120 Things ABC CBS CNN FOX and NBC Won't Tell You" Cont..
44. Jesus performed miracles.
Ankerberg: Did Jesus do miracles?
Witherington: Well, I certainly believe he did. Whenever a historian is evaluating that kind of issues, what we have to understand is, miracles, are by definition unrepeatable events. They’re unique incursions into space and time. They’re not ordinary events. And they’re not subject to scrutiny in a scientific laboratory. We can’t reproduce a miracle in a laboratory. So it’s no good talking about the scientific evidence for miracles, if we mean by that the kind of things that we could reproduce and prove or falsify in a laboratory. We’re talking about unique historical events. When we’re evaluating whether Jesus did miracles or not, what we’re dealing with is the veraciousness of the testimonies about Jesus as a miracle worker. Now what’s interesting to me is that it’s not just the New Testament that claims that Jesus was a miracle worker. Later Jewish traditions that rejected that Jesus was the Messiah, also attest that Jesus did miracles. It is also true that some of the later Greco-Roman sources as well, also attest that Jesus was a miracle worker. And then, or course, we have the famous testimony of Josephus to the same effect. So you know, do we have credible testimonies that Jesus did miracles? I think we do have some of those. Now if you have presuppositions that miracles don’t happen, then none of that’s good enough.
Ankerberg: Yeah, a lot of the scholars for example that are being quoted in Time or Newsweek would say, yeah, Jesus did miracles, but you’ve got to take the context of 2000 years ago, where people just kind of believed in that thing. Tom Wright, I think, at Oxford, says you know, the last 200 years we think we’re the only guys that understand what history is, those people didn’t. What’s the tip off? What’s the evidence that show those people weren’t so easy to fake in terms of these miracles, they knew the truth between a guy coming back from the dead and somebody that was just passed out?
Witherington: Well, the very fact that they used terms like signs and wonders or mighty works—dunemas is the Greek word that’s used by Mark about Jesus’ miracles, distinguishing those events from other ordinary events like sleeping or eating or whatever—shows that they’re critically sifting their historical experience. Some things are miracles, some things are not miracles. Now, if you know, you want to paint ancient people as simply naïve, gullible people, who bless their hearts, they couldn’t possibly tell the difference between a miracle and a fake, well, you know, I think the response that is that is an arrogant modern assumption about ancient people. The truth of the matter is that if you actually read ancient sources that ancient peoples critically dealt with these kind of issues just as we do today.
Ankerberg: One fellow was quoted as saying when Jesus is said to heal people, and cast out demons, this can only be true in the sense that in the first century sick people were thought to be possessed by evil spirits, so here you have it coming up again.
Witherington: Yes, the theory that whenever we’re dealing with the demonic it’s some kind of psychosomatic illness which can be healed through therapy or something like that. Well, I think it is fair to say that first century persons lived in the age before modern medicine. It’s plausible from a historical point of view to say, okay, some things that they attributed to the demonic were simply natural diseases. I think that’s a plausible thing to say, I think that you can actually demonstrate that that’s the case. But what you cannot say is that all the accounts, for example of exorcisms in the case of Jesus’ exorcisms could actually be explained that way. That’s what I would want to say about it. There are some exorcism accounts which simply don’t have the cash value of some kind of psychosomatic illness. We’re dealing with something far more profound and frightening, frankly, than a psychosomatic illness. And so, you know, that sort of issue would have to be weighed and sifted as well.
Ankerberg: What about the accounts of Jesus walking on water, or of healing the blind?
Witherington: Well, you know, in the Old Testament it’s not ever claimed that any of the great prophetic figures healed the blind. Now this is interesting. If it was true, as some have claimed, that the stories about Jesus are simply taking Old Testament stories and predicating them of Jesus, and claiming well if they did these sorts of things, then Jesus did them as well. The interesting thing about that is, nowhere did any of the prophetic figures of the Old Testament give sight to the blind. Yet we have in all the layers of tradition, whether we’re thinking of Mark, Matthew’s special source, Luke’s special source, the gospel of John and all of these sources, Q as well, in all of these sources we have evidence that Jesus gave sight to the blind. We have multiple attestation to this from the sources that we have. Now, if we have multiple witnesses to this, then the evidence has got to be taken as strong that he did such things.
45. Jesus’ own family didn’t believe in his ministry—until something changed their minds.
Ankerberg: What did Jesus’ family think of his ministry?
Witherington: Well, I think you have to say that there’s a pre-Easter period to this and a post-Easter period to this. What we know about the post-Easter period, from little texts like Acts 1:14 is that Jesus’ mother, also his brother James, and perhaps other members of his family did become followers of Jesus after the fact. What the gospels tell us about the pre-Easter period in John 7:5 says that the brothers didn’t believe in him. Mark 3:21 and following tells us that his family thought he was 15 degrees shy of plumb, and they came to take him home. They thought he was not well. He was out of a normal state of being. Well, the truth is, of course, that that’s so, in a sense. He was an unusual person, pursuing an unusual career path, unlike any of the other family members, and they thought that there was something not quite right. So the evidence is mixed, and we have to pursue the whole trajectory of the story of Jesus’ family, of doubt and then belief.
Ankerberg: Why did James doubt him all of his life, and then, after Jesus died, all of a sudden, James becomes the leader of the church in Jerusalem, and says that he believes in Jesus. What happened?
