(upbeat music) - We welcome my friends to the Catholic Reason, a radio production of St. Michael Catholic Radio based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, where we think through various claims made by the Catholic Church concerning issues of faith, morality, and culture, and provide reasons behind those claims, hence the title of the show, The Catholic Reason. My name is Dr. Carlo Broussard. I'm a staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and a member of the Chancery Evangelization Team, the Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma. The Catholic Reason airs locally here in Tulsa every Thursday from 4 to 5 p.m., one St. Michael Catholic Radio 94.9 and 102.9, but you may be listening on your own local Catholic radio station at a different time since the Catholic Reason is now aired on other Catholic stations throughout the country. So if you're joining me from outside the Tulsa area, welcome and thanks for tuning in. Just to let you know, you can download the show through whichever podcast platform that you use by subscribing to the Eastern Oklahoma Catholic Podcast. That's the Eastern Oklahoma Catholic Podcast, and you can also access the archived episodes of The Catholic Reason at my website, chorlobroussard.com under the audio tab. In Matthew's Gospel, Matthew 11, two through six, were told that there's one thing essential to identifying Jesus as the Messiah, his miracles. Here's what Matthew tells us, quote, "Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, 'Or you he who is to come, or shall we look for another?' And Matthew records Jesus' answer as follows, go and tell John what you have heard, what you hear and see, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers or cleanse in the death here, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them." In other words, yes, I am he, Jesus is saying, I am the Messiah, and the evidence is my miracles. Jesus appears to have Isaiah 35, five through six in mind, which mentions some of the same miracles within the context of God coming with vengeance and bringing salvation to his people, which was understood to be a messianic text. It's even this messianic hope and the involvement of miracles is also present within the Dead Sea Scrolls. According to one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Qumran Scroll 4Q 521, also known as 4Q Messianic Apocalypse, the miracles that Jesus lists there in Matthew, chapter 11, were associated with the coming of the Messiah. So here's what the text reads, and bear with me, it's a bit lengthy. So those of you who are listening, try your best to follow along, right, without having the actual text in front of you. Here's what it reads, "For the heavens and the earth shall listen to his Messiah, and all that is in them shall not turn away from the commandment of the Holy One. He will honor the pious upon the throne of the eternal kingdom, setting prisoners free, opening the eyes of the blind, raising up those who are bowed down, and the Lord shall do glorious things, which have not been done, just as he said, for he will heal the injured, he shall make alive the dead. He shall proclaim good news to the afflicted." So notice it appears it's this prophetical background, coming from both Isaiah 35 and the prophetical background, testified to in this four-key messianic apocalypse, Dead Sea Scroll, that Jesus is alluding to in his response about whether he is the Messiah. So in our quest to defend Peter's answer to the question, "Who do you say that I am?" There in Matthew chapter 16, verse 15. It's important that we get straight on the question of whether Jesus was a miracle worker. Jesus, the miracle worker, are the miracles of Jesus, or testimonies, as to who Jesus is as the Messiah. And also further, the miracles testify to who Jesus is as Lord, because Jesus claimed to be the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He claimed to be the God of the Jews, the creator of heaven and earth, equal to the Father. And his miracles are a way by which we can verify that claim, since the miracles vindicate those claims to divinity. But the miracles also testify or show us that Jesus indeed is the Messiah, the long-awaited Messiah prophesied within the Jewish tradition. And so the question becomes are the gospel reports based on actual events in Jesus' ministry and not just made up stories or legendary developments? Is it historically credible we need to ask to say that Jesus was a miracle worker? We need to have that question answered first before we can conclude and assent to the proposition that Jesus is Messiah. It is precisely because of the Jewish tradition that these particular miracles are associated with the Messiah, and also to assent to the proposition that Jesus is divine or a Lord. Now, our Catholic claim here is yes. It is historically credible to say that Jesus was a miracle worker. The gospel reports of Jesus' miracles are based on actual events and are not legendary developments. And my intention is to make good on this claim that these