Page 10 - GALIET MIRACLES IN THE WATERLESS REGIONS: Jesus IV++

The many wondrous exorcisms, healings, resuscitations and natural miracles of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels were far from foreign to antiquity. Gods and daemons were believed to intervene in the life of beings causing disease or good health and, often, sin was related to misfortune and disease. In the Grecian cosmos, Aesclipeus, the God of Healing whose temple was at Epidaurus, was a notorious, miraculous healer along with wise Pythagoras and Epimenides of Cnossos, equally renowned for their miracles. So, what makes Jesus’ miracles that much more worthy or astonishing? Their splendid novelty, in contrast to those of Apollonius of Tyana1 or those of Aesclipeus, is that Jesus’ thaumaturgies deliver Jews and Gentiles and are living signs of his message of the coming Kingdom of God on Earth. By faith, forgiveness and love, he symbolically invites the blind to see, the deaf to hear, the lame to walk and the dead to live. Thus, Jesus’ miracles heighten and strengthen Christian belief and faith; they contribute to the impression that Jesus, endowed with unwavering faith, telepathy and supernatural powers, is a divine being 3⁄4 Messiah, son of God and Savior; they encourage Christians with promises of continued divine support; they solidify the truth of the Christian message by rebuking Old Jewish tradition; and, lastly, they elucidate Jesus’ compassionate nature. In summary, Jesus’ thaumaturgies link the authority of his deeds to the authority of his message. His actions and words highlight the loftiness of his beatific ideals: “a good person brings good things out of a good treasure” (Mt
1 Philostratus. Apollonius of Tyana. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2005.
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