BM 620 B4346 v.3 BtN-OLia LTTRSTOTHJEWS THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES etto to the Jeto0. LETTER III. 'HE MIRACLES OF JESUS; OR, ID JESUS KEALLY WORK MIRACLES? BY KEY. ABRAHAM BEN-OLIEL, ROME. LONDON: ABRAHAM J. LEV, 4, HERBERT STREET, HAVERSTOCK HILL, N.W. 1884. C. K. OGDEN LETTERS TO THE JEWS. BY EEV. ABRAHAM BEN-OLIEL. In the Press. 1. CHRISTIANITY A WONDROUS PROBLEM. 2. THE PROBLEM OF CHRISTIANITY SOLVED. 3. THE MIRACLES OF JESUS; OR, DID JESUS REALLY WORK MIRACLES ? 4. THE TEACHING OF JESUS; OR, LIFE AND IMMOR- TALITY BROUGHT TO LIGHT. 5. POPULARITY OF JESUS WITH THE JEWS. 6. SACRIFICES THEIR ORIGIN AND SIGNIFICANCE. 7. SALVATION BY FAITH, NOT BY WORKS. 8. THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION OF MESSIAH. 9. MESSIAH A SPIRITUAL KING. 10. MESSIAH'S SECOND COMING ; OR, THE FUTURE KING- DOM IN GLORY AND MAJESTY. 11. JEWISH TESTIMONY TO JESUS. 12. STUMBLING BLOCKS TO JEWISH BELIEF. 13. PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY AMONG THE JEWS. 14. POINTS OF AGREEMENT; OR, BIBLICAL JUDAISM AND CHRISTIANITY ONE AND THE SAME RELIGION. 15. POINTS OF DIFFERENCE ; OR, TALMUDIC JUDAISM AT VARIANCE WITH THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE GOSPEL. a <8mes of |Cctter0 xrn- 16. THE TRINITY IN UNITY PROVED FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT SCRIPTURES. 17. THE TRINITY IN UNITY PROVED FROM RABBINIC WRIT- INGS AND THE TRADITIONS OF OTHER PEOPLES. LETTER III. Home, Jlai), 1884. THE MIRACLES QF JESUS; oit, DID JESUS REALLY WORK MIRACLES? XLo the Jbi0pcrsf b of Jubnh ;iub the scattered of BEsntel. ma: (Isaiah ix., 6, ver. 5 in the Hebrew.) DEAR BRETHREN, In this Letter I invite you to investigate a. most important question. It is this DID JESUS CHRIST WORK MIRACLES ? Was there anything supernatural in His life and actions ? The great importance of this question is self-evident ; for, if it can be satisfactorily proved that Jesus of Nazareth did really work miracles, then, it would neces- sarily follow that He was Divinely commissioned that He was, in fact, what He professed Himself to be the Messiah promised to our fathers, of whom it was predicted : /nraT ncsn rrn /mm mi vhy nnn :mm nsrm n;n rrn H-TQJI nyj; rm "And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of council and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord " (Is. xi., 2). It is the fashion now-a-days with many thoughtless, irreflec- tive minds, and particularly with a certain class of scientific men, to deny the supernatural altogether, and, therefore, the possibility of miracles. Were this Letter intended for them, I should have somewhat to say on the point; but as I am writing to brother Israelites, the sons of Patriarchs and Prophets, it seems to me that it were an insult to you indi- vidually, and to our nation collectively, to argue on the pos- sibility of miracles; for what is it to deny the supernatural, but to belie our whole national history as recorded in the Sacred Scriptures? It involves a denial of the Inspira- tion of the Word of the Living God, the God of Israel, and gives the lie to our Seers and Prophets, the great luminaries of the world. Not only does that marvellous and incompar- able history of our nation speak of miraculous manifestations of Divine power in almost every page, but our religion itself, with its appointed feasts and fasts, rites and ceremonies, is based on those supernatural interpositions of God on behalf of our ancestors. Deny the possibility of the miraculous, and then the history of the Exodus from Egypt, which we have been celebrating in the Feast of Passover during 3,385 years, would be a mere fiction ! Deny miracles, and the Deca- logue is a human invention, and the thunders of Sinai a display of fireworks ! Deny miracles, and we Jews become an enigma a hard nut which no infidel could crack ! For, observe well, I go so far as to maintain unhesitatingly, that our very existence, dispersed throughout the world, but still remaining separate from all other peoples, and still cherishing the memory of those wonderful and stupendous events, and by special festivals and rites keeping them con- stantly before our minds and the world at large, is of itself a miracle a marvel, which can be accounted for rationally only by the admission of the supernatural. Our nation's role in the history of the world, and particularly in the reli- gious department of it, is altogether miraculous. We are, in reality, irrefragable witnesses to the Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and to the supernatural intervention and immediate control of God in the affairs of the world. If I wanted to confound and silence the sternest unbeliever in miracles, provided he