reports are historically reliable in today's episode, thereby giving us a reasonable foundation to be able to say Jesus was a miracle worker and thus to make an act of faith in Jesus Christ and say, yes, you are my Lord, I worship you, I adore you, and I'm gonna live my life for you and even die for you. Now, there are two approaches that we can take in answering this question. One is general and the other is more specific. So let's start with the general approach, which seeks to establish a general trust in the gospel reports that Jesus was a miracle worker. So the idea here is if we can establish that the gospels are generally trustworthy, well, then it would be reasonable to trust their reports that Jesus was a miracle worker. That's the portrait they paint for Jesus. And so how might we go about establishing a general trust in the gospel reports? Well, we could literally spend several episodes just on that question, but I'm just gonna share a few approaches or ways in which we can establish a general trust just to kind of give you a sampling here. And one way to establish this general trust is by using what scholars call the criterion of embarrassment. This refers to the idea that when embarrassing details are recorded about a sympathetic historical figure, they're probably true since the author would have no reason to make them up. This criterion is commonly used in both biblical studies and elsewhere, like in courtrooms. So one example is Mark's account of the Pharisees accusation that Jesus performed miracles by the power of Beelzebub or the devil. Here's what Mark records in chapter three, verse 22. Jesus, referring to Jesus, he is possessed by Beelzebub, they say. And by the Prince of Demons, he casts out the demons. Now, it's unreasonable to think Mark would make up a story in which Jesus is accused of demonic possession when it has the potential to harm Jesus' reputation. And thus undermine Mark's purpose in writing his gospel. Why would Mark even give his audience the slight potential or possibility to begin thinking that Jesus is possessed by demons? That would be at cross purposes with his intention in writing to try to persuade people to follow Jesus, to accept Jesus. If you're making up and fabricating this story, you're not going to give your reader the slightest possibility to begin thinking that Jesus was demonically possessed. That Mark includes this embarrassing detail, tells us that it's historically true, right? It gives a strong probability that it is historically true. And that's why he included it in his report. So that's one example of how the criterion of embarrassment is met and thus giving us reasonable grounds to conclude that the report of Jesus as a wonder worker, as a miracle worker, in this case as an exorcist, is historically reliable. Now, there's another criterion for historicity that applies here, and that is enemy attestation. The principle of enemy attestation states that when enemies of a person, message, or cause corroborates some given facts or data, those facts are more likely to be authentic. So notice Jesus' critics in Mark, the Pharisees, don't deny that something supernatural happened. They simply try to offer an alternative explanation and explanation other than Jesus having divine power. So the supernatural character of what he's doing remains and the enemies attest to it, they affirm it. They can't deny it. They just have to try to explain it away with some explanation other than divine power. We can extend the criterion of enemy attestation to opponents after the time of Jesus. Consider Flavius Josephus, the first inter-Jewish historian, who attest to Jesus being a doer of wonderful works. That's from his Testimonium Flavianum 1833. So Josephus cannot deny the fact that Jesus performed supernatural deeds. We can also appeal to the late second century Neil Platonist philosopher Celsus, who wrote the first known full-scale attack on Christianity entitled True Doctrine. Like the Pharisees in Mark, Celsus didn't deny that Jesus was a wonder worker. Rather, he argued Jesus was a sorcerer and a magician. Yet again, cannot deny the supernatural character but must explain it away with an explanation other than divine power. Well, my friends, I'm gonna have to hit the pause button there, we're coming up on our first break. Don't go anywhere, stay tuned. On the other side of the break, we're going to continue our looking at this criterion of enemy attestation. Stay tuned, you're listening to the Catholic reason. Well, welcome back my friends to the Catholic reason, a radio production of St. Michael Radio based here in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I'm Dr. Carlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic answers and a member of the Chancery Evangelization Team for the Diocese of Tulsa in Eastern Oklahoma. If you're just joining me in today's episode of the Catholic reason, we're looking at the topic of Jesus' miracles. Factor fiction, that's the question we're asking. Our claim is that they are a fact. Jesus, the miracle worker