Synoptic Miracles Research Paper

This week’s discussion on the Synoptic miracles gave me a great deal to meditate on with the review of extra-biblical miracle workers of Jesus’ day. Honi, the Circle Drawer, had his plight with drought followed by miniature flood. Hanina ben Dosa had his vinegar powered oil lamp, drought, and enough meditative power to inadvertently kill a lizard. With all of these miracle workers popping at the beginning of the Common Era, it is no wonder the early Christian communities felt the need to convey the mystical miracles of their own religious front-runner, Jesus the Christ. At first glance, these early communities seem merely to be attempting to “keep up with the Jones’s” of the religious groups surrounding that geographical point of the world. While some people may feel a sense of crisis when comparing their central religious figure to these competing miracle workers, I myself feel comfort

This intrigued me since I understood Mark to be shorter in total length than the other synoptic texts. As I began the side-by-side verse comparison Throckmorton assembled, I noticed this observation was slightly skewed. While Mark’s verses were greater in number, the stories themselves were not always greater in terms of length. A few of Mark’s traditions were greater and most were equal to Luke’s in terms of length; Matthew was almost always shorter. Why would the most brief of the three gospels have miracle contents that rivaled the others, mostly Luke, in terms of the number of verses and story length? I can only surmise that the miracles of Jesus were thought to be of great importance to the Markan author(s). However, it is difficult to determine whether this observation has credible weight since I am viewing it in the English translation and not the original Greek. Thusly, my one question is whether my observation is on the correct track or