Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen

zum Neuen Testament

Herausgeber / Editor
Jrg Frey (Zrich)
Mitherausgeber / Associate Editors
Markus Bockmuehl (Oxford) James A. Kelhoffer (Uppsala)
Hans-Josef Klauck (Chicago, IL) Tobias Nicklas (Regensburg)
J. Ross Wagner (Durham, NC)

339

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Hermeneutik
der frhchristlichen
Wundererzhlungen
Geschichtliche, literarische und
rezeptionsorientierte Perspektiven
Herausgegeben von

Bernd Kollmann und

Ruben Zimmermann

Mohr Siebeck

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Bernd Kollmann; 1989 Promotion, 1995 Habilitation in Gttingen; 19962000 Vertretungsprofessuren in Aachen und Siegen; seit 2000 Professor fr Neues Testament an der
Universitt Siegen.
Ruben Zimmermann; 1999 Promotion in Heidelberg; 2003 Habilitation in Mnchen;
2004 Vertretungsprofessur in Hamburg; 200509 Professur in Bielefeld; seit 2009 Professor fr Neues Testament an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universitt Mainz.

ISBN 978-3-16-152465-3
ISSN 0512-1604 (Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament)
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Natio
nalbibliographie; detaillierte bibliographische Daten sind im Internet ber http://dnb.dnb.
de abrufbar.
2014 Mohr Siebeck Tbingen. www.mohr.de
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Inhaltsverzeichnis
Vorwort .................................................................................................. V

I. Grundfragen
Bernd Kollmann
Von der Rehabilitierung mythischen Denkens und
der Wiederentdeckung Jesu als Wundertter.
Meilensteine der Wunderdebatte von der Aufklrung bis zur Gegenwart .. 3
Ruben Zimmermann
Von der Wut des Wunderverstehens.
Grenzen und Chancen einer Hermeneutik der Wundererzhlungen ......... 27
Craig S. Keener
Miracle Reports: Perspectives, Analogies, Explanations ........................ 53
Gerd Theien
Wunder Jesu und urchristliche Wundergeschichten.
Historische, psychologische und theologische Aspekte .......................... 67

II. Geschichtliche Perspektiven

Axel Graupner
Wunder ber Wunder: Israels Fhrung durch die Wste
Exodus 15,2218,27.
Eine Skizze ............................................................................................ 89
Detlev Dormeyer
Wundergeschichten in der hellenistischen Medizin und
Geschichtsschreibung.
Eine religionsgeschichtliche Annherung ............................................. 127

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Manfred Clauss
Wunder und Kaiserkult ........................................................................ 153
Erkki Koskenniemi
Apollonius of Tyana, the Greek Miracle Workers in the
Time of Jesus and the New Testament .................................................. 165
Eric Eve
Jesus Miracles in their Historical and Cultural Context ....................... 183
Graham H. Twelftree
Exorcism in Early Christianity ............................................................. 205
Reinhard von Bendemann
Elementar feurige Hitze.
Zur Krankheitshermeneutik frhjdischer, hellenistisch-rmischer
und frhchristlicher Fieberheilungen .................................................... 231
Pieter F. Craffert
What Actually Happened?
Miracle Stories in Anthropological Historical Perspective ................... 263
Marco Frenschkowski
Antike kritische und skeptische Stimmen zum Wunderglauben
als Dialogpartner des frhen Christentums ........................................... 283

III. Literarische Perspektiven

Ruben Zimmermann
Gattung Wundererzhlung.
Eine literaturwissenschaftliche Definition ............................................ 311
Susanne Luther
Erdichtete Wahrheit oder bezeugte Fiktion?
Realitts- und Fiktionalittsindikatoren in frhchristlichen
Wundererzhlungen eine Problemanzeige ......................................... 345
Michael Labahn
Wunder verndern die Welt.
berlegungen zum sinnkonstruierenden Charakter von Wundererzhlungen am Beispiel der so genannten Geschenkwunder ............. 369

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XI

Wendy J. Cotter
The Function of the Outrageous Petitioner in Pre-Markan
Miracle Anecdotes ............................................................................... 395
Cornelis Bennema
Character Analysis and Miracle Stories in the Gospel of Mark ............. 413
Paul Borgman
Pattern and Purpose in Johns Gospel: the Seven Miracle Stories ......... 427
Kristina Dronsch
In Wunder verstrickt: eine medio-theologische Pointe der Wundergeschichten im Markusevangelium .......................................................... 445
Ruben Zimmermann
Phantastische Tatsachenberichte?!
Wundererzhlungen im Spannungsfeld zwischen
Historiographie und Phantastik ............................................................ 469

