Loading...I’ve been arguing that Christians eventually converted the Roman empire because of their great miracles. But, well, I’m an atheist and I don’t believe in miracles. So how exactly does that square up? How can miracles convert anyone if miracles don’t happen?
Well, as it turns out, it absolutely can happen (and it doesn’t take a miracle!) Before continuing on to demonstrate the centrality of miracles to the Christian take-over of the Roman world, I pause here for some reflection on how it works….
Again this is from my book Triumph of Christianity (Simon & Schuster, 2018), slightly edited.
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How are we to credit the Christian stories of miraculous conversions? Anyone who wants to accept these stories at face value will say they happened. But what about anyone else? Anyone, say, who doesn’t believe in miracles?
We are confronted with three inescapable facts, all of which need to be accounted for. First,
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Every time I read your blog, I am reminded of two things: first, that I have forgotten far too much of the books I have already read; and second, that my mind often turns to cultures very different from Christianity.
Your discussion reminded me of Daniel L. Everett’s well-known book *Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes*, about the Pirahã people. As I recall, when Everett was serving as a missionary and tried to speak to them about Christ, they would ask, “Did you see him?” When he answered that he had not, they quickly lost interest. As you know, after many years among them, Everett himself eventually lost his Christian faith and became an atheist linguist and anthropologist.
The existence of a people with such an immediate, experience-based view of reality is astonishing to me. But perhaps it is equally astonishing that many of us are able to believe stories about events from two thousand years ago that we ourselves have never seen.
I find myself wondering whether both attitudes reveal something deeply human: the need for direct experience on the one hand, and the equally powerful human capacity to trust stories transmitted with conviction across generations on the other.
The distinction between miracles happening, people believing they happened, and people hearing stories about them is helpfully precise. Looking forward to seeing how the argument develops.
Respectfully,
Tjalling
There are also the non-miracles that confuse or trick people. Like “demon possession” that may be an epileptic episode quickly cured for the moment and “healing” like we see today in some groups. It doesn’t matter if it recurs again later because the person “just didn’t have enough faith” or lost it later. Like other groups and in other areas like prophecies, aren’t failures just explained away or not recorded by the faithful?
Usually!
Did pagan religious leaders claim that their gods were doing miracles in their day? If so, what made Christian miracle stories more persuasive?
Yup! For Christianity to succeed, the miracle stories didn’t need to be MORE persuasive. They could be far less persuasive and Xty would still have won out. If a Christian preacher and a pagan both proclaim that their God (say, Jesus and Apollo) did better miraxles to a group of 100 people (who worshiped neither of them) , and the Xn convinced only 3 out of the 100, Xty would win. It would gain 3 people and lose no one; paganism would lose 3 and gain no one. That’s why the exclusivity really matters. Do that for a few hundred years, converting only 3/100 at a time, and you take over the empire.
I get what you are saying about exclusivity. But that goes both ways. If a Christian reverts back to paganism, Christianity loses that person and paganism gains him or her back. So the conversion needs to stick for Christianity to take over an empire. I’m thinking that good miracle stories could help. The merging of god worship with ethics (love your neighbor) could also be a factor. A feeling of community could help. Basically I’m saying that Christianity won not by just converting but also keeping people in the faith. Any thoughts on how they did that?
Yes, that would be true. It did happen sometimes. But not usually.
Dr. Ehrman, I found several volumes of Meier’s A MARGINAL JEW at the local library. Do you feel that the work remains relevant in the field of historical Jesus research? Did Meier’s work as a priest impact the objectivity (so far as such a thing is possible) of his research and analysis?
He was brilliant and terrifically learned. I disagree with him on points, but he’s one of the top experts of modern times.
By Christianity that converted the Roman Empire, are you talking about the later post-apostolic Gentile religion that developed after the collapse of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and after the last Hebrew bishop had departed Jerusalem in AD135? Or are you referring to the later “Christianity” that became detached from Torah, Gentile in leadership, increasingly universalized, philosophical and Greco-Roman, and eventually imperial under Constantine?
That is an irreconcilably different Christianity than the original movement centered on the end of the Old Covenant age, the gathering of the diaspora, synagogue-based proclamation, covenant fulfillment and imminent judgment upon Jerusalem. The earliest Jesus movement was still operating inside Israel’s covenant world. Even Paul repeatedly says his ministry concerned the “hope of Israel” and synagogue-centered proclamation among Jews, proselytes, God-fearers, and covenant-adjacent Gentiles (not all Gentiles in the universal sense).
