Signs and Wonders: A Beginner’s Guide to the Miracles of Jesus

INTRODUCTION

Uncanny, Amazing, Confusing, Consoling

The Gospel writers depict Jesus as having authority over illnesses to cure, over demons to exorcise, and over nature to control. His earliest followers, and followers subsequently, have similarly regarded him as a miracle worker. In fact, the Jewish historian Josephus, who was not a Christian, likely recorded that Jesus was a doer of wonderful works (Antiquities 18.63). Although I am not a Christian, I have no difficulty in recognizing this historical memory. I doubt people would have gathered around Jesus, let alone left their homes and families to follow him, if all he had was a story about a sower who went out to sow. He must have had what we today call charisma: the ability to seem superhuman, so much so that he could calm those who were disturbed in spirit and bring a feeling of wholeness to those who felt physically incomplete.

More, he must have conveyed not only this impression but also this ability to his followers. In Acts 2:22, Peter preaches to the people of Jerusalem about Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know. Hebrews 2:4 similarly asserts, God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will. Indeed, these early followers, and some Christians to this day, continued to experience miracles: they prayed for storms to be stilled, and the weather calmed; they placed their hands on an ailing person, and the tumor shrank; they prayed to be closer to God, and they began to speak in tongues or be slain in the Spirit. Good timing? The power of mind over matter? Psychological openness to altered states of consciousness? Or, miracles? The answer will depend on whom we ask.

Debates over whether the miracles the New Testament records—enabling a paralyzed man to walk, stilling a storm, healing a hemorrhaging woman, multiplying loaves and fishes, restoring sight to a blind man, raising Lazarus from the dead, and many other accounts—are ultimately unhelpful. People who believe in miracles, in the sense of events that contravene what we know of nature, will believe Jesus performed them. Others, perhaps adherents to non-Christian religions, may claim that while their spiritual leaders did miracles, Jesus did not. Still others will look for scientific explanations: if a magician can make a red liquid green, so Jesus can turn water into wine. The concern to ensure Jesus was not seen as a magician was already in play by the second century. Justin Martyr, in his mid-second century Dialogue with Trypho 69.7, notes that some regarded Jesus as a sorcerer and a magician (Greek: Magos, as in Magi).

A few may argue that the Gospel texts have been mistranslated: Jesus did not stand on the water but by the water (how powerful prepositions can be!). Some will see Jesus as in cahoots with the people he ostensibly cured. Still others propose that not only was Jesus a visionary, he also taught his followers to have visions, including visions of him doing amazing things. And quite a number of critics suggest that the healings were of psychosomatic problems; Jesus does not regrow limbs, they note.

Such arguments get us nowhere on the question of history. Historians cannot state that something that contravenes the world as we know it happened. Belief in miracles is a matter of faith. Further, where one person sees a miracle, someone else sees the practice of medicine or an example of magic or an optical illusion. Sometimes these distinctions are gendered (here’s my feminism coming to the fore): for generations, if a woman healed a person with a combination of herbs she learned from her mother, it was called witchcraft or at best folk medicine, but if a man, with a medical degree, using the same herbs, healed a person, it was called medicine.

Either we believe in miracles of the sort the Gospels describe, or we don’t. But—and here’s the good news—for the stories to have value for us, the question of historicity is not of ultimate import. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—the convenient designations for the authors of the Gospels—believed Jesus did miracles or, as John prefers, signs. To understand the Gospels in their own context, it therefore helps to enter into the way the authors and their readers thought.

