Salvete, omnes!
How do we defend against the argument that some make that the accounts of the miracles in Sacred Scripture come from a kind of “game of telephone” where something gets reported and then altered and then altered and then altered some more until it has been exaggerated to an incredible degree?
I’m thinking in particular about Jesus’ miracles. How can we be sure, apart from faith, that these were reported accurately? How do we convince someone outside the Faith that there is strong evidence to support this?
I mean, perhaps Christ was such a charismatic figure, a skeptic might say, that stories of “miracles” sprung up around him and even got exaggerated very quickly.
I mean, you look at other texts of the period and even those before and after that report various supernatural events such as omens and men/gods doing/experiencing extraordinary/supernatural things. Many of these we consider as inaccurate and many invoke the “game of telephone” argument to support these statements.
Gratias maximas.
It seems to me that there is only one miracle that is absolutely crucial to Christianity and that is the Resurrection of Jesus. The others are all embellishments in the sense that they depict deep symbolic meaning through those miraculous events to draw attention to that meaning. However, the truth of Christianity does not hang on any of them like it does on the Resurrection.
Paul declared, “If Christ did not rise, then our preaching is in vain,” and he was correct. Thing is, though, that Paul’s letters proclaiming the Resurrection are very early, so this miracle could NOT have been a later embellishment. It was the crux of the Christian message in a way that other, lesser, miracles were not.
The point here, is that if someone is going to deny the possibility of miracles, there is really only one miracle, the denial of which will have any real impact on the truth of Christianity. If you don’t deny that one, there really is no point in denying the others.
Why would anyone claim they accept that a man could be raised from the dead after three days and ascend to heaven in a glorified body but then insist they just couldn’t accept the possibility of water turning into wine or a man walking on water? It wouldn’t make any sense to accept the least plausible major miracle but deny the others.
It would seem pretty implausible to suggest that the initial preaching about Jesus being “just another good guy” could have had the impact it did on hearers without the Resurrection being central to it from the very beginning. It certainly was evident that Paul was convinced virtually from the get-go since he was present at Stephen’s stoning less than a handful of years after Jesus died.
Also, it seems pretty implausible that large numbers of followers would have been convinced by stories about the good man Jesus purely on the merit of his goodness and then a few decades later have someone attempt to revise the story by adding, “You know this guy Jesus we’ve been telling you about all these years, well he ALSO rose from the dead.” I would think reasonable people at that stage would have more of a reason to leave the faith than continue in it, since believing or not believing in Jesus, specifically, would have had no real significance and now people were beginning to just make up stuff about him.
A parallel would be people beginning to toss miracles into the biographies of Gandhi, for example. How would that motivate anyone to take the teachings of Gandhi more seriously? It wouldn’t. In particular, if the real reason Jesus gained any attention to begin with was simply because of the wisdom of his teachings AND if that wasn’t the reason, what is left? That is, besides the fact that God vindicated the life and death of Jesus by raising him from the dead?
No, the most plausible explanation is that actual eye witnesses to the Resurrection were alive for forty or fifty years after the event and it was the consistency and integrity of their stories that convinced many from the beginning.
It is also pretty clear that the Gospels were all written within the lifetimes of the Apostles and, therefore, within the lifetimes of those in Galilee who would have been around to have witnessed the other miracles. There would have been lots of opportunity for individuals living at the time to debunk miracle accounts since the push was to evangelize others in the region from the very beginning. The Romans and Jewish leaders had plenty of motivation to refute the Gospel accounts since Christianity remained socially unacceptable for another three hundred years with many attempts to discredit it, but none using credible facts or verifiable alternative witness accounts.
), or how many people can do math in their minds. It so deeply ingrained that it can be recalled without any effort.