I believe you are correct about how miracle stories psychologically and socially spread belief. But the “Christianity” that eventually conquered the empire was already several stages removed from the original Israel-centered movement described in the New Testament. Do you agree?
I don’t think in either of the periods you’re referring to Christianity was a single thing. There were lots of Christianity in all periods of the first four centuries. As Christians of various kinds were converting peopel, they were also trying to convert one another to their particular perspectives. The form that won out within Christian circles is also the one that won out when the empire converted; Marcionites, Ebionites, other jewish Christians, various Gnostic groups, Montanists, etc. were all by then on the margins, and so in the fourth century — when the fuller takeover was happening — proto-orthodox Xty had pretty much become orthodox Xty — a form of gth efaith very different from what was found in the 1st century.
I agree that multiple competing Christianities existed in the first centuries, and your admission that fourth-century orthodoxy became “very different” from first-century Christianity is historically significant.
But I think the central question still remains unresolved: what was the original covenantal scope and historical horizon of the earliest Jesus movement?
Even the diverse first-century groups you mention were still operating within an Israel-centered framework: Israel’s Messiah, Israel’s scriptures, Israel’s covenant, Israel’s temple, Israel’s restoration, and an imminent eschatological crisis tied to Jerusalem and that generation.
What seems to change after AD70 — and especially after AD135 — is not merely theological variation, but the movement’s entire center of gravity. Once Jewish Jerusalem leadership disappeared and Christianity became predominantly Gentile in leadership and Greco-Roman in orientation, it increasingly detached from the covenantal world that originally produced it.
So my question is this: at what point does “development” become recognition that the later universalized Greco-Roman religion was no longer simply another form of the original Israel-centered movement, but something fundamentally different in scope, identity, and purpose?
Yes, I’d say it’s hard to say when somethihng differnt is *fundamentally* different — not just with Christianity but with, well, most things that change. I’d say that in some sense the religion of Paul was fundamentally different from that of Jesus. In other ways not….
Prof Ehrman, I think your admission is more significant than it may initially appear. If Paul’s religion could already be “fundamentally different” from Jesus’ religion in some respects, then the question becomes not whether transformation occurred, but how far the transformation eventually went.
My point is that even Paul’s movement still remained inside an identifiable Israelite covenantal framework: Israel’s Messiah, Israel’s scriptures, Israel’s covenant promises, synagogue-centered missions, the “hope of Israel,” and an imminent eschatology tied to that generation and Jerusalem’s coming judgment.
That entire covenantal world largely disappears after AD70 and especially after AD135. Once Jewish Jerusalem leadership vanished, Christianity increasingly became detached from Torah, detached from Israel’s restoration expectations, and increasingly shaped by Gentile leadership, Greek metaphysics, and imperial structures foreign to the earliest apocalyptic Jewish movement.
So while I agree transformations were already underway, the question is whether the original movement itself was still fundamentally tied to a historically bounded covenant crisis centered on Israel.
If the earliest Jesus movement was not contextually and audience limited, why are virtually all of its central categories tied specifically to Israel, Jerusalem, the temple, diaspora regathering, covenant fulfillment, and events expected within “this generation”?
The earliest community of Jesus’ followers certainly saw themselves as members of the (Israelite/Jewish) covenantal community. That didn’t end with 70 or 135, though. There continued to be “Jewish Christian” groups for centuries. Still today in fact! But they moved into the minority probably by the end of the first century.
My wife’s uncle became a Christian after a night when a tornado struck while he and his family were sheltering in their mobile home. In the middle of it, he prayed to God and promised that if they were spared, he would dedicate his life to the Lord. They survived, and from that point on he became a devoted Christian.
What history can tell us are the events themselves: there was a tornado, he prayed and pleaded with God, destruction happened around him, he and his family were spared, and afterward he became a Christian. Those are historical claims about what happened. But questions of meaning- why he was spared, whether God intervened, or what deeper significance should be drawn from it.. those move beyond history and into the realm of faith.
While someone can reasonably ask, “But what about those who weren’t spared?” and others may argue that people sometimes become overly focused on finding meaning in everything, it still seems that to say there is no deeper meaning to the significant events of our lives risks reducing human existence to something rather meaningless.
