Is this convincing evidence that Jesus' miracles are genuine?

Great Debates
1

Hi,

 I think that I have found some convincing evidence that Jesus' miracles are genuine. I would like to hear your opinions. 

 First read Mark 8:22-26 (RSV):

“22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man, and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ 24 And he looked up and said, ‘I see men; but they look like trees, walking.’ 25 Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even enter the village.’”

 When I read these verses a long time ago, I became confused. Why did Jesus need to lay his hands upon the blind man twice? Did He not heal the blind man correctly the first time He tried? Did Jesus not heal the blind man "all the way"? Was it an imperfect healing? Or was/is Jesus trying to communicate some kind of symbolism in not healing the blind man wholly at first? I decided to ask a scripture expert.

 The response that I received from the expert said that what Jesus was doing seemed to be a symbolic act representing a process of coming to faith which is not instantaneous but proceeds from a blurred vision of reality to clear sight. And also perhaps it was symbolic of baptism, referring to the sacramental action of Jesus spitting on the blind man's eyes and laying His hands on him, which resulted in sight. Obviously, the blind man receiving sight is symbolic of a person receiving faith. And there were other such tidbits that the expert noted, but the above is enough.

 His answer was good enough for me. But then another person wrote to the forum and offered a different solution. This person said that she had found the answer to the double healing confusion in a Discover Magazine article titled "Sight Unseen".

You may read that article Hi,

 I think that I have found some convincing evidence that Jesus' miracles are genuine. I would like to hear your opinions. 

 First read Mark 8:22-26 (RSV):

“22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man, and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the village; and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands upon him, he asked him, ‘Do you see anything?’ 24 And he looked up and said, ‘I see men; but they look like trees, walking.’ 25 Then again he laid his hands upon his eyes; and he looked intently and saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even enter the village.’”

 When I read these verses a long time ago, I became confused. Why did Jesus need to lay his hands upon the blind man twice? Did He not heal the blind man correctly the first time He tried? Did Jesus not heal the blind man "all the way"? Was it an imperfect healing? Or was/is Jesus trying to communicate some kind of symbolism in not healing the blind man wholly at first? I decided to ask a scripture expert.

 The response that I received from the expert said that what Jesus was doing seemed to be a symbolic act representing a process of coming to faith which is not instantaneous but proceeds from a blurred vision of reality to clear sight. And also perhaps it was symbolic of baptism, referring to the sacramental action of Jesus spitting on the blind man's eyes and laying His hands on him, which resulted in sight. Obviously, the blind man receiving sight is symbolic of a person receiving faith. And there were other such tidbits that the expert noted, but the above is enough.

 His answer was good enough for me. But then another person wrote to the forum and offered a different solution. This person said that she had found the answer to the double healing confusion in a Discover Magazine article titled "Sight Unseen".

(You may read that article here.) The article concerns a man who has had his eye healed (I believe that his other eye was too physically damaged) by a new treatment with corneal stem cells. He can see perfectly now, right? Nope. If a person has been blind from birth or early childhood, and this man was blinded at age 3, his brain has never had the chance to develop the proper neural pathways for sight. So this man who underwent this corneal stem cell treatment can’t make sense of what he sees. His sight is very blurry.

 Now go back and read the Bible verses. At first the blind man can see people, but they look like "trees, walking," or, as another translation would put it, "walking trees." This is what the article confirms with pictures that show how a person who has been blind from birth or early childhood but has had his vision restored by this corneal stem cell treatment would see objects. People would look like blurry trees. 

 The person who wrote to the expert forum after me solves the double healing confusion by saying that she thinks Jesus performed a double miracle. He first healed the blind man's eyes. Then He healed the now not-so-blind man's brain, which was previously incapable of processing incoming visual information Th is solves the question why the blind man was having trouble seeing clearly, perceiving human beings as "trees, walking." It wasn't an imperfect healing. It was a double healing.

My question is this: Do you think that this is convincing evidence that Jesus’ miracles are genuine? If not, why?

Thanks,

richardc

2

The Discover Magazine article can be found here:

“Sight Unseen”

http://www.discover.com/june_02/featsight.html

3

This is a story in a book, not evidence.

