by Joe Nickell
It is quite unnecessary to toy with the notion that one day, as he had talked to a multitude of listeners, his generous act in sharing his own luncheon had encouraged others to like generosity, with the result that all had eaten; and later, that a miraculous element was added to a simple story.
Enslin goes on to point out that the story derives from the Old Testament. Elisha fed a hundred men with a sack of food containing twenty loaves of barley and some fresh ears of grain (2 Kings 4:43–44): “And his servitor [servant] said, ‘What, should I set this before an hundred men?’ He said again, ‘Give them to the men, that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, “They shall eat and have some left.”’ So he set it before them. And they ate, and left thereof, according to the word of the Lord.” Note the points of similarity. In each case the servant(s) ask how so little can feed so many; nevertheless the miracle is accomplished; and there is so much that some is left over. To see that, once again, Jesus’ miracle is a parable, we need to look at what is, in effect, a repeat performance. Consider then the next “miracle.”
FEEDING THE FOUR THOUSAND
Given in Mark (8:1–9) and Matthew (15:32–38), this miracle's plot is the same as that of the preceding story. Why then—if the disciples had just witnessed the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes—do they query Jesus: “How can one feed these men with bread here in the desert?” Mark's Jesus does not make the obvious reply (“Just as I did before!”), but Matthew's Jesus seizes a later opportunity to remind them of both miracles of feeding the multitude. And in so doing he makes clear that the “miracles” were actually parables (Matthew 16:11–12): “‘How is it that ye do not understand that I did not speak about bread? Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.’ Then they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”
The leaven of the Pharisees was hypocrisy; of the Sadducees, skepticism. Jesus was the true bread, in other words. He was the fish as well, for in this second version of feeding the multitude there were again “a few little fishes,” which were multiplied. We may understand this to mean that just as a handful of “fishers of men” had spread the word to a larger group of willing listeners, so the “fish” were multiplied by the number of those receiving the word.
WALKING ON WATER
The image this miracle presents is of a god-man triumphantly overcoming the laws of nature (Mark 6:47–52; Matthew 14:23–33; John 6:16–21). By doing the impossible, he is performing a miracle; that is, working magic. Symbolically he is also presiding over the domain of fishes and the water of baptism. Mythologically speaking, it is yet another account of a storm-associated miraculous crossing of water—like those of Noah, Moses, and Jonah (figure 42.3). The archetype of these Hebrew myths is the God of Genesis, for we are told that before there was light “the Spirit of god was moving over the face of the waters” (see Genesis 1:2).
Jesus’ nighttime stroll upon the water of Lake Gennesaret (or the Sea of Galilee) immediately follows the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. Omitted by Luke, it is told in slightly different versions in the other three Gospels (Matthew 14:22–33; Mark 6:45–51; and John 6:15–20). The earliest Gospel, Mark, says that Jesus directed his disciples to take the boat to the other side of the lake while he went upon the mountain to pray. The disciples made headway slowly, the wind being against them. Mark says:
and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh unto them…. But when they saw him walking upon the sea, they supposed it had been a spirit, and cried out: For they all saw him and were troubled. And immediately he talked with them, and saith unto them, “Be of good cheer: it is I; be not afraid.” And he went up unto them into the ship; and the wind ceased: and they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered.
This story—the centerpiece of the miracles—fits perfectly with the symbolism of the other “miracles” (actually parables). There is a rather heavy-handed clue in Mark's account: the fact that the disciples are en route “to the other side, to Bethsaida.” The root word beth means “house,” and just as Bethlehem means “house of bread,” Bethsaida translates “house of the fishers” (Asimov 1968, 191). Surely it is no coincidence that the Gospel writers thus name the destination. Jesus had just multiplied the bread and fish. (In the Gospels fish became a symbolic element—in part because the Greek letters spelling out the five-letter word for fish form the initial letters of five words: “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior” [Craveri 1970, 78].) Now the great fish traveled over the abode of all the little fishes in order to rescue his own “fishers of men.” He calmed the storm, and finally he and his followers reached their haven, the “house of the fishers.” No wonder then that Jesus’ walking on water is the ultimate parable. The great depth of that fact becomes even clearer when we realize that the account actually belongs at the end of the Gospel story, that it is surely another account of an appearance of Jesus (refer again to chapter 33) after his resurrection! (Yet another, I believe, is the miracle known as the Transfiguration—see Matthew 17:1–117.)
As these examples demonstrate, I think pretty convincingly, the miracle stories of Jesus are actually parables intended to instruct his followers. Many, if not all, probably first existed as parables (like that of the Barren Fig Tree in Luke). Later, they were transformed—either accidentally by the folkloric process of telling and retelling, or by the deliberate acts of the Gospel writers, or both—into miracle stories.
While the country's official name is the Netherlands, most people elsewhere call it Holland (even though that term really applies only to two of its thirteen provinces). Just about a tenth the size of California, the Netherlands is still one of Europe's most densely populated countries (after Monaco and Malta). It has historically been a treasure trove of geniuses—from Dutch masters like Rembrandt and Vermeer to such scientific pioneers as Antoni van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1723), who first identified bacteria, and Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), who proposed the wave theory of light. Indeed, seated in the front row during my talk at a skeptics congress in Utrecht on October 28, 2006, was Gerard 't Hooft, cowinner (with Martin Veltman) of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Of course, like people everywhere, the Dutch can also be superstitious—hence the conference theme, “the paranormal.” I spoke on the relationship between Dutch and American psychics and for several days before the event toured the country with noted Dutch skeptic Jan Willem Nienhuys investigating a number of mysteries and legends, including an Amsterdam woman's visions.
