Some miracle claims (the Jesus miracle acts in the Gospels) are more credible than others.
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The "historians"/writers sometimes believed miracle claims, without the "qualifiers" (in a few cases).
Not without qualifiers like "the story is told" or "the people believed" or "his tomb claims."
The miracle acts of Jesus are reported in the Gospels as real events which happened, and not with the qualifiers saying this was only a claim someone made. This adds to the credibility.
The Jesus miracle acts were events which reportedly happened 40-70 years earlier than the written account(s) we have. There are almost no other cases in the ancient literature of superhuman miracle acts reported less than 100 years later than the alleged events.
So this isn't mainly about stories of the ancient pagan gods, about Achilles being aided by Apollo, or about Zeus rising up against Cronos, or about Asclepius raising someone from the dead, and other hero myths. Those were
ancient legends repeated by poets and other writers who often presented them as actual events without needing to say "the story is told" or "the people believed," etc. Maybe the writers believed the stories were literally true -- or, maybe it was just pious to tell them as true stories, in respect for tradition. Whatever the explanation, there was often no qualifier.
The reported miracle acts of Jesus in the Gospels cannot be placed in the above ancient myth category (even if you consider them "myth"), but were claims of RECENT events, only a few decades earlier than the written accounts, and so were not about the ancient gods. Almost all such recent stories appear with qualifiers "the story is told" or "people believe," etc., or especially "he claimed he could . . ." etc., showing that the writer doubts the truth of it, even suggesting it's a hoax.
R. Carrier's "Kooks and Quacks" (
https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/kooks.html ) gives examples where the writer did not believe the miracle claims:
Josephus tells us that the region was filled with 'cheats and deceivers claiming divine inspiration' . . . entrancing the masses and leading them like sheep, usually to their doom.
One "trickster" was "The Egyptian" claiming special powers:
. . . he would show them from hence, how, at his command, the walls of Jerusalem would fall down; and he promised that . . . -- Jewish Antiquities, 20.170
So Josephus reports only this
promise of a miracle, not any actual miracle event, which would allow the rebels to invade the city, like Joshua at Jericho. But the real outcome was failure and subsequent slaughter of the rebels by the Romans. Obviously Josephus thought this "Egyptian" was a charlatan only, with no power as he claimed to have.
Another charlatan was Jonathan who attracted a gang of rebels:
. . . a mob of the poor and needy, promising to show them many signs and portents (Jewish War, 7.437-8). Again, it took military intervention to disband the movement.
And no "signs and portents" really happened, according to Josephus, but only promises from the charlatan.
Josephus also names a certain Theudas, another "trickster" who gathered an impressive following in Cyrene around 46 A.D., claiming he was a prophet and could part the river Jordan (Jewish Antiquities, 20.97).
Again, only
claims by the charlatan, pretending they would relive some of the ancient battle scene miracles of Joshua. But no real miracle event.
But there are a few cases of a "miracle" event which Josephus did believe and reported as fact without the "qualifiers" -- so the "historian" sometimes (rarely) did believe the miracle claim he reported.
Miracles were also a dime a dozen . . .
No they weren't -- let's get it right. Only
reported claims of miracles were "a dime a dozen," not miracles, and also
very few believers in such claims. Just because a few wackos joined them doesn't mean there was "dime a dozen" anything: some of the joiners did not believe the miracle claims of the charlatan, while those who did believe are not representative of the general population, who mostly scoffed at such claims.
. . . were also a dime a dozen in this era. The biographer . . .
Which "era"?
Excluding the Jesus miracles in the Gospels, the pattern of miracles appearing in this "era" is as follows:
Prior to 100 AD the miracle claims were not "a dime a dozen" but were very few, virtually zero, unless you go way back several centuries, and we see an increase in them going backward. But going forward from 300 to 200 to 100 BC they become fewer and fewer. So there's virtually NO miracle claims after 100 BC and into the first century AD, up to about 100 (90) AD. And then suddenly, like an explosion they break out everywhere, and increase on into the Middle Ages.