is a historical fact and we're providing some reasons behind that claim or for that claim. Now, in our first segment, we began a general approach in establishing a general trustworthiness, a general, let me retract, a general approach to justifying the claim that Jesus was a miracle worker. And the way in which we're doing that is establishing a general trust in the gospels themselves which would provide us reasonable foundation to believe the gospel portrait of Jesus as a miracle worker. And we started looking at a couple of ways in which we can do that, one of which is identifying the criterion of embarrassment in the gospel narratives. And we gave one example of that from Mark 3.22 where the Pharisees say that Jesus is casting out demons by the power of the Elzebub, that's an embarrassing detail that would seem to work at cross purposes with Mark's purpose of trying to persuade his readers about Jesus. Given that it's such an embarrassing detail and that you wouldn't include that sort of detail if you're fabricating the story, it follows that Mark is not fabricating the story. This is not just made up. This is something that really happened and that's why he puts it in the report in his gospel. And then we looked at the criterion of enemy attestation. And the idea here is that whenever you have an enemy, somebody not sympathetic to whatever claims being made in the report, attesting to something about the claim, but then that provides strong probability that the claim is authentic and reliable. And so we said the Pharisees and Mark's gospel, they were enemies, they are critics. They cannot deny the supernatural character of what happened. They just simply have to try and explain it away with an alternative explanation. Flavius Josephus in the first century, Jewish historian, same thing, a critic, but yet he cannot deny that Jesus was a doer of wonderful works. We looked at the philosopher's celsus. He cannot deny that Jesus was a wonder worker. And so what does he do? He offers an alternative explanation other than divine power and saying he was a sorcerer and a magician. Now, there's one other point to make here that caps it all off. No one in the ancient world ever outright denied that Jesus performed wonder's deeds. Christian apologists Gregory Boyd and Paul Rhodes in their book, Lord or legend, they put the argument this way. Quote, "This uniform agreement is difficult to explain "on the assumption that the Jesus story "was in fact a recently created legend "at the time the gospels were written. "If it was indeed largely legendary, "wouldn't at least some of the numerous critics "of the early Jesus movement "have raised this charge against it?" So by using the criteria of embarrassment, the criterion of embarrassment, and the criterion of enemy attestation, we have a general confidence that what the gospels report concerning Jesus' miraculous deeds were based on actual events, events that at least his audience believed to be miraculous. So that concludes our general approach to justifying the claim that Jesus was a miracle worker, providing a reasonable foundation for the claim that Jesus was a miracle worker, that his miracles were in fact, fact, factual, based on real events that those people whom experienced it believed they were witnessing miracles. So with our general approach now finished, let's get more specific. For our more specific approach, we're gonna look at two things in today's episode. First, the evidence for Jesus as a healer since according to Isaiah and the Kumran Scroll hit that we mentioned in the first break, I mean in the first segment, miracles are central to the Messiah's ministry. And so we wanna look at Jesus as the healer. And we're also gonna look at the evidence for Jesus' claim, the dead are raised up. Recall, again, from the Kumran Scroll, raising people from the dead was also considered to take place when the Messiah arrived. So two things we're looking at in this specific approach, Jesus the healer, Jesus the razor of the dead. So let's start with the claim that Jesus was a healer. As we already said, historians use various criteria for assessing the historicity of a saying or event in ancient literature. We're already looked at two, the criterion of embarrassment and the criterion of enemy attestation. Now, another criterion is multiple attestation. This refers to the principle that the more often an event or saying appears in independent sources, the more probable its historicity. Now, traditionally, it was commonly thought that each gospel represented an independent source. But since the time of literary criticism, it's been more commonly held that Mark wrote his gospel first and that Matthew and Luke relied on it, at least for much of their gospel, gospels. Furthermore, many historians believe that Matthew and Luke shared a common source that Mark did not use, historians call it Q, which refers to Quella, the German word for source. However, Q is not without its doubters, but for the sake of this content here, for the sake of our episode, for the sake of