I'm looking for scientific answers - How did the stories about miracle cures performed by Jesus end up in the bible?

i will go with 2 thank you.

Well, one has to ask oneself what mental illnesses and physical ones like epilepsy, allergies or what have you, would be considered to be in the ancient world.

Even today in African countries (yes, generalizing) diseases are treated as curses or demonic possessions.

What makes us think that the ancient peoples in the Levant would be more enlightened?

Since there are neither any “bodies” or even a “crime scene”, there could only be speculations about the miracles, as you say.

It was the first documented game of Chinese whispers .

The truth is probably more complicated than just any general The Truth About Jesus. Not all the stories of his miracles probably have the same explanation. One might be a true story, embellished (like you describe); one might be an invention of an author; one might have actually happened to someone else and been attributed to him later, after he became the famous one; one might be a true story told by a witness but misunderstood by the author; and so forth.

@ragingloli – Yes, I’m aware of the claim that Jesus never existed. However, only a very small percentage of scholars support the claim. Are you aware of this? I would agree that not all parts of the gospels offer reliable historical accounts. But I find it unlikely that Mark invented the cures and the other three copied this fabrication. What most scholars agree about is that Luke ‘Nativity of Jesus’ story is a myth, not a historical fact. In 7 BC Jupiter and Saturn were quite close (thought it wasn’t a great conjunction) and this might explain the star of Bethlehem. But a single bright star would be a great exaggeration.

@oratio – So how did the cure stories end up in the gospels?

@sandystrachan – Oral traditions without a jokester then? What could have been the first and second whisper that somehow ended up as a miracle cure?

@Janka – Thanks for pointing this out. Yes, a combination of 2 – 4 is also possible.

I’m curious about the case against Jesus, and not familiar enough with it to have an opinion on it. The statement is that Jesus does not appear in the historical record outside of Biblical account, right? But would he necessarily? Might not official Roman or Jewish accounts prefer to simply ignore him? That said, I ultimately view the Bible as a collection of myths, no different from the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Edda, or the Homeric epics. As such there is an intermingling of truth and (mostly) fiction. Some of the miracles may be mis-interpretation of actual events, including events that Jesus had nothing to do with. Others may be wholesale fabrications. I think that (no matter what another thread says) this is a place in which Occam’s Razor may be applied. If a miracle requires a convoluted and questionable explanation, then it is probably a work of fiction or a gross contortion of the actual facts of the event.

I believe the miracles of Jesus are real, and happened as recorded. Jesus was perfect and a literal Son of God. And if God can create the Earth surely he could heal a blind man, or cause the lame to walk. The science behind it is higher than we know now. And I know someone is going to say something about that, but we do make scientific advancements, and we have not discovered all there is to know. What I believe is Jesus was able to perfom those miracles because he asked the elements in the withered hand, or the eyes of the blind man to fix themselves or be re-orgranized. And because didnt speak, think, or committed any sin the elements themselves obeyed.

@mattbrowne My impression? Well, I suspect that the new testament follows the age old global tradition of myth making and symbolism to convey stories, culture and meaning, just as the old testament does.

These miracle stories are put in there as proof to show that Jesus is not just any person, but divine. To do so, they demonstrated situations where he would show his divinity and cure what was conceived as evil. Not understanding these illnesses for what they are, but for curses and possessions he would naturally be show to dispel these evils, something a normal man could not.

@gussnarp – I would say a collection of myths, advice and historical events.

@oratio – So if Jesus existed, the cures were a fabrication of the evangelists to portray him as divine?

@willbrawn – Well, I also think the miracles were real (or most of them), but what exactly was the cause. Would Jesus really be able to do all this instantly and we don’t know the scientific reason yet?

@mattbrowne Yes, I guess that is what I am saying. People and causes have been used for political reasons – true or false – all throughout history.

If you ask me about my theory about him, Jesus was a Nazarene who tried to raise a rebellion together with some Essenes, Sicariis and Zealots. To do so, plagiarized myths were created and spread. When it failed the myths lived on and became more and more fantastic, used to create cults, picked up, organized and became the biggest religion in the world we all know. All by chance and dubious purposes really.

@Mattbrowne: you have bent my mind. you rejected telekinesis in an earlier thread and now you feel that you want an explanation for this. you take the gospels seriously enough to look for alternative explanations. how could you possibly glean enough information from a second- or third-hand (or fourth-hand) account decades later to come up with a plausible explanation? why would take this seriously enough to even look for one when you rejected telekinesis out of hand? (showing that you don’t trust the eye-witness testimony of people alive right now.)

re-edited to make a better argument.

