Why did Jesus refuse to perform miracles on demand?*

[LouisB]

@Czarcasm

We don’t even have biased first hand accounts of Jesus performing miracles.

I tried to exclude miracles in my question but I’ll try again: Are there any known non-biased primary witnesses to any aspect of the life of Jesus Christ?

[Czarcasm]

@LouisB

I tried to exclude miracles in my question but I’ll try again: Are there any known non-biased primary witnesses to any aspect of the life of Jesus Christ?

There are no primary witnesses of any kind for any aspect of the life of Jesus Christ.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@buddha_david

Weren’t the Gospels themselves based on a text written by one of Jesus’ disciples?

Even if things were that simple, Diogenes’ statement would be correct. My little sister is extremely reliable, but if I relate a story she has told me, about incidents she witness and I did not, my account is not eyewitness testimony.

[BrainGlutton]

@buddha_david

Weren’t the Gospels themselves based on a text written by one of Jesus’ disciples?

Probably not, on oral traditions, more likely. But nobody really knows.

[brocks]

@LouisB

I tried to exclude miracles in my question but I’ll try again: Are there any known non-biased primary witnesses to any aspect of the life of Jesus Christ?

No, but the apologists here are correct in saying that nothing can be inferred from that. Jesus spent all but a few days of his life in the Roman equivalent of Podunk, so it’s not surprising we have no first-hand accounts of him.

However, it’s VERY unlikely that things like the Star of Bethlehem, the Slaughter of the Innocents, and the dead Jewish saints walking around Jerusalem would leave no traces in secular history.

And it’s simply impossible to believe that there would be no secular record of a worldwide census that required everyone to journey to wherever their ancestors had lived in 1000 BC.

[Meatros]

@ITR_champion

First of all I’ll make a minor but not entirely trivial quibble. The birth of Jesus, the crucifixion, and the resurrection are events in the story of Jesus, not themes. Concepts such as forgiveness, salvation, divine love, and sanctification are themes.

Yes, you are correct - I didn’t really mean theme. I was thinking along the lines of Dundes and Campbell. Markers of an archetype? Sort of like the hero’s journey, that sort of thing.

@ITR_champion

Now whatever else we may be wrong about, we Christians are necessarily right about what’s the relative importance of the various aspects of our own religion. What’s most important is that Jesus offered forgiveness and love and provided a means of salvation through His death and resurrection. The events in the life of Jesus are important to the extent that they communicate information about these topics to us. (In fact the Greek word logos used to describe Jesus in John’s gospel, though normally translated “the Word”, can also mean “the message”; thus Jesus is a message.) This is how Christians have seen it from (at latest) when Paul wrote his letters until now. Hence if there were pagan myths with similar events but completely different meanings attached to them, then from a Christian perspective there’s no similarity in the most important aspects.

Okay, I can go with you here, if I have a correct understanding of what you are saying: The important thing about Jesus is the forgiveness of sins and salvation. The history of Jesus is meant to testify to Jesus’ divine status. So yes, there are important differences.

That said, I cannot follow you with regard to what you take to the Christian perspective. It seems to be what Justin Martyr argued - that the difference (primary) between pagan religions and Christianity is that Christianity is true, while the others are forgeries.

I will grant both you and he that you all have your reasons for believing that Christianity is morally superior to the Pagan religions (whether I agree or not is different).

All of that said, where I cannot follow is to deny the importance of the similarities. It seems to me that while the ‘message’ or ‘theme’ (or whatever you’d like to call it) of Christianity was different from the Pagan beliefs at the time, the actual stories were similar. It also seems to me that other religions preached similar things - such as brotherly love (I believe there was a Rabbi prior to Jesus who distilled the Old Testament down to two commandments). I also feel that it’s important that we can’t really tell what the original Christianity was - was it what the Gnostics said it was? Was it what survived? I suspect you would say it was what survived. I’m not sure that we can be that solid on this subject. I’d be interested if you had any knock down arguments in favor of your position though.

@ITR_champion

However, that still leads the question of whether there are meaningful similarities between the events of Jesus and pagan myths. Now I’d say that if you define categories of events broadly enough, there’d be similarities between any person’s life and pagan myth. Consider all the similarities between the life of Barack Obama and pagan myths:

Broadly enough, sure. However, I don’t believe that’s what I’m doing here.

