The Unexplained Miracle: Biblical Israel
Photograph: A fresco from a synagogue in Dura Europos, Syria, dating back to 244 - 255 CE. It depicts the baby Moses being drawn up from the Nile River. Photo credit: Unknown | Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons. The synagogue was next to a Christian house church. Both had remarkable paintings and mosaics.
The emergence of the Jewish people and Hebraic thought is an unexplained miracle. This page explores why.
Messages and Essays on the Unexplained Miracle: Biblical Israel
The Uniqueness of the Jewish People and Jewish Thought
A selection of quotations on the uniqueness of Jewish practices, laws, and institutions, from historians and other scholars.
Other Resources on Israel as the Unexplained Miracle
Gordon Hugenberger, The Historicity of the Bible
N.T. Wright, How Can the Bible Be Authoritative? (1989, 1991)
Frank Moore Cross, From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel (1998)
Kevin D. Miller, Did the Exodus Never Happen? (Christianity Today, Sep 7, 1998)
James K. Hoffmeier, Israel in Egypt: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Exodus Tradition (1999)
Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (2006)
Ben Witherington, The Relationship of the OT to the NT According to John Chrysostom (blog, Aug 28, 2007)
Roger Isaacs, Passover In Egypt: Did the Exodus Really Happen? (Huffington Post, Apr 9, 2011)
Annette Gordon-Reid, Slavery's Shadow: Historians' Problems with Slave Narratives (New Yorker, Oct 23, 2013) and my reflection on the socio-political context of biblical narrative
C.D. Elledge with Olivia Yeo, Rethinking the "Qumran Community": Recent Approaches (ASOR blog, Dec 13, 2013)
James Wood, Why? The Fictions of Life and Death (The New Yorker, Dec 9, 2013) on why stories and especially the novel wrestles with death - removing the story as a literary form from its original theological context (Hebrew biblical narrative) only leaves a deeply unsettling, emotional question: why?
Brian Zahnd, My Problem with the Bible (blog, Feb 17, 2014)
Sarah Knapton, Scientists: Noah's Ark Would Have Floated With 70,000 Animals If Built By Dimensions In The Bible (Business Insider, Apr 3, 2014)
Peter Enns, N.T. Wright on Jesus, Adam, Paul, and Hermeneutics (youtube video, May 23, 2014)
Kristin Romey, Has the ‘Signature’ of Biblical Prophet Isaiah Been Discovered? (National Geographic, Feb 21, 2018)
Janelle Alberts, 4 Little-Known Facts About the Bible That Suggest It Can Be Trusted (Relevant Magazine, Apr 10, 2018)
Henry Abramson, What is the Extra-biblical Historical Evidence for the Exodus? Henry Abramson, Mar 27, 2023.
The Supernatural: Topics:
This section on the Supernatural is organized as follows: The Natural Is Supernatural highlights how creation itself is miraculous, since there is something rather than nothing; and creation points in its own way to God. General Accounts of the Supernatural highlights how people who are not Christians have observed supernatural phenomena. Christian Accounts of the Supernatural spotlights specifically Christian experiences and interpretations of the supernatural. An Unexplained Miracle: Biblical Israel examines how the the origins, literature, and early history of Israel point to a supernatural origin. The Decisive Miracle: Jesus of Nazareth considers Jesus to be the supreme miracle of a God who reveals God’s own self.
