The miracles ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were probably another case of linking the story of Jesus to the Old Testament, and in particular the Jewish prophets. The stories of Elijah and Elisha in 1 and 2 Kings contain similar miracles, both of them purportedly raising a boy from the dead (1 Kings 17.17-24 and 2 Kings 4.18-37). Elisha also cured a leper (2 Kings 5.4-14), as did Moses (Numbers 12.10-15). The Gospel of Luke has Jesus bring a widow’s son back from the dead (Luke 7.12-15), which exactly mirrors the miracle performed by Elijah in 1 Kings 17.
The feeding of the four thousand and the feeding of the five thousand were probably also based on a miracle story from the Old Testament. In 2 Kings, Elisha feeds one hundred people with twenty loaves of bread, which is again portrayed as a divinely inspired miracle (2 Kings 4.42-44). The miracle of Jesus walking on the sea is probably also a reinterpretation of an Old Testament myth, the parting of the Sea of Reeds by Moses. The gospel of John has Jesus perform exactly seven miracles before his crucifixion. Seven is the number of mythology par excellence.
The book of Isaiah in particular was probably a source for some of the miracle stories in the gospels. The New Testament authors scoured the Old Testament for lines that they could write into the gospels to try and show Jesus fulfilling various ‘prophecies’. A good example of the influence of Isaiah on the gospel writers’ accounts of Jesus’ miracles is,
‘Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
And the ears of the deaf will hear;
Then shall the lame man will leap like a deer,
And the tongue of the dumb will sing for joy’ (Isaiah 35.5-6)
and,
‘Your dead will come back to life, their bodies will rise.
Wake up and shout for joy, those who dwell in the ground.’ (Isaiah 26.19).
The healing of the deaf and dumb man that appears in Mark 7 would definitely appear to have its roots in the first passage from Isaiah quoted above. The description of the healing uses the rare Greek word mogilalos, which means ‘speaking with difficulty’. The line from Isaiah, ‘And the tongue of the dumb will sing for joy’ is the only place in the Septuagint (Old Testament) where this word appears.
Some of Jesus’ more bizarre miracles were also written into the gospels to correlate with passages from the Old Testament. Jesus curses a fig tree because it has no fruit on it and it dries up (Mark 11.13-21 & Matthew 21.19). Given the gospel narrative is set in the spring, he really shouldn’t have expected any figs to be on the tree. The image of a withered fig tree appears several times in the Old Testament in the prophets’ descriptions of the apocalyptic Day of the Wrath of Yahweh (Jeremiah 8.13, Isaiah 34.4, Hosea 2.12).
Jesus walking on water may have been written into the gospels to mirror Moses parting the sea in the story of Exodus. It may also have been written to mirror a line from Job about Yahweh, ‘He alone stretches out the sky and walks on the waves of the sea’ (Job 9.8).
A strong belief in the existence of devils and unclean spirits permeates the gospels. Many of Jesus’ miracles involve confronting and driving these devils out of people (eg Luke 4.40-41, Matthew 9.32-33, Matthew 15.22). The gospel writers believed many illnesses were caused by devils and unclean spirits. In the gospel of Luke, Jesus cures an epileptic and a deaf man by exorcising unclean spirits from them (Luke 9.39-43, Luke 11.14). In one of the most bizarre miracle stories in the gospels, Jesus casts an impure spirit out of a man and into a herd of pigs! (Mark 5.1-13).
This belief that illness was the work of demons and unclean spirits can be seen in earlier Jewish texts. The book of Jubilees states, ‘Noah wrote down all things in a book as we instructed him concerning every kind of medicine. Thus the evil spirits were precluded from hurting the sons of Noah’ (Jubilees 10.13). Sin was also seen as the cause of disease and illness. In Luke 5.18-25, Jesus cures a paralysed man by telling him that his sins are forgiven.
