Henry Imler February 2nd, 2007

Introduction

The purpose of this research paper is to analyze and compare the use of miracle stories in the Canonical and Gnostic gospels. The Canonical gospels will be used to represent what became the orthodox Christian community in West Asia and the Mediterranean. The Gospels of the Nag Hammadi library will be representative of the Gnostic sects with the similar understanding that Gnosticism was not a monolithic tradition, but had many forms. Karen King, in What is Gnosticism?, dismantles the assumption that there was a monolithic entity called Gnosticism. The origins of the assumption date back to the early church fathers who created the dichotomy between orthodoxy and heresy, a dichotomy that still exists in religion and scholarship to this day (King 216). As I have defined it, these groups stretch from the communities that formed the Canonical and Gnostic gospels on to those that ended up employing them. The focus on this paper is not on the communities themselves, but on the writers of the gospels and how they employed miracle stories in their works and how they intended to affect their implied readers. The purpose of this is to obtain a better grasp of how each group viewed reality and employed rhetoric for the purposes of advancing their worldviews.

First, the metaphysical basis of varying approaches to miracle stories will be examined with an emphasis on Hume and Lewis’ positions. Luke will be used as representative of the Canonical gospel tradition. Each Gnostic gospel will be examined individually with the goal of surveying how each author used miracles. Finally, the results of the Canonical and Gnostic gospels’ attitudes towards miracles will be compared and contrasted.

I will argue that the Canonical and Gnostic gospels employed miracle stories with opposite effects. In the Canonical gospels, the primary set of miracle stories served a marketing function, drawing in the first and second century readers to the Canonical gospels. The immediacy of miracle stories to the gospel message formed what Hume would later term a “constant conjunction.” This constant conjunction served to link in the readers mind the practicality of the effects of the miracles and the way of life demanded by Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the gospels. The same power that manifested itself in the miracles was behind the teaching. Once this link of earthly benefits to earthly teaching had been established, a second set of miracle stories were employed to draw the reader to other-worldly benefits and to the corresponding set of other-worldly teachings. This is the opposite effect that the gospels of the Nag Hammadi Library intend to have on their readers. I will argue that the Nag Hammadi gospels, used miracles for a different function; the texts only employed miracles sparsely, using them to emphasize the divine spark in everyone and the priority of spirit over matter.

Bias Examined

Before beginning the analysis, several terms and issues need to be explored. After all, without the same definitions, nothing can be agreed upon. First off, what is meant by a miracle needs to be addressed. In this paper, whenever the term “miracle” is used, it will refer to any event that takes place outside the normal laws of nature, usually acted by the divine, by one that has authority given to him or her by the divine, or by one that has reached a high level of understanding. These events can be dramatic, such as the raising of someone from the dead, or mundane, such as receiving a vision of hidden knowledge. The emphasis is on supernatural action in the natural world.

Another important preliminary examination in any study of occurrences and use of miracles is the metaphysical framework one used in his or her analysis of the miracles accounts. Restated, one should explore and expose his or her biases towards miracle stories before launching into a study of them. Quite naturally, if a person believed wholesale in the occurrence of miracles, his or her approach would be quite different from a person who is an adamant denier of the possibility of miracles. Therefore, this section of this paper will explore the possibility and likelihood of miracles with a concluding account of how they will be dealt with in this paper.

A devastating argument against the existence of and belief in miracles came from the Scottish philosopher and historian, David Hume. In his work, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume said, “A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.“
(Hume 73) Hume used what he called the probability principle to discern whether miracles should be believed. For Hume, eyewitness testimony was the most trustworthy evidence one can have of specific instances of history. However, there were problems with the reliability of eyewitness testimony as Hume demonstrated. All inferences are never actually proved; they are merely “implied occurrences of causation” due to constant conjunctions of events (Hume 27-28).

Eyewitness testimony was also shaken by the fact that humans sometimes told falsehoods and were sometimes prone to confusion (Hume 78-79). Lastly, one needed to take into account the uniformity of experiences and how the uniformity aligned with the eyewitness testimony. If the eyewitness testimony matched up with past testimonies and experiences, then it may be assumed the testimony is more likely to be accurate. However, if the testimony contradicted what has been observed in the past, then one has reason to doubt the testimony’s accuracy.

