Steven Carr

http://www.christianorigins.com/miracles.html

'Both Mark and Q include the accusation of Jesus' opponents that he was able to perform miracles because he was in league with the devil. (Mark 3:20-30; Matthew 12:22-32) Not only is this doubly attested, but it is an unlikely fabrication. As N.T. Wright states, "the Church did not invent the charge that Jesus was in charge with league with Beelzebub, but charges like that are not advanced unless they are needed as an explanation for some quite remarkable phenomenon." (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 188) It appears, therefore, that Jesus' religious opponents did make this charge, and must have had a reason for doing so.'

Isn't this a bit like the claim that Christians would not invent a charge that Pilate was not historical, so sceptics really must have claimed that Pilate was not an historical figure?

And if somebody argues for diabolical intervention, is that because there is a quite remarkable phenomenon which has to be explained away?

Didn't early Christians say that Satan had counterfeited stories about Jesus, eg in the birth stories of other people in history?

Surely that means that those births really were quite remarkable phenomena? Why else would such a charge of Satanic deception be produced?

If Jesus really did work quite remarkable phenomena, why did not more people believe?

GakuseiDon

I've always wondered about that, too. When Jesus healed people on the Sabbath, the Pharisees didn't say, "wow! that's remarkable!" but "You can't heal people on the Sabbath!"

It seems that the gospels were written in an atmosphere where miracles were, if not commonplace, at least not unexpected.

Steven Carr

Mark has a tricky task showing that Jesus was the greates miracle worker in the history of the world,while at the same time explaining why people were not converted by such feats. His solution - that Jesus enjoined silence on people and kept his Messianic identity a secret - is a bit of a creaky solution, in my opinion.

Vorkosigan

Ted Weeden argued that Mark's real goal is to expose how silly the Jerusalem leadership's claim to secret knowledge was. Thus Jesus shushes everyone, only to have crowds follow him everywhere. In essence, Mark is sarcastically making Carr's point, at least according to Weeden.

As I point out before, this is almost certainly a fabrication of Mark's. My own belief is that Q depends on Mark.

Wright's historical arguments, as usual, are screwed up -- there was no "Church" in the first century to invent or record things, just believers without organization.

It's fiction, Don. Healing on the Sabbath was not forbidden, and in fact Jesus never does any work in the two healings represented by Mark 2:1-12 and Mark 3:1-6 and therefore commits no Sabbath violation (talking is not work). The constructed nature of these events can be seen in their derivation from the OT, their beautiful Markan irony (the Pharisees immediately go out and plot to kill Jesus, still on the Sabbath), the literary structures -- there's a nice chiasm that runs through the conflict stories, although I have forgotten whether it was Edwards or Dewey who first spotted it:

healing
disciple call/eating with sinners
fasting with disciples
hungering in the grain field
healing

Note how two pericopes that feature a miraculous healing and Sabbath violations bracket three pericopes that deal with eating.

Never mind that evidence for Pharisees in Galilee prior to 70 is practically non-existent. Burton Mack (The Lost Gospel) writes:

• "Even conservative Christian scholars have begrudgingly had to admit that there is only the spottiest evidence for the presence of Pharisees in Galilee before the Roman-Jewish War, and nothing to suggest that they had any position of power there. The Pharisees were active in Jerusalem and represented a form of Jewish thought and piety that took on an increased importance in the course of the first century, but scholars have not been able to identify an official function for them whether within Galilee or at Jerusalem. Views of them have ranged from political party, scribal retainers of the temple bureaucracy, teachers in schools such as those of Hillel or Shammai, to members of a religious society or sect. No theory seems to satisfy."(p60)

The passages also contain a few historical absurdities -- like the scribes coming all the way from Jerusalem to see Jesus.

Vorkosigan

Roland

Jesus as a miracle worker is actually one of the LATEST aspects of his story to receive public notice. The epistles are utterly silent on the issue and even most early church fathers have little or nothing to say on the matter.

gregor2

And doesn't Mark 8:12 say that Jesus would not give any signs (i.e. miracles) to this generation? (Accord 1 Corinthians - Jews look for a sign)

So did the legend progress as:

1. Skeptic A: Why should I believe this Jesus existed, he didn't perform miracles that I heard about
2. Follower A: Well, he told everyone that he would not perform miracles simply to spite the Pharisees

Fast forward 40 years -

3. Follower B: Jesus was a great miracle worker (and too many years have passed for people to have first hand knowledge whether it occurred)
4. Skpetic B: Sure, thanks to the devil