aikido7

I don't believe the gospel writers or most of their intended readers actually thought that people could walk on water, magically multiply food or come back from the dead. I believe that basic physics had the same effect in the first century as it does in the 21st.

I guess my question is one of guessing at the intent of the evangelists in their using metaphoric and religious language and the self-conscious patterning of some of the main themes and subjects of the Hebrew Bible to bring to bear on their telling of the story of Jesus.

In a nutshell--a hopefully educated and critical one--what WERE they thinking? What was their mindset? Were they writing pretty lies for the masses or were they being didactic--or was it some kind of combination of the two?

(I also want to add a scholar's observation that today at Lourdes in France and even at pagan healing shirnes in Turkey, there are piles of cast-off crutches, canes, walkers and wheelchairs at the end of the shrine--but there is a noticable lack of empty coffins and piles of artificial limbs)

Amaleq13

I wouldn't be so quick to grant the benefit of the doubt, aikido7-san. Have you read Carrier's relevant essay?:

http://www.infidels.org/library/mode...ier/kooks.html

Even quite some time after the Gospel authors, you've got Tertullian comparing the dying/rising phoenix (as a real animal!) with the idea of Jesus resurrecting.

Heck, most polls today indicate a substantial number of folks believe ridiculously unsubstantiated things. Benny Hinn is rich, healing magnets make tons of money, and crop circle "experts" still find supporters. It doesn't matter to most that Benny has been shown to be a fraud, healing magnets have no basis in reality and crop circles are made by creative drunks.

That has always been one of my favorite quotes but I can never remember if it was Anitole France or Voltaire who said it.

My special gift to you is my new favorite quote:

“I feel just that terrible pain of loss, of God not wanting me, of God not being God, of God not really existing.” --Mother Teresa

Doctor X

The quote comes from Sir George Bernard Shaw--it is in Randi's The Faith Healers which I thoroughly recommend. I have to paraphrase it:

"When looking at Lourdes I am amazed at all of the crutches but not one artificial limb, not one glass eye, and not one toupee."

I can look for the actual quote and post it tomorrow.

--J.D.

Amaleq13

Well no wonder I can't remember which of those other two fellows said it!

Doctor X

Heee! As a brief tangent, I recall a pompous prat who proclaimed:

"It is as Churchill said, 'Those who do not know their history repeat it.'"

This allowed me to note, "That was Santayana, and you misquoted him."

Anyways . . . to go back to the question, I do think the miracles--many of them if not all of them--have enough literary purpose to suggest . . . nay . . . conclude that their are fictions--and the authors knew it. Does that mean the authors denied that Junior performed miracles? No.

--J.D.

offa

aikido7,
I don't believe the gospel writers or most of their intended readers actually thought that people could walk on water.

(Offa) The only body of water for miles around Jerusalem that one could float a boat full of fishes (humans, evangelism) is the Dead Sea. Jesus walked on a jetty (submerged sidewalk) and when the boat approached the jetty it appeared that he was walking on water. Jesus was in another location called Jerusalem (there were more than two of these pseudo locations, sometimes Jerusalem and Egypt were the same place, just like heaven which was originally a room in a tent and now it is a mystic place in the sky).

aikido7,
magically multiply food

(Offa) The 5,000 that were fed was One Person called the 5,000.

aikido7,
or come back from the dead.

(Offa) If you do not believe in GOD, you are DEAD! There is always hope for you. Just believe in GOD.

aikido7

Amaleg--Would you agree that Carrier's essay also shows that the first-century world isn't that far away from today's world?

Doc X--It would be great to read that original quote and source. If you can come up with it, it would be a splendid addition to my arsenal. There is a spiritual battle going on, y'know...

Offa--Your hermeneutics are Procrustian. The Bible uses allegory but is not bound by it.

I am still a bit disappointed in the responses. I think the New Testament is a unique style of writing--perhaps an example of a midpoint between fantasy and pre-Enlightenment facticity. I have read before of Jesus' "nature miracles" (calming the sea, walking on water, raising the dead) are clearly messages by the evangelists to the disciples in their own communities years after Calvary. For example, the disiples don't realize their boat will go off course and sink without Jesus there, or that the feeding of the 5,000 or 1,000 is Jesus' message to his doubting followers (check out the context!) that eating and drinking with the public is first and foremost a necessary act for early Christians.

The answer has something to do, I would suspect, with the difference between writing about belief and writing about history and if in fact the blend of the two got muddled up because they were muddled up in the first place or that there was something else going on which points to a world view and / or sophistication that we are unable and unprepared to totally understand.

It may be like a staute of Lincoln outside a high school which shows the Great Emancipator raising his axe to cut the chains off of a prostrate slave. It is certainly a "true" depiction but it is not factual. Anyone not bound by concrete thinking would see the statue and the truth expressed in it without a second thought.

But I am probably blowing out my ass here. Help me if you can I'm feelin' down...

Vinnie

If all people could walk on water and multiply food when Jesus allegedly did these things what would have been special about them? This is why Jesus' activities were "maraculous". Most people didn't have this power but some did in their eyes--especially God's agent Jesus.

Our ancestors believed in miracles and many people still do today. Your statement simply defies all evidence. Do you have anything to back it up?

Now that does not mean these stories are historical or that they were not created to serve a theological purpose. What are we discussing? Lots of theories have been proposed. --> It was late and Jesus was preach and was out walking on rocks in the water. This gave the "impression" that he was walking on water.

Whether or not each has merit is a long discussion. Meier really hits the miracle accounts well in v II of Marginal. He devotes a large number of pages to them.

Vinnie

contracycle

That must have been Legion.

CX

On what basis? All the study I've of ANE peoples, the Hebrews and Early Xians and Pagans seems to imply that they were both scientifically illiterate AND exceedingly credulous. The world was filled with gods and magic in that era so the exploits of the gospel Jesus would not have been greeted especially skeptically. It was claimed by several opponents of Xianity that Jesus learned magic tricks in the East that allowed him to perform the miracles he is alleged to have performed. There is no early mention I'm aware of that he could not have actually performed miracles because they would violate the laws of physics. If we look at Celsus' criticisms of the Jesus myth they are not primarily concerned, if at all, with the implausibility of the acts attributed to Jesus, but rather that other individuals had performed similar acts (although his main issue, apparently, was that Jesus' philsophy was an artless and simplistic copy of the Classical Greeks).