“We entertain suspicion concerning any matter of fact, when the witnesses contradict each other; when they are but a few, are of a doubtful character; when they have an interest in what they affirm; when they deliver their testimony with hesitation, or on the contrary, with too violent asseverations (Hume 75).”

When this reasoning is applied to the gospel miracle accounts, at least some of the negative criteria are meet. In places the gospel accounts contradict one another, at least in sequence. For instance, was Peter’s mother-in-law healed before Peter was called to be a disciple as in Luke 4:38-40 reports, or after as is reported in Matthew 8.14-15? In a Humeian analysis, this would be important because even though this discrepancy is probably due to a difference in editing, it still implies that one of the two is factually false and that calls into question the absolute reliability of the text. The number of eyewitnesses of these miracles is also disputed because one cannot go back to the earliest eyewitnesses and has to rely on mostly oral traditions handed down from the eyewitnesses. The gospel writers, as evangelists, had an exceeding interest in what they are affirming.

With eyewitness testimony called into question, Hume turned next to the subject of the testimony, the miracles themselves. His definition of miracle was that they were violations of the laws of nature. They were, by definition, extremely improbable; the laws of nature were as immutable as Christians perceive God to be. Hume maintained that since there is uniform experience that miracles did not happen, this amounted to “direct and full proof” against the testimony of miracles. Therefore, “no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle (Hume 77).” On the basis on these two principles, Hume maintained that there will always be more proof against a miracle occurring than for it. Therefore, since a
wise man proportions his belief to the evidence, one should always reject a miraculous story.

The greatest problem for Hume’s treatment was that it seemed to disavow his other attempts to make sense of reality. Hume was very adamant elsewhere that one was to regard the supposed laws of nature as mere constant conjunctions. As such, one was never protected from violations of these constant conjunctions because of a lack of observation of the connectedness between any two events. If one is to adopt this view, then there cannot be any laws of nature for miracles to rail. I might have missed something in his treatment of causality and miracles, thus I too, “keep my mind still open to instruction (Hume 23).” For the moment, let one give grace to Hume’s contradiction and allow for both skepticism and the laws of nature. With that said, his arguments for the disavowal of miracle testimony are unscathed by this counter-argument.

Hume has been answered by two other convincing arguments, the first one stems from probability calculus and C.S. Lewis proposed the second one. The argument from probability calculus maintained that Hume used bad math in his analysis of the probability of miracles. Dr. Craig went into this argument in detail in his debate with Dr. Ehrman at the College of the Holy Cross in March of 2006. A brief summary will be given here. The probability of a miraculous event X needs to be ran not just with background knowledge, but also with background knowledge and evidence (Ehrman and Craig 14-19). With this change, the probability of a miracle having occurred gives value to the evidence for it. Therefore, if there is ever strong historical evidence for a miraculous event, such as multiple attestations, then the probability is quite high

Lewis acknowledges Hume’s flaw that I have noted above and expounds on it. Hume’s big assumption was the Uniformity of Nature, as Lewis terms it. Lewis said that Hume is using probabilities to analyze the Uniformity of Nature and that such an examination is fruitless. He likens the situation to timetables for a school. No study of the timetables themselves can let one know if it is possible to change the timetables. He said, “To find that out you must eavesdrop in the [school] master’s common-room. It is no use studying the time-table (Lewis 125).” Notice that this analogy assumed there was a schoolmaster that set up the timetables. Quite naturally, if there was such a schoolmaster, then he could have been at liberty to amend the tables to his liking. Likewise, once God, the Supernatural, is allowed, one has no security against miracles. Probability as a judge of possibility is thrown out the window. Probability can only be used to determine what most likely happened, or what happened in general. History, on the other hand, should try to determine what happened in the specific. Therefore, while probability can and should be employed to help determine what likely occurred in the past, one should also be mindful that even in the bell curve; there are exceptions to the norm.