So in the "era" of Jesus and the early Christ cults there are NO miracle claims, up to about 100 AD. We see a slight hint of them in Josephus, but the real beginning of the "dime a dozen" miracles are those of the Jesus disciples in the Book of Acts, 90-100 AD, and the reference to Simon Magus who did "magic" to impress people.
But the "era" of Jesus and the Gospels and the Paul epistles was an "era" of virtually NO MIRACLES (outside the Gospel accounts). You can search for them, but they're not there in any literature -- Greek or Roman or Jewish. (Even the
Asclepius miracle claims don't really break this pattern, though these are more difficult to explain. But since they are virtually absent from 100 BC to 100 AD, they end up following the general pattern of miracle claims from this "era." This cult is dealt with in a later Wall of Text.)
In some writings there are repeats of earlier ancient legends, e.g., Ovid, and maybe some of these are modified from the earlier versions. All the pagan myths go back to Homer and earlier, some far back into prehistory. But nothing in the "era" of Jesus and the Gospel accounts, when new miracle stories had stopped appearing.
The alleged miracles of Simon Magus or Hanina Ben Dosa or other 1st century figures are absent from the literature until way past 100 AD. Everything in Plutarch and others, including the Vespasian miracle story in Tacitus/Suetonius, is later than 100 AD. For anything earlier, you have to go back to 600 BC to the Elijah/Elisha stories.
So first there's the "era" before about 500 BC, when some early miracle mythologies appeared through the centuries, then there's the "era" of these dying out, 300-200 BC, and then there's the "era" of NO miracle stories when Rome conquered most of the Mediterranean world, up to about 100 AD, followed by the "era" after 100 AD, where the miracle stories suddenly appeared and increased way beyond anything previously.
In the writings
only reports of frauds or hoaxes were common. Note that there are extremely few writers who really believe any miracle claims or say such events really happened. Unlike the Gospel accounts, which say the miracle acts of Jesus happened as real events. The Gospels are conspicuous in this regard, not typical.
. . . this era. The biographer Plutarch, a contemporary of Josephus, engages in a lengthy digression to prove that a statue of Tyche did not really speak in the early Republic (Life of Coriolanus 37.3). He claims it must have been a hallucination inspired by the deep religious faith of the onlookers, since there were, he says, too many reliable witnesses to dismiss the story as an invention (38.1-3). He even digresses further to explain why other miracles such as weeping or bleeding--even moaning--statues could be explained as natural phenomena, showing a modest but refreshing degree of skeptical reasoning that would make the Amazing Randi proud.
I.e., reports of frauds. But nothing from any writers saying the miracle events really happened. You see the need to distinguish here:
There were NOT miracles happening everywhere a-dime-a-dozen, NO! not even
claims, except ones believed by only a tiny band of ignorant misfits. There were frauds, and false claims of such things -- the writers told us they were fraudulent. And the followers of these were few, not many, except in the case of worshiping an ancient deity, where many did believe the ancient miracle claims, not claims of recent miracle events, like the charlatans mentioned by Josephus.
Likewise, statues with healing powers were common attractions for sick people of this era. Lucian mentions the famous healing powers of a statue of Polydamas, an athlete, at Olympia, as well as the statue of Theagenes at Thasos (Council of the Gods 12).
But in both cases Lucian mentions the claims as fraudulent, stating his DISbelief in them. Lucian recounts no example of a healing miracle taking place, but only
claims or
alleged healings caused by these statues, and nothing to show a widespread belief in these claims.
Also, we need to note the difference between reports of RECENT miracle claims vs. the invoking of ANCIENT legends. E.g., mentions by Pausanias of superstitious claims are from centuries earlier than Pausanias wrote of them:
Both are again mentioned by Pausanias, in his "tour guide" of the Roman world (6.5.4-9, 11.2-9).
Possibly Pausanias is ambiguous here about branding these as fraudulent claims. But that's because the miracle claims date far back to 600 years earlier rather than to anything recent.
So, importantly, the writers sometimes did believe or affirm
ancient miracle claims, or at least refrained from denouncing them as fraudulent. For the ancient legends, many of the writers -- poets and historians and others -- seemed to give credence to the superstitious beliefs, or miracles like instant healings at statues, etc. But
not to miracle claims of their own time or claims of
recent miracles. The ancient myths are sometimes given a pass, or granted credibility, without the derision typically shown by the writers toward the charlatans of their own time.
