Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity: A Sourcebook for the Study of the New Testament Miracles (review)

Wendy Cotter. Miracles in Greco-Roman Antiquity:
A Sourcebook for the Study of the New Testament Miracles. The Context of Early Christianity. New York: Routledge, 1999. Pp. x + 274. $23.99 (pb).

In this very useful volume Wendy Cotter assembles hundreds of examples from the Greco-Roman world in order to provide a contextual, comparative basis for interpreting the miracles of Jesus in the New Testament in light of "the most common ideas available" to first- and second-century C.E. audiences. Following Rudolph Bultmann's classic fourfold categorization of miracle stories, Cotter presents her selections in four parts. Part 1 contains healing stories attributed to deities and heroes in antiquity. Included in this section also are the few stories concerning the raising of dead persons. Part 2 addresses the exorcisms of antiquity with special attention to the nature and identity of daimons/demons in the Greco-Roman world and to the cosmology served by the daimon's/demon's expulsion. Part 3 offers stories of gods and heroes who control nature in four particular ways: (1) Controlling the wind and sea; (2) Walking/traveling over the surface of the sea; (3) Changing water into wine; and (4) Multiplying food for the hungry. Finally, Part 4 presents stories dealing with the world of magic and offers a sampling of magical spells from the Magical Papyri. Two appendices conclude the volume: Appendix A, "Diseases and Doctors," gives a selection of texts describing the most commonly cured diseases and their remedies; Appendix B, "Jesus, Torah, and Miracles," gathers the pertinent Torah and Mishnaic ref-erences which correspond to the various miracles of Jesus.

Cotter's aim in this collection is not to be exhaustive but to provide a significant sampling of stories that will demonstrate "the ideas available to the ordinary (i.e., non-elite) populace of the Greco-Roman world concerning sick-ness, healings, and exorcisms." She has accomplished her purpose well.

Cotter intends her collection as "a basic text for a graduate course on miracles in the Greco-Roman world" (7) and her introductory comments for each part, together with the notes and brief commentary, add to the usefulness of this volume. An extensive bibliography, indices to the ancient texts cited and to the miracles of Jesus as well as a general index to the volume, all make this text eminently "user friendly."

While Cotter's collection will not replace exhaustive sources, such as Edelstein's two volumes of texts on Asclepius, nor sources in the original ancient languages, this English collection is a rich resource documenting ideas about and form of miracle stories in the ancient world. Cotter joins Samuel Sandmel in deploring "parallelomania" and claims no attempt to posit "genetic influence on miracles of a similar type." Instead, she urges users of this collection to find in it the basis for contextualizing early Christian miracle stories and their significance within their Hellenistic and Jewish environment. All those studying these miracle traditions will indeed be in her debt.

 

Barbara E. Bowe, Catholic Theological Union, Chicago

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