Were the Miracles of Jesus invented by the Disciples/Evangelists?

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Posted: June 7, 2002 | Back to the Miracles Index | Summary

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11. Are there any indications from the miracle stories themselves that suggest their historicity?

At this point in the series, we have seen that these miracle stories were apparently meant to be taken historically.

We have determined this by examining the various genres and various authorial intentions that could be considered to "allow" fictional events. We then examined a couple of unconscious and social influences which are suggested as possible 'creators' of the miracle stories. And finally we saw that any hypothetical 'embellishment motive' could not be discerned in the period immediately after the New Testament, nor could we find evidence of it being operative--at the level required to CREATE an entire miracle--within the various postulated sources/layers/strata of the gospels.

In the next question in the series, we will look at whether there are any extra-biblical witnesses to Jesus' miracle working activities, and especially whether we can find any mentions of specific events from the gospels.

Our purpose in THIS question, however, is to look at the internal data about the miracles--are there any indications from the stories themselves (and/or their placement or usage within the larger gospel wholes) which might be considered evidences of authenticity.

We are immediately faced with the obvious problem of method, in assessing a narrative unit on its own terms.

The major method we will use here is that of the Criteria of Authenticity.

New Testament scholars have come up with what they call historical Criteria of Authenticity. These are historical 'canons' against which the various words and deeds of Jesus are tested. These criteria were originally developed to weed out the narrative elements supposedly invented/added by the post-Easter Church, and to thereby distill out the historical 'core' that could be attributed to the pre-Easter ministry of Jesus. The basic aim of the criteria is to identify those elements which most plausibly originated in a Palestinian-Jewish, pre-Easter community. Although some of these can become notoriously subjective in application, they will at least allow us to illustrate why/how strongly the historical "claims" of the miracle traditions are sometimes asserted.

The minor method we will use is that of intra-narrative details.

The miracle narratives sometimes contain details that are either vivid, incidental, or unexpected. Some scholars have seen these to be reflective of historicity (e.g. Vincent Taylor), whereas others have cautioned against the use of these (e.g. J.P. Meier). We will discuss these from a method standpoint first, and then assess what evidential weight might be assigned to these types of details.

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Major Method: The Criteria of Authenticity.

There are 5 such criteria which are broadly accepted. There are many summaries and statements of these--I will be using Evan's discussion in NT:JHC. (The abbreviations of these are mine--for use in the table below).

1. Multiple Attestation (MA):

"Multiple attestation refers to material that appears in two or more independent sources. This material may be regarded as primitive, though not necessarily authentic. Multiple attestation confirms that material was not generated by one evangelist or another (or their respective communities), but must have been in circulation some years before the Gospels and their sources were composed. Thus, multiple attestation does not guarantee authenticity; it only guarantees antiquity." [NT:JHC:15]

2. Historical Coherence (HC):

"Material that coheres with what we know of Jesus' historical circumstances and the principal features of his life should be given priority. This is a point that Sanders has made, and I think it has merit. We may expect authentic material to help explain 'why [Jesus] attracted attention, why he was executed, and why he was subsequently deified.'" Material that does not clarify these questions is not automatically excluded, of course, but priority must be given to material that does clarify them." [NT:JHC:13f]

"Finally, the criterion of coherence (or consistency) should also be considered as a valid canon of authenticity. It justifies the broadening of the core of material established as authentic through appeal to the criteria described above. Accordingly, material that coheres or is consistent with material judged authentic may also be regarded as authentic. However, Meier rightly warns that this criterion should not be applied too rigorously, especially negatively, to exclude material as inauthentic…The potential danger in this criterion lies in too quickly assuming what the essence of Jesus' message was and in insisting that material cohere quite closely to this essence." [NT:JHC:23]

3. Embarrassment (EM):

"By 'embarrassing,' I mean material that is perceived by the evangelists as awkward, as in need of qualification, and perhaps even deletion. It may also be material that is contrary to the editorial tendency of the evangelist himself. Nevertheless, despite the awkwardness and the potential embarrassment, the material is preserved. It is reasoned, and I think cogently, that this material is preserved because it is ancient and widespread. As Meier has put it: 'It is highly unlikely that the Church went out of its way to create the cause of its own embarrassment.'" [NT:JHC:18]

4. Dissimilarity (DS):

"Defined and put into practice as it was during the heyday of redaction criticism, the criterion of dissimilarity (or discontinuity, as it was sometimes called) is problematic. Norman Perrin gave this criterion its classic definition: "the earliest form of a saying we can reach may be regarded as authentic if it can be shown to be dissimilar to characteristic emphases both of ancient Judaism and of the early Church." In recent years it has been soundly criticized…Although the criterion of dissimilarity has been criticized, it has in a certain sense also been rehabilitated. Dissimilarity to early Judaism has been dropped, as it should be, while dissimilarity to emphases in the early Church is applied with greater nuance. Material cannot be disqualified simply because it is in continuity with the teaching of the early Church, it should be disqualified if it appears to reflect ideas that are inconsistent with the Sitz im Leben Jesu." [NT:JHC:19,21]