Witherington: Well, this is where 1 Corinthians 15 again, a piece of evidence from Paul, from the mid-50s, but he’s quoting much earlier evidence. He says, I have this, as it was handed down to me, that I’m passing on to you, that Jesus appeared to James, the brother of the Lord. The most plausible explanation I would have for somebody doing a complete about face on that issue would be that James had seen the risen Jesus.
46. There’s far more to Jesus’ touching the lepers then merely "bringing hope to the common man".
Ankerberg: What is the meaning of Jesus’ touching the lepers? A lot of the fellows in the Jesus Seminar will use his action there to say that he was bringing hope to the common man, to the outcast, to the leper, to the sinners. Those days of not having hope are over, I’ve come to heal this kind of people. Is that all that Jesus was saying there?
Witherington: Well, I don’t think it was all he was saying, and I don’t think it was all he was doing, but he certainly wanted to bring the outcasts back into a whole relationship with Jewish society. This is why at one point, when he’s dealing with a person like this, he says go and report to the local priest and show him what’s happened to your flesh. Because if the local priest verified that he was normal and his skin was whole, he could once again resume normal life in Jewish society. So of course it’s true that by doing this Jesus was bringing hope that they were no longer to be outcasts from Jewish society, but there’s something far more profound going on here, too. He’s also saying that the old ways of dealing with issues of clean and unclean, now that the kingdom was breaking in, those days are over and gone.
The Jews believed that if you touched such a person as this, you were defiled by those persons. Jesus believed if I touch these people, they are cleansed. Just the opposite. Now that’s what the coming of the kingdom means. The coming of the kingdom means redemption, cleansing, renewal, being a new person. So it’s more than just offering cold words of comfort or hope, it’s more than just touching somebody who’s an untouchable, it’s actually curing them that’s the issue here.
47. If you want to come to the right conclusion about Jesus, you have to come to the evidence with an open mind.
Ankerberg: What’s the important thing that students and people that aren’t Christians should look at, then. How do you focus on the Jesus of history? How do you come to the right conclusion?
Witherington: Well, I think first of all that if I’m dealing with a person who really is seeking the truth about Jesus, I would say, you need to come with an open mind to the evidence. That you need to not rule out things in advance that the text may tell you about Jesus. That you need to reflect carefully and prayerfully about material. Sift it, weigh it, consider whether you think it might be plausible or not. Listen to a variety of witness about Jesus from the whole spectrum of opinions about Jesus. Don’t take any one person’s word as the gospel about this. Interact with the gospel yourself, and find out, in this process of discovery what you think about Jesus.
48. After Jesus died on the cross, his body was buried in a tomb.
Ankerberg: How about the fact that Jesus was buried?
Witherington: Well, now we do have some recent claims, a distinct minority opinion, offered by John Dominic Crossan and perhaps a few others, that perhaps Jesus wasn’t buried. Now this flies right in the face of that early tradition in 1 Corinthians 15, that says that Jesus not only died, but was buried according to the Scriptures. And what we know about early Jews is that corpses were the main cause of uncleanness. You’d get seven days worth of uncleanness from touching a corpse. The idea that early Jews would just leave Jesus’ body, even if they were not sympathizers with who Jesus was, leave him to lie in a ditch, and die like that and never bury him is historically just very implausible.
Ankerberg: Is that a spot where you can fault the Jesus Seminar, because many of their scholars would say that, yes Paul did write that, and that tradition is early, so then, how can you discard one point of that information?
Witherington: Well, I guess what we’d have to say about that is that, for some people, arguments from silence are more powerful than arguments from evidence, and I have a problem with that.
Ankerberg: Is it a fact that Jesus’ death caused the disciples to despair, and lose hope, believing that his life had ended?
Witherington: Well, we are told in fact, and it’s a very unflattering picture, that the twelve denied, deserted, betrayed, abandoned him. We’re told very clear that’s true in regard to the male disciples, the twelve. We are not told that about the female followers of Jesus. They were last at the cross, first at the tomb, and the first to see the risen Lord. Now, here we are in the midst of the first century patriarchal culture. The likelihood that early Christians, promulgating an evangelistic religion, would make up the idea that the essential twelve apostles who had been with Jesus all along denied, deserted, abandoned and betrayed him, but on the other hand the women who were followers and disciples of Jesus they were there at the cross, at the tomb, and they were the first to see the risen Lord. The idea that in a patriarchal culture you would make up women as the primary witnesses to that crucial triad: died, buried, was risen, is just so historically implausible that it just, you know, it’s beyond belief.
Ankerberg: Is it a logical conclusion that a few days later, the tomb in which Jesus was buried was discovered to be empty?
Witherington: Well, all the evidence we have suggests that it was, even the indirect evidence. Let’s go back to that phrase again in 1 Corinthians 15: he died, he was buried, and on the third day he rose. Now, to a Jew, who believed in the resurrection, it was a bodily resurrection. It wasn’t some sort of spiritual event that didn’t involve the body. When you go through the sequence of died, buried, was raised, this necessarily implies the body isn’t in the tomb anymore. So we have even an indirect piece of evidence to the empty tomb in the Pauline tradition.
Ankerberg: So what you’re saying is that, if the Jesus Seminar wants to object to the kind of resurrection, now you’re bypassing the Jewish culture, which was stating it.
Witherington: Exactly. Part of the problem here is taking 20th century ideas, anachronistically, and predicating them on first century people. And that’s not good historiography either. Whether you agree with what first century people believed or not, is neither here nor there. The question is, did they believe this, and did they present the evidence in this sort of fashion that the resurrection was a bodily thing? Well, yes, they did. |