argument, we'll just go with the majority consensus because debating Q would get us too balked down here, which would conflict with our purposes for today's episode. Matthew and Luke also drew from their own unique sources that are not found in Mark or Q, and these are called special Luke tradition and special Matthew tradition. And since the Joy-9 source, as long being recognized, as independent of the synoptics, that's to say independent of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, if this view is true, then we would have five independent traditions for the four gospels. You have Mark, you would have Q, you would have M, which is special Matthew, L, which is special Luke, and J, the Joy-9 tradition. Okay, so now that we have our sources in place, right, we now come to the application of the five sources to Jesus as the healer. That Jesus was a healer, overwhelmingly meets the criterion of multiple attestation, given the five sources I just articulated. So let's start with the specific narratives in which Jesus's healing miracles are recorded. There are 16 distinct, non-overlapping accounts in five out of the five independent sources. Mark, Q, special Luke, special Matthew, and John. So for example, Mark records eight healing narratives, two cures of paralytics in chapter two, verses one through 12, and chapter three, verses one through six, two cures of blindness, in chapter 10, verses 46 through 52, in chapter 8, 22 through 26, one cure of leprosy, in chapter one, verses 40 through 45, and three cures that involve various diseases. Fever in chapter one, 29 through 31, a hemorrhage, in five, 24 through 34, and deafness in chapter seven, verses 31 through 37. The one healing miracle in the Q source is the cure of a centurion's servant at a distance, recorded in Luke seven, one through 10, and Matthew eight, five through 13. The special Luke tradition, L, records four healing narratives. One involves a paralytic in 13, 10 through 17. Another concerns the curing of leprosy in 17, 11 through 19, and two cures of various ailments. Drop C in 14, one through six, in the ear of the slave to the high priest, in 22, 49, through 51. The special Matthew tradition, M, records the healing of two blind men, in chapter nine, verses 27 through 31, of Matthew's gospel. And note, this is distinct from Jesus' healing of Bordamaeus in Mark 10, 46 through 52. The details are different. First, there are two blind men in Matthew nine, and both are unnamed. Second, we're told in Matthew nine, 28, that they meet Jesus in a house. And Mark's account of Bordamaeus, Bordamaeus meets Jesus on the road. So to round off our tally here, John relates two healings. One that involves the healing of a paralytic in John five, one through nine, and the other, the healing of a blind man, and John nine, one through 41. The 16 non-overlapping accounts of healing miracles in five out of the five independent sources for the gospels gives us good and strong reason to conclude that these gospel reports of Jesus being a healer or indeed trustworthy. That's to say, they're based on actual events in Jesus' ministry that led his followers to believe he performed healing miracles. But that's not all, there's actually more to it. Jesus' healings are also mentioned in non-narrative contexts. That's to say, they're mentioned in passing. So we were just going through those 16 non-overlapping narratives of Jesus the healer, Jesus performing healing miracles. But we also have mentions of Jesus being a healer in non-narrative contexts in passing. So for example, we have a list of healings that's believed to come from the Q source. Matthew recorded in Matthew 11, two through six and Luke seven, 18 through 23. Healing of the blind, the lame, lepers and the death. Mark tells us that those who were sick touched the friends of Jesus' fringe of Jesus' garments and were made well there in Mark 656. He also records in passing that Jesus healed many sick people who were brought to the door of Simon's mother-in-law there in Mark 132 through 34. In Mark three, seven through 10, Jesus was forced to get into a boat because many who were diseased were pressing upon him to touch him, quote, "For he had healed many," there in verse 10. Luke four, 16 through 21, tells us about how Jesus identifies himself as the anointed one who would give recovery of sight to the blind. And so it's these passing references to the disciples, and then we also have passing references to the disciples performing healing miracles in the name of Jesus in virtue of Jesus' authority. My friends, I'm coming up on the break. Stay tuned. You're listening to the Catholic reason. I'll talk to you on the other side. Well, welcome back to the Catholic reason. My friends, a radio production of St. Michael Radio based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. I'm Dr. Carlo Broussort, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic answers and a member of the Chancery Evangelization Team for the Diocese of Tulsa in Eastern Oklahoma. In today's episode, again, we're talking