I have heard “alternate” meanings of several of Jesus’ miracles which make the mechanism of the miracle more mundane, but still show Christian teachings in the story. First is the water-to-wine. The text never says that He changes water to wine, it just says that He told the servants to get some water in casks, and when the casks were opened it was very fine wine? What if the servants had stolen the wine, and Jesus figured it out. Jesus then gives the thieves an out, which to me says that giving a person a chance to make up for their sin is more important than shaming them for it.
Second is the loaves and fishes. What if some of the crowd had brought food, but others had not, and those that did were not inclined to share. But they found a young boy who was willing to give up all that he had. This example soften the hearts of those present, who shared what they had brought. Obvious lesson in sharing.
The 'Loaves and fishes miracle was about the meaning of sharing!" thing is one that you often hear from a certain brand of ultra, uh, ‘modernist’ pastors/priests, and it’s one that those of a more, uh, ‘supernaturalist’ blend like to mock as an example of the silliness of that particular brand of theology.
If the miracles of Jesus weren’t actual miracles (that is to say, suspensions of the laws of nature), then they wouldn’t have provoked the reaction than they did. There was no shortage of people before Jesus, and since, who have told us that it’s good to share. It’s hard to believe that something so prosaic and boring would have seemed out-of-the-ordinary enough for the gospel writers even to comment on.
Whatever they were, they were living in a culture where people founded religions. That was not the culture Jesus lived in. Miracles in Judaism are performed by God, not prophets, so there wouldn’t be any reason for Jesus to do or claim he did miracles. Those who wrote about him lived in a more Roman culture, where miracles might be more expected.
I’ve seen photographs of Sri Rajneesh, a wizened little old man in a loincloth, holding up a steel beam with the legend “70 tons” stenciled on it. So, there ya go: photographic proof of a miraculous feat of mystic strength.
Is it your belief that this covers all founders of religion? That all founders of all religions have been either some sort of con men, or some sort of mad men, suffering from “mental issues”? Specifically, is it unimaginable to you that some of those who have been “misinterpreting or misunderstanding natural phenomena” have done so for reasons other than “mental issues”?
I was going to say ignorance, but that could loosely fall under mental issues.
Is that from the DSM?
Did I come anywhere close to claiming it was? As astro said;
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Mental issues also covers a lot of territory from seriously delusional people to sincere people who are simply misinterpreting or misunderstanding natural phenomena. The latter does not require that you be innately mentally impaired.
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You claimed that ignorance “could loosely fall under mental issues.” I’m asking if this is supported in the DSM, which gets to define what is meant by “mental issues.”
Or is it that you (and perhaps astro too?) are using your own, home-brewed definition(s) of “mental issues,” entirely disconnected from the psychiatric mainstream?
I don’t know if this is on-topic or not, but St Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus shares many features of a kind of epileptic fit.
Regardless of whether you believe such a hypothesis, the fact is you don’t need people to fabricate stories from whole cloth; there are lots of ways people can be mistaken, or deceived, or a true story could just get progressively exaggerated in each retelling.
(e.g. he actually only fed 20 people with 5 loaves and 2 fishes – by using the fish heads and bones as the base for a delightful soup :D)
I’m not talking about psychiatry at all, never claimed I was. If your use of the term mental issues was intended to mean only a formal diagnosis of mental illness or mental disorders, you should have said so.
Ah! So you are using your own, home-brewed definition, entirely disconnected from the psychiatric mainstream. That’s good to know.
Since I wasn’t talking about psychiatry or clinical disorders, it doesn’t really matter.
A lot of people seem to like coming up with “just-so” stories that give naturalistic explanations to biblical miracles (“the Red Sea was parted by an earthquake, St Paul had epilepsy, Jesus was just a really good swimmer”, etc). Its sort of a fun game, but the evidence for them is almost always nil. And since we have plenty of cases where modern people have subscribed to supernatural simply because they were lying or mistaken, I don’t really see that grasping for such explanations serves much purpose, besides as a sort of parlour game.
Words have meanings.
“Mental issues” is usually used to refer to “mental disorders,” which is - surprise surprise! - a psychiatric term.
You may, of course, feel free to come up with your very own personal definition, so as to make the term include stuff like “not liking green tea,” “having freckles,” “whistling on a Tuesday,” “being ignorant about the physics behind certain natural phenomena,” “actually just being religious in general,” “disagreeing with me on any subject whatsoever,” “preferring Flame Princess to Bubblegum Princess,” and/or “woodworking.”
But if so, you may expect confusion when attempting to communicate with people more used to the commonly agreed-upon definition.
Considering that my very next post clarified what I was talking about, your confusion should have ended right there. I was not clear that you were solely asking about mental health issues (mental disorders, illnesses etc) in the post I first responded to.
In a quick search of Psych.org, the phrase ‘mental issues’ appears only once (in a powerpoint presentation for a conference) but ‘mental health issues’ does appear commonly. Adding that word to your post would have made it clearer. But I think we can move on from this side point since we weren’t talking about the same thing.
In my case at least I made it clear that this is one of things which could explain that specific vision. I didn’t mean to imply any degree of certainty, or that such events must always be the original cause of such stories.
Of course many of the stories are just made up.
Yeah, I’ve heard liberal clergymen try to seel this interpretatgion: The “twue” miracle of the loaves andf fishes was that the altruistic Jesus inspired greedy people to share their food.
This interporetation shows a complete lack of understanding of the Middle East, where hospitality and sharing food even with strangers was (and still is) EXPECTED.
Almost everyone o nthe hillside woulkd have regardsed it as a near-sacred duty to share food with others around him. And anyone on the hillside who had food and DIDN’T share it would have been regarded as an ulta-jerk.
The first time I heard that interpretation of the story, a Lebanese Christian I knew said, “The people I grew up with (and he meant Muslims and Jews as well as Christians) would have starved themselves before they let a traveller go hungry.” To accept that Jesus’ listeners would have selfishly harded their food until Jesus melted their hearts doesn’t hold up.
I don’t understand this comment at all. The Old Testament is full of prophets who performed miracles, from Moses to Elijah and Elisha.
Also, we don’t know for a fact that Jesus claimed to do miracles - we only know that the Gospel authors claimed that he did so. It is a common literary device that you see in Greek and Roman histories of the time and earlier and continued long after – read any hagiography of early Christian saints and you will see plenty of miracles ascribed to them; many more fanciful than the ones ascribed to Jesus.
Finally, at the risk of being declared to have mental issues, the OP is missing another possible explanation for the accounts of Jesus’ miracles. Just saying.
My own impression is that religions grow miracles the way a pier in the ocean grown barnacles: that is, over time they get added to the story, seemingly by a natural process of accretion.
This can be readily seen in “religions” that start out as philosophic systems devoid of expressly religious content-even, in some cases, totally uncaring about expressly religious content.
Two examples that readily spring to mind are the original message of the Buddha and the original philosophy of Taoism (as expressed in the Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu). The original message lacks much in the way of the miraculous or supernatural: but soon enough, both “grow” miracles and dieties, as can be seen in many of the varieties of Buddhism and Taoism that exist today.
Hell, there are even temples to Confucious, who is in some cases refered to as a type of god in Chinese folk religion.
My conclusion is that any philosophy can (and often will) come, over time, to resemble a religion, complete with rituals, prayers, and miracles - even if it did not start out that way.