If God created us in his image then it makes sense that we try to follow in his footsteps. Judging by how video games have evolved in the past 30 years, from squares bumping off rectangles to a photo-realistic world like GTA 4, we’re doing exactly that and as our tech advances we might be able to understand how God works a bit better. Devs can modify what happens in virtual worlds easily, even users can. So God, with a technology far more advanced, must be able to interact with the world pretty easily.

I was very young when I read the bible and religion was a weird concept to me so I just went for the meat.

The way I understood it: As a species, we’re in hell and on our own. We have a goal: turning this hell into a paradise. Individually, this is our training ground, where we get to show what we’re made of. When we have succeeded, and turned earth into a paradise, we win access to Heaven and our real lives begin. In order to reach our goal, we have a straightforward guide: one list of the things that will help us and one of the things that will hamper our efforts. Plus a bunch of stories in case we’re even dafter than God thought we would be.

He must have had second thoughts about his decision to leave us to our own device on this insanely harsh training ground. He probably figured he needed to give us more incentives to follow his guidelines so he took liberties with the laws of nature and made this one exception for our good.

@Jack_Haas: Judging by how video games have evolved in the past 30 years, from squares bumping off rectangles to a photo-realistic world like GTA 4, we’re doing exactly that and as our tech advances we might be able to understand how God works a bit better.

I think of it as humans coming up with ever more recondite and sophisticated speculations about an entity that unquestionably exists in our imaginations and arguably exists in reality. (if I ever finish a novel I started, it will go into “God”‘s sex life, by the way. though that won’t take up a huge part of the book.)

@Ria777 – I reject telekinesis today for scientific reasons. I quote: To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses (Wikipedia). So far no test gave us any evidence. If we can come of with new tests or more elaborate tests, say next year, showing clear evidence for telekinesis I will change my mind. So I wouldn’t rule it out completely. No one believed Einstein at first. But rigorous testing led to data which confirmed both special and general relativity. Let’s keep an open mind with telekinesis. But as of today we don’t have evidence. And maybe we never will.

Now the words printed in a bible you can buy in any shop are a fact. My question was, how did they ended up there, specifically the cures. There must be a plausible explanation. Which is most plausible?

@Jack_Haas – I like Kenneth Miller’s quote: “The existence of a supreme being simply is not a scientific question. A supreme being stands outside of nature. Science is a naturalistic process and can only answer questions about what is inside nature. Beyond that it’s a matter of personal belief.” But the words in the bible are a fact. Where do they come from? Specifically about the cures.

exorcisms like the ones described in the Bible happen all the time, all over the world. they often work just as well as the ones in the Bible. why not any curiosity about those? surely you would get more useful information from people alive today? or even from watching the actual footage? (you can find the footage easily enough.)

on telekinesis, you wouldn’t find evidence for anything unless you want to find it. creationists won’t believe evolution. “it’s just a theory.” present them with the proof and they say something like you said about telekinesis: “let’s keep an open mind [about it]. [b]ut as of today we don’t have evidence. [a]nd maybe we never will.”

the gospels describes some whacky stuff. walking on water for example. does that clue you in to how much you can take them at face value?

@Ria777 – I’m sure thousands of people are interested in finding evidence for telekinesis. Some scientists tried and the tests came out negative. So far that is.

Yes, how to explain walking on water. More difficult than the cures. Of course the walking as such did not take place. Maybe the disciples who saw Jesus suffered from dehydration. The human mind can play all kind of tricks. Maybe the story was created later when passed on through oral traditions.

as far the walter-walking basically, you have a skeptical attitude, though can’t ever really know, right? I apply that skepticism to all of the gospels.

why not apply that to the exorcisms and apply your intellectual curiosity to the fact that oftentimes effective exorcisms take place right now?

finally, do you accept that perhaps if evidence for telekinesis did exist, that you might reject it? again, the creationists analogy. they have the evidence for evolution in front of them and they don’t believe it, because it just don’t fit their world view.

I will PM you if studies indicative of telekinesis existing. I have something to do now.

@Ria777 – Sure, go ahead :-)

Evidence for telekinesis must be conclusive. But preliminary results are also interesting.

@mattbrowne “The existence of a supreme being simply is not a scientific question. A supreme being stands outside of nature. Science is a naturalistic process and can only answer questions about what is inside nature.”

Matt I don’t think I agree with that. Finding God or proof that he doesn’t exist is an untold motivation for many scientists. Some, like the head of the human genome project have admitted to looking for the “hand in God” in their research.