about Jesus' miracles and asking the question, are they fact or fiction? The claim that I am making today is that they are fact. They are historical facts, and we have good reason to believe such a claim. We have evidence to justify that claim, historically speaking. In our last segment, we were looking at the specific approach to justify the claim that Jesus was a miracle worker. And we said that we were gonna look at two things in that specific approach to give justification that Jesus was a healer because healing miracles or part and parcel of the messianic ministry, thereby giving justification that Jesus is the Messiah. And then we're going to look at Jesus, the razor of the dead and raising people from the dead because according to the Kumranzko scroll that we mentioned earlier in today's broadcast, it's part and parcel of the messianic ministry to raise people from the dead. We haven't gotten there yet. We were looking at Jesus, the healer, and looking at his healing miracles and the historical reliability of that portrait of Jesus, the healer. And one of the ways in which we were doing that, we were saying that we can justify the claim that Jesus was a healer providing historical basis for Jesus, the healer, by looking at the criterion of multiple attestation, which is the principle that whenever you have independent sources all corroborating and verifying a specific event, saying or a person that provides a strong basis for the historical reliability of that which is being reported on. And so for Jesus, the healer, we said that within you have, we have 16 non-overlapping narratives collectively that are present within the five independent sources that we have. So that's a strong multiple attestation for Jesus, the healer. And then we also, before the break, we're looking at several non-narrative references. Rather than narratives of Jesus's healing miracles, Jesus, the healer is mentioned or his miracles are mentioned in passing with a non-narrative form. And we were listing all of those non-narrative references before our last break. Now, there's another way in which we can justify Jesus, the healer, and provide reason to think that these reports are historically reliable. And that is to look at the historicity of a particular miracle story. So notice in our first approach, we were just establishing a general trust of Jesus, the healer. Now, we can actually look at a particular miracle story and provide historic evidence for the historicity of that event. And the one that I'm gonna choose for today is the healing of Bortimaeus recorded by Mark in Mark chapter 10, verses 46 through 52. Now, one thing that is in favor of its historicity is Semitic details. Semitic details that reveal a connection to the early Palestinian community, which for historians, again, is an indication of historicity. One detail in that story is the use of the Aramaic word, rabbooning, which translates as master. That's one Semitic detail. Again, providing, suggesting a connection to an early Palestinian community. And thereby limiting the time gap between the event and the report or the tradition of the event, the oral tradition, the reports of those events, eventually put down in writing by Mark. But this shows us that what's being reported on is coming from an early source, thereby precluding legendary developments. It also includes the story of Bortimaeus, also includes the other Semitism of Son of David, which is a title that was commonly used in the early Christian community, and thus probably dates to the time of Jesus' ministry, thereby again, precluding the possibility of legendary developments. So those are a couple of Semitism's there, Semitic details. But you also, the historicity of this healing is further supported by details that don't serve any apologetical or catechetical purposes, which, as many will argue, suggests an eyewitness testimony. So for example, Mark names the recipient of the miracle, Bortimaeus. He ties the named individual to a geographical place, the roadside, outside Jericho. He marks the point of Jesus' ministry when the healing takes place on his way up to Jerusalem for his passion and death. Mark tells us in Mark 1032. And Mark marks the time of the miracle, shortly before the Passover, according to Mark 14.1. These details, this sort of mundane, vivid, minute details, non-apologetical details suggest that the story comes from an eyewitness. How else would they be known? And they have no apologetical value in so far as trying to convince people to believe that Jesus is a healer. These are just details, part and parcel of the story that he's including suggesting an eyewitness account. And if an eyewitness account, they're historically reliable. No possibility of legendary development. Now, we also have the evidence or evidence to suggest that the eyewitness was probably Bortimaeus, right? According to the famous Catholic Bible scholar, John P. Meyer, was probably true that the eyewitness account, which those vivid, mundane, detailed details, my new details suggest an eyewitness