For Hume there was no schoolmaster and therefore no one to amend the timetables. This is the crux of the problem. If one admits God in their historical study, one must admit the possibility of miracles. That was the over arching point of Lewis’s work. Hume’s approach is rightly termed as a methodological atheist approach and therefore no miracles are possible, while Lewis’ approach can be termed as a methodological theist approach and therefore miracles are possible. All that is left is to prove the existence of God, and to determine how it interacts with the world. That is the historian’s conundrum; an unwarranted assumption either way must be made in order to approach the miracle stories in the Bible or any other work. An assumption on God’s existence or nonexistence must be made in order for one to evaluate the miracle accounts. However, it is well outside the scope of this paper to prove or disprove the existence of God, which is needed to affirm or deny a methodological atheistic approach or the methodological theist approach, the only two allowed in a historical-critical approach. However, whether or not the miracles actually happened, they are recorded in the texts. When one discounts the miracle stories as fantasies, delusions, or lies; the value that the gospel writers place on them is lost. In first and second century Palestine, as in most of the Greco-Roman world, there was a popular belief in the occurrence of miracles (Jeffers 93). As a matter of fact, for people claiming to be deities or representatives of deities, miracles were expected. Therefore, the gospel writers and their audiences assumed that the miracles did happen and employed the miracle stories to emphasize their points. For this reason, the historical-critical approach will not be utilized, for it does not apply. Instead, a narrative-critical approach will be exercised. This will allow for the miracle accounts to be taken at face value. Once they are taken at face value, the text can be treated as it was meant to be treated, allowing one to plumb for the effects intended for the implied reader.

General Miracles in the Gospel of Luke

It is impractical to do an adequate treatment of all four of the Canonical gospels here; instead, the paper will focus on one gospel as a representation of the Canonical gospels. Since the Gospel of John differs substantially from the synoptics, it is not an adequate candidate for representation of the Canonical gospels. The Gospel of Luke, however, is the latest and most polished of the synoptics. Luke often cleared up questions that arose from the other gospels (Achtemeier 549). For instance, in Mark 1:45 the Greek text said, “But he [the man who was healed] went out and openly talked about it, so that he could no longer openly enter a town.” It is not explicit as to which person Mark is referring. Was it Jesus or was it the man he had just healed that could no longer openly enter a town? Luke cleared this up by informing the reader that it was Jesus that stayed in the wilderness (Achtemeier 549). Luke also shared literary links with the synoptic gospels; Luke used Mark as a source and shared at least one source, Q, in common with Matthew. Because of Luke’s concern for clarity and his links to the other gospels, the Gospel of Luke is the best candidate for a representation of the genre.

In the Gospel of Luke, the miracle stories conveyed a constant theme of utility. The main focus of this theme is on benefits in this world, in this life. With the exception of four miracles, each miracle in the Gospel of Luke dealt with the meeting of needs. There were no fewer than twenty accounts of Jesus giving health, restoring life, or providing nourishment. For instance, in Luke 5:17-26 Jesus restored paralyzed man to a natural state of health. For the first and second century Greeks to whom this gospel was written, the prospect of a religion that gave one immediate benefits was enticing. The overall effect of this effort was that the Gospel of Luke offered its readers practical, everyday benefits. To illustrate this point, one of the largest rivals to Christianity in the early part of the first millennium was the cult of Asklepios, the Greek god of healing (McCasland 221-227). It was the god’s promise of help in this world not in the next, which made the cult so appealing. Jesus met this same need and surpassed it in the providing of sustenance. For instance, Luke 9.10-17 related a story of Jesus feeding five thousand persons with only a few loaves of bread. The meeting of earthly needs, such as bodily healing and sustenance was why Jesus is constantly being referred to as savior in the Gospel of Luke, a term that conveys a sense of needs being immediately met, a term that was usually reserved for Caesar (Jeffers 100-102).

The teachings of Jesus were usually accompanied, or be more specific, predicated by miracle stories. Does this serve to validate Jesus’ teaching, something that Mark abhors? It does not. Similar to the case of the Gospel of John, the use of miracles might seem validate the message upon first glance, but under the surface, another answer awaits.

Achtemeier suggested that the clearest way to see how Luke used miracles is to examine how the same stories are treated in the other gospels (Achtemeier 551). A comparison will demonstrate how Luke framed miracle stories around the teachings of Jesus and offers a glimpse of how Luke intended to influence the reader. The first example that Achtemeier gives is of Jesus’ healing of the man with the withered hand. This account is located in Mark 3.1-6, Matthew 12.9-14 and in Luke 6.6-11 (emphasis added).