IV. Rezeptionsperspektiven
Christian Mnch
Erzhlung und Ereignis.
Zur theologischen Deutung der Wundergeschichten .............................. 497
Stefan Alkier
Das Kreuz mit den Wundern oder Wunder ohne Kreuz?
Semiotische, exegetische und theologische Argumente wider die
formgeschichtliche Verkrzung der Wunderforschung ......................... 515
Istvn Czachesz
How to Read Miracle Stories with Cognitive Theory.
On Harry Potter, Magic, and Miracle ................................................... 545
Susanne Luther
Die ethische Signifikanz der Wunder.
Eine Relecture der Wundererzhlungen der apokryphen Thomasakten
unter ethischer Perspektive .................................................................. 559
Eugen Drewermann
Tiefenpsychologische Hermeneutik von Wundererzhlungen ............... 589

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Inhaltsverzeichnis

Ulrike Metternich
Wunderdeutungen in der Feministischen Theologie
und Bibelwissenschaft .......................................................................... 607
Markus Schiefer Ferrari
Gestrte Lektre.
Dis/abilitykritische Hermeneutik biblischer Heilungserzhlungen
am Beispiel von Mk 2,112 ................................................................. 627
Reinhold Zwick
Die Wunder Jesu im Film.
Grenzfall der sthetik und (film-)theologische Herausforderung ......... 647
Annike Rei
Mit Kindern und Jugendlichen ber Wunder theologisieren ................. 663
Autorenverzeichnis ............................................................................... 679
Stellenregister ...................................................................................... 683
Autorenregister .................................................................................... 692
Namen- und Sachregister ..................................................................... 709

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How to Read Miracle Stories with Cognitive Theory

On Harry Potter, Magic, and Miracle
Istvn Czachesz

1. Mental Candy
As the first Harry Potter books appeared in the late nineties, I happened to
visit a congregation in rural Hungary. On the shelf where hymnals, bibles,
and devotional literature were displayed for sale I spotted a pamphlet, next
to the weekly of the Reformed Church, entitled Why Harry Potter is
against Christian Faith. I became curious and inquired the minister about
his opinion on the books and the threat he thought they would pose for
Christian readers. At some point of the conversation I asked him straightforward, Do you really believe in people flying around on broomsticks?
Of course not, he answered with some indignation. Then what really is
the problem? I countered. Indeed, when confining Harry Potter strictly to
the realm of fiction, his harmful effects seemed less imminent.
However, the problem is not so easy to dismiss. If people cannot fly on
broomsticks, perhaps they cannot walk on water either. This way of thinking leads us to question the world-view of the first Christians. And if that
world-view proves to be untenable, we will have to purge the Christian
message from the outdated elements. But perhaps we should not move too
rapidly in that direction. As I will show in this chapter, Harry Potters
dealings, together with biblical miracle stories, are here to stay for the reason that they are mental candies. Why are miracles so alluring? Why do
people who do not confess religious faith nevertheless immerse themselves
in narrative worlds of mystery and miracle? And why has the allure of
miracles remained unbroken since antiquity allowing us to be fascinated
by the very same narratives that attracted ancient people?
From the perspective of modern Western readers, miracle stories (often)
go against modern scientific knowledge. According to modern common
sense, illness can be healed by killing off pathogens with the help of antibiotics, removing damaged tissue and mending broken bones, not by prayer and the laying on of hands, let alone by words uttered from a distance.

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This is, however, hardly the full story. Without knowing bacteria, Newtonian mechanics, and Copernican cosmology, ancient intellectuals expressed skepticism about miracles. The most famous among them is probably Lucian of Samosata, who especially reprimanded the use of miracle
stories in historical narratives (Luc., Philops.; Ver. Hist. 14). Long before
Lucian, arguing probably against Herodotus, Thucydides in his History of
the Peloponnesian War required that no fables, however entertaining,
should be included in a work of history (Thuc. 1.22). Both Josephus and
Philo, while zealously dedicated to Jewish religion, were reserved when it
came to miracles.1 It is obvious that some ancient elite thinkers had a sense
of skepticism or at least reservation about miracle stories, in spite of holding a world-view in which the supernatural played an important role.
Again, attitudes toward the miraculous (this time skepticism) seem to depend on more than just modern or pre-modern world-views. I will suggest
that the dynamics of intuitive and reflective thinking largely determine the
reception of miracle stories.
In order to understand what attracts us to miracles intuitively, we have
to take a step back and think about learning and culture from a psychological perspective. Human culture is made possible by the accumulation of
knowledge across generations. But our cumulative tradition comes at a
price: we cannot test every piece of wisdom we learn from our parents and
teachers. Even modern Western education, assumedly nurturing critical
thinking, is based on believing things on authority in first instance. Although we do question tradition and occasionally revise beliefs we learned,
there are more general and automatic strategies in place to optimize learning: we tend to follow individuals whom we perceive as successful and we
do what the majority of people do around us.2
This does not mean that the content of ideas that we learn does not matter. It has been demonstrated that ideas mixing common sense and strangeness optimally are remembered better and therefore have an advantage in
cultural transmission. When we use the expression common sense we are
referring to what is more technically called maturationally natural ontological expectations.3 Maturationally natural ontology develops in children
under a wide range of external circumstances and enables people to re1

