Miracles in the Gospels

[FredPuli43]

Which of the miracles of Jesus were witnessed by any of the authors of the four gospels?

[Anlyn]

Is it none of them? They were all written a long time after Jebus's death..?

[Hymie]

None

[Hymie]

Anlyn has explained why.

[jomifl]

Since the authors of the gospels neither met jesus nor were contemporaneous, then the possibility of any of them witnessing the miracles is vanishingly small.

[mibn2cweus]

But I've seen it with my own eyes . . . on Youtube!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLSIHYbedII

[FredPuli43]

That was my thinking too. They were all apparently compiled 60 years or more after the events. It seems a little odd of God to allow no contemporaneous account to survive to relate the most important events that he had to tell us, the life,teaching and works of his own son.
What evidence do we have of contemporaneous sources that provided information for the gospels we have?

[naomi24]

None of them. The earliest writings come from Paul, who never met Jesus, never saw him, and never heard him speak.

[naomi24]

//It seems a little odd of God to allow no contemporaneous account to survive to relate the most important events that he had to tell us, the life,teaching and works of his own son. //

It seems more than a little odd that God was on earth in the form of a man and no one bothered to record his every word and action.

//What evidence do we have of contemporaneous sources that provided information for the gospels we have?//

None. We have only the gospels - written long after the event.

[naomi24]

And incidentally, as far as I'm aware, Paul didn't mention the miracles of Jesus. They too came much later.

[FredPuli43]

Gibbon, in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,recounts that, in the early church, saintly individuals were commonly recorded as having performed or seen miracles yet ,strangely, the writings of the saintly individuals themselves contained no references to any such events! Such a cynic, Gibbon !

[Ankou]

there were the 33 people at the back of the queue when the food run out at 5,000. apparently they were right miffed and asked to speak to the manager.

[beso]

There is not even a single mention if Jesus even existing in any contemporary writing whatsoever.

I have little doubt the New Testament is a conscious work of fiction set at time just conveniently prior to any chance of living memory at the time it was written. Its purpose was to reinforce the power of the Old Testament.

The gospels don't even agree on the "facts" and it is fairly obvious they were written for their respective audiences.

It seems every man and his dog were writing gospels once writting became more common. Other gospels that didn't say what those in power wanted to hear were dropped.

Of course they were all sure it was true because they had heard it from a friend of a friend.

[naomi24]

It's perhaps little known that there were other people around at that time who were believed by some to be the messiah. They reputedly performed miracles too.

[Zeuhl]

Two of the best known Messiahs were Paul and Daniel.

They performed miracles together, as one.

The most famous was the miracle of the steel rings that could be joined and parted.

[MarkRae]

http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm

[Anlyn]

From Monty Pythons Life of Brian...
" He IS the true Messiah..I should know, I've followed a few!"

[jake-the-peg]

I take it Beso you are discounting Josephus because you think his mentions are forged or because he was out by 20 or 30 years?

There are an awful lot of famous people that are not mentioned in contemprary documents - we have a surprisingly small number of documents for Shakespeare for goodness sake!

I think the answer rather depends on whether or not you accept the traditional attributions of the Gospels and if the answer is "None they weren't written by the supposed authors" it's a rather peurile question.

So let's assume for the sake of argument they were.

Matthew or John were apostles - they certainly were meant to have witnessed Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection - I don't think that is meant to strictly speaking count as a miracle like walking on the water or the feeding of the 5,000.

My knowledge of the Bible isn't good enough though to answer the question - does anybody actually know if Mathew or John (who I think are the only supposed Gospel authors to meet Jesus) would have been present at any of the miracles?

It's interesting because if not the question of the reliability of the Gospel writers as witnesses can be called into question without first having to go down the rather tedious "Who really wrote the Gospels" road

Having a slightly closer look at this it seems that the claim is that John became an apostle after Jesus performs the miraculous draft of fishes so he'd have been an apostle at the time of the centurian's servant, the calming of the storm, and he and Mathew would have been disciples at the time of the feeding of the 5000 an the walking on the water

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Jesus

Don't know if there is any reference to whether either *were* there at the time though

[boxtops]

The short answer to Fred is none, they were written many years after Jesus' death, all the information given is at least second-hand.

[naomi24]

Jake, //Having a slightly closer look at this it seems that the claim is that John became an apostle after Jesus performs the miraculous draft of fishes so he'd have been an apostle at the time of the centurian's servant, the calming of the storm, //

So let's say, for argument's sake, John was 20 at the time of the crucifixion, he'd have been about 110 when he wrote the gospel.

Matthew, unfortunately, relies heavily upon earlier works - not something we would expect from an eye-witness. In addition, much was added at a later date. The name 'Matthew' was attributed to the work long after the main event.

I discount Josephus.