In each account, Jesus entered a synagogue and encountered a man with a withered hand. Matthew and Mark only mention that Jesus entered the synagogue and it is not known whether or not Jesus was at the synagogue to teach or to listen. In Luke however, the reader is informed that Jesus was indeed teaching. Jesus then senses the thoughts of the Pharisees and confronts them with a miracle that at once is helpful to the man with the withered hand and demonstrates the authority of Jesus’ teaching. The net effect of this is the balancing of the account between Jesus’ teaching and his healing (Achtemeier 551). The reader knows, because Luke actively made it explicit that Jesus was a teacher and a healer and often the two were connected.

The same theme of encasement reappears in Luke’s treatment of Mark 6.34, the preface of the feeding of the five-thousand which is found in Luke 9.10-17 (emphasis added).

In Mark 6.34, there was only mention of Jesus teaching the crowds about “many things.” Was the crowd’s motivation for coming in Mark the result of past miracles? The only indication the reader is given for the approachment of the crowd is that they were “…sheep without a shepherd.” Luke modifies this source by adding that in addition to teaching the crowd, Jesus also healed everyone who had need. Once again, there is a connection or immediacy drawn in Luke of Jesus’ teachings to Jesus’ miracles. Along with the teaching came healing. So while there was a validating effect, as will be made explicated later, Jesus did not perform the miracle so that they may believe his teaching, but he preformed the miracles next to his teaching.

These connections served to create proximity between Jesus’ miracles and teachings. The Gospel of Luke constantly had a theme of utility running alongside the theme of teaching. The effect of this is a causal conjunction that forms in the reader’s mind between the two. The constant association of the teachings of Jesus accompanied by miracle stories served to foster the idea that if one desired to have the immediate benefits that are displayed in the gospel, then one should pay attention and heed Jesus’ teachings. Thus, the miracle stories in the Gospel of Luke function as billboards for the message.

This was how Luke marketed the teachings of Jesus to his readers. As has been shown, the first and second century reader would allow for miracles. The reader would also have a keen interest in a religion or any organization for that matter, that took care of the readers earthly needs. Given the common occurrences of miracles in the Gospel of Luke, the text would thus be attractive to readers in the first and second century. Once Luke had his reader hooked, he then peppered the reader with the teachings of Jesus. The proximity that Luke made explicit between the occurrences of miracles and the teachings of Jesus also connected the two in the reader’s minds. However, there are exceptions to this general theme, the most notable of which are the four miracle accounts that do not attest to a meeting of worldly needs. These four miracles that do not involve the meeting of needs are the conception of Jesus by the Spirit of God in Luke 1.35, the passing of Jesus through the crowd in Luke 4.28-30, the Resurrection of Jesus in Luke 24.1-12, and the Ascension of Jesus in Luke 24.50-51. How Luke employed these miracles will be examined in the next section.

The Miracles of Entry and Exit in the Gospel of Luke

If all but four of the miracle stories in Luke are need-based, the question is raised of why Luke included them? For the author of Luke to deviate from his overall pattern indicates that it was his intention for these stories to powerfully effect the reader. Thus, the four exceptions must have served an important function for the author. The four miracles that do not involve the meeting of needs are the conception of Jesus by the Spirit of God, Luke1.35; the passing of Jesus through the crowd, Luke 4.28-30; the Resurrection of Jesus, Luke 24.1-12; and the Ascension of Jesus, Luke 24.50-51. Many words are easily spilt in the struggle to explain what Luke and the other Canonical gospels were communicating to their readers in these passages. I will attempt to explain their intended effect on the reader in light of the Luke’s overall “miracles as marketing” theme.

The conception of Jesus pointed to the heavy involvement of God in the Jesus’ life. Luke make it explicit that God has sanctioned Jesus appearance and mission in this world. This orients the origin of the teachings of Jesus and his miracle working towards God. There is nothing explicit in the miracle about Jesus’ being equated to God’s being, only that Jesus is conceived by, or originated from, God. What is most important for Luke here is the connection between Jesus on the earth and God outside of the normal world. This same theme will rear its head in the other miracles.

