"Unlearning" is a painful struggle to be engaged if we are ever to grow in understanding. What, for instance, is your understanding of a "miracle"? Have a look at this learning/unlearning session at City Church (November 2006):

MIRACLES and BIBLICAL TRADITIONS OF WRITING

We think of the miracle stories as demonstrations of Jesus’ power over nature.

On a literal level, they are. But that doesn’t get us very far. On the level of popular imagination, this “power over nature” was the way miracles were understood even in the days of Jesus, as we see in Mark 6.14, where Herod thinks Jesus is John the Baptist returned from the dead: “This is why he has this power to perform miracles.”

But on a deeper level, the miracle stories are symbolic or poetic stories. What is important is their “meaning”, a meaning that pushes us beyond the way we usually understand the world—not a violation of natural laws but a change in our orientation, an awakening to new possibility. . Myfanwy pointed out that the Bible was “Poetry Plus” not “Science Minus”.

Let’s look at some Biblical conventions of story-telling. First off look at poetic exaggeration (“hyperbole”) in Isaiah 43.1-2:

"Fear not, I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name. You are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flames shall not consume you.”

A popular form of Biblical literature casts such poetic statements into narrative form, as we have in the story of Shadrach, Mesach and Abednigo and the fiery furnace in Daniel 3.19-25. The miracle of their survival would not have been taken literally, but as a commentary on a sentiment like we have in Isaiah.

This practice of “interpreting” an exclamation about our experience of God by casting it in narrative form is called a “midrash”. You can also see this happening in the story of Jesus walking on water (Mark 6.45-52).

It isn’t easy to read and understand biblical narrative when we are so used to the conventional ways of writing of our own times. Biblical conventions were very different (but no less familiar then); once we know them, we have a better chance of knowing what is going on in the “miracle” stories.

continued in pdf file