MIRACLES

THE attempt has been made in this short commentary on the three synoptic Gospels to show that about the last third or half of each of them is older and contains a more authentic history of Jesus than the first half or the later chapters of the books. The position has been taken that that portion of Matthew beginning at about chapter 13 verse 53, and that portion of Mark beginning at about chapter 6 verse 1, are two copies, or rather copies of copies, of one manuscript, which manuscript was, when it was written, a collection and revision of all the manuscripts extant at the time on the subject, or at least of all those known or accessible to the writer of it. Attention has been directed to the fact that these last chapters of the books contain fewer references to any disciples of Jesus than the first chapters, and also much less of the miraculous and supernatural.

There are in the first three Gospels about twenty-six miracles related of Jesus. This is counting some generally considered as seperate miracles as one. Counting them as two there are about twenty-nine. Of these that section of the Gospels designated as A contains none; B contains one; C contains two; and D, including the three above, contains six, or, counting the Feeding of the Multitude twice, seven. Roughly speaking, sections A and B constitute about the one third part of each of the three Gospels; A, B and C about one half of each of them; and D in Mark is something over two thirds of the book.

Besides this there are scattered about through the Gospels some twentyfive or thirty simple statements to the effect that Jesus healed the sick, etc. Not one of these is to be found in either A, B or C, and but one or two in D. See h-i page xxvii, and i page xxix.

There are twenty accounts of miracles in the book of Matthew, and the book contains twenty-eight chapters. The first fourteen chapters contain fifteen miracles; the first seventeen contain eighteen of them. And the reader must bear in mind that the last chapters are about twice the length of the first chapters; the middle of the book is about at the beginning of the 16th chapter.

Mark contains eighteen accounts of miracles, and has sixteen chapters. The first eight chapters have fifteen miracles; and the first ten contain all of them but one. The middle of the book is in the 9th chapter.

Luke contains twenty accounts of miracles, and has twenty-four chapters. The first nine chapters have fourteen of them; chapter 9 verse 51 to chapter 18 verse 14 has four more of them making eighteen.

Furthermore one of the remaining two in Matthew and one of the remaining two in Luke have no corresponding passages in the other Gospels, and stand as apparent interpolations into older accounts when the books are compared one with the other.

Then too there is much of a supernatural character in the Gospels that is not to be classed as miracles performed by Jesus, such for instance as many of the statements made in the two opening chapters of Matthew and of Luke, the crying of John in the wilderness, the voice from heaven, the Temptation, etc. Most of this is well toward the beginning of the books.

The account of the Resurrection is of course at the end. The account of the Transfiguration is about in the middle of the books.

As pointed out above, there are six accounts of miracles in the oldest portions of the Gospels: the healing of the blind man, page xxxviii; the casting out of a dumb and unclean spirit, page xxxiii; the Feeding of the Multitude, page xxvi, (and xxx); the Walking on the Water, page xxvii; the casting out of a devil from a woman's daughter, page xxix; and the Blasting of the Fig Tree, page xl. Now there are two things about these six miracles, or some of them, and one other soon to be mentioned, worthy of note. First, the only accounts of miracles in common between the book of John and the other three Gospels are just these seven minus the two about the casting out of the devils and the one about the blasting of the fig tree. In other words there are only four in common between them, and those four are four of these seven. This statement needs but one qualification. It is not generally conceded that the account of the healing of the blind man in John's 9th chapter is of the same incident as that in the other Gospels. But there is a phrase or two in both accounts which justifies the suspicion that the two stories may be two different versions of one. Nor is the account of the healing of the nobleman's son in John generally believed to be the same as that of the healing of the centurion's servant in Matthew and Luke, but the two are given together on page xv and the reader may compare them. And, second, there is a peculiarity about the most of these accounts not observable in any other of the accounts of the miracles in the Gospels. That peculiarity consists in the fact that five or six of the seven are so worded that one can believe them to have been founded upon realities in the life of Jesus without necessarily admitting that he ever performed miracles.

According to John it was not believed, even by those who were present and had every means of ascertaining the facts, that Jesus had given sight to a blind man. They questioned the man and his parents and even then did not believe it, "and they cast him out." No one was found to corroborate the man's statement that he was once blind with sufficient emphasis to convince them that it was true. There was an element of doubt about it that was eliminated from the account that went into the other Gospels.

In the account of the casting out of the devil from the woman's daughter, the woman came to jesus and besought him to heal her. She, not belonging to the Jewish race, was told that it was "not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs." He was the "King of the Jews," and that was the accusation brought against him before Pilate. She, possibly credulous and ignorant, heard that Jesus had proclaimed himself as the Messiah, and went to him. The daughter was not there; it is to be presumed that she was at home. He did not go to her house as he did to the house of Jairus. He simply said to her, "For this saying go thy way; the devil is gone out of thy daughter." It is not said that any one went with her to see whether the daughter got well or not; the only evidence that she did is contained in a statement at the end of the account reading (Matt.), “And her daughter was healed from that hour." The only miraculous feature to the story is contained in that one sentence. And if such passages as that about the healing of the servant's ear, the opening of the graves at the time of the crucifixion, the bloody sweat, etc., are interpolations, it is perfectly possible that this may also be.