The miracle of the passing through the crowd is inexplicit as to what exactly is happening in the passage in which it occurs, Luke 4.28-30.

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

What does Luke mean by “passed through the midst of them?” There are two basic options. The first one suggests that Luke had Jesus pass through the crowd via natural means either by way of force or persuasion. The other possibility was that Jesus somehow passed through the crowd supernaturally, as light travels through a prism. If the event occurred naturally, then it does not belong in this study of miracles. If Jesus did perform a supernatural act, then notice the event’s proximity to the teachings of Jesus. Just before this episode, Jesus was teaching at the synagogue and those in attendance were enraged at his point that during the time of Elisha the only leper that was healed was a gentile. So, for a Greco-Roman reader, a gentile, the two themes would be comforting. Following the teachings of Jesus will protect one even if it seems like their very lives would be threatened. It raised the question of the need for life in the face of death. There are two possible answers to the problem of persecution because of the teachings. The first is that somehow the person would be miraculously delivered, like Jesus was here or Paul was in Acts. The second possibility, that one would lose his or her life, was a question that Luke would answer towards the end of the text and will be treated next.

The remaining two miracles, the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus have close proximity in the text, being contained in the same chapter, and deal with common themes, the exit of Jesus from this world. Due to these similarities, they will be treated in the same section. At this point, it is important to note the heavy emphasis that Luke places on Jesus’ role as savior. Out of all three synoptic gospels, Luke is the only one that names Jesus as savior. This theme is emphasized in the sections describing Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension. After the followers of Jesus discover that the tomb is empty, Jesus appears to them and teaches them about the correct interpretation of the scriptures. After the teaching, Jesus performs another miracle, he vanishes. This repeated itself in the miracle of the Ascension. Jesus suddenly appeared in front of the followers terrifying them. After he demonstrated that he was not merely a spirit, he proceeded to teach them. In Luke 24.44-49, Jesus details his mission and his teaching about other worldly matters, ending with instruction to wait until they are “clothed in power.” He then ascended into heaven. Thus, the miracles the Resurrection and Ascension encase the last teachings of Jesus.

Notice that the same pattern occurred that happened in the general miracles. The last teaching from Jesus was immediately preceded and proceeded by the miracle of his Resurrection and Ascension into heaven. Only the placement of the benefits are changed, not the structure. Thus, with the miracles of entry and exit, Luke maintained the same marketing strategy and build upon it. The other worldly miracles serve to draw the reader into the other-worldly teaching. This literary structure uses the general miracle stories to draw the reading into the general teaching of Jesus, since the first and second century readers were most concerned with benefits in this world. This is evidenced by the popularity of cults that promised immediate betterments, such as the cults of Asklepios and Mithra (Jeffers 96-97). The second phase of the marketing plan is for the first miracles/teachings set to draw one into the second set, the set of miracles and teachings that deal with other-worldly matters. With the miracles of this world, Luke coaxed the reader into accepting that following Jesus will give them real-world benefits. With the miracles of the next world, Luke attempted to show his readers how following Jesus will give them next-world benefits. The overall structure is as follows: (worldly miracles → worldly teaching ) → (other worldly miracles → other worldly teaching).

General Miracles in the Nag Hammadi Library

The Nag Hammadi library was a collection of texts found in Egypt. The texts are Coptic translations of lost Greek manuscripts (Robinson 2). The texts contained heavy Gnostic overtones and therefore are claimed to be part of a Gnostic library. The miracle profile of Gnostic gospels in the Nag Hammadi library differs substantially from those in the Canonical gospels. It differs to such a degree, that one cannot analyze them under the same framework that the Canonical gospels were analyzed. To do so would be to further the dichotomy that Karen King warned against in What is Gnosticism? It is prudent to review some general features of the Gnostic movement at this juncture. Gnosticism presupposed a dualistic worldview in which humans were divine sparks encased in matter (Rudolph 57). The spirit was good and the matter was evil because it was the creation of a Demiurge, which was hostile to God (Rudolph 88). The Demiurge of most Gnostic sets was the God of the Hebrew Bible (Rudolph 73). This explained the creation of the material world and the atrocities commanded by the God of Hebrew Bible. It was the goal in this system for the divine spark, or soul, to be liberated from matter by knowledge imparted by God’s helper, the redeemer (Rudolph 58). These same themes will arise in the miracles of the Nag Hammadi library.

