Josephus tells another story in his Jewish Antiquities.11 He has just been speaking of the wisdom of Solomon and his power to banish demons. Then he continues:
[A]nd this method of cure is of great force unto this day; for I have seen a certain man of my own country whose name was Eleazar, releasing people that were demoniacal in the presence of Vespasian, and his sons, and his captains, and the whole multitude of his soldiers. The manner of the cure was this: He put a ring that had a root of one of those sorts mentioned by Solomon to the nostrils of the demoniac, after which he drew out the demon through his nostrils; and when the man fell down immediately, he abjured him to return into him no more, making still mention of Solomon, and reciting the incantations which he composed. And when Eleazar would persuade and demonstrate to the spectators that he had such a power, he set a little way off a cup or basin full of water, and commanded the demon, as he went out of the man, to overturn it, and thereby to let the spectators know that he had left the man; and when this was done, the skill and wisdom of Solomon was shown very manifestly.
Josephus explicitly emphasizes his own status as eyewitness (historēsa) at the beginning of the story. We have no reason to doubt it. Apparently there were quite a few Jewish exorcists in the first century. This is, in fact, confirmed by Jesus himself when he defends himself against the accusation that he is driving out demons with the aid of the prince of demons: “If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists [Greek: sons] cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges” (Matt 12:27; Luke 11:19).
So Josephus tells of demons being driven out by a Jewish exorcist. What is most revealing in this is the way he proceeds: by calling on the name of Solomon, with magical formulae that supposedly come from Solomon, and by causing the victim to smell a magical root. That draws the demon out of the possessed person. Finally, the demons are also adjured not to return. We know from Luke 9:49 that another Jewish exorcist used the name “Jesus” in his treatment of possessed persons—further proof of the activity of Jewish exorcists! Apparently they too were successful.
But the difference between them and Jesus is striking: in his exorcisms Jesus never made use of a “name.” He acted on his own authority. Above alclass="underline" he never employed magical practices. Finally, he did not stage any demonstrations as Eleazar did in causing the expelled demon to upset a basin.
Besides Eleazar we can mention two other Jewish names: Honi the Circle-Drawer (first c. BCE) and Chanina ben Dosa (first c. CE). Both were charismatics, wonder workers, and people who healed by prayer. Honi was famous for his prayer for rain. It is said that during a period of severe drought he drew a circle, placed himself within it, and said that he would not leave that circle until God caused it to rain. Thereupon it rained so heavily that he had to beg God for a suitable amount of rain (m. Ta‘anit 3.8). Both these men worked their miracles through insistent prayer—and that in itself is completely atypical of Jesus.12
So if we look at Jesus’ environment we see that it did indeed contain healers and miracle workers. We even find a certain number of well-attested accounts of miracles. But they are clearly different from the stories about Jesus’ miracles. Moreover, there was no miracle worker in antiquity besides Jesus from whom we have such a large number of plausibly attested miracles handed down to us.
Structural Matters
This fact is not changed by the way New Testament exegesis, since the introduction of the so-called form-critical method, has demanded a comparison among New Testament, Old Testament, Jewish, and Hellenistic miracle narratives. Not only have the structures of all the texts in question been investigated; their motifs have also been compared in detail. This has revealed a large number of common motifs and has shown that the basic structure of miracle stories is frequently repeated.
To make it clear to the reader what we are talking about I will quote from the influential book by Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition, where he gives a list of typical and frequently recurring motifs in miracle stories.13 The list given here is only partial and is much more refined in Bultmann’s work.
Information on the length of the illness
Dangerous character of the illness
Ineffective treatment by doctors
Doubts about the miracle worker
Approach of the miracle worker to the sick person
Removal of the onlookers
Touching the sick person with the hand
A miracle-working word
Description of the success
Demonstration of the success
Dismissal of the healed person
Impression of the miracle on those present
Of course, the motifs vary among individual texts. Sometimes there are more, sometimes fewer, and sometimes they are accompanied by additional motifs. This is therefore an ideal list divorced from all the particularities of a given text. Further work has been done on the motifs in New Testament miracle stories since Bultmann. Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz have materially refined and expanded the list.14
What should we say about the whole matter? Making such lists is a good thing. Abstracting the typical features of a text can help us better understand individual texts. In addition, the process reveals the “international” form-language of the time that was used to tell about miracles. But as helpful as such lists can be, they are also deceptive because they promote the impression that the gospels’ miracle texts are freely composed fantasies based on an inventory of motifs that was available at the time. In addition, we should consider that this inventory of motifs, composed two thousand years after the fact, has been cobbled together out of all possible literary directions and angles. These lists are made up on the basis of texts that are fundamentally different in their form and intent. They include temple inscriptions, magical texts, fairy tales, ancient novels—and also historical works.15
We should also consider that the motif complex “miracle story” is to a degree simply a given on the basis of the thing itself. The healer must approach the sick person or the sick person the healer. Otherwise the two would not encounter one another. Normally (except in the case of healings at a distance) the healer will also touch the sick person and speak a powerful word. Could the healer keep silence and remain at a distance? Likewise, the success of the healing must be marked in some way. Otherwise there would be no need to tell the story in the first place. The fact that those present then react in some way to the miracle is also typically human. It could not be otherwise, and it is an integral part of the miracle.
Add one other thing: language is always socially shaped. That is its nature. Our speech is much more strongly affected than we suspect by existing forms and structures. We write our letters according to models of which we are scarcely aware. Politicians’ statements are stereotypical to the point of banality. Even declarations of love are usually preformed down to the last detail. Those who think they speak in a form they themselves have created independently, one that has never existed before and owes its shape only to the particular situation, deceive themselves mightily. New types of forms succeed but rarely. And scarcely have they begun to exist before they become common property. Because all that is so, we can conclude nothing about the historicity of an event solely from the form in which it is related—neither that what is told is historical nor that it is unhistorical.
Therefore, the crucial question about Jesus’ miracles is not about their form. Ultimately, the issue is always a decision: are miracles possible? And what is a miracle, after all? I will now address this question.