Craig Keener's book was a bit more than what I expected when I ordered it. "Miracles, the Credibility of The New Testament Accounts" comes in two volumes. Volume 2 is almost all bibliography. That should say something right there about the exhaustive work that Keener put into researching material for this work. He does not just take someone's word for it, he actually goes back and searches out what is stated by historians as well as Theologians and eyewitnesses.
The book does not just discuss New Testament Miracles (which is what I thought it was going to do). Instead it starts with discussing the New Testament account of miracles, mainly the four Gospels and the Book of Acts and leads to a scholarly discussion of historical accounts that would add credibility to the miracles expressed in the writing of the New Testament. He then goes on to further discuss the history of Miracles and the credit given to eyewitness accounts to add validity to the headings that take place.
In Part One there is a major discussion of the New Testament accounts. But then there is lots of information regarding the "healing pools" of the Greeks, the Persians, the Egyptians and other cultures and how those were significant in the way the culture of Jesus time viewed healers / healing waters and the issue of Miracles. It is a fascinating discussion with lots of background information going into his thesis.
Part two of the book deals with the question, "Are Miracles Possible?" This section looks at the criterion used by the ancients to determine whether a miracle had taken place as well as to look at the modern culture and how we critique and review miracles that have taken place. Further Keener delves deeply into the questions of the "Skeptics" who don't hold fondly to the idea of Miracles. Further what about the Philosophical questions that were raised by scholars as to whether Miracles were real or not.
Then Part Three of the text goes into Miracle Accounts beyond Antiquity. This is where Keener takes off from New Testament times and starts to look at the Majority world perspective on miracles and what is going on in each of the cultures from the Middle East to Africa, China, the Pacific and so on. This is where I thought the text went so much further than what I first thought it was going to do. Keener doesn't just research the New Testament times but he goes beyond that and brings us to even current day events. Part Three is a modern day account of the miracles still taking place in our world. For those who are skeptical they need to give a reasonable look at Keener's work and then also at the work of the Catholic Church. The Vatican has a whole department that researches miracles so that they can give "sainthood" to the Priests and Nuns of their faith who over the years have performed "miracles."
The idea of miracles is not just relegated to the Christian Church. There are miracles happening all over the world. Some from what we might consider demonic sources, but many from what are claimed to be Christian sources.
After reading through this work (yes it takes a while it is fairly long) you will be left with a fascination of New Testament and modern day miracles.
As the mission pastor at my church I hear of modern day miracles all the time from credible sources. I don't always like hearing about them, because it is not in my comfort zone, but I know miracles can still happen. So, I was excited to see Keener's work on Miracles and even more fascinated once I started to read.
This book is a great book for serious Bible students, Scholars, Pastors and Theologians that get their kicks delving into such interesting topics.
This book probably isn't for the average lay person who just is curious about Miracles. Maybe we can get Keener to write a "Cliff's Notes" version the curious.
Enjoy!.
No comments:
Post a Comment