Jesus is the only reported ancient miracle-worker for whom there is evidence.
I hope I did not already post this response from earlier -- probably not. But if I did, here it is again, with some revision.
DrZoidberg;936704 said:
To the ancients, any healing was a miracle healing.
That's just semantics, playing with the "miracle" word.
There were no reported instant healings, such as we see in the Gospel accounts. No reported healers who were approached to heal blindness and leprosy etc. and who healed these conditions instantaneously. It's true that there were priests and sages and others who performed rituals, but there are no accounts of instant healings.
You are wrong to insinuate that all the ancients were idiots who knew no difference between a superhuman healing act, such as an instant healing like we see in the Gospel accounts, and a normal everyday religious ritual which did not produce an instant cure. It's not true that the ancients were inferior mindless bumpkins who could not appreciate an act which instantly put an end to a physical affliction which a victim had suffered for many years.
They didn't have a concept of the body healing naturally.
Yes they did. Except that maybe they thought NOTHING happened "naturally" in their worldview.
But even some modern religionists have that same belief that all is done by divine control, and yet all moderns do know that the body can heal naturally, without treatment. And the ancients also knew this, in practice, regardless of religious superstition. Also, they did not have the English word "natural" or "naturally" -- but they were not inferior creatures who had no concept of "natural" healing, or the body recovering without being treated by a healer.
To the ancients any wound healing by itself was evidence of a miracle.
Playing semantics with the word "miracle" proves nothing. The question is whether the instant healings we see in the Gospel accounts did or did not really happen. If they did happen, the ancients who witnessed it or heard about it would care and think that it mattered. Regardless of our modern theories about their superstitions or what they believed or how their thinking was inferior to ours or about their inability to distinguish between treatment vs. natural healing without treatment.
It's true that the English word "miracle" was not used by the ancients.
We have loads of texts about this.
We have no text saying they could not appreciate something unique about instant healings such as the Jesus miracle healing acts described in the Gospel accounts. There are no ancient texts describing other such healing acts or indicating that the Jesus acts were the same as other healing acts being performed by someone. What we see in the texts are religious rituals, performed by priests of an ancient cult -- like religious practices of all cultures, even today, where worshipers who recover from an illness attribute it to the gods or to their praying, etc.
(Possible exception to this might be 3 reported healing miracles by Elijah and Elisha, dating back to 500-600 BC and reporting events 2 or 3 centuries earlier. These are very dissimilar to the Jesus healing miracles. These are the closest to any reported healing miracle acts prior to Jesus in the 1st century, so it's clear that such stories were extremely untypical of either the pagan or Jewish ancient traditions.)
Such standard religious ritual is at least 90% of the
Asclepius healings in the inscriptions at the temples. The few reported Asclepius healings which are in the supernatural/miracle category (superhuman or instant healings) fall into two groups timewise: one group before 200-300 BC and the other from after 100 AD when miracle claims suddenly increased. So there were no "miracles" of Asclepius during this gap of 300-400 years. But there also was no Asclepius person at all (whether the legendary healer might have earlier existed), but only the priests at the temples of Asclepius performing the ancient rituals, 90% of which are clearly in the non-miracle category, while the few bizarre claims of an instant recovery are a tiny percent of the total reported healing claims and are confined to the two periods above.
Also, it's not true that ancient doctors used magic only, because there were many remedies based on scientific beliefs, regardless whether the science was flawed. They believed that natural herbs and other substances contained healing qualities. In these cases it was not "miracle" healing which took place or which they thought took place. Just because they also had religious beliefs does not put these treatments in the "miracle" category, anymore than modern medical treatments are in the "miracle" category simply because someone prays for the patient to recover.
That's just nonsense. I think you just made this up.
There are hundreds of websites on ancient medical cures, which are easily found by just searching "ancient cures" or "ancient remedies" etc.
Here's one of many dozens which pop up:
https://www.mdlinx.com/article/ancient-medicines-and-procedures-still-used-today/lfc-4453
This one lists aspirin, sutures, cataract surgery, morphine, and Tracheostomy as medical treatments from ancient times which are still used today. And there were hundreds of others.
And the vast majority of Asclepius "miracle" healings were really treatments, where the patient was given some herbs or performed some act with bits of bones or insects or vegetable matter or animal parts or chemicals or spices, sometimes cooking them. There were hundreds of procedures, some of which were believed by the practitioners/priests to have healing power, whether the patient believed it or not. In the case of the Asclepius rituals, of course, it was always taught that the ancient healing god was the real source of the healing, even if the priest believed it was a real medical treatment which worked.