Now we can address what the miracle stories did, and can, mean. Additionally, we can do more than point to the obvious, which is that the miracle stories are designed to tell us something about Jesus. We learn from these stories that he has authority; he can do amazing things. We shall see how several of the miracles connect him to Israel’s story: he controls nature as the God of Israel controls nature. Psalm 107:25 reports that God commanded and raised the stormy wind, which lifted up the waves of the sea, and verse 29 concludes, he made the storm be still and the waves of the sea were hushed. As the God of Israel, so Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus also must have reminded his first followers of the assurance Moses gave the people of Israel in Deuteronomy 18:15, The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This prophet could split the sea in half to allow the people to escape from slavery to freedom; he could make food, like manna, appear to feed the hungry. Jesus would also have reminded his followers of the great miracle-working prophets, Elijah and Elisha, both of whom also raised the dead. Further, Elijah provided the widow of Zarephath a jar of meal [that] will not be emptied, and the jug of oil [that] will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth (1 Kings 17:14).

More impressive still, Elisha not only heals the leprosy from Naaman the Syrian general (2 Kings 5:1-18), he also feeds one hundred men in what looks like the first draft of the feeding of the five thousand: A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God: twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. Elisha said, ‘Give it to the people and let them eat.’ But his servant said, ‘How can I set this before a hundred people?’ So he repeated, ‘Give it to the people and let them eat, for thus says the Lord, They shall eat and have some left.’ He set it before them, they ate, and had some left, according to the word of the Lord (2 Kings 4:42-44).

Because some of the miracles attributed to Jesus likely served as propaganda against pagan rivals, it is possible that the disciples either invented or elaborated upon things Jesus did in order to make their teacher look better than possible rival figures. Jesus emerges as more powerful than the Greek god of healing Asclepius, the child of Apollo and Koronis, who was raised by the gods after he died and transported to Olympus. Asclepius, who had temples throughout the Mediterranean, could also, according to those who told his stories, heal illnesses and raise the dead. Some early Christian art even depicts Jesus as looking like Asclepius. The difference between Jesus and Asclepius, at least in the early years, was that one encountered the Greek god in a temple, where a fee was charged or a donation of some sort expected. Jesus and his early followers practiced free health care, which is another type of miracle.

The Gospels also depict Jesus as more powerful than the Emperor Vespasian and thus more powerful than anyone Rome worshipped. Suetonius, in his Lives of the Caesars (Ves. 7), reports that Vespasian needed to perform a miracle in order to solidify his claim to the throne, since he was not a descendant of the royal household. He then, before multiple witnesses, restored sight to a man who was blind by anointing his eyes with spit, and he restored mobility to a man who could not walk by touching his heel.

We can similarly compare Jesus to the Greek god of wine, Dionysius, who would be right at home in Cana where Jesus changes water into wine, or to his contemporary, the philosopher-healer Apollonius of Tyana (ca. 3 BCE–97 CE), whose biography, replete with mighty works such as exorcising demons and raising the dead, was composed about a century later by Philostratus. Such comparisons often take the shape of my god is better than your god. We do not need to play this game. Rather, the comparisons help us situate Jesus in a world where miracles were recognized, and where miracle workers were usually interrogated: Is the power to do mighty works from a benevolent source, or a malevolent one? Are the miracles designed to help others, for self-aggrandizement, or to harm others? Pretty much everyone agreed that miracles occurred; the question was what they signified.

Exorcists, a specific type of miracle worker, were also part of the culture. Our impressions of exorcisms often come from modern novels or horror films rather than from antiquity. Illnesses, such as fevers, could be ascribed to demons; hence, when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, he rebukes her fever (Luke 4:39); given that she immediately gets up from bed and begins to serve him, I’m inclined here to rebuke Jesus (let the lady get some rest), but that’s a different book. Josephus (Antiquities 8.46-48) reports to have witnessed, personally, a fellow named Eleazar who performed exorcisms in the presence of Vespasian and his army troops. Mark 9:38 records John the Disciple saying to Jesus, Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us. The verse suggests that people regarded Jesus’s name as having supernatural ability; it also shows the presence of rival exorcists. The Book of Acts 19:15 reports a similar attempt at exorcism, but this one doesn’t work, as the evil spirit said to them [exorcists who are not disciples], ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are you?’ This scene, which is meant to be humorous, concludes with the notice, Then the man with the evil spirit leaped on them, mastered them all, and so overpowered them that they fled out of the house naked and wounded (Acts 19:16).

