normally happens very quickly. It did not take long for hundreds of apocryphal stories about George Washington to develop.
Most of them not miracle stories. But, for the famous coin throw or whatever, George Washington was a powerful popular hero figure known to millions, so it was possible for unusual claims to develop in a short time. His long career and widespread reputation during his lifetime can easily explain this.
It has taken much more effort to separate the apocryphal stories from the more accurate anecdotes from his life. Thus, while Washington did not hurl a coin across the Potomac, he did, evidently cross the Delaware with troops to effect a crucial surprise victory over forces in Trenton during the revolutionary war.
It all fits the pattern that miracle stories usually require many generations and even centuries to develop, but that a popular hero figure might be a rare exception, especially in modern times when publishing is far more vast than it was in the 1st century AD.
That you can't come up with any ancient example to offer really proves the point. Obviously today there are YouTube examples to disprove the theory that it requires centuries -- but not that it required centuries in ancient times. That you can't find any early examples only proves the point that the Jesus case cannot be explained as a result of normal mythologizing as all the others can be.
The first writings about Jesus say absolutely nothing about miracles.
Wrong -- the
Paul epistles, the earliest, report the Resurrection, the most important Jesus miracle. Paul ignores everything about Jesus prior to the night of the arrest, so all the earlier miracles are bypassed, as Paul passes over everything about Jesus earlier than the events during the last week. Whereas the other early writings, beginning with Mark, report the miracles.
Even the Q Document does include mention of the miracles, though it's mainly sayings.
You can speculate about "sayings" documents, including the
Gospel of Thomas, but it's not known that they date from the 1st century, and even if Thomas is that early, it says nothing biographical about Jesus, and so it's not clear who this Jesus is that Thomas writes about if it's not about the same one described in the Gospel accounts. Thomas is probably a compilation of later content and 1st century content. Its purpose obviously is not to relate anything about the historical Jesus, but only to promote the Gnostic teachings.
The miracle narratives do not begin appearing until decades later, but . . .
There's nothing about Jesus until "decades later," beginning with Paul and the Resurrection, about 20 years later, followed by the miracles in the Gospel accounts. The miracle narratives are as early as anything else.
It's normal for the historical events reported in documents generally to not appear "until decades later," putting the Jesus miracle narratives in the same category as 90% of our ancient historical facts, reported to us decades later.
. . . but it is evident that they proliferated quickly and competing versions of these stories ended up in the canon. An example is the otherwise inexplicable miracles of the loaves and fish. Separated by only a single chapter in GMark they have slightly different numbers but the stories are otherwise nearly identical, including the plot device of the disciples not knowing how they were going to feed all these people. If this stuff wasn't a collection of developing anecdotes you'd expect the disciples the 2nd time around to ask, "You gonna make with the loaves and fish miracle again?" But no. They were just as surprised the 2nd time as they were only a chapter earlier.
There was probably only one event, later evolving into 2 different versions. There's special reason to have doubts about this story, because of II Kings 4:42-44. This is the only reported miracle act in the Gospels for which you could say there is real evidence casting doubt on it, because of its striking similarity to the II Kings story.
There are more than 30 healing miracle stories in the Gospel accounts, and no evidence against the credibility of any of them. One can nitpick over the particular details, or minor discrepancies between the accounts. Just as one can find discrepancies about any multiple reports of the same historical event, which does nothing to undermine the general credibility of the reported event.
It is also evident to those of us who are skeptics that as time passed believers felt compelled to fabricate stories of Jesus that demonstrated power over other areas that had legendarily been ascribed to other Greek and Roman gods.
There are no earlier Greek and Roman miracle stories having any resemblance to Jesus in the Gospels. You cannot name any examples.
Thus he had to turn water into wine in the much later gospel of John to show that he was better than Dionysus who simply made wine and caused vineyards to be fertile.
The wine-into-water miracle is silly. The real miracles of Jesus are the healing stories and Resurrection. Maybe 1 or 2 other miracle stories are fictions which were added on, by believers who wanted him to be something more than only a healer. What's important is whether the miracles did happen, generally, not if possibly 1 or 2 or 3 additional miracles were later fictions added on to the ones which really happened. Even if this is true, it doesn't explain why miracle stories were attributed only to Jesus and not to anyone else, or why we don't have any accounts of others, like
John the Baptizer and
James the Just, also doing miracle acts.
Some revisionist scholars, like Robert Eisenman, believe James the Just was the famous Teacher of Righteousness of the Dead Sea Scrolls. So, if he was that important, why do we have no miracles also attributed to him?
But if Jesus really did perform the healing acts and resurrected from the dead, then that explains his unique reputation as a miracle-worker to whom some later fiction stories might have been added. But if ALL the miracles (or most of them) are fiction, you have to explain how these got attributed to Jesus but not to anyone else, like other prophets or rabbis or messiahs etc.
There is nothing noble about what GJohn claims is the first miracle Jesus performed. He was just showing off. But to christians of the era it was important to know their home-team god was more powerful than the competition.
There really was no serious competition.
Even if there was some psychological element like that among 1st-century Christians, you need to explain why such miracles were not attributed to any other messiahs or rabbis or prophets, etc., of which there were many.
You can always conjecture about the John writer, that he was thinking of Bacchus or other ancient deities, and offering some copycat wine-maker to his readers, for some psychological purpose -- there's plenty of room for that kind of speculation.
But it leaves unanswered the question why there is no other person, any other human of the period, even going back centuries, for whom such miracle stories are in the written record, or reported miracle acts.
Absolutely nothing in the Greek/Roman legends -- zero, zilch. And only one otherwise -- the
Elijah/Elisha legends of I-II Kings, of humans in history performing miracle acts, in an identified time and place. For these we have only the one source, I-II Kings, written about 300 years later than the reported events.
There's virtually nothing else.
If you're desperate, you could add prayers/meditations/rituals performed at the
Asclepius temples, such as we have throughout all ages and all cultures, where people pray to their healing deities, like Christians pray today, at revivals etc., and sometimes the victim recovers and says it was an answer to the prayers. 90% of them are easily dismissed as normal recoveries, and non-miraculous.
But mixed in are a few claims of an instant healing miracle, from the ancient healing god, like Asclepius, known from ancient Tradition passed on for centuries in institutionalized rituals practiced by a long-established religious priesthood. It's always a believer/disciple of the guru who is healed, worshiper of the ancient healing deity, like the supplicants to the Emperor Vespasian begging him to perform the ancient healing ritual for them.
These cases have no resemblance to the miracle acts of Jesus described in the Gospel accounts, of instant healing, where non-disciples are suddenly healed without any ancient religious ritual being performed, no established priesthood already believed in by the religious worshipers receiving the rituals and making routine claims of divine healing according to the centuries-old traditions and practices of the culture and taught to them from childhood.
None of this has any resemblance to Jesus the instant miracle-worker in the Gospels, who appears from nowhere, and is gone in less than 3 years, and yet becomes the only miracle-worker recorded for us in ancient documents, near the time of the reported events.