There were many cases where practitioners believed they had a natural healing procedure, using substances of one kind or another, and they kept the formula secret, because they believed it really worked and didn't want other competing "doctors" to steal it from them. So they let the patients believe it was magic or divine power that produced the cure (when a recovery took place).
That a tiny percent of bizarre "miracle" reports are also found is easily explained as embellishment on the more factual claims of normal recoveries -- the vast majority of the reported cases -- or typical examples of praying for the sick and those that recovered attributing it to the healing god's power.
Just because there existed a couple of Greeks who hypothesized about a division between the natural and supernatural realm, doesn't mean it was something that was widely accepted.
Throughout many cultures the remedies were practiced, many nations, "civilized" and "primitive" and everything in between. It was "widely accepted" that treatments worked, performed by practitioners who had the knowledge or talent or divine gift or whatever power it was -- people believed it and went to them just as we go to doctors today. And these practitioners had many different approaches, and of course religion was never excluded, and patients were encouraged to pray and so on. Very much the same as today, except that it's more scientifically advanced today, and religion is less important in today's practices.
In the Roman world naturalism was a popular belief among the elites. But for people in general out in the provinces, ie Jews... no.
No, naturalism was known and practiced everywhere, and accepted by the commoners also, with their superstitions added to it.
All the societies had their practitioners who used various remedies which were based partly on knowledge of biology and chemistry etc., even if most of them also appealed to religion. Some of the knowledge was scientific rather than religious, and some of it was partly legitimate, having some medical benefit. And also there was heavy reliance on psychology, because the patient's frame of mind was also a factor, and the practitioners knew how to make the patient feel good, think positive thoughts, which could either aid the healing process or at least make the patient imagine that healing was taking place.
This was partly real science, along with natural talent of the practitioner to make the patient feel good. And to this the pure superstition is added as a further component, often maybe the strongest component among the less educated. The practitioner used all means of any kind which would produce more patients and more profit. It is false to say there was zero legitimate medical practice or science, even if it was a small percent in many cases.
Why this demand to find sources for something this well attested and well known?
If it's well known, then provide the written accounts of cases where a "miracle" healing actually took place. It's not enough to say that they "would expect" a miracle. Where are the cases of instant healing of leprosy or blindness, etc.? If it is well attested, then you should have some examples in the literature reporting such cases.
Do you mean the case of King Pyrrhus and his magic toe? That's based on one source only, several centuries later. But there are no "well attested" cases of such miracle healings, in sources near the time of the alleged event. Or, if there really are any such cases, you will come up with them. You should mention the Asclepius stories/inscriptions, which might be the best example, but those are largely in the medical science and psychology category, rather than in the "miracle" category. Just because the ancient gods are worshiped and rituals followed doesn't change the fact that there was some science also, in the practice.
You refute yourself if you refuse to cite the particular examples and provide the narrative accounts of the alleged miracle events. Anyone can prove their case by just saying it's "well attested and well known" but not provide the individual examples and quote the original source for them.
The Bible has exactly one source... itself.
There was no such thing as "the Bible" in the 1st century. The NT is a collection of almost all the 1st-century writings which mention Jesus, so almost all the sources are in that collection. Those are from separate authors, and thus separate sources, each one having separate sources we don't know about.
You do not change multiple sources into "one source" by putting them all into one collection and calling that collection "the Bible" or "exactly one source." This collection is not like the Koran which all comes from one author or speaker. "The Bible" is/are several different writings from different persons who did not collaborate. None of them had any idea that a "Church" propped up by the Emperor 2 or 3 centuries later would combine their writing along with several others into "the Bible" or holy book or compendium of Christian teachings.
All the various Jesus narratives in the Bible come from Mark.
No they don't. That's only one of the earlier sources, or the earliest source we know of which others quoted from. It's definite that they used other sources also which are lost. All the other Gospels individually contain narratives not from Mark. Even some which contradict Mark.
One source. A highly dubious source.
All sources are dubious. All our ancient history comes to us from dubious sources. All the sources are a mixture of fact and fiction, for all our ancient history. If we can't rely on "dubious" sources, then all our ancient history record has to be thrown out the window and you can throw away all those history books and anything you learned in school.
. . . pretty obvious that they're added in order to jack into earlier preconceptions about divinity to convince pagans of his godly specialness.
But didn't other cults also want their miracle-worker hero to be special? So why wouldn't they do the same? and also jack into the earlier preconceptions, etc.?
Yes, exactly. Which is what they did. For example, every European Christian king also performed faith healings on major holidays.
No, not healings, but ritual healing ceremonies.