While this was apparently true, it begs the question: How did early Christians understand those stories? Did they take them literally, as symbol-infused “parables” of a sort, or what? Surely there is evidence of two understandings: a literal one among hoi poloi, and a symbolic one among those with ears to hear. Those who were not educated would have perhaps taken Jesus’ calming the storm and walking on the water literally. Those who knew the traditions would, I suggest, have readily understood the message in terms of divine control over the chaos waters – the tehom. That motif recurs from Gen. 1 through Noah’s Flood, the parting of the yam sup, Job 9:8, and many of the Davidic psalms, not to mention many other passages and it relates, imo, directly to Christain talk of the powers of darkness – viz., the Roman Empire. Don’t we need a nuanced account of what early converts understood?
All the references to these stories in our sources take them as literal events, not parables.
Hey First Post,
What about the possibility/probability that they actually did perform “miracles” like many perform them today. Charlatans, snake oil salesman. . . You still have many preachers today healing the sick, curing cancer, people throwing their crutches away and the church constituents fainting because of the power they witnessed. Robert Tilton amongst many others were criminally convicted for defrauding many people of their hard earned money. A lot of their tactics have been exposed.
Magic with a lowercase m. When I attended Sunday school as a youth I was so amazed by Jesus because I thought he was a magician ala Gandalf or something like that. I hated the two hour mass, but the early morning bible studies always engrossed my imagination.
Or as attested to by Thomas Jefferson, miracles were just mistaken identity or optical illusions. Also, many people were extremely superstitious/uneducated and more susceptible to manipulation. In other words the greatest conversion tool available to Early Christian creators. Sometimes, they went too far. (the virgin birth) but people were already too far down the rabbit hole to back out.
Yes, it’s possible there were charlatans among them. I would not say they were doing miracles, though. (There are indeed stories of “fake” miracle workers in early Xty. Usually they are put in contrast to the “real” ones — as in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, who faced “competition” from the heretic Simon Magus)
ACorzo – I agree. We should consider modern-day examples of countless ‘miracles’ that are staged for monetary gain or attention for fame. It is so common today, documented cases of charlatans staging miracles, that it should be a reasonable historical explanation of common, ancient references to Jesus as a magician or sorcerer. Jewish and Greek sources (Celsus) referred to Jesus the Nazarene as a sorcerer, or magician. Many ‘healing’ miracles could have been easily staged to gain attention – pretending to be blind, and then miraculously seeing; pretending to be lame, and then walking; covering up imagined leprosy, and then throwing back a hood to reveal a normal face; writhing in a ‘demonic’ seizure, and then coming out of it; feeding a multitude in a remote location – not impossible with support from a ‘capable’ backer – an ingenious ‘miracle’, effecting so many people all at once, and their stomachs. There is a reasonable historical basis for having the early Jesus movement heavily identified with ‘miracles’, rather than simply enthusiastic fabrication of overzealous followers.
When I think of various accounts of miracles accepted as true by many Christians because—all those witnesses! I always recall that in 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, thousands of Iranians saw the Ayatollah Khomeini’s face appear on the surface of the full moon. That’s a lot of witnesses. But somehow that’s different from an appearance of, for instance, the Virgin Mary.
@ Bart – I should be very curious to know what the evidence is for that, since I disagree but have an open mind on the matter. I think we would agree that the lake perambulation was not an instance of “magic.” Nor are rationalist explanations a la Paulus plausible. But I do think my suggestion is much more plausible, relative to my data, and more in line with a principle of charity in interpretation.
I think you indicated that converts sometimes (often) understood miracle stories metaphorically instead of literally; my response is that we have no evidence of that. All our sources treat them as literal events. I’m not sure what evidence you’re looking for? If you read discussions of the miracles of Jesus or his apostles or of Xns in the present, they are never discussed as metaphor but as proofs of the gospel.
Mark 6:13 “They drove out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them.”
The oils healed the sick.
There’s a lot of medicated oils, notably with opium, that simply hadn’t made their way to the most underdeveloped region in the incorporated ancient world, but opium and other medicinals are featured Very Prominently in the friezes of the land of Herod Antipas’, his first wife Phaesalis, and his second wife Herodias’ ancestry – Nabataea.
Why can’t we just think of the miracles as a tribal people’s way of describing new technology, Gods Must Be Crazy style?
Jesus manually couches a cataract in Mark 8:22-25; that’s why its still blurry on try one, and functional on try two.
For a modern corollary, I met Hawai‘i’s governor when he was a physician campaigning for the former monarch seat that is now subsumed into empire.