@ITR_champion

* Obama lived in Hawaii and Indonesia, then Chicago, then went to Washington D.C. where he lead America in several wars and finally killed his arch-enemy Osama bin Laden. Likewise in Virgil's Aeneid the main character spends time on several islands, goes to a city whose name starts with 'C', then goes to a capital city, fights several battles, and kills his arch-enemy Turnus.
* Obama had a long race against a woman named Hillary Clinton. Likewise Hippomenes had a long race against a woman named Atalanta. In both cases everyone expected the woman to win at the start, but the man actually won.
* Obama had two daughters. So did Tyndareus.
* Obama was educated by Harvard, the most famous university of its time. Likewise Alexander was educated by Aristotle, the most famous teacher in Greek history.
* etc...

That is all very interesting - but I’d say the difference between this and what I’m thinking is the mythical elements. None of these elements are miraculous. No one would contest that any of this stuff could happen. Whereas miracle claims are not common.

@ITR_champion

So the question becomes whether alleged similarities between the life of Jesus are strong enough to be more meaningful than these. I do not think that they are. Concerning the case of the resurrection, those promoting a Pagan copycat hypothesis have three main candidates: Osiris, Attis, and Adonis. Adonis is both too late and wasn’t really resurrected. For Attis, material about the resurrection postdates Jesus (though the character predates Jesus) and it barely qualifies as a resurrection. That leaves only Osiris. As already mentioned, in Egyptian mythology Osiris was dismembered by Seth, after which his wife reassembled the pieces (except one piece of the male anatomy) and Osiris ruled in the land of the dead. Further, the Osiris cult was a minor one with no influence, and didn’t exist in Palestine. (Or Greece, for anyone who wants to try the claim that the life story of Jesus was made up among the Hellenistics.) So if we’re supposing that someone made up the story of Jesus being resurrected with intended reference to Osiris, it raises the same questions as before. First, why reference something that virtually no one knew or cared about? Second, why make the Jesus story so different from the Osiris story? Third, if it was intended to remind people of Osiris, then why did it fail so badly, since no one noticed this until modern times? So there’s three reasons to doubt that it was an intended reference to Osiris, any one of which would be enough.

I think the difference between Obama and Jesus similarities revolving around miracle stories is important.

I do not think that Pagan sources were copy-catted. I think there was influence. I think there is a difference between these two stances. So, for instance, the notion that God became man (or a demi-god or whatever) is a pagan idea, not a Jewish one. This was one of the arguments that the Jews had against the ancient Christians. There were several other ones. The point is that it seems that Pagan religions influenced Christianity - not that Christianity took pagan religion and made it their own. Clearly most of the New Testament is derived from interpretations of the Old Testament. The notion that we are sinners and we can do something to purify ourselves comes from the old testament. They had sacrificial animals and such to cleanse themselves. So the notion that Jesus was the salvation or necessary sacrifice was not an entirely new concept even within Judaism.

The question is, why did the Jewish religion morph the way it did? I think it did because of Pagan influence, which is what the ancient Jews believed as well.

Typhro (supposedly) says:

And Trypho answered, “The Scripture has not, ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son,’ but, ‘Behold, the young woman shall conceive, and bear a son,’ and so on, as you quoted. But the whole prophecy refers to Hezekiah, and it is proved that it was fulfilled in him, according to the terms of this prophecy. Moreover, in the fables of those who are called Greeks, it is written that Perseus was begotten of Danae, who was a virgin; he who was called among them Zeus having descended on her in the form of a golden shower. And you ought to feel ashamed when you make assertions similar to theirs, and rather[should] say that this Jesus was born man of men. And if you prove from the Scriptures that He is the Christ, and that on account of having led a life conformed to the law, and perfect, He deserved the honour of being elected to be Christ,[it is well]; but do not venture to tell monstrous phenomena, lest you be convicted of talking foolishly like the Greeks.”

Justin disputes this point, by pointing to scripture - he doesn’t dispute it by denying the similarity.

I think Tryphro is right, that the ‘virgin’ bit is a mistranslation and the influence of the culture the first century Jews found themselves in crept into their beliefs about Jesus.

@ITR_champion

Likewise for the similarity of healings by Jesus and Vespasian, what can I say? Perhaps the former is a copy of the later, perhaps the later a copy of the former, but I find it most likely that it’s a coincidence. While the similarities may seem strong, there are dozens of stories in the gospels and thousands of pagan myths. With such a large number of possible pairings there’s got to be a few with similarities.

A coincidence that Jesus performs magic that was the same as what the ancient egyptians practiced?

From a philosophical point of view, it makes no sense for Jesus to have had to ‘spit’ at all.

