Transcription
Many Christians seem to believe that if Jesus did all those miracles attributed to him in the gospels, then he simply must be God. Who else could do these extraordinary miracles—the nature miracles, the healings, the raisings from the dead, the exorcisms, and so on? This is proof that Jesus is God, surely. I'll just show you some slides I found earlier on Google images. You know, was Jesus God because of his miracles? Many Christians will say yes. Miracles of Jesus, wondrous acts that prove he is God and the Messiah. Here's another one. Uh, Jesus's miracles prove he is God. Big truth session. And another one, Jesus' miracles prove he is God. John 14. How did Jesus' miracles prove he is God? These are family discussion starters.
Now, the thing is, um, this is far from being proven—that this follows: just because he did miracles, therefore he is God. I want to show you why, and the evidence comes entirely from the Bible itself, not through any particular arguments. So I'm going to read a passage or two from this marvelous book, *The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction*, by Bart Ehrman, who is the distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, here in the United States. Now, this text is a standard undergraduate text. It's used in many university courses and it's published by Oxford University Press, and I've used it before in a recent video. And Ehrman says some very interesting things on page 125. Uh, there's a section entitled "The Miracle-Working Prophets," plural prophets. And he says, "Many readers of the New Testament gospels today believe that if Jesus did all the miracles attributed to him, then surely he must be God. Who else would be able to make nature obey him or heal the sick with a word or a touch or raise someone from the dead? The one who does such things could be none other than God in the flesh." Right?
Now, this seems perfectly logical to many Christians. However, and the catch here is not some skeptical trick. This is not an attack on Christianity. What I'm doing is simply to look at the entire Bible—all the evidence there. That's all—that's all that we're doing in this video is to look at the evidence of the Bible itself. And Ehrman goes on, "Anyone who has read their Old Testament carefully knows the answer to this question." And, by the way, in my experience, like 99% of Christians have not actually read the Bible from cover to cover, from Genesis to Revelation. They've simply not read it all. They've cherry-picked some very nice passages, say in Paul's letters or the Gospels, maybe some Psalms, maybe a bit in Isaiah, a bit in Genesis, but they've not systematically read through every chapter in the Bible. And that's possibly why they can argue what they argue because they're not familiar with their scriptures. And this is remarkable. And this—this fact prompted me a long time ago to actually read the whole Bible for myself. So I knew every word in it.
Anyway, back to what Ehrman is saying. Anyone who's read the Old Testament carefully knows the answer to this question. Throughout the Jewish Bible, prophets of God such as Moses, Elijah, and Elisha could do spectacular miracles. In fact, very similar kinds of miracles to those reported of Jesus. There's nothing that Jesus does, by the way, by way of miracles that is not prefigured by some other prophet in the Jewish Bible. And he gives lots of examples of this. This is not because any of them was God himself come to earth, but because the power of God was at work through them. And so in the narratives in 1 and 2 Kings—we find 1 and 2 Kings are books of the Bible—many Christians, most Christians, haven't read these books. They're really interesting, and I do recommend you read them. The stories of 1 and 2 Kings, we find both Elijah and Elisha multiplying the food to feed those in need miraculously. So in the Gospels, of course, we have Jesus feeding the 5,000s—is one of the nature, one of the miracles that is found in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but is also mentioned in, uh, as I say, the Old Testament. Let me just share my screen and we'll get the uh first passage up. Now, I'm not going to show you all of the references that Ehrman mentions because there are quite a few of them, but I'll just mention this one. So, we find both Elijah and Elisha multiplying food miraculously to feed those in need. So, one of the references that Ehrman gives is in 2 Kings 4:42-44. And here we have it.
"One day, a man from Baal-Shalisha brought the man of God a sack of fresh grain and twenty loaves of barley bread made from the first grain of the harvest. Elisha said, ‘Give it to the people so they can eat.’ So the man of God here is Elisha himself, a prophet of God. What—his servant explained, ‘Feed a hundred people with only this?’ But Elisha repeated, ‘Give it to the people so they can eat. For this is what the Lord says: Everyone will eat, and there will even be some left over.’ And when they gave it to the people, there was plenty for all and some left over, just as the Lord had promised." So this is remarkably similar, uh, to the miracle attributed to Jesus in the Gospels because not only did he feed, you know, a huge number of people from very little fish and lo—fish and bread, but actually there was some left over—as well, that little touch there in the last sentence is found even in the Gospels, but clearly this is a parallel miracle, and no one thinks that Elijah was God incarnate. Uh, there's other references he gives, uh, to feeding, uh, miraculously in 1 Kings, which I won't mention because this is good—a good—good enough example—making nature obey their commands because Jesus, for example, calms the storm by—by a command, but if you look, the prophets did this sort of thing as well in 1 Kings 17:1-6, 1 Kings 18:41-46, and 2 Kings 6:1-7. So if you compare those stories with Jesus's calming of the storm, they're very similar. Healing the sick in 2 Kings 5:1-14. The prophet does just like Jesus does. And even raising the dead just as Jesus does. And I'll show you, uh, the passage where Jesus raises the dead—no, where the prophet in the Old Testament raises the dead. Here we go.