He promoted his native Hawaiian ties (marital alliance style) and talked about healing the poorest of the rural poor in Kau to the crowd.
Dr. Josh (Yahoshua) Green was chosen by a multi-ethnic Hawai’i State but actual Native Hawaiians wanted someone who had notable Native Hawaiian patrilineality.
Jesus didn’t have a notable Jewish dad, so it was a no-go for many.
I myself have experienced what I now call “the holy spirit” on two different occasions. It was powerful enough each time to change me, change the way I looked at things and change the way I behaved. I’m not a believer in the divinity of Jesus, nor am I a believer in the unerring word of “God” in the Gospels. The Bible, while being very interesting, is just a collection of books, parables, letters, etc., as far as I am concerned. Not dictated by some god.
It’s hard to describe the feelings of the two experiences I had with “the holy spirit” (I call it that because I can’t think of a better description) but it was very powerful, very intense, and like I said, life changing. I became convinced that there is some sort of force, maybe in the way gravity is a force, that is intelligent, supremely aware, deeply personal, beautiful to experience, and full of grace and goodness.
Although you don’t need anyone’s “approval”, I approve. This is the INTERNAL SIGN, aka, the INTERNAL WITNESS. Harland and Diana Hay had a Christian ministry beginning in the 1970s (both are deceased). Their message was that the Bible is an idol. Eight of the letters of the New Testament are 100% forgeries and four have insertions. Revelation preserved Hindu myths and wrote fiction of caste tattoos. The Beast was modeled after Alexander the Great (and possibly a response to Nero). A young man has the YouTube channel with the message of Harland and Diana Hay: BIBLEisMARKofBEAST. Harland said that he met a ghost in a house. He told the ghost to leave and not come back!!!!
INTERNAL MIRACLES. We are hearing the testimonies of former Muslims who claim to have experienced visions of Jesus.
Charlatans and fraudsters exist; I am not denying that. The easiest fraud to perpetrate is the internal miracle. There are Christians evangelists who are charlatans; I am not denying that. Jesus had a parable about fakes. It is the Parable of the Tares. The “tare” is a weed in the wheat fields. Thank you for posting.
I’ve been listening to talks by Richard Rohr. Your description is very similar to his description of a mystical experience. He says the “force”or ground of being, or God or whatever name you want to give it, can’t be understood by our rational minds, but can only be experienced. I think we have to allow some space for mystery in our universe we may never understand even with all our technology.
@Bart Ehrman,
I grant the fact that their *seeming* to take the miracle stories to be literally true is evidence that they are doing so. But by itself this fact is not dispositive, imo. As the philosopher of language J. L. Austin quipped, “No remark without remarkability.” Sometimes things are left unsaid because everyone presumed to be listening knows them to be obvious. Of course, I haven’t seen all these sources and their exact wording, so I defer to your judgement. Criteria of obviousness are unfortunately context-relative.
I pretty much agree. (My wife is an Austin scholar.) But any claim requires evidence. If something is claimed to have been “obvious” and therefore “left unsaid” — why should the claim be considered likely? It can’t simply be because it seems to be. One of the biggest problems with doing history is realizing that our “common sense” was, in many times and places, “non sense.” So it’s very hard to argue that “they must have been thinking X Y or Z)
Granted, a miracle is a “sign”. There is an “internal sign”. Granted, internal hallucinations and delusions are noted in the medical literature. There is a religion in America called ECK. Shut your eyes, click your heels together, and express whatever it is that you want to happen. Don’t stop until it happens for you as you envisioned it. Yet, the ACTS OF THE APOSTLES and 1st CORINTHIANS described an “internal sign”. It is VOLUNTEERS ONLY. The volunteers are probably “vetted” supernaturally, too. Some “volunteers” were surprised. Corrie ten Boom was surprised.
Medical literature does not have any explanation for the internal sign of ACTS and 1st CORINTHIANS. Yet, medical literature describes past-life regressions in deep hypnotic sessions with board-certified psychiatrists. One example is Dr. Brian Weiss of Florida. He wrote the book: Many Lives, Many Masters. Hypnosis was taught to psychiatrists, gynecologists, and even dentists. Some of them wrote books of their patients.
Past-life hypnotic regressions and the “internal sign” are the two sides of the same coin. It is a different currency. “Richard Earl” commented May 26th (three days prior) about an experience. An internal sign.