You made a video a few years ago now asking whether Jesus was a magician.

An interesting title, because it sort of conjures up images, if you will, of Jesus walking around with a sort of wizard hat on acting like David Blaine, doing a bit of sleight of hand kind of magic.

But I don't think that's the kind of magic that scholars have in mind when they're talking about the ancient world.

What is the kind of magic that we're talking about in that time period?

Sure. I mean, it's a great question because when we think of magic in English, it conjures, to use that term again, the folklore pop culture idea of a magician, so the Harry Potter's, the Gandalf's.

It also brings up ideas of

stage performance like David Blaine, but also there's like, we use it as a term to describe a

category of ritual performance. And there's, you know, contemporary Wiccans today, contemporary

pagans and witches that practice what we would call magic. And when we use terms like

that, we think of these smaller scale rituals that might include various, you know, potions or

ritual paraphernalia like magic wands. So we kind of have these three valances of magic, the folklore,

the stage performance, and then a category of ritual.

And when I was asking that question, was Jesus a magician, we kind of have to grapple with all three of those ideas.

And this came up controversially in the late 70s with the ancient historian Morton Smith, who basically published a book called Jesus the magician, and he argues

exactly that. Like, Jesus, for all intents and purposes, was a magician. The problem with the book

is he doesn't quite grapple with what he means by a magician, but what I really appreciate what

Morton Smith did back in the late 70s was he challenged our categories of miracle versus magic. Because when we think

of miracle, we kind of have a sense of what that means, doing these wondrous feats of supernatural

power, raising the dead, walking on water, turning water into wine. But also, magic are wondrous

feats that are supernatural and unexplainable.

And when I talk about magic in the ancient world, people try to trot out definitions like, oh,

miracles are this and they provide a definition.

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