In many of the Gnostic gospels, there are no records of miracles. For instance, in the Gospel of Truth, no miracles occur. This Gnostic gospel is especially esoteric and philosophical rather than narrative, such as The Gospel of Matthew. Instead of performing miracles, Jesus is often put to a test of knowledge or wisdom and ends up confounding his opponents. This jealousy of Jesus’ knowledge is what leads to his crucifixion. The struggle was with “Error” and the “Material Ones” which were in error. Jesus was the bringer of knowledge that one needed to be written in the book of life. There are several gospels that only contain one miraculous event; often it is an implied miraculous event. In The Book of Thomas the Contender, only implies one miraculous event: the Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus. It only mentioned that Judas Thomas, twin brother of Jesus, begs Jesus for hidden knowledge before he ascends back into heaven in 1.1. No time is spent building up to the death, resurrection, and Ascension of Jesus. They are treated as a mere afterthought in the book. Instead, what is important is the gathering of Jesus’ knowledge before Jesus leaves. Similarly, The Sophia of Jesus Christ, only mentioned that Jesus had risen from the dead and was teaching the Twelve and seven women how to be “perfect flesh,” in 90.10-20. The emphasis was once again on hidden knowledge. The more famous Gospel of Thomas, which is a saying gospel with intermittent short narratives that splice together sections, only contains one implied miracle. Towards the end of the gospel in verse 114, Peter wants to send Mary away because as a female, she was not worthy to hear the secret teachings of Jesus, which are known as Life. Jesus acknowledged this and tells Peter that He will teach or lead her so that she might become spiritually male. Jesus then reinforces the idea that only those that are male can go into the kingdom of heaven. More than likely, this is a mental or spiritual transformation, although it is possible that Jesus was in fact talking about a bodily transformation.

In the In the Gospel of Philip, there are several occurrences of miracles. In this gospel, the very appearance of Jesus was otherworldly. He appeared to each as each was in 57.25-58.10. If one was tall, Jesus appeared as a tall person; if they were short, He appeared as a short person. In the miracle of the dye located in 61.25-30, Jesus is able to take seventy-two colors of dye and make them all white.

“The lord went into the dye works of Levi. He took out seventy-two different colors and threw them into the vat. He took them out all white. And he said, ‘Even so has the son of man come [as] a dyer.’”

Since in the Gnostic worldview ignorance and matter are what keeps one from salvation, from the truth, the colors most likely symbolize one or both of these themes. Salvation conversely comes from the removal of ignorance or the release of the divine spark, or the light particles from its/their entrapment in the body (Rudolph 114-115). In the story of the dyes, the whiteness is symbolic of either or both of the above salvific attributes. There is evidence of this at 61.14-25 in the Gospel of Philip. It is said that “God is a dyer…his dyes are immortal, they become immortal by his colors.” Thus, the colors are symbolic of the ignorance of man, which Jesus, through his knowledge can make clean, or white. This gospel, like the Gospel of Truth contains very esoteric subject matter, such as in 71.15-20 where Jesus is described as born of two virgins, matter and spirit. This is why Jesus is the only one that can rectify the fall into matter. The Gospel of Philip also indicates the separation of the sexes is the cause of the fall of humankind. The last miracle in this gospel is the mention of the Samaritan’s healing oil in 78.5-10.

“The Samaritan gave nothing but wine and oil to the wounded man. It is nothing other than the ointment. It healed the wounds, for ‘love covers a multitude of sins’”

It is important to notice that Jesus is not involved with this miracle, but the parable from the Canonical gospels is portrayed as an actual event and miracle. The Samaritan in 78.5-10 does not try to mend the wounded traveler, but instead merely gives him wine and oil. Because love covers a multitude of sins, the wounded traveler is healed. This miracle story is very important, as it offers a glimpse into several key doctrinal points that differ from the Canonical gospels. In the Canonical gospels, all authority stems from Jesus. He is able to heal, raise, and command nature due to his own essence. He sometimes bestows this ability upon others; see the sending out of the Twelve. In The Gospel of Philip, on the other hand, it is the love and knowledge of the Samaritan that enables the wine and oil to heal the wounds of the traveler. Notice also the connection between sins and wounds. The Gospel of Philip implies that defections in the flesh are evidence of being more sinful.