4

It certainly is interesting, but it certainly is not evidence. Evidence manifests itself in concrete observations that can be verified. Pretty tough to verify the New Testament, which doesn’t currently have any eye-witnesses.

5

How would the blind man, if he had been blind since before his brain learned to process visual information, know what a tree looked like?

The other thing that needs to be considered is source - there are too many contradictions among the four gospels to treat them as perfect records of a man’s life.

6

Let me echo: I see no evidence of any kind here, just supposition.

7

The bible shows the authors’ ignorance because blind people who can suddenly see are more than confused and they couldn’t possibly describe anything as like ‘trees’.

You’d figure God could get the blind thing fixed in one shot though, wouldn’t you?

God touched him and then needed to make a few adjustments!

That’s freaking great!!!

8

Welcome to the SDMB, richardc. The General Questions forum is for questions with factual answers. Religious debates belong in the Great Debates forum, so I’ll move this thread over there.

bibliophage
moderator GQ

9

why couldn’t jesus fix both his eyes and his brain with one touch? If anything, this is “evidence” that jesus/god is not perfect. He screwed up the first time, and had to try again.

10

No.

11

“Better one, or better two?” :smiley:

And if the patient has been blind since birth, how would he know what a tree looks like anyway?

12

Evidence, no.

But what if the first healing is the true healing?
The cured man sees humans for what they are, just walking trees.
I have no idea what the symbolism might be for that one. Maybe people walking about without the real message?
Then Jesus ‘restores’ the man’s view to what normal people see.

13

I find the idea that it’s “necessary” for a belief in God to attempt to “prove” that He somehow short-circuited the laws of nature that He created, to be loathsome.

Miracles happen. And they usually happen in accordance with natural law – but with the purpose of the blessing of the recipient of them. As the beneficiary of a bona fide miracle mediated by the good people here, many of whom are not believers in any way, I have to voice my objection.

That said, I do think that the “neural pathways have to be trained” explanation of the modern events helps to illumine what went on in that story, and serves to suggest that it may have been something more than a figurative parable. I suspect that if we had the facts underlying the Gospel accounts (which are, of course, written in non-objective language in an effort to teach people about Jesus as their Savior), we’d understand much more about the miracles that He is supposed to have performed. (Reiteration of a point made in a previous thread: John reports a lot of so-called “miracles” but never uses the word once – his term for acts Jesus did is “signs” – because they illustrate truths about faith and moral behavior.,)

14

Why do you care if the alleged ‘miracles’ of Jesus are genuine or not?

15

Well, the fact that it occurs in a way which makes much more sense to us 2000 years later is some sort of evidence. But not really “proof”. If I was a Christian Note that simple “faith” as opposed to the actual “hand of God” has done some amazing “miracles” of healing.

16

Oops. To continue after “If I was a Christian…”… such evidence would make me happier, but it would hardly be cause to make a non-believer convert on the spot. But it is interesting.

17

well, the Bible, being a historical document, is evidence. whether or not one finds it convincing is a bit subjective.

just because he had never seen a tree doesn’t mean that he had never felt one, or had them described to him.

18

Ah, you believe the “Fables of the Fox Reynard”, being a historical document, to be evidence?

19

At best, it would be to some people convincing evidence that the miracle was possible in a way that we can partially explain.

Whenever questions of this nature come up, my thought is, is your faith so weak that it needs corroboration from physical evidence?

20

C. S. Lewis was quoted as saying that he was inspired to write his story “The Man Born Blind” after pondering this enigmatic Biblical passage.
His story seems to suggest that Christ laid hands on the man twice to accomplish two different things: first, to restore his sight, and second, to enable him to make sense of what he saw. People who gain sight after a lifetime of blindness go through a period of tremendous disorientation as they make sense out of such phenomena as color, shadow, perspective, the spearateness of various objects, etc. These are things an infant manages to sort out naturally as he or she gradually acquires sight, but they are a considerable challenge to a mature person who is confronted with them all at once for the first time, particularly when they have stored up a lifetime of impressions and assumptions based on their other senses. I recall that there was a motion picture dramatizing one such person’s experiences about ten years ago.

Why Jesus would have done the healing in two steps is anyone’s guess. This aspect of the story, like the story as a whole, needs to be accepted on faith if it is to be accepted at all.