It was already noted in detail that for some of the non-biblical religious founders, performing miracles was not even part of their ethical and/or social message, particularly if they did not share a supernatural view of reality in the first place. Further, most if not all of the chief holy books that report the major religious founders’ teachings and actions present severe historical problems. These issues are often due either to the texts being written centuries after their founders died, and/or to the earliest extant copies of these works being dated even far too

long after that to insure that no major changes occurred during the process of transmission.59

On the latter points, Buddhist scholar Edward Conze notes that many of the major writings of Buddha’s teachings date from 600 to 900 years after Buddha’s death, with oral teachings being the norm for the first 500 years. Conze then states clearly the corresponding issue that this causes: some of these myriad volumes of teaching must actually represent Buddha’s originally teachings. The problem is that “we have, however, no objective criterion which would allow us to isolate the original gospel. All attempts to find it are based on mere surmise, and the discussion of the subject generally leads to nothing but ill will and fruitless disputes.”60 In other words, at least some of Buddha’s original teachings must be among the ones we have, but we can never really tell which are which, because these documents are so late in origin.

The last issue just raised, beyond the actual date of composition, concerns the date of the earliest surviving copies. Hexham notes that, “The earliest extant Buddhist documents date from the seventh century A.D.”61 This difference of at least some 1300 years after Buddha’s death fails to insure the creeping in of foreign ideas, which is one of Conze’s exact points: “Different schools wrote down different things.”62 One result is that, “Scholars still dispute which school

[Buddha] actually belonged to.”63

Other similar historical problems were also apparent even in our brief look at other major founders. This would include not only the earliest forms of Buddhism, but Confucianism and Taoism not even having supernatural beliefs, let alone producing miracles. The major Zoroastrian theological texts were not even written until some 1500 years after Zoroaster lived. But the actual extant copies of the Avestas date to about 1800 years after Zoroaster! For Krishna, the existing text of the Bhagavad Gita dates from 3300 to perhaps as late as 4200 years after him, for those who think that he even lived!

Lastly, no miracles are reported of Muhammad in the Qur’an beyond his recording the words themselves, though miraculous reports do appear in the Hadith tradition, beginning some 200 years later.64 Interestingly enough, however, the Qur’an does state that Jesus performed miracles and even specified some of them (Surahs 3:49; 5:110).

Thus, these three huge issues involving the lack of miracles in the first place, plus the problems of much later writings, followed by the enormous gap with some of the extant copies plague and even sound the historical death toll for virtually all these non-Christian holy texts. For originators like Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-Tzu, miracles seem simply foreign to their original mission because of the rather naturalistic philosophical outlook. But for almost all of these founders, any texts that might record such occurrences were either actually written, and/or the remaining copies actually date from, literally hundreds to thousands of years after the founder’s deaths. Such a track record totally disallows even the opportunity for reliable, historical miracle reports.65

Compared to the non-biblical founders of the major world religions, only Jesus has miracles reported of him in early sources.66 Moreover, in the last couple of decades, almost all critical scholars, including the skeptical ones, have conceded that overwhelming data attest to the historicity of at least some of these special events. Not all scholars agree on what actually occurred on these occasions, but it is nearly unanimous that healing events such as those depicted in the Gospel accounts did indeed happen. At least two nearly exhaustive recent studies illustrate the strength of this conclusion. Each one gives attention to the factors that confirm and back up that many of these events occurred, employing a careful usage of the critical historical method, including the criteria of authenticity.

Summarizing the results of his over 400 page historical study on this topic alone, Graham Twelftree tallies a total of 29 different miraculous accounts narrated throughout the Gospels as the number of Jesus’ individual miracle-claims. Twelftree determines that in 22 of these cases (approximately 76%), sufficient evidence is revealed to indicate that, with “high confidence,” we may conclude that the events described in these texts actually happened. Again, he points out carefully that this by no means judges that the remaining reports are unhistorical—they could actually have occurred as well. Rather, this conclusion only means that the remaining seven instances just do not have the same quantity and/or quality of evidence as do the others.67