G. DELLING, Josephus und das Wunderbare, NT 2 (1958): 291309; H.R. MOEHRationalization of Miracles in the Writings of Flavius Josephus (Berlin 1973);
D.C. DULING, The Eleazar Miracle and Solomons Magical Wisdom in Flavius Josephuss Antiquitates Judaicae 8.4249, HThR 78 (1985):125, see 912; E. E VE, The
Jewish Context of Jesus Miracles (Sheffield 2002), 385.
2
P.J. RICHERSON and R. B OYD, Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution (Chicago 2005), 162164.
3
R.N. MCCAULEY, Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not (New York 2011),
3182.
RING,

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spond to information in the environment quickly and efficiently. For example, we know that animals move, humans speak, and tools are designed
for some purpose and we can interact with them accordingly, without testing those features in every instance of them. It is important to note that
such ontological divisions are not necessarily identical with categories that
people use to describe the world when we ask them (or categories that philosophers use). Maturationally natural ontological categories include human, animal, plant, artifact, and (natural) object.4 A donkey that talks
(e.g., Acts of Thomas 3941 and 6881) or a statue that hears what people
speak violates expectations about animals and artifacts, respectively. Such
ideas will be remembered longer than common-sense ideas. However, if
the violations are multiplied, the advantage diminishes. As a consequence,
minimally counterintuitive ideas are passed on across generations at higher
rates than either ordinary or maximally counterintuitive items.5 Empirical
evidence suggests that the advantage is most pronounced in the long-term
retention of ideas.6
As I have shown elsewhere, the development of early Christian theological concepts was influenced by the selective transmission of ideas. For
example, the formation of the mainstream idea of Jesus death and resurrection can be explained by the selection of a minimally counterintuitive
version, whereas ebionite and docetic alternatives were too ordinary or
excessively counterintuitive, respectively. 7 Miracle stories are often minimally counterintuitive. Consider the following two hypothetical alterna4

F.C. KEIL, Semantic and Conceptual Development: An Ontological Perspective

(Cambridge, Mass. 1979), 48; S. ATRAN, Basic Conceptual Domains, Mind and Language 4 (1989): 716; P. BOYER, Cognitive Constraints on Cultural Representations:
Natural Ontologies and Religious Ideas, in Mapping the Mind: Domain Specificity in
Cognition and Culture (ed. L.A. Hirschfeld and S. A. Gelman, Cambridge 1994), 391
411.
5
P. B OYER, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion
(Berkeley 1994); P. B OYER, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious
Thought (New York 2001).
6
P. B OYER and C. RAMBLE, Cognitive templates for religious concepts: Crosscultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations, Cognitive Science 25
(2001): 535564; J.L. B ARRETT and M.A. NYHOF, Spreading Non-Natural Concepts:
The Role of Intuitive Conceptual Structures in Memory and Transmission of Cultural
Materials, Journal of Cognition and Culture 1 (2001): 69100; A. N ORENZAYAN and S.
ATRAN, Cognitive and Emotional Processes in the Cultural Transmission of Natural and
Nonnatural Beliefs, in The Psychological Foundations of Culture (ed. M. Schaller and
C. S. Crandall; Mahwah, NJ 2004), 149169.
7
I. CZACHESZ, Early Christian Views on Jesus Resurrection: Toward a Cognitive
Psychological Interpretation, NedThT 61 (2007): 4759; IDEM, Kontraintuitive Ideen
im urchristlichen Denken, in Erkennen und Erleben: Beitrge zur psychologischen Erforschung des frhen Christentums, (ed. G. Theien and P. von Gemnden; Gtersloh
2007), 197208.

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tives to the resuscitation of Eutychus in Acts 20:912. (a) The boy fell out
of the window and broke his leg. Paul hurried downstairs, lifted him up,
and laid him on a bed. He took a piece of wood and cloths and secured the
broken leg by splints. (b) The boy fell out of the window and died. Paul
did not go down but prayed to God. The boy came back to life, turned into
an owl and flew back to the third floor. From that day he could remember
everything he heard. In terms of the theory of minimal counterintuitiveness, the first narrative would not be especially memorable and would be
forgotten. The second, in contrast, contains too many counterintuitive details (rising from the dead, turning into an animal, remembering everything) to be transmitted accurately. One counterintuitve detail, the boy
coming back to life (which violates the ontological expectation that death
puts an end to biological life),8 is necessary but also enough so that the
episode would be memorable and transmitted.
In some miracles, identifying the counterintuitive element is rather
straightforward. For example, the multiplication of bread in Mark 6:3944
and parallels violates maturationally natural expectations about artifacts.
We do not expect natural objects or artifacts (such as bread) to multiply
spontaneously, which we only attribute to living things. We mentioned the
case of Eutychus above, to which we can add other resurrection miracles.
Dead bodies and decomposing corpses (John 11:3844) are not expected to
resume biological function. Another food miracle, the changing of water
into wine (John 2:211), implies a crossing of ontological boundaries.
Whereas water is a natural substance, wine is an artifact. Arguably, we do
not expect natural objects to transform into artifacts without human labor:
artifacts are produced by investing time and energy.
Many other miracles, however, lack a strictly counterintuitive element.
For example, catching extraordinary amounts of fish (Luke 5:111) at an
unusual time of the day is unexpected but does not violate innate ontological categories. Healing with saliva (e.g., Mark 7:33) is an intuitive technique that relies on demonstrable physiological effects: saliva contains
healing substances. Many therapies in biblical literature change intuitive
healing processes (which might or might not comply with modern scientific theory) into paradoxical (but not strictly counterintuitive) events by
adding extraordinary difficulties. For example, the man healed in John 9
has been blind since birth and the one at the pool of Bethsaida (John 5:1
20) had been crippled for thirty-eight years.
8
Whereas the continuation of psychological functions after death is intuitively plausible, biological functions are believed to stop. Cf. J.M. B ERING, Intuitive Conceptions
of Dead Agents Minds: The Natural Foundations of Afterlife Beliefs as Phenomenological Boundary, Journal of Cognition and Culture 2 (2002): 263308; IDEM, The Folk
Psychology of Souls, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (2006): 453462.

