New Research Confirms Jesus’s Miracles

In chapter 5 of his Gospel, Luke unfolds the following scene: Jesus is teaching in a crowded house, and a paralyzed man is lowered through the roof to ask for healing. Jesus answers by forgiving his sins. Shocked, the scribes and Pharisees accused Jesus of blasphemy—for who, they ask, can forgive sins but God alone?

In response, Jesus heals the man’s paralysis. At this, the crowd is amazed. They glorify God, they’re filled with “awe,” and they exclaim, “Today we have seen paradoxa!” (Luke 5:26).

The word paradoxa is unusual. It’s used nowhere else in the New Testament, and translations are divided as to its meaning; the ESV renders it “extraordinary,” the NIV and NASB say “remarkable,” but many others prefer “strange things” (KJV, NKJV, NRSV, ASV, WEB, YLT). Dictionaries of ancient Greek retain both positive and negative meanings and also add “paradoxical.”

It seems that either the crowd as a whole was confused by what it had witnessed, not knowing exactly what to make of Jesus, or the crowd was divided, with some denigrating Jesus as a blasphemer and others praising him as a prophet of divine commission.

Either way, paradoxa captures the crowd’s belief that it witnessed something supernaturally strange, unsettling, and inexplicable, something perhaps paranormal, as we might say in English. The word paradoxa therefore isn’t inherently negative, but it isn’t inherently positive either—it connotes the kind of astonishment that leaves one bewildered, wondering what the source of the paradoxa might be. Are these of demonic origin? Are they divine? Without context, who can tell?

In my recent book Josephus and Jesus (read TGC’s review), I show that the ambiguous connotations of paradoxa reveal remarkable new evidence for Jesus’s miracles—evidence, moreover, that comes from an early, non-Christian writer well placed to know all about Jesus of Nazareth.

Accusations Against the Source of Jesus’s Miracles

First, a bit of background. The implications of paradoxa aren’t unique in the New Testament and call to mind the debates recorded in the Gospels regarding the source of Jesus’s power. They also fit with what other unbelievers accuse Jesus of doing.

The Jewish Talmud claims Jesus practiced “sorcery.” The Toledot Yeshu (second to fifth centuries), a hostile Jewish biography of Jesus, presents a frankly ridiculous account of Jesus somehow obtaining the four sacred letters of God’s name, YHWH, and verbally wielding them as a power totem to raise the dead.

Pagan sources echo the same and admit Jesus’s miracles, but they venture to account for them with their own spin. Perhaps, some suggest, Jesus was a kind of lesser pagan deity; or maybe, some submit, he learned the dark arts in Egypt. Celsus, a vicious second-century critic of Jesus, subscribes to the latter idea and even employs the same word found in Luke 5:26 to claim that Jesus performed paradoxa by magic.

It seems that in the ancient world, Jesus’s miracles were so indisputable that both Jewish and pagan critics couldn’t deny they had occurred and instead sought all manner of explanations, however unlikely such explanations might be. Early Christians wisely replied by asking how it could be honestly maintained that Jesus’s deeds were malevolent sorcery when he preached repentance from sin, pursuing truth, and loving one’s enemies?

Josephus and the ‘Paradoxa’ of Jesus

But here is where new evidence for Jesus’s miracles arises. It turns out that once we’ve understood paradoxa for what they are, a compelling confirmation of Jesus’s miracles comes to light from a first-century Jewish chronicler. I speak of course of the famous historian Flavius Josephus.

In the ancient world, Jesus’s miracles were so indisputable that both Jewish and pagan critics couldn’t deny they had occurred.

Born in AD 37 to an eminent family, Josephus descended from high priests and kings. He received an aristocratic upbringing in Jerusalem, where he became a priest, a Pharisee, and an army general. He was astoundingly well connected: He knew two or three high priests, the leader of the Sanhedrin, and Herod Agrippa II (the last king of the Jews). As I argue in my book, Josephus even knew some of the men who attended Jesus’s trial.

It so happens that Josephus also wrote about Jesus in a passage much debated by scholars. In it he claims that Jesus wrought paradoxa (Antiquities 18.63). Past scholars have rendered this term positively as in “miraculous deeds,” or “wonderful things,” or other synonymous phrasing.

Such a positive understanding has been one reason that many scholars questioned the passage’s authenticity: Why would Josephus, a first-century Jewish historian, write so glowingly about Jesus? On these grounds, they conclude a later Christian scribe must have tampered with Josephus’s text to cast Jesus in a better light.

But in view of the above, we see now that paradoxa aren’t obviously positive deeds; they’re instead ambiguous, potentially even negative. This, for example, is how Josephus used the term elsewhere, when he described the supernatural works of Pharaoh’s magicians in their duel with Moses. There, he wrote that the magicians conjured a paradoxon, the singular form of paradoxa. Josephus then had Moses claim that the magicians’ power wasn’t divine but only human wizardry.

Josephus’s words about Pharaoh’s magicians unmistakably parallel his words about Jesus. He hence seemed to wonder whether Jesus was a magician using forbidden or illegitimate powers.

Certainty of Jesus’s Miracles

The implications are clear: Josephus fully acknowledged Jesus’s miraculous deeds, as other ancient non-Christians did. And this comes from a man raised in first-century Jerusalem, a man who knew those involved in Jesus’s trial, a man who went on to become one of the finest historians the ancient world ever produced.

He was also perfectly ready to deny the miraculous—he laughed at the idea of certain wizards casting spells on him when he served as a general, and he unmasked false prophets and charlatans when writing his books of history—but in the case of Jesus, he didn’t claim his miracles were false, or exaggerations, or the stuff of legends. While Josephus wasn’t sure of the source for Jesus’s supernatural deeds, he was sure they happened.

And we can be sure they happened too.

While Josephus wasn’t sure of the source for Jesus’s supernatural deeds, he was sure they happened.

Yet this conclusion that Jesus worked miracles should spur us on to a more important realization. The crucial point of Jesus’s supernatural deeds isn’t that he did them but that they testified to his divine commission, just as we saw when Jesus healed the paralyzed man and then forgave his sins.

Jesus’s miracles were signs validating his more vital gospel message—they authenticated the good news of Jesus that all should repent of their sins and receive forgiveness by trusting in him.

Although Jesus’s miraculous deeds were great and awesome, they were only waymarks guiding us along the pathway of mercy on which all the forgiven walk with the Lord. Thus, Jesus healed the paralyzed man in body, and then the man walked before Jesus. But the greater miracle was that Jesus also forgave that man in spirit, and now the man walks with Jesus forever.

Jesus will do the same greater miracle for you. Will you walk with him?