The pattern is: Some ancient miracle claims are reported as if they were real events which had happened -- but not CURRENT miracle claims, or claims of recent miracle-workers, which are only reported as false
claims of a charlatan. So there was a respect or approval shown toward some of the ancient legends, as if they were true, but not to claims of a contemporary/recent miracle event. (The Vespasian miracle story might be an exception to this rule, but in this case the reported miracle was attached to an ancient deity. Where the miracle claims are humored by the writers, or given a pass, it's because of their attachment to an ancient deity which is invoked as the source for the miracle power.)
There are virtually no writers who give credence to any recent miracle claims. Not Lucian or Pausanias or Plutarch. Rather, all the contemporary or recent claims of miracles are rejected by them.
Lucian also mentions the curative powers of the statue of a certain General Pellichos (Philopseudes 18-20).
But he mainly ridicules the tradition that this statue had healing powers.
If the superstitious belief in question is from several centuries earlier than the writer, as in this case, then there is not the same ridicule. If Lucian is less emphatic in condemning this tradition, it's because the legend dates to 400-500 years earlier, having no connection to any claims during his own time (2nd century AD). But he does ridicule ALL the claims of statues having any power to heal. And he especially ridiculed the recent false prophet Alexander who created his own perverse version of Asclepius worship. So the norm was to condemn recent charlatans concocting their own miracle claims, but little or no condemnation of the ancient legends.
And Athenagoras, in his Legatio pro Christianis, polemicizes against the commonplace belief in the healing powers of statues, mentioning, in addition to the statue of a certain Neryllinus, the statues of Proteus and Alexander . . .
Of course this is the
Christian polemic against the pagan healing myths, but the NON-Christian writers also ridicule these claims of healing powers attributed to pagan statues.
There are virtually no writings giving any credence to these miracle claims, such as to narrate them as real events which happened (as the Jesus miracles are narrated in the Gospels).
The references to the miracle claims, such as healing statues, or weeping statues, etc., are ones which only ridicule the claims. Any exception is only the kind which refers to ancient legends, centuries earlier, which gain some kind of status over the centuries and become respected and treated as though they were real historical events, accepted as literally true, and not subjected to skepticism.
Virtually no writers report anything favorable or give credibility to the claims of miracle power, and the belief in such claims was very limited, not widespread. If there had been any widespread acceptance of these claims, we would surely have some written account narrating some of their miracle acts and presenting these as real events which happened. This rejection of the claims by the writers is part of the evidence for disbelieving most miracle claims (i.e., claims of recent miracle events), as distinguished from accounts like the Gospels where the writers describe the (recent) events as real.
But this doesn't mean there are ZERO examples of the writers believing miracle claims. The Vespasian case is one presented as fact rather than ridiculed by the writers, giving credence to such a miracle claim, like the Gospel accounts reporting the Jesus miracle acts. I.e., the source, the writer (an educated person), actually believes the miracle claims being made.
The Vespasian miracle story
The Emperor Vespasian is said to have done a miracle cure for two afflicted victims. And since there are
two sources, only 40-50 years later than the event, it has to be considered seriously, unlike most miracle claims for which there is usually no source close to the time of the event.
Suetonius version
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:phi,1348,020:7 A poor man who was blind, and another who was lame, came both together before him, when he was seated on the tribunal, imploring him to heal them, and saying that they were admonished in a dream by
the god Serapis to seek his aid, who assured them that he would restore sight to the one by anointing his eyes with his spittle, and give strength to the leg of the other, if he vouchsafed but to touch it with his heel. At first he could scarcely believe that the thing would any how succeed, and therefore hesitated to venture on making the experiment. At length, however, by the advice of his friends, he made the attempt publicly, in the presence of the assembled multitudes, and it was crowned with success in both cases.
That last sentence is a bit ambiguous, but we have to take it at face value as an endorsement by Suetonius, apparently believing the story.