5. Semitisms and Palestinian Background (SP):

"Meier subdivides this criterion into two related criteria: "Traces of Aramaic" and "Palestinian Environment." He admits that they have some value in making negative assessments (i.e. linguistic and environmental elements foreign to first-century Palestine probably do not derive from Jesus, but from later, non-Palestinian segments of the early Church). But he doubts that these criteria have much value for making positive judgments. All that Semitisms and Palestinian features prove is that a given saying originated in an Aramaic-speaking Palestinian community, not that it necessarily originated with Jesus. To an extent, Meier is right. There is no question that Joachim Jeremias and others sometimes claimed too much on the basis of Aramaic and Palestinian elements. Nevertheless, I think these criteria do make an important contribution, perhaps mostly in a general way.

"The Gospels are written in Greek and yet they purport to record the sayings of Jesus who in all probability spoke primarily in Aramaic. If these Greek sayings in reality represent the utterances of the Aramaic speaking Jesus, we should expect to find traces of the Aramaic language. And indeed we do. We find Aramaic words and idioms that are foreign to Greek but at home in Aramaic. Aramaic language and Palestinian elements do not of course prove the authenticity of any given saying, though they add a measure of support and, in general, they instill in the historian the confidence that the tradition is ancient and bears the characteristics one should expect of authentic dominical tradition. I believe that it is therefore appropriate to regard the criteria of Semitisms and Palestinian background as playing an important supporting role with respect to the other criteria." [NT:JHC:22f]

Okay--our next step is to apply each of these criteria to our list of miracles.

1. Multiple Attestation

The first one--Multiple Attestation--deals with how 'widely spread' the miracle story is, with 'wider' being 'more likely to be original to the ministry of Jesus': How pervasive is the tradition that Jesus worked miracles, in how many different 'forms' are they narrated or referred to, and how many different ways are the miracles referred to?

I will use for sake of this analysis the various independent sources as discussed by scholars:

1. Mark

2. Q - (Generally material common to Matthew and Luke, but not occurring in Mark)

3. John's gospel, including the putative 'signs source' and Appendix

4. L - (material only found in Luke)

5. M - (material only found in Matthew)

When we apply this to our matrix of miracles, here's what we get:

Miracle	Type	Mark	Matt	Luke	John
In all four gospels (Mark)
1. Feeding of 5,000	nature	6.35f	14.15f	9.12f	6.5f
In three gospels (Mark)
2. Walking on water	nature	6.48f	14.25f		6.19f
3. Peter's mother-in-law	healing	1.30f	8.14f	4.38f
4. Man with leprosy	healing	1.40f	8.24f	5.12f
5. Paralyzed man	healing	2.3f	9.2f	5.18f
6. Man with shriveled hand	healing	3.1f	12.10f	6.6f
7. Calming the storm	nature	4.37f	8.23f	8.22f
8. Gadarene Demoniac(s)	exorcism	5.1f	8.28f	8.27f
9. Raising Jairus' daughter	revivification	5.22f	9.18f	8.41f
10. Hemorrhaging woman	healing	5.25f	9.20f	8.43f
11. Demon-possessed boy	exorcism	9.17f	17.14f	9.38f
12. Two blind men	healing	10.46f	20.29f	18.35f
In two gospels (Mark, Matt)
13. Canaanite woman's daughter	exorcism@distance	7.24f	15.21f
14. Feeding of 4,000	nature	8.1f	15.32f
15. Fig tree withered	nature	11.12f	21.18f
In two gospels (Mark, Luke)
16. Possessed man in synagogue	exorcism	1.23f		4.33f
In two gospels (Matt, Luke="Q")
17. Roman Centurion's servant	healing@distance		8.5f	7.1f
18. Blind, Mute, and Possessed man	exorcism		12.22	11.14
Only in one gospel (Mark)
19. Deaf mute	healing	7.31f
20. Blind man at Bethsaida	healing	8.22f
Only in one gospel (Matt)
21. Two blind men	healing		9.27f
22. Mute and possessed man	exorcism		9.32f
23. Coin in fish's mouth	precognition/nature?		17.24f
Only in one gospel (Luke)
24. First catch of fish	precognition/nature?			5.1f
25. Raising Widow's son at Nain	revivification			7.11f
26. Exorcism of Mary Magdalene	exorcism			8.2
27. Crippled woman	healing			13.11f
28. Man with dropsy	healing			14.1f
29. Ten men with leprosy	healing@distance			17.11f
30. High Priest's servant	healing			22.50f
Only in one gospel (John)
31. Wine miracle at Cana	nature