7. Why didn’t any of Jesus’ miracles in the Bible leave any evidence?

(If you haven’t already, please first read the answer to question #1)

I find that this question seems to answer itself. The Bible records first hand accounts of the miracles. What other evidence is needed? The Bible, as compared to other ancient texts, is the relative equivalent to live TV today. And yet it is also the most disputed books in antiquity. Secular papyrologist Carsten Peter Thiede can date certain fragments of the gospel of Matthew back to A.D. 60. This is within 30 years of the events themselves, where the eye witnesses were still alive to refute or verify the miracles that Jesus performed. Additionally, other scientists argue for a latter date of about A.D. 100, and this is being very generous. This means that these accounts were in wide circulation during the infancy of the church and if the accounts were false, people who were there could have refuted them and put an end to the false account, but they did not. Additionally, we have more early manuscripts of these accounts than we do any other ancient texts in the western canon of literature (roughly 14,000 manuscripts). What this means is that we have more accounts of the miracles from manuscripts that were written closer to the event it is recalling than the works of Plato, Aristotle, or Homer combined. To give you an idea, we have roughly 643 early manuscripts of Homer’s works and we do not know how far removed the earliest of these are from the original. For Aristotle, we only have 7 early manuscripts and the earliest is 1400 years removed from the original autographa. And we have only 5 manuscripts of Plato’s work and they are nearly 1300 year older than the original text. Additionally, for Tacitus, the Roman historian, we only have 20 early manuscripts and the earliest of these is 1,000 years removed from the original. And yet no one is calling into question the accuracy or authenticity of these works. They are all taught in high school and college as historically accurate and reliable. The comparison to the New Testament documents is incomparable and to simply reject their accounts is academically irresponsible. To claim that 14,000 manuscripts dating 30 to 70 years from the original are less reliable than 20 manuscripts 1,000 years removed does not make sense academically, historically, or rationally. If we were to apply the same scrutiny to these and other ancient texts as most do to the Bible, then we would have no ancient literature (historical, philosophical, theological) within the western canon.

My point is simply this: the accounts of Jesus’ miracles recorded in the gospels of the New Testament are reliable evidence. They are of the same caliber as the accounts of George Washington crossing the Delaware River and they are just as reliable as the accounts of Napoleon Bonaparte’s battle at Waterloo. And we teach these stories in schools and rely on this information as evidence of historical events. I am not sure what further evidence this video is demanding apart from the biblical accounts. If it wants fossilized bodies of people healed of leprosy or blindness, then I must admit that I cannot provide this level of evidence. If it demands satellite photos of Jesus walking on water or a chemical analysis of the water he turned into wine, then I am at a loss. But I would submit that this kind of scrutiny has an underlying agenda and it is not the search for truth or a rational worldview. Rather it is pushing for the supremacy of its own ideologies which are not necessarily academically, historically, or philosophically valid or responsible. Nor are they more or less plausible than the Christian worldview given the data.