account, it was probably Bortimaeus himself. New Testament scholar Richard Bockum, in his book, "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses," or yeah, "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses" supports this thesis by arguing it's likely the reason the names of figures like Bortimaeus were preserved in the Gospels was that they became members of the Christian community and served as the primary tradition bearer for these events. And this rings true. If someone encountered Jesus and the Christians never heard from that person again, it's unlikely that person's name would have been remembered and passed down. For example, the name of the father of the possessed boy whom Jesus exercised in Luke 9, 40 through 44 was not preserved. Unlike Jarrus, whose name was preserved. And so it's likely the boy's father didn't join the Christian community, whereas Jarrus did. So in conclusion here, having an eyewitness of an event is of tremendous value. But having the very person who was healed as the eyewitness tradition bearer, that's even better, since it further ensures that the story won't be tainted with legendary developments or fabrications. And so the story of Bortimaeus is just one example, among many, where the narratives of Jesus' healing miracles meet the historiographical criteria, certain criteria that are used to establish the historicity of the report, of the historicity of the event that's being reported on. Now, we don't have time to look at the others, but for now suffice to say that when we combine the account of Jesus' healing of Bortimaeus itself, with the multiple attestation evidence of Jesus' healing miracles throughout five of the five independent gospel sources and the non-narrative references, man, we have good reason to conclude that the New Testament portrait of Jesus as a miraculous healer is a portrait that dates back to the time of Jesus. This is what his earliest followers believed him to be. And so there's no possibility that the portrait of Jesus as a miracle worker is a legendary development. Okay, so that wraps up our focus on Jesus the healer. Recall, we said there are two things that we're gonna look at in order to constitute this specific approach to justifying the claim that Jesus was a miracle worker. We're gonna look at Jesus the healer, which we've already done. Now, let's move to looking at Jesus as one who raises the dead. This is a specific, a second specific line of defense for the reliability of the historical portrait of Jesus as a miracle worker. And the reason why we focus on Jesus the razor of the dead is because recall, according to that kumran scroll, the messianic apocalypse that we looked at in the first segment, part and parcel of the messianic ministry is raising the dead. Now, there are three accounts of Jesus raising people from the dead, Jairus's daughter in Mark 5, 21 through 43. And, sorry, the son of the widow of name in Luke 7, 11 through 17, and Lazarus in John 11, 1 through 44. I got hung up because Mark records the accounts of Jesus raising Jairus's daughter, but the parallel stories in Luke is Luke 8, 43, 56, and Matthew 9, 18 through 26. Okay, but the question becomes, can we trust these reports about Jesus? Are they historically reliable? Well, one thing they have going for them is that the claim that Jesus raised people from the dead is found in multiple independent sources. So what does that mean? That meets the criterion of multiple attestation. Mark, John, portions of Matthew, like Matthew 11, two through six quoted at the beginning of this episode and Luke's gospel that are independent of Mark, right? So that creates independent sources. Mark, John, portions of Matthew and Luke's gospel, four independent sources. That works in favor of the claim that Jesus raised people from the dead, multiple attestation. Now, another criterion that's met is a lack of exaggeration. The evangelists don't exaggerate the number of these kinds of miracles. Mark, Matthew, and John all confine themselves to one case, and Luke includes two. He repeats Mark's story of Jairus's daughter, and he provides another. If they were simply making up these accounts to impress their readers, well, then you would expect them to appeal to this kind of story more frequently, but they don't. My friends, I'm gonna have to hit the pause button here because we're coming up on our third and final break. Stay tuned. You're listening to the Catholic reason. More to come on the other side. God bless. Well, welcome back my friends to the Catholic reason. In today's episode, we've been looking at reasons why we should believe that Jesus was a miracle worker. And in our last segment, we were looking at that portrait of Jesus as razor of the dead, one who raised the dead. And then we asked the question, which reasons do we have to believe that this portrait is historically reliable? And one reason was that the criterion of multiple attestation is indeed met concerning Jesus as one who raises the dead. Secondly, there's a lack of exaggeration. And that was the point