We need not, however, think of being possessed as necessarily a bad thing. The issue is the one doing the possessing. For example, people who believe in the Holy Spirit, active in the world, might think of Jesus as possessed by this Spirit, just as others are possessed by Satan or demons. This understanding would have made sense to a first-century person.

Jesus’s miracles are also comparable to miracles performed by rabbis known from post-biblical Jewish sources, rabbis such as Honi the Circle-Drawer, who can control the rain, and Haninah ben Dosa, whose prayers are efficacious in healing and whose miracles included making loaves of bread appear miraculously in the oven lest his poor wife be shamed that the household had no food (b. Taanit 24a/b; thank you, Hanina, who was also known for his poverty; his wife may have had other thoughts). However, unlike the Gospels, which celebrate the mighty works of Jesus, the rabbinic sources overall promote the wisdom of the sages rather than the charismatic miracle workers. For the rabbis, more important than individual figures who perform signs and wonders and speak only on their own authority are students and teachers—activities that do not require supernatural talents—who work within the community structure. Rabbinic sources are more likely to talk about ongoing care for the sick rather than miraculous cures.

The rabbinic sources do help us put the Gospel miracle accounts into perspective. If our major sense of Jesus is great miracle worker, we’ve missed the point of the New Testament. Paul does not mention the miracles; he stresses what he sees as the central point: the faithfulness of Jesus in going to the cross, and the faithfulness of God in resurrecting him. Although about 40 percent of Mark’s Gospel concerns miracle stories in various forms, Mark’s Jesus with some consistency tells people who have witnessed or experienced the miracles to remain quiet about them. For Mark, Jesus should be seen primarily as the Son of Man who must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again (Mark 8:31).

Together with the first-century Jewish historian Josephus, the rabbinic sources show us that miracle-working was not the primary role of the messiah, at least according to most Jewish messianic expectations. The messiah, or the two messiahs known from the Dead Sea Scrolls, was the agent who brought about the messianic age, the time when all bodies are resurrected from the dead, and all bodies and minds are whole. Yet, there were also at the time of Jesus various signs prophets, as they have come to be called. For example, Josephus (Antiquities 20:97-98; compare to Acts 5:36) mentions a fellow named Theudas, who promised to divide the Jordan River (see Joshua 3:15-17). Make a big enough promise, and the crowds will come.

In fact, what look like signs or miracles may prove not divine authority, but Satanic ability. In 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10a, Paul (or perhaps a follower, writing in Paul’s name) warns, The coming of the lawless one is apparent in the working of Satan, who uses all power, signs, lying wonders and every kind of wicked deception…. Even Jesus gets accused of being in league with the devil. As the Pharisees charge, It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of demons, that this fellow casts out demons (Matthew 12:24).

Why then record the miracles? They were not necessary. While Paul may have told his followers in Galatia, Thessalonica, and Philippi that Jesus did miracles, he does not appeal to those miracles in providing them the exhortations they need. He notes that people in the assemblies gathered in Jesus’s name do miracles, but he downplays miracles as well as speaking in tongues in favor of the speaking wisdom and knowledge through the Spirit (see 1 Corinthians 12:9-10, 29). Thomas Jefferson’s edited Bible famously omits all the miracles, which he found to be superstitious nonsense. As a Deist, miracles did not fit his rational view of the world (he provides a fascinating discussion point for those who insist the founding fathers were promoting a Christian nation—that’s another book too). Many people today can, and many do, follow Jesus not because of the miracles and even despite the miracle stories, but because they find compelling his ethical teachings and actions or his courage at the cross. But miracle stories in the Gospels do serve a number of functions.

Alongside presenting the evangelists’ Christologies, their views of Jesus, connecting Jesus to the Scriptures of Israel, and presenting