In another historical study, this time numbering over 500 pages in length, prominent historical Jesus scholar John Meier began with a similar number of Jesus’ total miracle accounts in the Gospels, though the way Meier tallies the cases makes it difficult to provide exact totals. If just the “regular” exorcisms plus the healing miracles are counted, as critical scholars often group them, then just under half (approximately 45%) received a similar positive verdict to

Twelftree’s: these Gospel reports describe or otherwise specify “events that actually occurred in Jesus’ lifetime.”68 In the three incidents where Jesus reportedly raised the dead, Meier decides with different degrees of historical probability in favor of all three accounts! If these are added to the earlier totals for healings and exorcisms, this raises Meier’s overall positive verdict to about 52% of these accounts.69 Quite stunningly, Meier determined that these accounts enjoy “as much historical corroboration as almost any other statement we can make about the Jesus of history.”70

Once again within our present limits, we also cannot construct here a historical argument for the meaning of these miracle-claims.71 Still, according to various Gospel passages, Jesus taught that his miracles indicated the truth of message (Lk. 7:18-23; cf. Jn. 14:11). But his resurrection from the dead would be the chief sign that evidenced the truth of his message and indicated that his word was true, even for skeptical scholars.72 This idea also appears in Acts and in the New Testament epistles. This includes both very early creedal statements that taught that Jesus’ resurrection would evidence the truth of his claims (Rom. 1:3-4; 1 Pet. 1:3-6), as well as at least three of the Acts sermon-summaries that argued similarly (Acts 2:22-24; 13:26-41; 17:30- 31). One of the main ideas in these texts is that if Jesus was raised, then God must have performed the event in order to approve Jesus’ message. After all, dead men do not do much on their own!

Endnotes

59 We may recall Frazier’s note on the growth of, “Superstition, magic, and mythological beings” that “were entirely absent from early Buddhism” but which were included during the centuries after Christianity first began, which would have been about the time that many of the texts were actually written (Frazier, Chinese and Japanese Religions, 25-26).

60 Buddhist Scriptures, ed. and trans. by Edward Conze, Penguin Classics, ed. by Betty Radice (London: Penguin, 1959), 11-12. Edwin M. Yamauchi places the possibility of some Buddhist supernatural elements a bit earlier than Conze, while the majority of such accounts are clearly quite late (Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroasterm Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad, Rev. Ed. [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1972], 6-7, 18). Stephen Neill points out that the Pāli Buddhist canon does not even begin to take its present form for 400 years (Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths: The Christian Dialogue with Other Religions, Third ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1984), 125, emphasis added.

61 Hexham, Concise Dictionary of Religion, 40.

62 Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 11-12.

63 Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 34.

64 Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroaster Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad, cf. 20.

65 J.N.D. Anderson also agrees on there being no rival miracles among the non-Christian religions. (See Anderson, Christianity and Comparative Religion, such as 46, 50-51.)

66 Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad, 40.

67 Graham H. Twelftree, Jesus the Miracle Worker: A Historical and Theological Study (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity), see particularly pages 328-330, especially the summarized results; cf. even the skeptical inclination on page 427, note 21.

68 John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Vol. 2: Mentor, Message, and Miracles, Anchor Bible Reference Library, ed. by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1994), see 967-970 for his conclusions.

69 Meier, Mentor, Message, and Miracles, Conclusion, 970. However, Meier only decides positively for just one of the six Gospel events that he states are “incorrectly labeled ‘nature miracles.’” The only one receiving an affirmative verdict is the event that he terms “the feeding of the multitude” (970). If these six cases are tallied into the total miracle count, then Meier’s overall favorable tally for all the categories of Jesus’ miracles is 45% affirmative cases.

70 Meier, Mentor, Message, and Miracles, 970.

71 For details of such a defense, see Habermas, The Risen Jesus and Future Hope, especially Chap. 3.

72 This includes the so-called “Q” text in Matt. 12:38-42; 16:1-4 (cf. Lk. 11:29). See also Matt. 28:19-20; Lk. 24:44-48; Jn. 20:24-31.

73 See Gal. 2:20-21; 3:13; Phil. 1:29; 2:8; 1 Thes. 1:9-10; 4:14; 5:10.