Word: jesus
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...healing services, the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies treat the subject of miracles with great care. For the minister trying to guide parishioners through the eddies of faith and reason, such stories pose a particular challenge. In many churches, the clergy distrust the miraculous for the very reasons that Jesus did. The preacher who affirms that miracles can indeed happen must also be prepared to explain why they do not. Why do some cancers vanish while others consume? Why do people starve if five loaves could feed 5,000? "Miracles can be like crack; you never quite get enough of them...
...particular is exceptionally cautious about granting an event the imprimatur of the church. "Nobody is more demanding than the Roman authorities when it comes to miracles," notes Father John Meier, Bible professor at Catholic University of America in Washington, whose new book, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, Volume II (Doubleday; $35), represents the latest scholarly attempt to meld science and faith. Too often over the centuries, Meier admits, the Catholic Church was taken in by charlatans. When reports spread of statues weeping or crosses bleeding or Jesus appearing on a tortilla, the church is often slow to respond...
...just as a generation of Bible scholars is dedicated to disproving them. From both seminaries and secular institutions, scholars are drawing on science, archaeology and modern textual criticism to write a chapter of Christianity that makes little mention of miracles except to reject them. They believe the teachings of Jesus are more important than the teachings about Jesus. In this book there is no virgin birth, no walking on water; the healings amount to parlor tricks, and the Resurrection never happened...
...modern skeptics analyze Scripture through the lenses of science, politics and literature. The rationalists study the medical impact of crucifixion and suggest perhaps it induced a deep coma from which Jesus might have revived. They search for evidence of a volcanic eruption that could have caused the Red Sea to part. Perhaps a comet swept across the Bethlehem skies, disguised as the Star in the East. As for the healing, even the enemies of Jesus talked about his miraculous powers, so it would seem churlish for academics, at a distance of 2,000 years, to dismiss them outright. But liberal...
...parallel line of argument holds that the Bible is made up simply of legends crafted by the Gospel writers to serve a political agenda in the early days of the church. Modern archaeology has given contemporary scholars a much richer sense of the Galilean world, the social tensions around Jesus and the political challenges his followers encountered after his Crucifixion...