There may also have been an allegorical level to many of the miracles performed by Jesus in the gospels. The most obvious being the granting of sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf and the resurrection of the dead. The blind, deaf and dead could be have been metaphors for non-believers, and the seeing, hearing and resurrected could represent the initiated. These miracles may have been placed in the gospels to show the supernatural powers of Jesus, but also to metaphorically represent the new life supposedly offered by Christianity. The non-canonical Gospel of Truth refers to the allegory of healing the blind. In it we read,
‘Such is the way of those who have cast ignorance aside from them like sleep, not considering it to be anything, nor do they regard its properties to be something real, but they leave them behind like a dream in the night. The knowledge of the Father they value as the dawn. This is the way each one has acted, as thoughasleep at the time when he was ignorant. And this is the way he has come to knowledge, as if he had awakened. Blessed is he who has opened the eyes of the blind.’ (The Gospel of Truth 29.32-30.16)
Greek philosophy undoubtedly influenced Christianity, Plato used the same analogy of blindness when discussing the perfected soul of the philosopher,
‘Only the philosopher is entirely pure at departing, and he alone is permitted to enter the communion of the gods…they will not walk in the ways of the blind.’ (Phaedo p82b-d)
Origen used this metaphor of blindness about pagans and linked it to the miracles of Jesus,
‘Let those who perceive that they are blinded by following multitudes who are in error, and tribes of those who keep festivals to demons, draw near to the Word, who can bestow the gift of sight. Like those poor and blind who had thrown themselves down by the wayside, and were healed by Jesus.’ (Against Celsus 6.67)
The resurrection miracles in the gospels could also be allegories for the rebirth gained through initiation in the new religion. The most famous resurrection Jesus performed was the raising of Lazarus, and the most interesting part of this miracle is a remark made by one of the disciples. After Lazarus has died, Thomas says, ‘Let us also go, so that we may die with him’ (John 11.16). In this comment, Thomas must surely be referring to the metaphorical death and rebirth of initiation.
Plutarch noted the similarity of the Greek verbs teleutan (to die) and teleisthai (to be initiated), and observed that the two were comparable transformations in someone’s life. In The Metamorpheses, Lucius Apuleius wrote that ‘the rites of initiation approximate to a voluntary death for which there is only a precarious hope of redemption’ (Metamorphoses 11.21).
There’s also a miracle in the gospels that may represent numerology. The Gospel of John recounts a miracle performed by the resurrected Jesus, in which he aids his disciples in catching fish. The significant part of the miracle is the number of fish they haul on board,
‘Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of big fish, a hundred and fifty three of them.’ (John 21.11)
153 was a sacred number associated with the vesica piscis (‘bladder of the fish’) symbol formed when two circles intersect so that each circle’s circumference touches the other’s centre. The ratio of width to height of the vesica piscis symbol is √3. In the mid third century BCE, the Greek mathematician Archimedes approximated this irrational number with the ratio 153:265.
Jesus was by no means the first religious figure from the Greco-Roman world to be recorded as having performed incredible feats and miracles. Asclepius was the god / son of god (he was the son of Apollo) chiefly associated with such miracles by the Greeks. His mythology also included resurrections of the dead, and he had temples and sanctuaries throughout the Hellenistic world where people went to be cured of their ailments. Asclepius was often referred to as ‘saviour’ in inscriptions.
The philosopher Empedocles was also said to have performed many such miracles. These included curing sickness and old age, controlling wind and rain, and raising the dead back to life. Apollonius of Tyana was a legendary philosopher and holy man to whom miracles were attributed, including prophecy, the healing of the sick and the raising of the dead.
The Christian writer Origen (184 – 253 CE) noted that miracles similar to those of Jesus were performed by Greek gods, sons of gods and philosophers. He came to the typical partisan Christian conclusion that any non-Christian and Jewish miracles were the work of demons,
‘Perhaps someone…would conclude, after close examination of the matter that the wonders mentioned by the Greeks were performed by certain demons, those among the Jews by prophets or by angels, or by God through the means of angels. Those recorded by Christians were performed by Jesus himself, or by his power working through his apostles.’ (Against Celsus 8.47)
The Bible and Mythology 