In the account of the Walking upon the Water, Jesus was seen during a storm on the sea in the night. Apparitions and spirits are frequently seen by sailors in the night. It is at the end of this account where it reads (Mark), "And he went up unto them into the boat." That which follows, "and they were sore amazed in themselves," etc., has the appearance, when Mark's account is compared with Matthew's, of having been inserted into the original at a comparatively late time in its history, after it had become

a part of the book of Mark, as that book was to be distinguished from the parent manuscript of which this part of Matthew and Mark are copies. And that portion of Matthew's account about Peter walking on the water does not appear to have been a part of the story as at first told, for it does not seem possible that both Mark and John would have omitted it. And if these two important passages, set in full round italics on page xxvii, were the works of copyists who wrote at so late a time that they copied the story of the Feeding of the Multitude twice from a manuscript which was written by someone before them who blundered in telling it twice, not knowing enough about Jesus to recognize the two accounts as two versions of one, how possible is it that that part of the account saying that that which they saw on the water in the dark spoke to them and went up unto them into the boat was not a part of the original story, leaving only for a foundation a story that some people in a boat (or ship) saw something on or in the water which they took to be Jesus, a perfectly natural event.

The account of the healing of the centurion's servant (nobleman's son) on page xv is much like that of the healing of the woman's daughter. Someone went to Jesus and wanted him to come and heal his son, or his servant whichever it was. Jesus did not go; he simply told the man that his supplication had been granted. The miracle was performed, as the story is told, not in the presence of, but at a distance from, the man who reported it. The only evidence that the servant was healed is contained in a single phrase at the end of the account reading (Matt.), “And the servant was healed in that hour." This omitted, the story becomes a natural and not an improbable one.

The account of the raising of the widow's son at Nain is on page xv immediately following the above in Luke. It is not in Matthew. It was not a part of F. It contains a reference to the disciples. It is miraculous throughout. It is not in John.

The story of the Blasting of the Fig Tree is one which does not represent Jesus as great, divine or tender, but on the contrary as having the petty temper of a child. He saw a fig tree and went to it in the hope of finding something thereon to eat. He was a man with human limitations to his knowledge, for he did not know that the tree had no fruit until he came to it, and when he found no fruit on it he cursed it. The story is divided into two parts; Mark gives them at a considerable distance from each other. It is in the second part where it says that the next day as they passed that way they saw the fig tree withered away. There are some queer repetitions in this account which were pointed on page 97, and these do not add weight to this supplementary statement that the tree withered up from the curse that was pronounced upon it.

In the account of the casting out of the deaf and dumb spirit on page xxxiii, the possibility of its having been founded upon some real incident is not so marked a feature of it as of the others above; but it will be seen that the first attempt to cast out this devil was a failure, and therein lies probability if not evidence of authenticity. A glance at Mark's account in comparison with the other two, and assuming that the three are copies of one original, shows much of it to be interpolation; and in the face of this fact it is not possible to tell how much of that portion of the account which is common to all three of them is authentic and how much is not.

The account of the Feeding of the Multitude is the only one of the above seven miracles left. All that can be said of it in this connection is that it is one of a different type or kind from most or all of the other miracles related in the Gospels.

There may be some other accounts of miracles and miraculous things told about Jesus in the New Testament having a nucleus of fact upon which has been built a superstructure of fable and myth by imaginative scribes. It is not possible to pick it out even with much degree of probability.

If Jesus was not the son of God, if he performed no miracles, then the most of that which is miraculous and supernatural in the Gospels is purely fabulous; and perhaps these seven should be included amongst the rest. It is only possible to say of them that they are so worded that they may have been founded upon fact. It is more possible to put that construction upon them than upon most of the other accounts of like character elsewhere. It is a matter of considerable significance that it is just those which appear in the last half or thereabouts of each of the three Gospels which it is possible to dissect in this manner, leaving a foundation which represents Jesus in much the same light that his accusers before Pilate looked upon him, namely, as one who thought himself a prophet, the chosen one of God, the restorer of the Jewish race to its former prestige amongst the kingdoms of the earth, and one who succeeded in convincing some of those with whom he came in contact that he was really that person. Many have been the men who have succeeded in establishing themselves as prophets, generally amongst the ignorant and credulous, and some of them have had very zealous disciples and followers. And Jesus is not the only one who has had believers who were to be numbered by the million.

Many believe in the miracles told of Jesus because they cannot believe that such stories would have been put forth without some foundation in fact. Let us look at the evidence in support of their authenticity. Let us look at the evidence in support of the truthfulness of miraculous stories in general. The world has been filled with them. They have been told in all ages and amongst all races of men. And those in the Gospels stand upon no better authority than any others.