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Healings and other miracles often receive a counterintuitive edge because they are attributed to divine intervention (as is the rule in biblical
literature) or because the condition that necessitates them (such as illness)
is explained by divine punishment or demonic influence. Gods and spirits
are always counterintuitive because they combine human psychological
and other features with elements that contradict expectations about humans: being invisible, being present at more than one physical location at a
time, transforming themselves into different shapes, having infinite
knowledge etc.9 The involvement of counterintuitive agency in miracles
(as opposed to featuring objects that change shape or levitate, for example)
makes a difference. Counterintuitive agents matter more than other counterintuitive concepts because they have minds, are capable of social interaction, and make moral judgments.10
Yet another factor that contributes to the salience of miracle stories in
human tradition is their emotional content. Empirical research demonstrated that if such elements are added to a story, they increase the memorability of all details of the narrative.11 In miracle stories we can read about
people who are seriously ill and desperately seek healing (e.g., Mark 2:1
12), parents who seek help for their sick or already dead children (e.g.,
Mark 1:2143), as well as extreme (e.g., lameness, blindness), repulsive
(e.g., leprosy), or spectacular (e.g., demoniacs) symptoms and diseases. Many of the vivid details in the stories are likely to elicit empathy,
fear, and disgust, which are archaic emotions (in terms of evolutionary
history) and are triggered quickly and automatically. Further, after such a
start, miracle stories are likely to evoke emotions of relief when difficulties are miraculously overcome in the end.
In sum, miracles attract attention and remain in memory for psychological reasons. First, by violating maturationally natural expectations just
enough to make them salient and memorable but not too much so they can
be remembered and transmitted accurately. Second, by engaging some ancient and vital mental functions that respond to relevant information rapid9
For the cognitive analysis of divine qualities see I. P YYSIINEN, Supernatural
Agents: Why We Believe in Souls, Gods, and Buddhas (Oxford 2009); I. CZACHESZ, God
in the Fractals: Recursiveness as a Key to Religious Behavior, Method and Theory in
the Study of Religion 24 (2012): 328; IDEM, The Grotesque Body in Early Christian
Literature: Hell, Scatology, and Metamorphosis (Durham 2013), 141180.
10
B OYER, Religion Explained (n. 5), 155231; P YYSIINEN, Supernatural Agents
(n. 9), 95136.
11
L. CAHILL and J.L. MCGAUGH, A Novel Demonstration of Enhanced Memory Associated with Emotional Arousal, Consciousness and cognition 4 (1995): 410421; C.
LANEY et al., Memory for Thematically Arousing Events, Memory and Cognition 32
(2004): 11491159; N ORENZAYAN and ATRAN, Cognitive and Emotional Processes (n.
6).

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Istvn Czachesz

ly and automatically: interaction with agents and basic emotions. That is

why miracles are mental candies that excite our brains by their color,
smell, and flavor so much that they cannot be expelled from human culture
by either ancient skeptics or modern demythologizers.

2. Do Cultural Conventions Matter?

But can we ignore culture? Does it really not matter for our attraction to
miracles whether we live in the ancient Mediterranean or in the modern
West? Fortunately, empirical studies have been conducted that allow us a
glimpse into the role of cultural differences in embracing the counterintuitive even if we cannot run experiments with first century Christians.
One of the first studies that tested Boyers hypothesis of the memory effects of counterintuitiveness has been carried out in three different cultural
environments, that is, in France, Gabon, and Tibet.12 The experiments
demonstrated the advantage of counterintuitive ideas consistently. The
only real surprise was that for Tibetan monks, adding minimally counterintuitive features artifacts contributed a greater advantage in retention than
adding such features to persons (agents). That is, artifacts with minimally
counterintuitive features were much better remembered than those that did
not have these features; whereas, persons with minimally counterintuitive
features were only somewhat better remembered than persons without
these features. The experimenters speculated that this could be due to the
monks frequent exposure to ideas about counterintuitive agents, somewhat
lowering the salience of such ideas for them.13
A recent study examined conceptions of personhood after death among
novice Buddhist monks in Mongolia, comparing their intuitions with official Buddhist teachings (that they actually studied) as well as with intuitions of older monks and lay people.14 When tested about their intuitions
(rather than asking them to report their explicit knowledge), participants in
all three groups (although to different degrees) attributed mental states as
well as some bodily functions to a person who reached Nirvana and died.
This was consistent with folk-intuitions found across cultural boundaries
but went against the teachings of Buddhism about Nirvana. The results of
the study suggest that culture shapes how we deal with information when
we manipulate it consciously and explicitly, but has less effect on how
people deal with information intuitively and without conscious effort. It
12

B OYER and RAMBLE, Cognitive templates (n. 6).