Just as religious worshipers pray every day and even do some ritual practices, hoping for a miracle. And when they recover from an illness they say it was the gods or God or Christ who healed them. That is not what the Jesus miracle healings in the NT were. If that's all they were, there's no explanation why they were recorded in writing, because everyone knew they were just rituals only which produce no result, like all the other prayings and chantings and ritual performings which produced no result and were not recorded. Everyone knew that there were normal recoveries anyway and that these were always attributed by worshipers to the healing deity. But that's not what the Jesus healing acts were. They were non-normal instant healings which were something new, and thus they were reported or circulated first as oral reports and later recorded in written accounts.
A surviving remnant from the pagan world.
What is not a remnant from paganism are the recorded Jesus instant healings in the Gospel accounts. If these were a remnant from paganism we would see not only earlier such healings in the pagan literature, but also other reported cases of instant healings in the 1st century, or from 100 BC to 100 AD, because there would be other cults also, such as a John the Baptist cult, and others which would have borrowed such healing stories from the pagan world just as the Christian writers did. If this were a remnant from paganism, then we'd see other new cults, both Jewish and pagan, during this period, which would have recorded similar miracle claims.
If the reported instant healings by Jesus were borrowed from paganism, we'd see other messiah figures as well, not just this one -- we'd see other saviors or Sons of God, other gurus or prophets or sages also recorded as performing similar healing acts, healing lepers and others instantly. What worked for the Christ cult(s) would have worked just as well for other messiah cults and crusades which numbered easily in the hundreds throughout the pagan and Jewish culture of this time, all competing with each other and doing anything necessary to recruit new followers.
Why was it only the Christ-believers who made any effort to record the miracle events? or, only the Christ-believers who got the idea to wipe out all record of the many other miracle-workers who were standard and traditional and just as well-known and believed as the Christ miracle-worker? -- until the Council of Nicaea decided to exterminate all trace of them and rewrote history, artificially creating all the documents we have now, doctoring them to promote this one miracle-worker only and obliterate all trace of the others?
Why did only the Christ cult(s), or the Catholic Church in 325 AD, think up such a scheme to wipe out all trace of its competitors? and find the technology to return 300+ years into the past to confiscate all that earlier evidence, written accounts. None of the other miracle cults were able to think up such a scheme?
Because Jews fetishize the written word. It's their special thing. Pagans... by contrast, were mystery religions. They did NOT write the miracles down.
They wrote down many things -- why not also any reported miracle acts? Not all pagans were "mystery" religions -- the vast majority were not. The term "mystery" religions is a modern term, not used by the ancients. The pagans, Greeks and Romans, wrote down everything they thought was important, just like the Jews did. There's no reason why we would not have any written accounts of instant healings or miracle healings if there were reports of such events or significant belief in them.
They were supposed to be mysterious. Stuff only shared with those initiated into the same cult. Writing it down risked the information to spread beyond the cult.
Most pagans were not members of so-called "mystery" religions, but practiced the ancient customs of Osiris and Apollo and Serapis and other deities recognized as healing gods. They report no instant healing messiah or savior who held healing rallies of any kind, or who arrived in town and then attracted crowds of sick who were seeking their healing power. All we have are reports of temple worshipers who went there for the traditional healing rituals. Nothing was kept mysterious among the millions of those common worshipers or among the educated writers who reported the practices.
Pagan mystery cults didn't want riff raff joining their cult. They were exclusive. You needed to jump through all manner of convoluted hoops to become a member.
There is no evidence that the pagan "mystery cults" had any special healing prophet who performed instant healings, or made any claims about such miracles, or that such things were kept secret. You can't argue that something must have happened because it's kept secret, which proved that it must have happened. Just because there are secrets or mysteries does not prove that there must have been instant healing claims which were covered up because of the secrecy.
And this mystery or secret element was not typical of the ancient pagan religions. If there were any such instant healing prophet or sage supposedly doing such miracle acts, we should see some report of it in writings, because there was no general practice of suppressing such a thing.
And even if there was some pagan "mystery" or secrecy activity to avoid publishing something, this is not true of the Qumran community, which also was exclusive and did no evangelizing. And yet, they published voluminously, with huge quantities of scrolls, disclosing their practices and advertising all they believed in, especially their condemnation of the "Sons of Darkness" and the mainline Jews. And among all their writings there is no mention of any healing prophet or savior who performed miracle cures or instant healings such as those of Jesus reported in the Gospels. But they fully reported their religious healing rituals like all the other religious traditions, with no secrecy.
This Qumran cult resembled the "mystery" religions in their exclusiveness and claim to be righteous and uniquely favored by Divine Power, and they published everything they believed in, with no secrecy, and yet they report no divine Messiah figure performing any miracle cures or instant healings.
