I thought I was done with miracles, having dispensed with the subject in two pages in my last blog essay. A sharp-eyed reader, however, nailed me to the wall with this question: "Is John's designation of miracles that Jesus does as 'signs' relevant to your discussion?" The short answer is, yes, of course it is! In his question, however, my reader designated things, at which we marvel, to be miracles— things, John insists, are signs (sēmeion, singular; plural, sēmeia) not miracles. And true enough when you plow through the some nineteen uses of the word "sign" in John, certain actions of Jesus are thought to be signs that God was working through Jesus (so Nicodemus thought, 3:2): turning water into wine (2:11), healing the Royal official's son (4:48, 53-54), things done for the sick (6:2), feeding the 5000 (6:14), the triumphal entry into Jerusalem (12:18).
Jesus' violent disturbance in the Temple precincts (2:14-16), however, was apparently not viewed as a sign, since the Judeans subsequently asked him for a sign to justify his actions (2:18). To which Jesus replied, if "this temple" were destroyed, he would raise it up in three days (2:19), which astonished the Judeans, who took his answer to refer to the temple structure (2:20). The evangelist intrudes, at this point, to explain to the reader that the "temple" to which Jesus referred was his body, which would be "rebuilt" by his resurrection (2:21-22). It was an understanding to which the disciples came sometime later.
For the word "sign," the lexicons compiling ancient words and their meanings are all agreed: signs (sēmeia), in addition to their secular meanings, are also signs from the Gods, evidence of intervention by transcendent powers, miracles, portents, prodigies, or miraculous works.1 The earliest (1755) English dictionary (Samuel Johnson) defines the word "sign" as wonder, miracle. In the English dictionary of Noah Webster (1828), there are numerous entries for sign. Among the definitions he lists are portent—something that foreshadows a coming event, prophetic understanding or significance, and a marvel or prodigy. Webster's New World College Dictionary (4th ed., 2002) after secular uses for the noun lists an 8th meaning: "an act or happening regarded as a manifestation of divine will or power, or an omen, portent."
To summarize the high points of these two, all too brief, essays on miracle: In Liddell/Scott/Stuart thauma is a wonder or marvel, or the feeling of astonishment produced by a wonder.2 The compilers do not associate thauma with miracle or divine action. In the Christian period thauma comes to include the idea of something done by God. The Bauer/Danker lexicon includes as a definition for thauma the modern English word miracle. Such a suggested meaning does not seem appropriate for thauma to judge by the German fifth edition (1958) of Bauer's lexicon.3 The word sēmeion, on the other hand, is applied both today and in antiquity to events, which were thought to be due to divine agency.
Even the English word miracle is a problem, since today its use can refer to something out of the ordinary, or to an action by divine power, to or something that deviates from natural laws. To know what is being claimed by the word miracle, one must query the user of the word.
This essay in the end begs the question: is there after all a divine spiritual force in the universe that invades both the physical world and human life to do the unusual and things thought impossible? Or is it a deviation from "natural law" and merely an indication that we have not yet learned all there is to know about the physical universe? Or is the seemingly impossible occurrence we term miracle merely due to unknown causes we call luck or chance.4 The answer, as with all questions in religion, depends on whom you ask.
Professor Emeritus
Missouri State University
1The Homeric Lexicon (R. J. Cunliffe, compiler) does not have an entry for sēmeion but does have an entry for sēma for which a meaning is assigned (in addition to secular meanings): a sign from heaven, portent, or omen.
2This is confirmed by An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (founded upon the 7th ed of Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon), which is made from the last edition (1883) of the large lexicon. The word "miracle" is still not used to translate thauma. I suspect that the word "miracle" used in the Bauer/Arndt/Gingrich/Danker Greek-English Lexicons as a translation for thauma is due to the compilers/translators, since the German word Wunder can be understood in German, in part, as miracle, something performed by divine agency. The question is, was that the intent of Bauer?
3Walter Bauer, Grechisch-deutches Wörterbuch zu dem Neuen Testament (5th ed. Tōpelmann, 1958), under thauma. The problem is complicated because the modern German word for both miracle and wonder is Wunder. Other German words, however, could have been used by Bauer to make the point clear, had he chosen to do so, that the event was due to divine agency, for example, Mirakel or Wundertat, which are also translated by the English word miracle.
4 See the two brief essays in Hedrick, Unmasking Biblical Faiths, "Chance, Luck, Randomness, and the Being of God," 28–30; "Does Anything happen by Chance," 30–33.