Ibid., 556f.
14
R. BERNINAS, Folk Psychology of the Self and Afterlife Beliefs: The Case of Mongolian Buddhists (Dissertation; Queens University of Belfast 2012).
13

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has been shown, for example, that experts do not mobilize their learned
skills when making judgments in everyday situations, making the same
mistakes as lay people do.15 Theological incorrectness has also been observed in a Christian context: when people have to make judgments about
situations that involve theological elements (without being tested on doctrines formally) their answers are based on intuitive, anthropomorphic notions of God.16 The lesson from these experiments is that complex ideas
acquired by cultural learning (in this case, official theology or scientific
theory) are useful only under certain conditions. Minimally counterintuitive ideas are intuitive in the sense of being better remembered and easily transmitted. Anthropomorphic ideas of dead persons and God will take
over whenever the situation permits.
Another approach to understanding the influence of culture on the success of minimally counterintuitive expectations is to manipulate culturally
postulated categories and see how ideas involving such tweaks are remembered as compared to minimally counterintuitive items. In an experiment,
ideas that stretched the limits of innate ontological categories without violating them (such as a man who knows every fairytale) were remembered just as well as technically counterintuitive items (see above).17 However, counterintuitiveness had a further advantage when the violation included agency (such as a car that likes to watch movies) but no difference was detected between counterintuitiveness and mere strangeness
when agency was not involved in the violation (a man who has no shadow or a car that is weightless). In other words, someone or something
doing something counterintuitive was found to stick in the memory better
than simply doing something strange, but there was no significant difference if the counterintuitive detail was not about doing something. In a
somewhat different experimental design, strangeness could be manipulated to contradict clearly culture-specific expectations to find out about
the difference between violating culturally postulated and maturationally
natural expectations, respectively.
It can be argued that a human being flying in the air is a strictly counterintuitive idea. Indeed, flying is the ultimate miracle that Simon Magus performs in the Acts of Peter (chs. 4 and 32). In Apuleiuss Metamorphoses,
Lucius landlady uses witchcraft to turn herself into an owl and fly at
15

D. GROOME, An Introduction to Cognitive Psychology: Processes and Disorders

(London 1999), 116.
16
J.L. B ARRETT and F.C. KEIL, Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts, Cognitive Psychology 31 (1996): 219247; D.J. SLONE, Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldnt (Oxford
2004).
17
K. STEENSTRA, A Cognitive Approach to Religion: The Retention of Counterintuitive Concepts (Masters Thesis; Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 2005).

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night. A contemporary version of this tradition is the fictional sport called

quidditch practiced by Harry Potter and his schoolmates which includes flying on a broomstick, a detail inspired by the popular image of the
witchs broomstick.18 In the post-war period, adherents of cargo cults in
the Southern Pacific built replica aircrafts and airports, awaiting the return
of the ancestors who would bring about material abundance.19 Has exposure to aircrafts, helicopters, space travel, and commercial flights changed
this fascination? One can argue that for modern Westerners the concept of
individual and reasonably free flying with the help of some innovative tool
(think about hang-gliders today) is just a matter of incremental technological development, rather than a paradoxical idea. A controlled experiment
could answer the question of whether cultural exposure has changed the
effect of this counterintuitive concept on memory.
Culture influences not only the transmission of counterintuitive ideas
but also their reception. Counterintuitive ideas and miracle stories that include such ideas (possibly adding emotional and other details to them) will
be contextualized and interpreted in some culturally available framework.
In a religious tradition, a miracle story can come with an interpretation that
already integrates counterintuitiveness into an elaborated theological system. For example, in the Gospel of John, Jesus miracles are seen as
signs of his being the incarnate divine logos. Yet the very polyvalence
and rich history of reception of New Testament miracles shows that counterintuitive ideas can be difficult to bind to one specific cognitive framework. Being both memorable and paradoxical, counterintuitive motifs can
generate ongoing reflection and interpretation. Harry Potters riding a
broomstick and his other counterintuitive dealings have no fixed frame of
interpretation (other than that of fantasy literature) and as free-floating
memes they can be contextualized in many different ways. In a dualistic
world-view, characteristic of many conservative Christian groups, understanding them as manifestations of Satanic powers or as occult teachings
is a possibility at hand.
Above I have argued that counterintuitive traits have a fairly similar affect on ancient and modern minds. There are, in turn, obvious differences
in the interpretative frameworks available then and now. The question is
not so much whether people believe in the factual truth of counterintui18
Whereas witches had been thought to fly before, the broomstick is a medieval addition, with sexual allusions present from the earliest mentions. Cf. M. M URRAY, The
Witch-Cult in Western Europe: A Study in Anthropology (Oxford 1962 = 1921), 104106.
19
For a concise review, see P. LAWRENCE, Cargo Cults (First Edition), Encyclopedia of Religion (2nd ed.) 3:14141421. For a critical discussion of early studies of cargo
cults (to the point of deconstructing them as Westerners wishful fantasies), see M.
KAPLAN, Cargo Cults (Further Considerations), ibid., 3:14211425.