If there were any such reported miracle-worker, somewhere, we'd see some indication of it somewhere in the vast amount of published pagan and Jewish literature. Why there is such an absence of miracle claims in written reports cannot be explained by some shortage of this literature.
Christianity, by contrast, wanted all their secrets to be spread as much as possible because they were NOT exclusive. Anyone is welcome. That's why they wrote it all down and shared it with the world. There's no other reason.
It's plausible to say that here, at this time and place, there arose a new idea of INclusivity vs. EXclusivity, and of spreading the "secrets" everywhere, to all, to save the whole world, all nations, races, tribes. But where did this new idea come from (assuming it really was new, which is not certain)? If we assume it slowly evolved as a result of new patterns of human interaction, new intermingling of different tribes and cultures, then the process was gradual enough that it should occur in many places and among many different people. So, why should all this new openness, or NON-exclusivity, get totally focused on one person only, one Jesus of Galilee person, who is seized upon as the central figure and gets credited with doing miracle acts and being a special Son of God Savior, who alone is reported as the link to God, and there is no one else who also gets credited with such status?
I.e., why not John the Baptist, James the Just, or many other acknowledged Teachers or Prophets or Sages? Why not the famous Rabbi Hillel, who was more widely recognized as a Jewish Teacher than Jesus, at that time? We have no evidence that Jesus was the most popular religious hero figure prior to 50 AD or so. There were many others likely more recognized than he was in the earlier period. It's only after 100 or 200 AD that the Jesus name and reputation became more widespread than these and many others.
If the absence of reported miracle-workers is due to this new INclusivity factor, wanting to convert ALL people instead of being limited to a secret elite membership, why were there no other hero figures who also became the divine Messiah figure performing miracles and rising from the dead? Why did there have to be only one such person designated for this special status, to the exclusion of all others? Why would all the new Inclusivists come together and rally around this one Messiah person only? There were plenty of others who qualified for this status. Why only this one?
Just because all the Inclusivists had a similar idea in common does not mean they would all settle automatically on only one Messiah figure to play this role.
And there were many conflicts among the first Christians. These were not all a united group. They were split from the very beginning into many different factions. Why should all these factions come together and choose one person, this Galilean Jesus person, as their savior Messiah, when there were dozens of candidates for this role? Where's the evidence that Jesus was special above all the others, if it's not the miracle acts which he alone reportedly did?
The most logical explanation is that he is the only one who actually did have such a reputation, and this must be because he actually did miracle acts which no one else did. If he did not do these acts, but gained this recognition because someone "made up" stories about him, this leaves unexplained why there were not others also -- other prophets or teachers etc. -- about whom someone would "make up" such stories to make them into similar miracle heroes or gods.
Those traces actually exist. Because some Christian converts wrote slanderous texts about what went on in the mystery cults. They are anti-pagan propaganda. But we can infer from those what kinds of things went on.
There are no texts reporting any miracle acts by pagan Prophets or Teachers or Sages or Messiah figures. We cannot infer that anyone reportedly did miracle acts.
Of course here or there it's possible a small band of nutcase followers worshiped a guru -- we don't know. You can suppose anything you want. Perhaps a charismatic demagogue could attract a dozen followers and convince them that he could do miracles. However, the "mystery" religions are not in this category.
The only miracle stories taken seriously -- outside a local nutcase cult -- are those attributed to the ancient deities -- Apollo, Prometheus, Serapis, Hercules, Asclepius, etc. -- not to recent historical persons, or instant Messiahs or upstart gurus who gained a following. (The case of Jesus in about 30 AD is the sole exception.) There are a few references to charlatans, identified as such by the writers. Josephus in the 1st century mentions 2 or 3 such charlatans, and in the 2nd century there is some report of charlatans. Nothing reports any of these actually performing miracle acts -- all we have are reports dismissing them as fraudulent. While in the case of Jesus we have the opposite: All the evidence -- the written accounts of the time -- reports that he did perform miracle acts, including the Resurrection, and no accounts contradict this. Regardless of some discrepancies on other points, every source we have confirms this event. When all the different sources confirm an event, and none contradicts it, that is good evidence, despite your prejudice or knee-jerk impulse telling you otherwise.
To conclude that Jesus did not do the miracle acts, one must explain why such reports are attributed to him only and not to dozens of other supposed Messiahs or Saviors or Revered Teachers. Otherwise, the evidence leads only to the conclusion that he did perform these acts, especially the Resurrection, and otherwise we cannot explain the evidence. So that's the best guess, and otherwise we have no explanation for the existing evidence.