I was making before our last break. The gospel writers, you would expect them to appeal to this kind of story of raising people from the dead more frequently if they're kind of making this stuff up and fabricating it, but they don't. And that lack of exaggeration is a strong indication of the historicity of Jesus being one who raised the dead. Now, those two criteria are established sort of a general trust and provide general reasons why we should believe Jesus is one who raised the dead. But like with regard to Jesus the healer, we can also look at the historicity of a specific story. The stories themselves also contain elements that show they're reliable. And I just want to focus on one here, the raising of Jarrus' daughter recorded in Mark 5 21 through 43. First, the high status of Jarrus as a synagogue official within the region of Galilee makes the event hypothetically checkable. It's not like this miracle is being performed for some Joe Schmo that no one ever heard of, right? Second, as we mentioned before, that Jarrus' name is even preserved suggests that he became a member of the Christian community. And this means that he would have been the primary tradition bearer of the event of the raising of his daughter from the dead. And having such a tradition bearer gives support for it not being a fabrication and it not being simply legendary. Third, Mark tells us in 537 that Jesus brought with him into the house of Peter, James, and John brought with him into the house of Jarrus, Peter, James, and John. So we have further eyewitnesses of the event who would have ensured faithful transmission of what happened. So not only Jarrus as an eyewitness, but Peter, James, and John. Fourth, this story meets the criterion of embarrassment. Remember that when Jesus told the mourners that the little girl was sleeping were told they laughed at him. People laughing at and scorning Jesus would have left a bitter taste in the mouth of the early Christians. If the early Christians weren't concerned with truth and historical facticity, they wouldn't have added this little detail to the oral tradition. Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that this event was part of the primitive tradition that Mark is drawing on, and that it dates to the time of Jesus' ministry and given that close temporal proximity, excluding legendary developments. Fifthly, a fifth reason to believe that the raising of Jarrus' daughter is historically reliable, the story contains unique semitism, semitic details, which are grammatical or syntactical details that reveal the influence of the Semitic language. Yes, semitism, so Semitic details would be other things. Semitism's is a particular kind of Semitic detail, grammatical or syntactical details that reveal the influence of the Semitic language. Scholars view the presence of Semitism's as providing good reason to think that the narrative has its origin within a Palestinian community near the time of Jesus. And again, the closer a narrative is to the events it narrates, the more reliable it is. John P. Meyer gives several, but one in particular is Jesus' statement to Lithakum, which is Aramaic for "Little Girl, I say to you, rise." They're in Mark 541. That Mark preserves the phrase in its Aramaic form, suggests an authentic, primitive tradition. Not only is this phrase significant because it's an Aramaic, but as Father Robert Spitzer points out in his book, "God So Love the World," it's in popular Aramaic, as opposed to formal or written Aramaic, which would have been to Lithakumi. This would be akin to me saying y'all versus you all, or that ain't gonna happen versus that will not happen, right? Why would Mark preserve to Lithakum if it's an informal way of speaking? Perhaps because he was trying to preserve the expression as it came from the lips of Jesus himself. I can imagine that if I were giving a talk that was being transcribed, that transcriber wouldn't change my southern Louisiana expressions to standard English, because such expressions identified me as a southerner, and particularly a cajun from southern Louisiana. Similarly, it's likely that Mark doesn't alter Jesus's colloquial mode of speech because he's trying to preserve the expression because he's trying to preserve the expression as it came from Jesus. The late Jewish scholar Giza Vermez, or Vermez actually, reaches a similar conclusion. He writes this, "It may also be presumed that like Peter, whose northern identity betrayed his speech." And that's, he cites several different passages like Matthew 2673. Jesus also spoke the Galilean dialect of Aramaic. His command addressed to the dead daughter of Jarrus is reproduced as to Lithakum in the oldest codices of Mark 541. But Kum, Vermez goes on to write, represents Galilean slovenly speech in joining the masculine form of the imperative to a feminine subject as against a grammatically correct Kumi, which we find in some of the more recent and polished manuscripts of the gospel. And that's from his book, The Changing Faces of Jesus, page 268. Again, Giza