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tive ideas but what kind of contexts they mobilize to make sense of them.
It has been shown that a context that makes the appearance of an idea less
surprising also makes it less memorable, whereas a context that justifies or
explains the idea after its appearance makes it more memorable.20 That is,
providing an explanation or justification for a counterintuitive miracle will
support its transmission: it does not really matter whether the context is
theological, rationalizing, or psychological. Whereas such interpretative
frameworks were both easily available and culturally consistent in antiquity, they are often sub-culturally defined or entirely idiosyncratic in the
modern Western world. In spite of their decreasing membership, the theological understanding of miracles provided by mainstream Christian
churches is still the most widely available framework of interpretation in
this culture. It is important to bear in mind that such a framework is a
mismatch when it comes to understanding miracle in antiquity and in other
cultures across space and time.

3. Magic and miracle

This is not the place to rehearse the more than a century-old scholarly debate about the term magic. It will suffice to note that in the latter part of
the twentieth century scholars simply wanted to do away with the concept,
arguing that it was an expression of ethnocentric bias and colonialism.21
More recently, however, there have been calls for a meaningful way of
using the term as an analytical category, without implying a pejorative
judgment.22 Already in antiquity, magic could carry negative connotations.23 Therefore, we have to be careful to separate the etic use of the con20

M.A. UPAL, L.O. GONCE, R.D. T WENEY and D.J. SLONE, Contextualizing Counterintuitiveness: How Context Affects Comprehension and Memorability of Counterintuitive Concepts, Cognitive Science: A Multidisciplinary Journal 31 (2007): 415439.
Unfortunately, the long-term retention of ideas was not examined in the study.
21
For a short survey, see F. GRAF, R.L. FOWLER and .M. NAGY, Magische Rituale, in Thesaurus cultus et rituum antiquorum (Vol. 3; eds. V. Lambrinoudakis and J.C.
Balty; Los Angeles 2005), 283301, see 283286.
22
E.g., J. BRAARVIG, Magic: Reconsidering the Grand Dichotomy, in The World of
Ancient Magic: Papers From the First International Samson Eitrem Seminar At the Norwegian Institute at Athens, 48 May 1997 (ed. D. Jordan, H. Montgomery and E.
Thomassen; Bergen 1999), 2154; E. T HOMASSEN, Is Magic a Subclass of Ritual?, ibid
5566; I. P YYSIINEN, Magic, Miracles and Religion: A Scientists Perspective (Walnut
Creek and Lanham 2004), 2154; J.N. BREMMER, Greek religion and culture, the Bible,
and the ancient Near East (Leiden and Boston 2008), 347352.
23
For ancient legislation against magic, see U. LUGLI, La magia a Roma (Genova
1989), 34f.; D. COLLINS, Magic in the ancient Greek world (Malden, MA 2008), 132
164.

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cept to analyze a pattern of thought and behavior from the emic use of the
word as a derogatory rhetorical tool in antiquity, applied by both Christians and non-Christians. Below I will use the concept of magic in a broad,
non-pejorative sense, including what is called performing a miracle in theological parlance.
As I have argued elsewhere, the heroes of early Christian literature rely
on the power of the Holy Spirit or Jesus name (after receiving baptism)
much in the same way as magicians in general relied on a parhedros, a
supernatural helper with which they were connected by an initiation process.24 This technique has been distinguished from the coercive approach
to gaining control over a spirit or deity.25 However, the use of the term
coercive () in the magical papyri can be misleading. For
example, the coercive spell in PGM IV.25202567 could be called a
petitionary prayer to Selene. The claim of the papyrus about the efficiency
of the spell can be compared to Jesus promise of whatever you ask for in
prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours (Mark
11:24). It is beyond doubt that magic involved a number of techniques to
influence supernatural powers, such as using secret knowledge or gaining
control over spirits with the help of higher gods.26 But these aspects have
to be examined on a case-by-case basis and do not allow us, in my opinion,
to establish clear-cut boundaries either between magic and miracle or between Christian and pagan practice.
I have also argued that magical practice across human cultures is rooted
in behavioral learning and supported by a number of cognitive mechanisms.27 The ties between magical manipulations and certain forms of operant conditioning (in which associations are made between ones behavior
and a stimulus) have been recognized and demonstrated by B.F. Skinner,

