Can miracles recorded in the four Gospels be compared and contrasted?

Answer 1

The earliest gospel was the Gospel of Mark, followed by Matthew, then Luke and finally, John. The authors of Matthew and Luke can be shown to have copied much of their material from Mark, independent of each other, but typically elaborated the descriptions of the miracles. The author of John knew the Gospels of Mark and Luke, but based his Gospel principally on Luke. This author was more independent than those of the synoptic gospels, Matthew and Luke, and made no attempt to follow his source closely. Some of the miracles in John are the most elaborate of all those in the gospels.

Mark's Gospel is a complex and well-structured narrative, divided into two principal sections. The first division begins with the baptism of Jesus and the voice of God from heaven. The second division begins with the Transfiguration of Jesus and the voice of God from heaven. The Transfiguration was important in Markbecause, in its original form, this Gospel had no appearances of the risen Jesus. The Transfiguration was his most important proof of the relationship of Jesus to God.

The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is a good example of how the original story was elaborated by subsequent authors. In Mark's version (Mark 1:13), there was no miracle, other than the angels ministering to Jesus. Compare this to Matthew 4:1-11 and Luke 4:1-13.

At first, Mark's description of the miraculous cures effected by Jesus, were cautious. In his own country, Jesus could do no mighty work except heal a few sick people; he marvelled at their unbelief. It is suggested that Jesus was powerless to perform miracles unless the people believed, an indication that psychomatic diseases were involved.

It was customary for holy men to use spit when curing afflictions. In the cure of the deaf and dumb man (Mark 7:32) and the blind man (Mark 8:23), Jesus is reported as using this technique, in one case with difficulty.

Life-threatening injuries and severed limbs would not have been uncommon in Judea, but there is no report in the Gospels of any victims being brought to Jesus for help, or of him assisting such victims. When Jesus cured the man with a withered hand (Mark 3:5), this was the only example where Jesus may have cured a disease that involved a deformity or injury, until perhaps the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus healed the ear that had been cut off.

The ancients expected holy men to exorcise demons, who were thought to cause insanity. For some reason the gospels often had many demons possess the same person, but Jesus was always able to exorcise them with ease. In 9:38, the disciple complained that someone else was exorcising demons in the name of Jesus but without his authority - so it must have been easy to perform exorcisms to the standard that would impress people of the time.

Several decades after Mark's Gsopel was written, it was no longer important to be cautious in describing the miracles of Jesus. John's gospel tells of Jesus resurrecting Lazarus, brother of Mary and Martha, even though he had been dead for four days and his body stank. This was the most impressive of all the miracles performed by Jesus, yet none of the other gospel authors knew of it or felt it important enough to warrant a mention. Mary and Martha also feature in Luke's Gospel, and Luke is the only other author to mention anyone named Lazarus (16:19-31), as a fictional person whose resurrection is described only hypothetically. This, in turn, may have been based on "El-Azar-us", the Egyptian mummy raised from the dead by Horus, much earlier.

Similarly, the later gospels elaborated on the stories of the crucifixion and resurrection, with Matthew providing the most impressive stories surrounding the crucifixion, including the dead miraculously rising from their graves and walking into Jerusalem.