aa5874

And what specific miracle or miracles broke the laws of science?

The raising of the dead?

And when were the laws of science broken?

Zeichman

Never, to my knowledge.

aa5874

So, The laws of science have NEVER been broken and miracles are breaks in the laws of science.

Zeichman

I don't know how much more clear I can be.

Psycho-somatic healings are not miracles to us, but they were to the ancients. I do not think that anything that a modern Westerner would call a "miracle" has ever occurred. However, if you think that electricity is "magic" or David Blaine performs "miracles," I'm in no position to deny that experience. They simply do not break the laws of science, so I personally would not call them miracles. Is this clear, or not? Perhaps a shift in terminology would make it more clear in the future; Jesus' healings were semeia, not miracles.

Steven Carr

I emailed Justin Meggit with these sorts of questions. I have had no reply yet.

andrewcriddle

I think we have to distinguish here.

The Gospels depict various opponents of Jesus as giving hostile explanations of his supposed miracles. This may or may not not be good evidence as to claims made about Jesus during his ministry by his opponents however it does seem to be evidence that at least by the time the Gospels were written such claims were being made by opponents of early Christianity. (If you wish to disagree then I think you have to provide a more plausible explanation as to why these claims about Jesus are introduced and refuted in the Gospels.)

Hence, we may have to argue either:
i/ that although no miracles were claimed for Jesus during his ministry, yet within less than 50 years he was accepted to have worked prima-facie miracles both by supporters and opponents of early Christianity.
or ii/ that miracles were claimed for Jesus during his ministry.

ii/ is IMO much more plausible than i/.

Andrew Criddle

Steven Carr

Can Andrew find one contemporary of Jesus who claimed that Jesus had performed healings?

Is it too much to ask for evidence that contemporaries of Jesus thought he had performed healings, rather than evidence that within 50 years , people were claiming miracles?

Why is Paul unaware that enemies of his Jesus were saying that Jesus was in league with the devil?

As I said in my original post, mainstream Biblical scholarship leaves no question unbegged.

Clutch

"If he cured people at all, which I doubt, it was probably through evil magic or evil powers."

There. And even that isn't an attitude that would have to be extant. I teach students to anticipate obvious objections in their writing all the time, without waiting for someone to actually raise the objection. I doubt that this is a tactic too subtle for the minds of the gospellers.

Never mind the contestability of your final assertion. The contrast is a botch in any event, since that miracles were claimed for Jesus during his lifetime says nothing about whether the claims were made (with any generality) by both his supporters and his opponents. Compare something more expressive, and far more plausible in detail than either of your options:

iii. Some miracles were (wrongly) claimed for Jesus during his lifetime, and were believed by some people, both at that time and subsequently; also, some scepticism existed about his miracles occurring at all, both during his lifetime and afterwards; also, some scepticism existed even among those who believed he had performed miracles as to the provenance of his powers, both during and after his lifetime; and also, even some of those who doubted his claimed miracles suspected that any small truth to the stories would have to have stemmed from malign supernatural influences.

What, exactly, does this show about Steven Carr's objection to the OP quote?

Nothing. None of this directly addresses the main point in any case: the mismatch between the non-factive language "believed by many of his contemporaries to have been a successful healer" and the factive language "he effect[ed] such cures".

The point is really very simple. The fact that someone was believed to have done something is not sufficient to motivate the question "How did s/he do it?" Something further is needed -- namely, reason to believe that s/he was correctly believed to have done it. In the case of miracle claims, this is a rather gargantuan assumption. Steven is right to consider it serious question-begging.

MortalWombat

I wonder if these scholars also have conferences discussing how all these other miracle workers of antiquity performed their miracles as well.

andrewcriddle

Given that we know from 2nd century evidence (Justin probably, Celsus according to Origen certainly) that later Jewish critics of Christianity accepted the reality of the purported miracles but attributed them to sorcery, it would seem simplest to assume that this situation already existed at the time the Gospels were written.
This is a very interesting argument but it may be blurring some of the issues.

First of all I think successsful healer and cures claim only that Jesus made people feel better.They don't beg the question by assuming that this necessarily involved organic improvement.

Secondly one could argue that the people felt better just as a result of being with Jesus rather than as a result of an explicit act of healing. However this seems to be an attempt to answer the question posed rather than a challenge to its presuppositions.

Thirdly the idea that claims were being made that Jesus healed people but nobody was claiming that they themselves or a loved one had become better does seem to be a real challenge to the presuppositions of the question. However it does not appear a likely scenario.

Andrew Criddle