When I was a kid and acted more pigheaded than usual about religion, my grandma lliked to quote an eminent physicist named Louis Leprince-Ringuet. A clumsy translation from french to English would give you something like this: “A bit of science takes you away from God, a lot brings you closer to Him”.

And again, based on my analogy: the devs at Rockstar games (the makers of the GTA games) are trying to make their virtual world as similar to the real one as possible. They put in an extraordinary amount of work to make sure that the physics feel real. But if a dev wanted to allow a character to fly he would easily insert lines of code to achieve that. Laws of physics wouldn’t change for the rest of the population, just for that particular character, and only until a dev modifies the code again.

Another example: there is a military sim I like that takes place on a 50sq km island that tries to replicate the real world. In it, if you are fed up with how long it takes to cover a 2 mile area on foot, you can accelerate the time by 2 or 4. The whole world is accelerated. In the end, what took 10 minutes in our world took 40 minutes in the real one. What we can’‘t know now, because the IA isn’t evolved enough, is whether virtual humans would feel the acceleration or whether our 10 minutes would seem like perfectly normal 40 minutes for them, without distortion. Sooner or later we will have the answer to that and it will provide us with a novel way to look at how our universe might be ruled.

@Jack_Haas – I admire Francis Collins. He’s a great Christian scientist. So is Kenneth Miller. Looking for the “hand in God” in research is not the same as attempting to prove the existence of a deity by applying scientific method. Our wonderful genomes are a consequence of the creation of the orderly biophilic universe. So to me the “hand” mentioned by Collins is a metaphor. I believe in the creator, but I know I can’t prove this scientifically.

@mattbrowne: “evidence for evoution must be conclusive.” if you have made up your mind not to believe in a thing, you will never accept the evidence.

note that posting quick responses like that takes up less time than digging around and finding papers. not sure if I have enough to time to do that today.

@Ria777 – Wrong. This doesn’t apply to serious scientists. The whole purpose of science is that scientists show other scientists that they are wrong. Every scientific theory is tentative. Test1. Confirm or fail. Test2. Confirm or fail. Test3. Confirm or fail… Testn. Confirm or fail. So far all tests about telekinesis I’m aware of have failed. I’m interested in tests I’m not aware of yet. Take your time and then share the tests and their results.

It’s likely to be a mix of 2 and 4. Mostly because similar stories used to pop out EVERYWHERE at the time, and every “god” happend to have that power. But it might actualy be that he knew how to cure some of those problems (cripples and such) and from that the exaggeration begun.

Afterall one doesn’t just pull completely unrelated stuff out of his ass, i wouldn’t write a story where Wolverine turned out to be a general surgeon, because all the other sources would contradict me, BUT i could write about him killing people nobody knew he killed, because he’s known for that kind of behaviour.

@Thammuz – Good example, thanks!

@mattbrowne About the walking on water part: There’s two possible nad intereting options here, IMO: the first is that it’s taken from either Mithra or Horus (i can’t remember which one but one of them walked on water, and they both have stories and bios similar to that of jesus) the other one, which is a personal thought, is that mirages are freuent in hot climates such as that of the middel east, and the most common one is the puddle of water on the ground…

@Thammuz – Here’s another theory:

Jesus may not have walked on water as the Bible claims but rather skated on ice formed through a freak cold spell, a scientific study has suggested. Rare atmospheric and water conditions could have caused ice to form on the freshwater Sea of Galilee. The research shows a period of cooler weather swept what is now northern Israel from 1,500 to 2,600 years ago. Sub-zero temperatures could have caused the formation of ice thick enough to support the weight of a man. The story of Jesus walking on water is recorded in three of the four Gospels, but Professor Doron Nof, an oceanographer from Florida State University insists his research points to a scientific rather than miraculous explanation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4881108.stm

@mattbrowne interesting, i didn’t know the sea of Galilee was a fresh water sea… Then again, it’s really counterintuitive, who’d have thought that that area, generally hot, could have had water freezing spontaneously

@mattbrowne: so Jesus essentially said, “see that solid substance yonder? I will impress you by walking on it.” or, if they did not know you could not walk on ice, how could he?

see: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/VoodooShark

Jesus did it. Somebody saw Him do it. God told them to write it down.

@Randoley – Jesus did what? What are you referring to exactly?

Jesus did what is written in the Bible.

Yes, the miracle cures performed by Jesus could have been real (perhaps exaggerated), but miracles in a strict sense didn’t happen. As I said, all cures can have a scientific explanation.