24

I. CZACHESZ, Magic and Mind: Toward a Cognitive Theory of Magic, With Special Attention to the Canonical and Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, Annali di Storia
dellEsegesi 24 (2007): 295321; IDEM, Explaining Magic: Earliest Christianity as a
Test Case, in Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography (ed. L.H. Martin and J.
Srensen; London 2011), 141165. For the parhedros, see recently E. P ACHOUMI, Divine Epiphanies of Paredroi in the Greek Magical Papyri, GRBS 51 (2011): 155165.
25
A. SCIBILIA, Supernatual Assistance in the Greek Magical Papyri: The Figure of
the Parhedros, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern
Period (ed. J.N. Bremmer and J.R. Veenstra; Leuven 2002), 7186, see 7275.
26
E.g., W. FAUTH, Gtter- und Dmonenzwang in den griechischen Zauberpapyri,
ZRGG 50 (2008): 4060.
27
For a more extended discussion, considering a broader range of cognitive components, see I. CZACHESZ, A Cognitive Perspective on Magic in the New Testament, in
Mind, Morality, and Magic: Cognitive Science Approaches in Biblical Studies (ed. I.
Czachesz and R. Uro; Durham 2013), 164179.

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K. Ono, S.A. Vyse, and others.28 The basic form of magic is thus embodied, based on associations encoded in implicit memory and possibly not
accessible to conscious reflection.
The explicit belief that magical acts influence the state of affairs is supported by a number of cognitive mechanisms. In an experiment, participants were instructed to perform a voodoo ritual with a doll.29 They were
introduced to a confederate who behaved either offensively or neutrally,
and who later played the role of the victim of magic. Then participants
were asked to generate vivid and concentrate thoughts about the victim
(who was in the neighboring room) and prick the doll in particular ways.
Finally, the victim came back and reported having a slight headache. It
turned out that participants who had ill thoughts about their victims (because of the victims offensive behavior) were likely to think that they
caused the victims headache, whereas participants meeting neutral victims
were less likely to think so. Students interpretations of the events probably relied on agentive reasoning, that is, the use of concepts of agents to
make sense of various kinds of information. Although we do not call them
demons any longer, we find it easy to accept that there are different
agencies acting in us, such as illnesses, emotions, desires, will, Jungian
agents populating our psyche etc. Without thinking about it, the participants seem to have believed that a similar agency (possibly connected to
their strong emotions) acted invisibly and caused damage in other people.
Another important underlying mechanism of magic is reasoning about
contagion. In a series of experiments conducted by C. Nemeroff, P. Rozin,
and their collaborators, participants avoided contact with objects that were
previously in contact with disgusting insects or substances, even after the
objects were carefully sterilized.30 An even more surprising finding was
that objects that were in contact with morally condemned people elicited
the same response.31 Theories about the origins of contagion avoidance
28

B.F. SKINNER, Superstition in the Pigeon, Journal of Experimental Psychology

38 (1948): 168172; K. ONO, Superstitious Behavior in Humans, Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior 47 (1987): 261271; S.A. V YSE, Believing in Magic: The
Psychology of Superstition (New York 1997).
29
E. PRONIN, D.M. W EGNER, K. MCCARTHY and S. RODRIGUEZ, Everyday Magical
Powers: The Role of Apparent Mental Causation in the Overestimation of Personal Influence, JPSP 91 (2006): 218231.
30
P. ROZIN, L. M ILLMAN and C. NEMEROFF, Operation of the Laws of Sympathetic
Magic in Disgust and Other Domains, JPSP 50 (1986): 703712; C. NEMEROFF and P.
ROZIN, The Making of the Magical Mind: The Nature and Function of Sympathetic
Magical Thinking, in Imagining the Impossible: Magical, Scientific, and Religious
Thinking in Children (ed. K.S. Rosengren, C.N. Johnson and P.L. Harris; Cambridge
2000), 134.
31
See note 30. C. NEMEROFF and P. ROZIN, The Contagion Concept in Adult Thinking in the United States: Transmission of Germs and of Interpersonal Influence, Ethos

