The Miracles of Jesus

I have, for some reason, really taken an interest in the Miracles of Jesus in the past few days. I honestly don't know why.


I have always found the Miracles interesting, but not to the degree that I have recently. I had, previously to my finding of faith through Jesus, always looked at the comparative features of Jesus' Miracles in comparison with Miracles performed by other religious leaders and prophets; I suppose originally this was to undermine the work of Jesus and show that he was just an amazing man, nothing more. Fortunatly, that's not what I do anymore, now that I have seen and read the truth.

Recently through my reading of the Gospels, the cleansing of the leper has really spoken to me. This could be for a number of reasons, but because I read and study from three different bibles, ( 2 KJV's and 1 NIV) I often read different Gospels at different times.


Again, I am unsure why I do this; I don't do it to pick and choose verses to read, but I do sometimes find it difficult to "digest" passages when  trying to work through the Bible, so i suppose having more than one Bible, more than one translation, helps me keep a closer eye on what I am reading. It also helps me, when God speaks to me through Scripture, what specifically He is trying to get me to understand (I can be a bit slow when trying to understand messages-God is very forgiving). 

All this week, I have read the Miracle of Jesus when he cleanses the leper. The reference to this miracle can be found below.


So, through seeing this, as I always do, I went straight on to the Internet to read more about this particular miracle. I love finding out if there is extra or relevant meaning. Where I don't have a study Bible, I find the Internet to be a very useful tool.


In my searching I came across this below table, listing the miracles of Jesus, and how they harmonise throughout the New testament.


list of key episodes in the Canonical Gospels.

Number	Event	Matthew	Mark	Luke	John
1	Marriage at Cana				John 2:1-11
2	Exorcism at the Synagogue in Capernaum		Mark 1:21-28	Luke 4:31-37
3	Miraculous draught of fishes			Luke 5:1-11
4	Young Man from Nain			Luke 7:11-17
5	Cleansing a leper	Matthew 8:1-4	Mark 1:40-45	Luke 5:12-16
6	The Centurion's Servant	Matthew 8:5-13		Luke 7:1-10	John 4:46-54
7	Healing the mother of Peter's wife	Matthew 8:14-17	Mark 1:29-34	Luke 4:38-41
8	Exorcising at sunset	Matthew 8:16-17	Mark 1:32-34	Luke 4:40-41
9	Calming the storm	Matthew 8:23-27	Mark 4:35-41	Luke 8:22-25
10	Gerasenes demonic	Matthew 8:28-34	Mark 5:1-20	Luke 8:26-39
11	Paralytic at Capernaum	Matthew 9:1-8	Mark 2:1-12	Luke 5:17-26
12	Daughter of Jairus	Matthew 9:18-26	Mark 5:21-43	Luke 8:40-56
13	The Bleeding Woman	Matthew 9:20-22	Mark 5:24-34	Luke 8:43-48
14	Two Blind Men at Galilee	Matthew 9:27-31
15	Exorcising a mute	Matthew 9:32-34
16	Paralytic at Bethesda				John 5:1-18
17	Man with withered Hand	Matthew 12:9-13	Mark 3:1-6	Luke 6:6-11
18	Exorcising the blind and mute man	Matthew 12:22-28	Mark 3:20-30	Luke 11:14-23
19	An Infirm Woman			Luke 13:10-17
20	Feeding the 5000	Matthew 14:13-21	Mark 6:31-34	Luke 9:10-17	John 6:5-15
21	Walking on water	Matthew 14:22-33	Mark 6:45-52		John 6:16-21
22	Healing in Gennesaret	Matthew 14:34-36	Mark 6:53-56
23	Canaanite woman's daughter	Matthew 15:21-28	Mark 7:24-30
24	Deaf mute of Decapolis		Mark 7:31-37
25	Feeding the 4000	Matthew 15:32-39	Mark 8:1-9
26	Blind Man of Bethsaida		Mark 8:22-26
27	Transfiguration of Jesus	Matthew 17:1-13	Mark 9:2-13	Luke 9:28-36
28	Boy possessed by a demon	Matthew 17:14-21	Mark 9:14-29	Luke 9:37-49
29	Coin in the fish's mouth	Matthew 17:24-27
30	Man with dropsy			Luke 14:1-6
31	Cleansing ten lepers			Luke 17:11-19
32	The Blind at Birth				John 9:1-12
33	Blind near Jericho	Matthew 20:29-34	Mark 10:46-52	Luke 18:35-43
34	Raising of Lazarus				John 11:1-44
35	Cursing the fig tree	Matthew 21:18-22	Mark 11:12-14
36	Healing the ear of a servant			Luke 22:49-51
37	Catch of 153 fish				John 21:1-24

Now, it was probably incredibly naive of me, but on first thinking of Jesus's miracles, I could name 8 maybe 10 of them, I thought logically about it and assumed if I can name 10 that there must be about 15, give or take.


Seeing that there was 37 really shocked me. Did I know all of them, surprisingly I did, but why didn't they spring to mind. This chart, taken from Wikipiedia, harmonises them throughout the Bible. That must have been it, they were not in all of the gospels, probably scattered throughout them sporadically. Looking at the above table, I assumed that for it not to be sporadically located that it needed to appear in more than one, 23 of the miracles do. That is still a massive number, and 18 of them in three out of four. Why didn't I know this?


Why didn't I know this: I suppose the question is did I ever really look before, probably not. But it definitely interested me (which is whyI am posting a Blog about it)  A lot of the miracles, showed and fulfilled the prophecies written about Him in the Old Testament, so sceptics could argue that they were placed appropriately in the gospels to collectively bring them together. I can see the point, if this is raised, as I would have questioned that myself. This shows that they have an all rounded and  supportive evidential structure to prove that they happened.What did stand out, is the feeding of the 5000 is the only miracle in all four of the Gospels, again, a little fact that I was unaware of. But this I believe this miracle was unprophacised. Although, this could be argued that this purposefully mirrored the story of Elisha (2 Kings 4: 34-41) But I don't think so, it just continues to show the wonder of Him.


The wikipedia site also had this table below as well.

List of miracles found outside the New Testament

Accounts of Jesus performing miracles are also found outside the New Testament. Later, 2nd century texts, called Infancy Gospels, narrate Jesus performing miracles during his childhood.

Miracle	Sources
Rich young man raised from the dead	Secret Gospel of Mark 1
Water controlled and purified	Infancy Thomas 2.2
Made birds of clay and brought them to life	Infancy Thomas 2.3
Resurrected dead playmate Zeno	Infancy Thomas 9
Healed a woodcutter's foot	Infancy Thomas 10
Held water in his cloak	Infancy Thomas 11
Harvested 100 bushels of wheat from a single seed	Infancy Thomas 12
Stretched a board that was short for carpentry	Infancy Thomas 13
Resurrected a teacher he earlier struck down	Infancy Thomas 14-15
Healed James' viper bite	Infancy Thomas 16
Resurrected a dead child	Infancy Thomas 17
Resurrected a dead man	Infancy Thomas 18
Miraculous Virgin Birth verified by midwife	Infancy James 19-20

For me, if these are included or not, just really opened my eyes to the things that Jesus did and that we should always remember them, not forgetting that he did just 5 or 10 great things, he did lots, with the greatest miracle being his death and resurrection for us all.


Ending on a verse to remember:

John 21:24-25

²⁴ This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true. ²⁵ Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.




*Just for the sake of Tom-Sheep and Goats: Bob Dylan