were, indeed, a conscientious lover of truth, I would simply place before him a Jew, such as he is actually, with his past history, religious observances, and present standing among the nations, and ask him to explain the ex- istence of that man, if he can, without admitting the miracu- lous. m!T'DK3 *JP Dntf "Ye are My witnesses, saith the Lord" (Isaiah xliii., 10 12), and our witness consists in testifying, not simply to the existence of God, which only fools and diseased brains can deny, but that the Almighty Architect of the universe is not a mere Supreme Force far away from His works and His creatures, but an all-knowing, all-seeing, ever-present, and beneficent Being, directing all events, the smallest not less than the greatest ; sustaining all things ; providing for the wants of all His creatures ; and governing the universe, not only by immutable laws, but ALSO by such anticipatory com- bination, coincidence, and concurrence of the working of those laws at certain and fixed times, as to manifest His presence and power to His rational, free, and, therefore, re- sponsible creatures. He, who knows the end from the beginning ; to whom the future is as the past and present ; who at a glance surveys the whole universe with its myriads of worlds ; the God, " in whom we live, and move, and have our being," has not relegated His governing and controlling power to mere laws, which are simply the expression of His will ; and were His volition's activity to stop an instant of time, the whole universe would tumble into chaos or disap- pear. His creative, preserving, sustaining, guiding, and over- ruling power is ever active and present, accomplishing His will and purposes, which universally proclaim that " God is love." I own that much mischief has been done by the manner in which our Rabbis, as well as many Christian writers, have defined, explained, and interpreted miracles; but the facts of astronomy, for instance, are not less true because the ancients believed in astrology. We should, therefore, strive to dispel the errors of superstition and ignorance, and to remove stumbling-blocks from the path of our fellow-creatures. To deny the supernatural, which is only so to us finite minds, would be to set limits to the power of the Almighty. But I must not dwell further on this line of reasoning. We Jews do not require any proof of the possibility of miracles, for we ourselves are the most conclusive evidence that God does wondrous and marvellous works to manifest His presence and make known His will. orn i\\ The question we have to investigate is a very simple one, for it relates to a matter of fact to historical evidence. Did Jesus work miracles, as Moses, Elijah, Elisha, and others of our Prophets did ? The fact is asserted constantly in the Gospels, and has been believed by all Christians from the beginning. But until, by the grace of God, you come to believe and acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, that kind of evidence does not carry sufficient weight with you. We must, therefore, inquire, What do our Rabbis say on this subject ? Do they deny that Jesus worked miracles ? No, CERTAINLY NOT. In the Gospels, the Pharisees, contempo- raries of Jesus, did not deny His miracles, but they attri- buted His power of performing them to Beelzebub (Mat. xii., 22 30), and Jesus gave them a terribly crushing retort, which completely demolished their fanciful theory. But our modern Rabbis are not so profane as their predecessors, the Pharisees. They admit fully and unreservedly the fact that Jesus did work miracles; but they attribute His power of performing them to His having got possession of the DJf ttniDDn " Shem-Hamephorash," the Ineffable Name ! It is singular they did not perceive that the crushing retort which Jesus gave to the Pharisees applies to their theory also. It were blasphemous to suppose or imagine that any human being, a mere worm of the earth, by simply pronouncing any name or attribute of God, could possibly do aught in oppo- sition to His will. The idea is simply preposterous, and so highly derogatory of God, that no unprejudiced mind, no sane man, would entertain it. There is enough in the writings of a certain class of Rabbis of fabulous stories of what has been done, or could be accomplished, by the use of the " Shem-Hamephorash." I am sure none of my reflec- tive and intelligent readers really believe in those ridiculous stories. Can the name be more powerful than God Him- self? Can it be independent of God, and adverse to His will and purposes ? The thing is so irrational, so illogical, so absurd, that to argue further against it is superfluous. To state it plainly, is to refute it completely. But while we discard, and reason