Prof. Huxley, in an essay entitled, Witness to the Miraculous, tells of one Eginhard who lived in the ninth century. Eginhard was a historian of ability and good repute. He occupied a high position in the court of Charlemagne. Amongst his writings are some of the most important that have come down to us from the middle ages. He wrote amongst the rest a work entitled, The History of the Translation of the Blessed Martyrs of Christ, SS. Marcellinus and Petrus, and in this he relates, in the most solemn manner, several wonderful miracles performed in the presence of the bodies of these two dead saints. Prof. Huxley says that, "A manuscript copy of the work made in the tenth century and once the property of the monastery of St. Bevon on the Scheldt, of which Eginhard was Abbot, is still extant, and there is no reason to believe that, in this copy, the original has been in any way interpolated or otherwise tampered with."

Now Christians, Protestant Christians, look with supreme contempt upon these miracles, who at the same time accept with profound credulity the miracles related in the Gospels; and those of Eginhard are better attested than those in the New Testament. A copy of Eginhard's writing is extant dating probably within a century of the time when the original was written. On the other hand, the oldest known MSS extant of the Gospels are copies which cannot possibly be older than the fourth and fifth centuries, and there are not more than two or three that can be as old as this by from one to several hundred years. There is scarcely any question of the authorship or the genuineness of Eginhard's writing; whereas the authorship of the Gospels is a much vexed question, and no one denies but that the originals have been much tampered with.

Even modern history contains much of a miraculous character, often apparently well authenticated; and it is sometimes surprising how many people there will be found to give credence to it. One does not have to hunt far amongst our popular magazines or daily papers for accounts of the workings of supernatural agencies. An instance has come very close to the personal knowledge of the writer where wonderful cures were said to have taken place beneath an image of the Virgin Mary which appeared upon a pane of glass in the window of a catholic church. Crowds of

cripples and diseased people were attracted to the church from a distance of many miles, and at a considerable expense to themselves, by the stories put in circulation. An investigation was started by some of the daily papers of a near by city and it was learned that there was no foundation for the rumors afloat, and the excitememt soon subsided.

The inspired character of the Book of Mormon stands upon better evidence than any portion of the New Testament. Joseph Smith, a man of as good birth and education as most of the New Testament writers, and no more worthy of contempt for his humble position in life than many of the followers and disciples of Jesus, found in the state of New York near Palmyra, from directions given him by an angel, some plates, which at first he was not holy enough to obtain. Afterwards the angel himself delivered Three them to him; and of them the Book of Mormon is a translation. reputable citizens of the place came forward with the statement that they These were had seen these plates, that an angel had shown them to them. followed by eight other witnesses who all testified to having seen the wonderful plates. The Gospels do not stand upon a foundation comparable with that upon which the Book of Mormon rests.

The point is generally made by those who are brought into a discussion of the subject that the miracles related outside of the Bible are mostly idle, foolish and silly tales not to be compared with those within the Bible. The ground is far from being well taken. To one whose mind is not prejudiced, the Gospel stories are as idle and foolish as those of the Book of Mormon or those of the Koran. They have been translated by abler men than Joseph Smith, and they passed through the hands of men who each added his mite in the way of literary improvement at a time when alterations were not looked upon with disfavor; but the miracles related in them are as unreasonable, as absurd, as inconsistent, and as silly as those related in in any other book.

They tell us that Jesus' birth was heralded by angels to the shepherds as they watched their flocks; that a star came and stood over the place where he lay; that wise men came from the east to worship him, bringing with them rich and costly presents; that the glad tidings were spread abroad all over the land that the long promised Messiah had been born; that king Herod sent and slew all the first born male children in Bethlehem in the hopes of killing him; and then what?-nothing! Thirty years passed and nobody thought of enquiring about that child the Jews had been looking for so many many years. If the stories told in the first two chapters of Matthew and in the first two of Luke had been truthful, there would have been a clamor for news concerning that child that would have stirred all Judæa to its very foundations; and Josephus or some other writer would certainly have mentioned it. Afterwards John came preaching in the wilderness; he came to testify of Jesus; and when Jesus was baptized the heavens were opened and a spirit came in the form of a dove and abode upon him, and a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son." And he went about healing the sick, restoring the blind, raising the dead, an honest and an upright man, the only perfect man who ever lived, The story as perfect as God himself was perfect,-and they crucified him! is false on the face of it.

On pages 136 to 138 it was pointed out how improbable was the story of the raising of Lazarus; and none of the other miracles in the Gospels stand upon any better evidence than it. There is a story told in the fifth chapter of John about Jesus healing an impotent man at the pool of Bethesda. At this pool was "a multitude of them that were sick, blind, halt, withered," lying in the porches waiting for the moving of the water He in the hopes of being healed. Jesus was there, and what did he do? The rest stood went in, selected one of the multitude, and healed him. looking on with apparently as little interest in what was taking place as