What can we make of Christ's miracles?

[marco]

If Christ had restricted himself to making outrageous claims: I'm a shepherd in charge of human beings; I am the way to Paradise; my dad is the proprietor of heavenly estates with many mansions; before Abraham was born there was me! I can call on many legions of angels to help me - if I wanted, but I don't ..... we could dismiss him as insane, as his family thought.



But then there is the little matter of the miracles. At the wedding party Mary asked her son for money to buy more wine - or did she ask for a miracle to be performed? Maybe getting Jesus to part with his cash was seen as a miracle. But the star event is surely the raising of the corpse of Lazarus, reported to great accalaim by his biographers. Except .... despite the enormity of this miracle, Matthew, the man who spoke of walking dead, Mark and Luke do not mention it. John does. The original event was Christ making Lazarus see sense, raising him up. In the Prodigal parable the father declares his son was dead and was now come alive. So death, in the bible, can be metaphorically overcome.


Are the miracles necessary for people to accept Jesus? If we dismiss them all, do we therefore dismiss the claims of Christ?

[marco]

I try and be careful about what I write because I would prefer my words not to be trivialized, misrepresented or rehashed for comic effect

Thank you for that rare insight. Of course however hard we try to phrase our thoughts to the best of our abilities, we can still be subject to ridicule. It depends what those thoughts are, not the splendour of their expression.

even if it makes me appear pedantic and somewhat humourless.

Now you are jesting with poor Marco. Perhaps Jesus never laughed but that doesn't mean the rest of us cannot. Keep trying! Best wishes.

[The Nice Centurion]

At the wedding party Mary asked her son for money to buy more wine - or did she ask for a miracle to be performed?

Neither, if we restrict ourselves to what was writtten. She told him of the problem and in doing so was evidently implying he should provide a solution. We cannot read her mind so we can but guess what exactly she expected him to do.


JW

Mary was not evidently implying anything. She just gave Christ information. Still, that implies that she didnt think him to be allknowing.

[TRANSPONDER]

There was a time when I still bought it that the Jesus story was more or less reliably reported, give or take some polemic tweaks or misrememberings. This was before I did my comparison check and found how horribly contradictory they were. I Bought the 'weaving together' narrative of picking the preferred elements of the narrative and making a coherent story out of them

That's where the problems started. The crucifixion was fishy. The actions of Pilate were very odd. The involvement of Arimathea unaccountable unless the idea was to save Jesus. On top of that came the realisation that all the action was around Bethany and Gethsemane because the tomb of Arimathea could not be in Jerusalem but had to be on the Mount of Olives, and what garden for Joseph's tomb but Gethsemane? And what tomb for Lazarus to be in but that selfsame tomb? And what conclusion can we come to about the sending of the message to Jesus and Lazarus hopping out of the tomb alive and well but that it was a fake miracle, and a put up job to impress the followers? Just like Bar Timaeus posted outside of Jericho when Jesus leaves (Luke seeing how fishy that looked, altered it so he was there when they arrived) to not only impress the followers Jesus'll need for the demonstration in the temple but Bar-Timaeus, primed, uses the title 'son of David' that Jesus needs to use in his procession to the Temple. On top of that, they know who the fellow is and he 'follows them' (read joins up with his buddies).

And before that the healing of Jairus' daughter done with only a few trusted cronies present and the 'ruler' of Capernaum (synagogue president), and he had already helped Jesus with his first miracle - the (claimed) healing at a distance where nobody saw it but only heard the claim 'He got better at the exact same time!" Yep it stank to me, too and even though I no longer swallow the teased out unified narrative, IF I did, that the miracles are fakes and the resurrection the biggest and best of all would be the conclusion. That's what I made of them.

Cue, denial, appeal to faith and bluster.