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assume that originally it had some evolutionary benefit, although the precise explanation remains unclear.32 There is also a tendency to prefer
touching objects that belonged to morally valued people, which seems to
be one of the underlying motivations to collect memorabilia or venerate
relics.33 In sum, there is a cross-culturally attested human intuition that
positive and negative qualities (including abstract, moral features) can be
transmitted by contact.
It is to be expected that whereas low-level, intuitive thoughts about
magic are universal (or cross-culturally recurrent), elaborate theological
concepts are more time-bound. In a different cultural context, theories of
magic can assume radically different forms, while the intuitive cognitive
mechanisms underlying first-hand reactions remain the same. For example,
a fanatic UFO believer can explain changes in his or her mental or physical
condition by abduction by aliens, while the same changes would be attributed to a favorable response to a sacrifice, demonic attack, or the influence of evil eye (depending on the positive or negative nature of the experience) in an ancient context.
Already from a very early period there is evidence of magical activity
among Jesus followers. In 1 Corinthians 12:710, Paul writes about magical specialists: healers, miracle workers, and possibly exorcists, who are in
the company of teachers, prophets, and other Church officials.34 This passage is interesting also because the epistle predates extant texts about the
miracles of Jesus and the apostles. What was the relation between magical
practice and miracle stories in earliest Christianity? One can argue that
traditions about Jesus and the apostles could have circulated in oral transmission before Pauls time but such a hypothesis is difficult to test. It is
also possible that it was magical practice that inspired the miracle stories
about Jesus and the apostles. Christianity could have incorporated already
existing magical lore. Magical specialists who converted to Christianity
could be among the healers and miracle workers mentioned in 1 Corinthians. The relation of magic and miracle was dialectical, in which miracle
stories generated belief in magic, and magical practice created an interest
in miracle stories. The interaction of magic and miracle can occur in the
22 (1994): 158186; H.L. LENFESTY, Adults Implicit Reasoning about Moral Contagion (Dissertation; Queens University Belfast 2011).
32
Cf. W. MCCORKLE, Ritualizing the Disposal of the Deceased: From Corpse to
Concept, (New York 2010), 107131.
33
H.L. LENFESTY, Adults Implicit Reasoning (n. 31); R. URO, From Corpse Impurity to Relic Veneration: New Light from Cognitive and Psychological Studies, in Mind,
Morality and Magic (n. 27 ), 180196.
34
For the possibility of 1 Cor 12:10 referring to exorcists, see E. SORENSEN, Possession and Exorcism in the New Testament and Early Christianity, (WUNT II/157;
Tbingen 2002), 156f.

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context of both individual and communal practice. At the personal level,

miracle stories (and superstitious traditions) can confirm spontaneously
developed superstitious behaviors. At the communal level, magic can be
institutionalized, giving rise to the use of miracle stories as a justification
for existing practices: believers imitate Jesus and the apostles.
The long ending of the Gospel of Mark, likely dated to the first half of
the second century, suggests that not only specialists, but all believers
could perform magic:35 these signs will accompany those who believe: by
using my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues;
they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing,
it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will
recover (Mark 16:17f.). It would have been meaningless to add such a
sentence to the Gospel unless there was an actual interest in at least some
of the practices on the list. Starting with the second century, magical papyri provide invaluable resources to study the variety of Christian magic.36
We can conclude that miracle stories spread for reasons that are independent from both the actual practice of magic and peoples explanations
of magic and miracle. This does not mean, however, that magic is independent from miracle. Repeated exposure to miracle stories familiarizes
listeners with ideas and provides them with narrative schemata and other
means to make sense of them. Such stories may be embedded into social
and institutional contexts (ancestral tradition, mythology) that enhance
their credibility and significance. In this way, miracle stories can provide
cultural interpretation and positive feedback to the behavioral patterns that
develop from a different background. Thus the miracle stories recorded in
the New Testament and other early Christian writings could play an important role in the magical practice of the Christians. Miracles stories
about the apostles proved that one could legitimately (from a theological
point of view) and efficiently invoke Gods power (for example, by calling
Jesus name) to perform magical acts. They offered an explanatory framework, according to which the Holy Spirit was a more powerful parhedros
than others in the cultural environment of Christians. Finally, they suggested a repertoire of magical manipulations, such as Pauls gestures when
he resuscitated Eutychus in Troas or the use of his aprons that healed people in Ephesus.
35
For dating the text, see B.M. METZGER, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New
Testament (2nd ed.; Stuttgart 1994), 125; J. KELHOFFER, Miracle and Mission: The Authentication of Missionaries and Their Message in the Longer Ending of Mark (WUNT
II/112; Tbingen 2000), 234244.
36
E.g., M. MEYER/R. SMITH, Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power
(Princeton, NJ 1999); P. MIRECKI/M. MEYER, Magic and ritual in the ancient world
(Leiden and Boston 2002).

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4. Conclusion
This chapter showed how scientific knowledge from evolutionary theory,
cognitive science, and experimental psychology helps us read early Christian miracle stories. In addition to highlighting and analyzing crosscultural patterns of thought and behavior that support the popularity of
miracle stories, making them mental candies for people with different
cultural backgrounds and convictions, we also paid attention to the cultural
factors that provide different contexts for the reception of miracle stories
in ancient times and Western modernity, respectively. Most importantly,
we have seen that it is not the belief in the factual truth of miracles (or
the lack of such faith) that determines their success. The question is rather
what a certain culture or subculture makes of the attractive power of miracle stories. Already in antiquity, a miracle story could be thought of as a
poetic device or entertaining fiction, or the miracle performed in it could
be interpreted as harmful magic. Miracle stories and magical practice
formed a symbiotic bond. For the modern reader, the options of contextualizing miracle are even more diverse, ranging from pre-modern literalism
to ideological deconstruction and psychoanalytical symbolism. In the end,
however, each of those interpretative frameworks adds to the success of
miracles.

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