Vermez. Finally, it's worth noting the absence of Christological titles in the narrative. This would have been a perfect opportunity to highlight Jesus's divinity with a post-resurrection title like Lord, given that he's manifesting his power over life and death. But Mark, Matthew, and Luke all refer to Jesus only as teacher in their account of raising Jarrus's daughter. Luke does up the ante a little bit with master in his account of Jesus healing the hemorrhaging woman in Luke 846, which is sandwiched into the account of Jarrus's daughter, but even that fall short of the divine title, Lord. So the lack of Christological details provides yet further evidence for the historicity of the raising of Jarrus's daughter. So given the multiple attestation, the lack of exaggeration, and the historicity of the specific narrative of raising Jarrus's daughter, the records of Jesus raising the dead or indeed historically reliable. We can trust that what they tell us is based on actual things Jesus did that led his followers to say he raised people from the dead. So in some here, we have our general approach to justifying the claim that Jesus was indeed a miracle worker. That general approach involves establishing a general trustworthiness of the gospels themselves. If we have reason to think that the gospels are generally trustworthy, then we can trust the reports that they give us of Jesus being a miracle worker. And in today's episode, we gave a sampling of how we might do that and achieve that end of establishing a general trustworthiness. The gospel writers meet the criterion of embarrassment, and we gave one example of that of the Pharisees saying that Jesus cast out demons by Beelzebub in Mark 322. We showed that the gospel writers and their reports meet the criterion of enemy attestation specifically with regard to Jesus, a miracle worker, because you have the critics of Jesus affirming that there is a supernatural character to what he's doing, which is simply trying to explain it away, offering alternative explanations to the divine explanation, namely that he's a magician, he's a sorcerer, or in the case of the Pharisees, he's actually doing it by the power of the devil. And so given that the gospel reports of Jesus as the miracle worker meet a variety of different criteria that historians look to to establish the historical credibility of a report of some ancient figure, that provides a reasonable foundation for us to be able to conclude, yeah, these reports of Jesus, the miracle worker are reasonable and historically reliable, and we can trust them. And then the specific approach that we took in today's episode was to look at two specific things about Jesus, the miracle worker, two different kinds of miracles, the healing miracles of Jesus, and Jesus raising the dead, concerning the hearing, healing miracles of Jesus, the report of Jesus, the healer, meets the criterion of multiple attestation, the independent sources all verifying that he was indeed a healer, and we also have the historicity of the specific miracle story of the healing of Bartimaeus in Mark 10, 46 through 52. And then Jesus, the razor of the dead, it meets the criterion of multiple attestation, there is a lack of exaggeration, and the specific story of raising Jarrus' daughter from the dead is itself historically reliable, and we gave, I think, five different reasons to think that it is historically reliable. Actually, six, I think, is what we went through. So our claim is that the gospel reports of Jesus as a miracle worker are historically reliable, and we did this in two ways. We've established a general trust in the gospel reports that Jesus had the reputation of being a miracle worker by appealing to the criteria of embarrassment and enemy attestation. We've also established the credibility of specific gospel reports that Jesus was believed to be a healer and someone who raised people from the dead. Now, there's one more part to this apologetic approach that we're leaving off today because one may very well want to take the extra step to provide the historical grounds for believing Jesus rose from the dead himself, and thereby providing reason to think that what these early Christians believed to be true, namely that Jesus was a miracle worker, was in fact true, that those events that Jesus performed that led people to believe he was a miracle worker were, in fact, miracles. But I think what we've provided today is sufficient evidence that Jesus, a healer, Jesus a razor of the dead, Jesus a miracle worker, is a portrait that we can reasonably believe and thus give provide reason to believe that Jesus indeed is the Messiah and is Lord. These are not fictional events. These events can be rooted in things that Jesus did. Our belief that Jesus was a miracle worker, it is rooted in historical, reliable historical testimony, thereby making our belief rational and reasonable. My friends, that brings us to the end of today's episode. Join me again next week for the Catholic Reason. Tell a friend, I'll talk to you then. God bless. (upbeat music)
