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9. Cosmology and the Jesus Miracles1 Wendy Cotter 1. Introduction The significance of any miracle story is immediately controlled by the cosmology presupposed as its backdrop. Once such a basic lens is affixed, it generates the expectation of a particular set of images appropriate to that cosmology. Only allusions and stories understood to share a similar world-view are admitted as resources for contextualization. In the case of the Jesus miracles, the two cosmologies most often presumed by academics for this backdrop, both Jewish, are the biblical and the apocalyptic world-views. Yet the presence of either cosmology cannot remain unargued or taken for granted, since neither represents the ordinary stance of the Mediterranean populace in the Imperial period. This paper addresses the assumptions that continue to justify the supposition that one of these two cosmologies undergirds the miracle stories, it presents the main differences between these cosmologies and those more typical of the Graeco-Roman world and it discusses the impact on miracle interpretation when the Graeco-Roman world-view is allowed to stand as its backdrop. 2. Septuagint Allusions Interpreted by Septuagint Cosmology When a miracle story involving Jesus holds an allusion to the Septuagint, scholars usually conclude that the writer of the narrative intends to signal that the full meaning of the story will be found by focusing on that Septuagint reference. A distinction, however, needs to be established between the meaning these Jewish texts held when they were first composed and the meaning they would have held in the first century CE.It was Hermann Gunkel who warned the "history of religions" scholars one hundred years ago that no matter how pure an ancient text they might unearth behind first-century allusions, if any "influence" were to be posited, the content and meaning of that text had to be available to a first-century audience and it had to be understood as interpreted through first-century eyes.2 For Gunkel, the old dichotomies of "Palestinian" and "Hellenistic" were presumed to hold in the Imperial period, and thus a 1 This paper relies on research from my 1991 dissertation, "The Markan Sea Miracles (Mk 4:35-41; 6:45-52): Their History, Formation and Function in the Literary Context of Greco-Roman Antiquity" (Ph. D diss., University of St. Michael's College). 2 Hermann Gunkel, Die Wirkungen des heiligen Geistes der populdren Anschauung der apostolischen Zeit und nach der Lehre des Apostels Paulus (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1888). In English, see The Influence of the Holy Spirit, trans. Roy A. Harrisville and P. Quanbeck II (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), 5. Cosmology and the Jesus Miracles 119 "Jewish mind" could not be represented by the larger Hellenistic world-view. We now consider such divisions untenable since we see the entire Mediterranean, including Palestine, as Hellenized. Yet although we are now agreed that a common cultural influence was shared throughout the Mediterranean world, we have yet to take seriously the implications of Hellenization on the first-century Jewish understanding of the cosmos. If this cosmology or world-view is overlooked, the Septuagint references are interpreted in their most ancient significance and in the context of other biblical texts. This means that in the end the first-century Jesus story is interpreted by ignoring the dominant first-century cosmology. Paul Achtemeier's study of Mark 4:35-41 demonstrates the effects on a miracle story's interpretation when a cosmology from remote antiquity is allowed to control the meaning of a miracle. Achtemeier claims that in order to understand the story of Jesus "stilling the storm," one needs to approach it from the perspective of a "Semitic mentality."3 He holds that the reader should be familiar with the ancient Canaanite deities Marduk and Tiamat, and the myth of a war between the great Lord of the Land, Marduk, and the Mistress of the Sea, Tiamat. Triumphing over her, Marduk takes full dominion of the earth and sea and brings the cosmos to peace. Since this myth is an ancient creation story, Achtemeier, consistently enough, interprets the meaning of the Stilling of the Storm to be creation "achieved by overcoming the forces of evil."4 Following the principle set down by Gunkel, we need to ask for evidence that this ancient legend was even available to, let alone commonly known by, Jewish people in the first century. The answer in this case is clear: no firstcentury Jewish texts either directly allude to these myths or recount them. They are known in our...

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