Overview of Miracles in the Nag Hammadi Library

Miracles are employed in the Nag Hammadi library to emphasize the central themes of Gnosticism. Often they are not explicitly mentioned, but merely implied. This serves to show that while they might have occurred, there was not an emphasis on them. The few time that miracles are made explicit, they are used as object lessons, as illustrations of principles. What can account for this? At first glance, a religious movement would seem to have a lot to gain with the utilization of miracle stories, as is evidenced in the study of their use in Luke. It is useful to utilize the major strokes that were used in the painting of Gnosticism. This will shed light on the absence of miracles in these gospels. As a whole, the Gnostics deemphasized matter. All of matter and as a consequent, the body is created by the Demiurge and is therefore evil. There is no healing of the body because it is merely a reconfiguration of a prison. The goal is to find a way of escape, not to fix the body. Thus, there is no incentive for the Gnostic texts to make use of miracles that ministered to earthly needs.

Thematic Differentiation

The Canonical and Gnostic gospels employed miracle stories with opposite effects. In the Canonical gospels, the primary set of miracle stories served a marketing function, drawing in the first and second century readers to the Canonical gospels. The first and second century reader would allow for miracles. The reader would also have a keen interest in any organization that took care of the readers earthly needs. Given the common occurrences of miracles in the Gospel of Luke, the text would thus be attractive to readers in the first and second century. The immediacy of miracle stories to the gospel message formed a constant conjunction in the reader’s mind This constant conjunction served to link in the readers mind the practicality of the effects of the miracles and the way of life demanded by Jesus’ teachings as recorded in the gospels. The same power that manifested itself in the miracles was behind the teaching. Once this link of earthly benefits to earthly teaching had been established, a second set of miracle stories were employed to draw the reader to other-worldly benefits and to a corresponding set of other-worldly teachings.

This was the opposite effect that the gospels of the Nag Hammadi Library intend to have on their readers. Nag Hammadi gospels focused on not on the matter world, but on the spirit world and on the dissection of its knowledge. Because miracles are primarily interjections of the supernatural into the natural world, the Gnostic texts used miracles sparsely. When they did it was to emphasize the divine spark in everyone and the priority of spirit over matter.

Thus, in the Canonical and Gnostic gospels, drastically different modes of rhetoric were employed, as evidenced by the use of miracles in each. This stemmed from drastically different viewpoints of the material world. The Canonical sects viewed the world as inherently good and worth of redemption. As such, The Gnostic sects, on the other hand viewed the material world as something that one needed to escape from. The Canonical texts and as a corollary, the Canonical sects, therefore used the texts to entice the reader into accepting the message; whereas the Gnostics texts and sects shied away from the approach, content to entice their readers with the revealed and secret knowledge from Jesus, the redeemer.

Works Cited

Achtemeier, Paul J. “The Lucan Perspective on the Miracles of Jesus: A Preliminary Sketch.” Journal of Biblical Literature 94.4 (1975): 547-562.

Ehrman, Bart D., and Willam Lane Craig. “Is there Historical Evidence for the Resurection of Jesus?” 28 March 2006. Holy Cross. 1 October 2006<http://www.holycross.edu/departments/crec/website/resurrection-debate-transcript.pdf>.

Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1993.

Jeffers, James S. The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 1999.

King, Karen. What is Gnosticism? Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2003.

King, Karen L. The Gospel of Mary of Magdala. Santa Rosa: Polebridge Press, 2003.

Lewis, C.S. Miracles, a Preliminary Study. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1947.

McCasland, S. Vernon. “The Asklepios Cult in Palestine.” Journal of Biblical Literature 58.3 (1939): 221-227.

Robinson, James M. The Nag Hammadi Library in English 3rd Edition. Edited by James M. Robinson. New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1978.

Rudolph, Kurt. Gnosis, The Nature and History of Gnosticism. Edited by Robert McLauchlan Wilson. Translated by P.W. Coxon and K.H. Kuhn. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1987.

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