and conscience compel us to discard and reject, the insinuations of Pharisees and Rabbis, as wholly absurd and blasphemous, there remains the precious testimony which both give to the reality of Christ's miracles; and this testimony is all the more valuable and satisfactory, because it comes, not from His disciples and followers, but from those who were in His day, and are to this day, His adversaries and opponents. The credentials with which our great Legislator, Moses, was furnished, on presenting himself to our oppressed forefathers in the land of Egypt, in order to prove his Divine mission, were the power to work miracles; and it was perfectly con- sistent with God's mode of accrediting His messengers that the Messiah also should have been endowed with the same power and faculty. The Prophets predicted that He would work miracles. He was to be known as, 7J< 'W7V 'tf?^ CtfyBTW '"F#"OK mSJ "Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace " (Isaiah ix., 6, ver. 5 in the Hebrew). And our Rabbis admit that Jesus had miraculous powers. And what does this prove, but that Jesus was indeed what He professed to be the Messiah of God ? We see in the case of Balaam that God controlled his will and desires, so inimical to our nation, and forced him to bless when he would rather have cursed. If Jesus had been an impostor, was it likely that God would have permitted Him to work miracles, and thereby to mis- lead mankind? No; it is impossible; and, therefore, His miracles prove His Divine commission. Let it be borne in mind that Christ did not work His miracles in an out-of-the-way corner, or only in presence of His disciples and followers; but PUBLICLY, and in sight of mul- titudes who did not believe in His Messiahship. There were the Pharisees, His enemies, to witness them, and to transmit their testimony to posterity, that Jesus did perform wonders. The truth of these miracles was sealed with the blood of the Apostles, and people do not die for falsehoods. They were eye-witnesses, and testified of them before the multitudes who saw them and were benefited by them. The blind to whom He gave sight ; the lepers whom He cleansed ; the lame, the maimed, were there to show in their persons the truth of Christ's miraculous powers. Read, as an example, John ix., i 38. Note, further, that His miracles were not mere displays of power ; but, as was predicted of Messiah (see Isaiah xlii., i 9, not to cite other passages of like import), the mani- festation of the benevolence of the most self-denying, be- nign, and loving Being that ever visited this world of selfish- ness and vain pride. They were intended to afford relief, to solace bleeding hearts, and to prove God's mercy to man. While His compassionate love embraced all mankind ness that touching interview with a Ruler, Mark x., 17 22)! He yet chose for His associates, not the great, the wealthy! or the proud, but the poor, the lowly, and above all, th( suffering. It was to stricken and mourning hearts that He best loved to draw near; for them he always had the tenderest words of compassion and hope; and for theiil benefit He was ever ready to exert His miraculous powers! The nature of His miracles is another conclusive prooj that He came from God. His blameless, pure, and hoi) life ; His humility, meekness, and self-abnegation ; the sub] limity of His teaching, and the spirituality of His docj trines, are so many other evidences of His Messiahship- they are the moral credentials of it ; but this part of the sub] ject requires to be treated separately. I have established, then, that, EVEN BY THE TESTIMONY 01 OUR OWN RABBIS, Jesus did work miracles; and I have demon^ strated that He could not have done so, except in conformit and harmony with the Divine will ; and if this be admitted] it is one more proof that He was the Messiah and the Saviotu promised to the world. Nor has He ceased to worl miracles now that He is seated at the right hand of the Ma-i jesty on High, for every converted and reclaimed sinner, through faith in Him, forsakes his wicked ways and enters into a life of holiness, is an exemplification of the power of Jesus to change the heart and renew the life ; to give peac of conscience, and a firm assurance of pardon, reconciliatior with God, and eternal redemption. Would to God that these inestimable blessings were the inheritance of every sor and daughter of Abraham ! for, like Saul of old, I can saj truly, that " my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved" (Rom. x., i). Brethren, ponder] over these facts ; and I beseech you, in the language of out Royal Bard, "linpCiO " Kiss the Son" (Psalms ii., 12), believe, and be saved. Your Brother in the Covenant, p DPT-OK 3 1158 00301 1987