Julio

Can you [or how would you] discredit the seven miracles in the gospel of John, one by one?
1st - John 2:1-12 - water into wine;
2nd - John 4:46-54 - healing of a nobleman's son;
3rd - John 5:1-9 - healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda;
4th - John 6:1-14 - five thousand fed;
5th - John 6:15-21 - Jesus walks on water;
6th - John 9:1-7 - Jesus heals man born blind;
7th - John 11:1-44 - Jesus raises Lazarus of Bethany.

Julio

For me, it is a FAIR proposition.
MIRACLES stand in the Bible to be discredited before believed.
A conscientious student is not going to play stupid and accept them at face value if they can be questioned, don't you think?
Even if thousands believe them, one student can discredit them all, because, ultimately, it is the church that has been in the business of taking advantage of religious superstition and fear of brutal gods, insane demiurges, and weird [dangerous] christs.
If they can be pointed out as infamous and their deeds morally insulting, we have then the absolute right to stand against the church and the miracles those “gods” sold to thrust ignorance upon the human race.

aa5874

By discrediting John one.

This is John one and it is NOT credible.

I don't want to hear about gJohn's fiction Jesus character unless there are external corroborative sources.

Julio

We know that.
But let us play along with the miracles for the sake of gathering enough ammunition to fight with those who want to credit them as genuine material.
Water into wine is said to have been the first miracle.
That is clearly a false statement, considering the synoptic.
Now, if the very first miracle in John is a false note, that's where the student starts gathering/collecting discrediting power.

Chili

That is difficult to do once they are rationalized and I am sure that each one can be done. The water into wine is easy and so are healing the nobleman's son and the pool at Bethesda. Not sure about feeding the five thousand where Jesus came across the sea of Galilee to show that it is the source of illumination where the chaff after illumination is greater than the food for thought at the moment we first believed (providing of course that the noble man's son had been healed). Walking on water is easy, the born blind is easy and so is the Lazarus parable.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Julio,


1st - John 2:1-12 - water into wine;

This is not a miracle story. Jesus or Jesus' mom offers drunk guests at a wedding wine, and they're so drunk, they say it is the best wine. This is more of a garbled joke than a miracle.

2nd - John 4:46-54 - healing of a nobleman's son;

This is not a miracle, as Jesus refuses to heal the son. It is just a prediction that Jesus makes that the son will get better. Prophets predict the future. That is what prophets do. The story is just meant to show that Jesus was a prophet.

3rd - John 5:1-9 - healing of the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda;

This is another very garbled story. The problem is that the man can't get through the crowds to get to the pool of magic water that will cure him. It is probable that in the original story, Jesus just pushed the crowd out of the way and the man got into the pool and was healed. Jesus did this on a Saturday and thus the attack on Jesus is that he helped the man to bathe on the Sabbath, when it was illegal.

4th - John 6:1-14 - five thousand fed;

The story concentrates on the number 12 which was the number of baskets left over and not on the feeding itself. This suggests that the feeding was originally not considered miraculous. We may take it that originally the problem was not enough money to feed the "multitude". The texts says, "One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, 6.9 "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?" It is probable that the original contained a larger number of barley loaves and fish. After distribution, there are twelve baskets left over. This is just enough to feed the twelve disciples. The moral of the story originally was that the disciples did not think that they had enough to feed the people, but, in fact they did and had enough left over to feed themselves. Jesus, being a prophet, knew that it would work out this way. This was not originally a miracle story, but a moral tale about generosity paying off. Later Christians did not like the fact that the Disciples gave away their food, so they changed it into a fuzzy miracle story.

5th - John 6:15-21 - Jesus walks on water;

I think the phrase " they saw Jesus walking on the sea" was originally "they saw Jesus walking on the shore." The point of the story was that the Disciples tried to get ahead of Jesus and did not wait for him, but the wind was so bad that they found Jesus was ahead of them. Apparently the editors did not like the lamb moral and changed it into a miracle story.


6th - John 9:1-7 - Jesus heals man born blind;

Here the man is healed by going to the waters of Siloam, which seem to be another healing pool. Like the Bethesda Pool story, Jesus just knows the power of the waters and directs the inflicted man there. Again, Jesus is just proving that he is a prophet who can divine where the good cures are. This is what a prophet does. Again, he is accused of letting the man be healed on the Sabbath, which a true Jewish prophet wouldn't do.


7th - John 11:1-44 - Jesus raises Lazarus of Bethany.The key passage here is this: "Our friend Laz'arus has fallen asleep, but I go to awake him out of sleep." 11.12 The disciples said to him, "Lord, if he has fallen asleep, he will recover."

