Critics and skeptics of the Bible think that the miracle stories in the gospels are what make them so hard to believe as history. Just the opposite is the truth. In fact, the way the stories are portrayed, and that they happened at all, are evidence for their veracity. The primary reason they are not believed is because of an anti-supernatural bias people bring to the text: Miracles can’t happen, ergo, the miracles in the Bible didn’t happen! Hogwash. The accounts we read in the gospels do not, at all, read like myths and legends, but like eyewitness testimony of events that actually happened. An important point to keep in mind as you are reading the text is the critics’ claim: What you read was made up, to one degree or another. The question we ask in return is, could or would it have been made up? Knowing human psychology as it is, I find this one of the most profound questions I can ask as I’m reading the Bible. My answer is always, no!
I’ve been reading a beast of a book, and an apologetics goldmine, by a 19th century Jewish Christian, Alfred Edersheim, called The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. It’s a beast because it’s north of a thousand pages, and also because English written in that century can be a tough slog. The truths he uncovers in the text of the gospels, however, is well worth the effort. His insights often stun me. He’s confirmed for me a growing conviction I’ve had over the years, that we must come to Scripture with an apologetics mindset. That is, we must read the text to find evidence of its truth, its veracity, why we can trust that it portrays true history, and why it is not made up stories of deluded religious people. Or as the critics claim, myths and legends. As I’ve been writing my way through the bible, from Genesis 1:1 through Acts, the phrase kept coming to mind as I read the episodes of the miraculous: This reads real! Edersheim is a master at picking up those clues in the gospels.
I wanted to quote from the book about a specific event in its entirety (Hendrickson Publishing, 1993, page 472) to show how Edersheim does it, but because of its length I will try to adequately convey his point with just one portion of it. The episode is taken from Matthew 14, Mark 6, and John 6. Jesus had just fed the five thousand, and sent the disciples on a boat to the other side of the sea of Galilee. A storm came up early in the morning while still dark, though likely moonlit, and they saw a man, who they discovered was Jesus, walking near them on the water during the storm, and in modern parlance, it freaked them out! Edersheim argues that this miraculous event is not at all recorded like it would be in “legendary narratives,” where the miraculous is expected and unsurprising. In such narratives
the miraculous, however extraordinary, is the expected; it creates no surprise, and it is never mistaken for something that might have occurred in the ordinary course of events. For, it is characteristic of the mythical that the miraculous is not only introduced in the most realistic manner, but forms the essential element in the conception of things.
To the contrary, in the gospels, and throughout Scripture, the miraculous is always a surprise. It is never expected. To his point, myths and legends are not written this way. When the disciples in the boat see a man walking by them on the water they are terrified, and cry out in fear, “It’s a ghost!” They react like any other normal human would in such a situation. And I ask myself further, why would they make up something so crazy that nobody would believe it, unless it really happened? They wouldn’t.
One last point Edersheim makes over and over again. Jewish Messianic expectation in the first century didn’t include a Messiah who did miracles, or said the things he said, or did the things he did. Most Christians have no idea how significant this is for the credibility of the narratives. If nobody was expecting a Messiah like Jesus, then how could they make him up? If Jesus confounded everyone, foes and friends alike, how could they make him up? The gospels display the utter cluelessness of everybody! Critics claim it’s all made up, myths and fairy tales, as if that’s even possible. Edersheim argues that everything Jesus said and did while in many ways Jewish in substance and context, was completely unprecedented. It takes a lot more faith, and credulity, to believe it was made up.
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