@ITR_champion

Another way to look at this is to ask whether there’s anything Jesus could have done after death that couldn’t be stretched to look like a copy of something else. If Jesus died a noble death and just stayed dead, you could say it was a reference to the death of Socrates. If He died and went to Sheol it would function much better as a copy of Osiris. If He died and became a tree you could point to Adonis. If He walked back from the the land of the dead to the land of the living you’ve got Orpheus. And so forth.

Yes, that’s possible - but if we start making such concessions, then why are we certain that other religious ‘miracles’ and god men did not exist?

@ITR_champion

As a final note, though, the backup reason I have for rejecting any Pagan copycat hypothesis is simply that scholars have turned against it. In the 19th and early 20th centuries some real scholars took it seriously. Today the scholarly community has turned overwhelmingly against it and some quick reading will show why. James Hannam’s website has a good summary article. The book by Boyd and Eddy that I linked to above has more in-depth discussion as does Craig Blomberg’s The Historical Reliability of the Gospels, and N. T. Wright has written a lot on the topic.

Fair enough with regard to the copy cat hypothesis. I’m not really supporting that though.

[Meatros]

I’d also like to point out some more of Justin Martyr’s discussion with Tyrphro:

CHAPTER LXIX – THE DEVIL, SINCE HE EMULATES THE TRUTH, HAS INVENTED FABLES ABOUT BACCHUS, HERCULES, AND SCULAPIUS.

“Be well assured, then, Trypho,” I continued, "that I am established in the knowledge of and faith in the Scriptures by those counterfeits which he who is called the devil is said to have performed among the Greeks; just as some were wrought by the Magi in Egypt, and others by the false prophets in Elijah’s days. For when they tell that Bacchus, son of Jupiter, was begotten by[Jupiter’s] intercourse with Semele, and that he was the discoverer of the vine; and when they relate, that being torn in pieces, and having died, he rose again, and ascended to heaven; and when they introduce wine into his mysteries, do I not perceive that[the devil] has imitated the prophecy announced by the patriarch Jacob, and recorded by Moses? And when they tell that Hercules was strong, and travelled over all the world, and was begotten by Jove of Alcmene, and ascended to heaven when he died, do I not perceive that the Scripture which speaks of Christ, ‘strong as a giant to run his race,’ has been in like manner imitated? And when he[the devil] brings forward sculapius as the raiser of the dead and healer of all diseases, may I not say that in this matter likewise he has imitated the prophecies about Christ?

Again, his contention is that devils imitated Christianity (or rather, Hebrew texts and such).

More such stuff:

"And when those who record the mysteries of Mithras say that he was begotten of a rock, and call the place where those who believe in him are initiated a cave, do I not perceive here that the utterance of Daniel, that a stone without hands was cut out of a great mountain, has been imitated by them, and that they have attempted likewise to imitate the whole of Isaiah’s words?

The ancient Christians did see the similarities - they didn’t deny them. They believed that they were the work of devils. Justin’s point was that you could look through the Old Testament and find “Jesus”, which is what the Devils did and they imitated Jesus in the form of the Pagan religions.

Another example:

And this prophecy proves that we shall behold this very King with glory; and the very terms of the prophecy declare loudly, that the people foreknown to believe in Him were fore-known to pursue diligently the fear of the Lord. Moreover, these Scriptures are equally explicit in saying, that those who are reputed to know the writings of the Scriptures, and who hear the prophecies, have no understanding. And when I hear, Trypho," said I, "that Perseus was begotten of a virgin, I understand that the deceiving serpent counterfeited also this.

Justin goes on (and on and on) about how prophecy, texts, and all that should be interpreted and how the Jews got it wrong (basically). It kind of reads how a modern person who believes in Nostradamus would interpret the quatrains.

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

What evidence have you that Paul of Tarsus was psychotic?

He saw shit that wasn’t there.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Diogenes_the_Cynic

He saw shit that wasn’t there.

The Damascus Road incident, yes? I’m not aware that feces were mentioned as being in Saul-soon-to-be-Paul’s vision.

Besides, I’m not sure I’d call one incident proof of psychosis. Any others come to mind?

[Diogenes_the_Cynic]

@Skald_the_Rhymer

The Damascus Road incident, yes?

Paul actually didn’t say anything about that (those stories are from Acts), Paul just says a dead guy appeared to him and talked to him. That is a psychotic episode by definition.

Besides, I’m not sure I’d call one incident proof of psychosis. Any others come to mind?

Any psychotic episode is a psychotic episode. One psychotic episode is ipso facto psychotic. How is psychosis not proof of psychosis?