Jesus says that he is asleep, but the disciples believe that he is dead. They don't want Jesus to go, so they humor him and say that there is no point to going if he is asleep, as he will wake up by himself.

After an interpolation, where Jesus, totally out of character, thoughtlessly is made to say, ""Laz'arus is dead; 11.15 and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him," we have this passage, "Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow disciples, "Let us also go, that we may die with him."

When we take out the interpolated passage of Jesus saying that "Lazarus is dead" it appears that once again we have a "Is he sick/sleeping or is he dead" debate. It turns out that Jesus was right and he was just sleeping.

This is again just Jesus in his role of prophet knowing things in the future (Lazarus will awaken).

None of these were originally miracle stories in the sense of Jesus performing miracles. Rather they are prophecy stories designed to demonstrate that Jesus was a prophet that knew things (like where magic healing pools were, and who was sick and who was better, or who was asleep rather than dead). Only later when Jesus graduated from being a Jewish prophet to being a Son of God did they get changed into confused miracle-magician stories.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Chili

It is probably is not good enough for me to say that the transformation of water into wine makes reference to the second half of life or post MENO pause period when everything should go downhill from there. I will propose that it foreshadows the transformation details of the last supper which is not until after Jesus is 'done,' which then is why John was beheaded so that Jesus could do his thing to re-appear when Jesus was done.

I see the water into wine parable specifically dealing with the edification of retained knowledge that at one time were called shepherds now into disciples. So is really a matter of comprehending our own knowledge by way of enlightenment and place it into the larger whole for which the 'Christ-mass' is the antecedent and so the final mass equivalent (so is also where Plato's forms culminate in the Ultimate form and Aristotle's ousia's reach parousia). This then is why the shepherds looked in, saw and understood all that was foretold . . . since they were 'out of order' until they saw, and it was 'their sheep' who admired in evidence of understanding and so were consumers of that wine.

To note is that they were 'on the run' or 'out of order' and so the annunciation to the shepherds is a credible event in that it is confirmation of illumination (I think Pasternak writes on this and I have seen some paintings of this too).

Now you can see also why Jesus had nothing to do with it and it really was 'his mother's' concern because she was the reason he (Joseph) had 'shepherds' to start with in that the 'primary premiss' of our insights is always ours by intuition as provided by the woman who presides over the TOL. Now 'that' they were out of order was on account of Elizabeth's retrieve among men (Lk.1:25), and so it is that the Lord could provide good news to the shepherds that were out of order since Elizabeth's retrieve among men which in turn is why there were guests at the banquet where we now bypass 'the woman' and go directly to God in the lineage of Jesus. So the lineage of Jesus then is were all the primary premisses that she had provided are revealed = entropy because the switch had been thrown in the final mass which therefore was at midnight, midwinter midlife and that is how Jesus saw Abraham (38 is ideal it the sabbath cure in Bethseda where only 'suffering sheep' can be cured).

The greater miracle of course was the Cana event itself but the conversion of water into wine means that Joseph was home when the magi arrived (cf Matthew) that so confirms that Christ was born instead of the anti-christ in Matthew, . . . which then is why some Catholic rites do not celebrate Christmas until Epiphany.

Significant here is too that the dove descended to stay on Jesus in Luke while in Matthew it just hovered over Jesus and may have even shit on him instead, but that, of course could never be.

Not sure if I am ever finished but should add that before a 180 can be done the shepherds must be converted into disciples so Jesus can do his thing because he needed them to be his omega so that reason will prevail.

Cege

Why is "Water into wine is said to have been the first miracle" a clearly false statement considering the synoptic gospels?

gJohn is the only book that mentions water into wine, much less defines "the first miracle".

gMark records a miracle of healing first. 1:23-28

gMatthew records a miracle cleansing of a leper first. 8:1-4

gLuke records a miracle of healing first. 4:33-37

None of the synoptics claim that their first recorded miracle was the very first miracle that Jesus accomplished.

jgreen44

Jesus discredits the miracles himself with this pathetic plea, totally unbecoming of the omnipotent creator of the universe....

"Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves." (John 14:11)

Jesus then says, "Wait! Wait! Don't go away. Watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"

Apparently, Christ's contemporaries were supposed to believe he was God because he performed magic tricks.

Transient

Not to mention that we are supposed to believe that some guy who may or may not have lived was actually god and that he did magic tricks that were supposed to actually be real and not illusions.
We are supposed to believe what humans have written - totally absurd and ridiculous - if there was such a god then he would be unjust and a monster for insisting that we trust the writings of humans.
Case closed for all religions - they are all garbage.