Pseudo-Philo is a first century C.E. Jewish work that interprets and
expands upon stories in the Hebrew Bible. In Pseudo-Philo 25, we learn
about luminescent Amorite stones in the Amorite sanctuaries that had the
power to heal disease. V 12 states that “even if one of the Amorites
was blind, he would go and put his eyes on it and recover sight” (D.J.
Harrington’s translation). The Israelite judge Kenaz, eager to destroy
the remains of Amorite religion in the land of Canaan so that they do
not become (or remain) a temptation to Israel, finds a way to dispose of
the stones.
We see pagan miracles elsewhere in Pseudo-Philo. In Pseudo-Philo 34,
there is a magician named Aod from the Midianite sanctuaries, and he is
able to make the sun appear at night. Aod has been sacrificing to the
angels who are in charge of magic, and the angels, in the past, had
transgressed by revealing magic to human beings. I got a similar sort
of message when I read I Enoch: that the transgressing angels, in
revealing astrology to human beings, were not revealing something that
was a total lie; rather, they were revealing something that, on some
level, was true, but that God did not want people to know. Perhaps God
did not think that humans were mature enough to handle that knowledge,
or he wanted for people to focus on him and thought that knowledge of
astrology could detract from that. It would be similar to the story in
Genesis 3 about God not wanting Adam and Eve to eat from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. Yes, the tree had real effects—-it enabled
Adam and Eve to know good and evil, like God. But God did not want for
them to eat from that tree. He may have thought that they were not yet
ready to know good and evil, or that they should not seek the knowledge
of good and evil apart from a relationship with God. Less charitable
interpretations say that God was being greedy, or that God saw the
knowledge of good and evil as his sole prerogative.
But back to pagan miracles! The reason that pagan miracles interest
me is that they can potentially cast doubt on miracles being a sign that
God is at work. In the New Testament, Jesus’ miracles are a sign that
God is at work. People are supposed to be able to recognize that God is
at work on account of miracles. There are apologists today who hold
that miracles attest to the truth of the Bible. But what if the bad
side can do miracles, too? The Bible, as far as I know, does
acknowledge that to be a possibility. Pharaoh’s magicians could do some
of the same miracles that Moses did. Jesus in Mark 13 (and parallels)
talks about false Christs and false Messiahs performing signs and
wonders. In the Book of Revelation, people marvel because the Beast
died and came back to life.
But one could come back and nitpick those miracles that the bad side
does. The magicians were able to do some of the same signs that Moses
was? What does that prove? If they wanted to demonstrate that they or
their gods were more powerful than Moses and his god, then they should
have tried to reverse the disastrous effects of Moses’ miracles—-to
purify the water that had been turned to blood, to make the frogs and
the locusts go away, etc. Jesus in Mark 13 does not explicitly say what
miracles the false Messiahs and false prophets will perform. And some
may take the Beast’s resurrection in Revelation as symbolic rather than
as a literal miracle, saying that it could symbolize the resurrection of
the Roman empire.
Jesus in Matthew 12:22-32 casts a devil out of a man who was blind
and mute, and that results in the man’s healing. When Jesus’ enemies
say that Jesus cast out demons through the power of the prince of
demons, Jesus finds their accusation to be absurd, for why would Satan
undermine his own power by enabling an exorcism? For Jesus, the Kingdom
of God was on the move, people were being healed, and Satan was not
supporting this, but was on the other side, and it was actually in
Satan’s interest to be on the other side. Does this imply that, for
Jesus, the bad side cannot perform exorcisms or heal, that those are
things that only God can do? And yet, in Pseudo-Philo, we seem to get
another perspective: that pagan Amorite stones had healing properties.
I realize that Christians have tackled this issue, or at least have
tried to do so. Some distinguish between magic and miracle, seeing the
latter as part of a larger redemptive purpose rather than as a mere
fluke. Some say that Christians do more miracles than non-Christians
do. Some say that Christianity is one of the few religions that has
miracles, whereas other religions (i.e., Buddhism) only talked about
miracles at a later stage. Some will call the pagan miracles magic
rather than miracles. Some say that the pagan miracles are not true
miracles—-that they only appear to be miraculous, but that they have a
natural explanation.
I don’t know. I have a slight bit of sympathy for the claim that
Christian miracles are part of a grand story of redemption. So the
Amorite stones could heal. What does that prove? I suppose that it
could prove the power of an Amorite god, or at least of the stones, but
where is the grand story of redemption? Plus, even if the Amorite
stones can heal, the Amorite religion could be pretty cruel, at least if
you accept what the Hebrew Bible says (and there are people who do not,
seeing that as a caricature, or as demonizing the other). But people
can come back with other points: Christianity could be cruel, too; and,
are the Amorite stones that different from ancient Israelite religion,
or the religion that writers in the Hebrew Bible promoted? Both may
have seen miracles as a sign of their own god’s power.
I have been talking as if the Amorite stones were historical, and
that is far from certain. I wonder how the story came to be. The note
in my Charlesworth Pseudepigrapha about Pseudo-Philo 44 states that
Pseudo-Philo’s depiction of Micah’s cult (as in the Micah from Judges
17) may be based on the Mithras sanctuary. Could something similar be
going on with the Amorite stones in Pseudo-Philo—-that they were based
on something within the pagan religion of Pseudo-Philo’s day?
I’ll stop here.