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200 years later. 64 Interestingly enough, however, the Qur’an does state that Jesus performed
miracles and even specified some of them (Surahs 3:49; 5:110).
Thus, these three huge issues involving the lack of miracles in the first place, plus the
problems of much later writings, followed by the enormous gap with some of the extant copies
plague and even sound the historical death toll for virtually all these non-Christian holy texts.
For originators like Buddha, Confucius, and Lao-Tzu, miracles seem simply foreign to their
original mission because of the rather naturalistic philosophical outlook. But for almost all of
these founders, any texts that might record such occurrences were either actually written, and/or
the remaining copies actually date from, literally hundreds to thousands of years after the
founder’s deaths. Such a track record totally disallows even the opportunity for reliable,
historical miracle reports. 65
Compared to the non-biblical founders of the major world religions, only Jesus has
miracles reported of him in early sources. 66
Moreover, in the last couple of decades, almost all
critical scholars, including the skeptical ones, have conceded that overwhelming data attest to
the historicity of at least some of these special events. Not all scholars agree on what actually
occurred on these occasions, but it is nearly unanimous that healing events such as those depicted
in the Gospel accounts did indeed happen. At least two nearly exhaustive recent studies illustrate
the strength of this conclusion. Each one gives attention to the factors that confirm and back up
that many of these events occurred, employing a careful usage of the critical historical method,
including the criteria of authenticity.
64 Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroaster Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad, cf. 20.
65 J.N.D. Anderson also agrees on there being no rival miracles among the non-Christian religions. (See Anderson,
Christianity and Comparative Religion, such as 46, 50-51.)
66 Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad, 40.
36