Miracles in Jewish and Christian Antiquity

The essays in this work explore ways in which miracle stories, both biblical and post-biblical, invite us into the realm of the imagination as a locus, and in some cases a privileged locus, of truth. The collection opens with a discussion of the history of the problem of miracles in the Bible from Spinoza to Bultmann, then moves to various demonstrations of how it is that we must turn to the imagination if we are to understand miracle stories, or if we are to permit them to have their intended effect. Other essays take up the much neglected topic of the miraculous in the Rabbis and stories told in connection with the lives of monks in 6th century Palestine. A concluding essay discusses the theme of the miraculous fertility of the earth in various early Christian accounts of the millennium, and examines the sources of those accounts.