Tacitus version
http://historum.com/ancient-history/57439-miracles-vespasian.html One of the common people of Alexandria, well known for his blindness, threw himself at the Emperor's knees, and implored him with groans to heal his infirmity. This he did by the advice of
the God Serapis, whom this nation, devoted as it is to many superstitions, worships more than any other divinity. He begged Vespasian that he would deign to moisten his cheeks and eye-balls with his spittle. Another with a diseased hand, at the counsel of the same God, prayed that the limb might feet the print of a Caesar's foot. At first Vespasian ridiculed and repulsed them.
They persisted; and he, though on the one hand he feared the scandal of a fruitless attempt, yet, on the other, was induced by the entreaties of the men and by the language of his flatterers to hope for success. At last he ordered that the opinion of physicians should be taken, as to whether such blindness and infirmity were within the reach of human skill.
They discussed the matter from different points of view. 'In the one case,' they said, 'the faculty of sight was not wholly destroyed, and might return, if the obstacles were removed; in the other case, the limb, which had fallen into a diseased condition, might be restored, if a healing influence were applied; such, perhaps, might be the pleasure of the Gods, and the Emperor might be chosen to be the minister of the divine will; at any rate, all the glory of a successful remedy would be Caesar's, while the ridicule of failure would fall on the sufferers.'
And so Vespasian, supposing that all things were possible to his good fortune, and that nothing was any longer past belief, with a joyful countenance, amid the intense expectation of the multitude of bystanders, accomplished what was required. The hand was instantly restored to its use, and the light of day again shone upon the blind. Persons actually present attest both facts, even now when nothing is to be gained by falsehood."
So is this "the exception which makes the rule"? I.e., the rule that there are no miracle claims for which we have credible evidence, outside the Jesus miracle acts in the Gospels? and claims which were believed by the writers who are our sources for the claims?
Though this story meets a higher standard for evidence, we can reason that no real miracle took place (though there was a real event), and we can easily explain how this likely fiction healing story of Vespasian got started, and how the Jesus miracles cannot be similarly explained, by comparison:
• Vespasian was a famous widely-popular hero figure at the time, a celebrity with political and military power, known to millions throughout the Empire. This easily explains the legend-building which took place and might have produced this story even during Vespasian's lifetime.
• His reputed miracle act was done in the name of the ancient deity, Serapis, widely revered throughout the Empire, fitting the common pattern among miracle healing claims, which always invoke an ancient healing god as the Divine Source for the miracle power. Both the above accounts name Serapis as the revered healing deity, having a similar reputation to that of Asclepius, in whose name miracle cures were reported. This helps explain the popular acceptance of the story, of a supposed healing performed according to the ancient rites.
• No other miracle acts are attributed to Vespasian. So he was a one-time reputed miracle-worker, with no such reported power except on this one occasion.
• There are only 2 sources for this reputed miracle -- which is better than only one. But the Jesus miracles are attested to in 4 sources from the time (the Resurrection in 5 sources).
• This Vespasian story appears in the record after 100 AD, at a time when there was a sudden explosion of miracle stories, unprecedented, totally out of character to anything earlier. So it fits into a recognizable pattern beginning at this point, unlike anything before 100 (90) AD, where we see a jarring increase in miracle stories. During this period (before 90 AD) there were NO miracle stories, or reports of miracle healing acts, other than those of Jesus in the Gospels.
If there were several other miracle stories like this one, believed by the writers reporting them, and especially appearing earlier, like BEFORE 50 AD, then the case could be made that the Jesus miracle stories, appearing in the record from about 50-90 AD, are part of the general pattern of ancient miracle stories which some writers believed, probably continuing a superstitious trend of earlier times. But there is no such pattern of miracle claims in the written record.
Rather, this Vespasian case is almost the ONLY case of a miracle report which is believed by the writers or sources we have. And there's virtually nothing prior to 100 AD. -- I.e., the two written accounts of this appear after 100 AD, while the actual event -- whatever really happened -- would have taken place about 60-70 AD.
Also, Josephus is in this period approaching the explosion of new miracle claims beginning about 100 AD. He reports -- without the "qualifiers" -- battlefield visions or portents, and one exorcism event.
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