So this is 1 Kings 17:17-24. "Sometime later, the woman’s son became sick. He grew worse and worse and finally he died. Then she said to Elijah—and Elijah is a prophet—‘Oh man of God, what have you done to me? Have you come here to point out my sins and kill my son?’ But Elijah replied, ‘Give me your son.’ So the son is dead. And he took the child’s body from her arms, carried him up the stairs to the room where he was staying, and laid the body on his bed. Then Elijah cried out to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord, my God, why have you brought this tragedy to this widow who has opened her home to me, causing her son to die?’ Then he stretched himself out over the child three times, and cried out to the Lord, ‘Oh Lord, my God, please let this child’s life return to him.’ The Lord heard Elijah’s prayer, and the child—and the life of the child returned, and he revived. Then Elijah brought him down from the upper room and gave him to his mother. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘Your son is alive.’ Then the woman told Elijah, ‘Now I know for sure that you are a man of God and that the Lord truly speaks through you.’" So that's a remarkable, uh, example there of, uh, a miracle-working prophet, of course, and even at the end of his life, Elijah ascends to heaven without dying in 2 Kings 2, just like Jesus does—Jesus doesn't die—he ascends into heaven, or obviously, if you're a Christian, you believe he was resurrected then ascended, but still there is this ascension into heaven that we find even prefigured in the Old Testament.
When Jesus does his miracles in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, says Ehrman, "it is not because he is God Almighty. It is because he is God’s prophet. This is recognized even by those he helps, as in Luke 7:11-17, where Jesus raises a boy back to life and the crowd responds not by declaring that Jesus must be God, but by exclaiming, ‘A great prophet has arisen among us.’" End quote. Isn't that extraordinary? All of the miracles—all of the miracles performed by God are prefigured—are, uh, enacted by prophets before him in the Jewish scriptures, the miracle-working prophets. So that was particularly interesting. That's from *The Bible: A Historical and Literary Introduction* by Bart Ehrman.
Now, what does the Quran say? Interestingly, the Quran says exactly the same thing. The Quran agrees with the Bible about Jesus, over against those Christians who say that these miracles are proof of Jesus's divinity. So what does the Quran say? Well, in the fifth chapter, it says this, in—in verse 110 onwards. "And on judgment day, God will say, ‘Oh Jesus, son of Mary, remember my favor upon you and your mother, how I supported you with the Holy Spirit.’" That's the angel Gabriel. "So you spoke to people in your infancy and adulthood. How I taught you writing, wisdom, the Torah and the Gospel. How you molded a bird from clay by my will and breathed into it and it became a real bird by my will. How you healed the blind and the lepers by my will. And how you brought the dead to life by my will.’ And so on." So I'm repeating "by my will," obviously, uh, deliberately, that this phrase occurs, uh, a number of times, uh, always after describing a miracle, and it leaves no ambiguity. Jesus does not act independently from his own power but only as a servant and prophet empowered by God. That's what the Quran says, and indeed, that's what the Bible says. This contrasts with how miracles are sometimes, uh, perceived in Christian theology, where Jesus is seen as performing them by his own divine authority. The Quran counters this view explicitly.
So finally, I just want to share with you a single verse from the Bible from the New Testament where Peter—Peter himself, uh, empowered by the Holy Spirit in the book of Acts—he now knows the truth about Jesus—is after Jesus' ascension into heaven and he's teaching the Israelites about who Jesus really is, and he—he announces in this extraordinary sermon. He addresses the crowd. He says to them, "‘You Israelites, listen to this. Jesus of Nazareth was a man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourselves know.’" And it goes on. So Peter is very clear here—that Jesus—not calling Jesus God, God incarnate. He does these amazing deeds of power, these miracles, these signs. God did them through Jesus. God did them through Jesus. Jesus didn't do them independently, on his own power. That's exactly what the Quran says.
And finally, I do recommend, uh, this book. This is an academic book written by J. Daniel Kirk. He's an American academic. "A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels." And this scholarly work is full of fascinating research. It's highly endorsed by many scholars. He—he—he says this book articulates a paradigm that I call idealized human figures, by which I intend to show that Peter’s depiction—which I’ve just read to you—is sufficient for understanding that Jesus who meets us, uh, in the pages of the Christian Gospels. So in other words, he understands Jesus of the Gospels as purely a human figure in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, not as God at all. And it is sufficient to use the paradigms that we already find in the Jewish scriptures to demonstrate this. We don't need to bring in the alien idea that Jesus must be God to do miracles or that Jesus' status, uh, in the Gospels requires him to be divine. No, he says, uh, Jesus is a man attested by God. And this is a direct quote from Peter, and he—he marshals some extraordinary evidence, um, and I really strongly recommend this book. He's got a good academic grounding in the human Jesus of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, who is not God. And there's a lot of fascinating research, and on the back cover, some extraordinary views from James McGrath of Butler University of America and Morna Hooker at the University of Cambridge, professor there, who both rate this work very highly. So there you go. Jesus is not divine because he does miracles. The Bible proves it, and the Quran confirms this fact. And there we are.