In Amsterdam, on March 25, 1945, the day of Catholicism's Feast of the Annunciation, a woman named Ida Peerdeman (1905–1996) was at home with her three older sisters. After a priest dropped in for a visit, Peerdeman was drawn to an adjoining room, where she said she beheld an intense light from which a female figure emerged and spoke to her. Thus began a series of fifty-six apparitions of the Virgin Mary, with messages from her that allegedly occurred over the next fourteen years (the last on May 31, 1959).
PROPHECY
The first twenty-five messages (1945–1950) were of a general nature, with imagery and prophecies that merely reflected the political as well as the spiritual turbulence of the period. In 1950, the Virgin, Peerdeman said, appeared atop a globe and announced, “Child, I am standing upon this globe, because I want to be called the Lady of All Nations” (Messages of the Lady of All Nations 1999, 75). The following year, she directed that she be depicted in that persona in a painting (see figure 43.1), and she advanced a new and “final” Marian dogma, that Mary was to be Coredemptrix, Mediatrix, and Advocate. The message (May 31, 1954) implied that the dogma would be proclaimed by the then-current pope, Pius XII, or at least sometime “in the twentieth century” (Messages of the Lady of All Nations 1999, 145–46). Neither was the case (Conte 2006).
Several other messages purported to predict future events. However, the statements, like those of French seer Nostradamus (1503–1566), are vague and open to various later interpretat
ions—by a process called retrofitting (that is, after-the-fact matching). For example, Peerdeman claimed publicly that in one message she had predicted the AIDS epidemic but had mistaken it for cholera (Van der Ven 2002). In fact, the actual reference (December 26, 1947) was to a torpedo-like device causing “terrible deadly diseases,” including cholera and leprosy, and to faces “covered with dreadful ulcers, something like leprosy” (Messages of the Lady of All Nations 1999, 51). No place or time period was specified. Thus Peerdeman could subsequently claim to have predicted some chemical/biological attack or any of various epidemics, such as smallpox, or, later reaching for a more dramatic matching, AIDS. (For a debunking of other Peerdeman predictions, see Conte 2006.)
EUCHARIST MIRACLES
Peerdeman also claimed to have had a number of “Eucharistic experiences” that lasted until 1984, effectively supplanting the apparitions. That is, during the Eucharist (Holy Communion), certain visions and supernatural phenomena allegedly occurred. For example, her first experience (in 1958) involved the Catholic belief in transubstantiation (that when partaken, the bread and wine of Communion actually change into the body and blood of Jesus Christ—not merely figuratively). Speaking of the Host (the consecrated Communion wafer) Peerdeman said (Daily Miracle 2003, 14):
All of a sudden the Sacred Host began to grow on my tongue, becoming larger and thicker. It seemed to expand and then suddenly it came alive…. It resembled a living fish, the way it moved in my mouth. I wanted to take it out of my mouth to see what it was but naturally out of reverence I did not dare.
(The fish is a symbol of Christ and Christianity [Stravinskas 2002, p. 328].)
In Amsterdam, Nienhuys and I visited the chapel of the Lady of All Nations Foundation, where the inspired painting hangs and nuns continue devotion to Ida Peerdeman and her cause. We spoke with one of the sisters, photographed the painting, and purchased copies of the messages, a biography of Peerdeman, and other materials. Nienhuys also subsequently obtained some relevant articles, which he translated for me.
Many indicators suggest Peerdeman was highly impressionable. The youngest of five children, whose mother died when she was eight, she reportedly had an apparitional experience on October 13, 1917, when she was twelve. Returning home from confession, she allegedly encountered a radiant Mary, who made a friendly gesture to her. This was repeated on two following Saturdays, although her father admonished her to keep her claims to herself lest she be “ridiculed and considered crazy” (Sigl 2005, 11). While to the credulous the date seems auspicious, to skeptics it seems suspicious, suggesting imitation: it was the day that, after much publicity, an estimated seventy thousand people gathered at Fatima, Portugal, where three children claimed the Virgin Mary would appear and work a miracle (Nickell 1993, 176–81).
POSSESSION?
On subsequent occasions at the Peerdeman home, a series of incidents occurred “that would not have been out of place in a Poltergeist movie.” Lamps began to swing, doors opened and closed, and other phenomena occurred—all apparently without human agency (El-Fers 2002). However, time and again, when properly investigated, such “poltergeist” phenomena have turned out to be the pranks of mischief makers, typically children and teens (Nickell 1995, 79–107). The phenomena attending Peerdeman appear no different.
That Peerdeman was simply acting out repressed hostilities is suggested by certain “demonic torments” she supposedly endured as a teenager. These include a claimed street attack by a man “dressed all in black” who allegedly grabbed her arm and tried to drag her into a canal, and another incident in which an old woman supposedly lured her into the path of an approaching train. Further, she was “severely tormented by demons at home,” on occasion exhibiting the typical, role-playing antics of those who are supposedly possessed: shouting, supposedly showing prodigious strength (lifting a chair over her head), and the like. Once, after “an invisible hand” allegedly choked her, an exorcism was performed, during which the family heard “Satan's revolting voice” (which is to say, Peerdeman speaking in a “changed” voice) cursing the priest (Sigl 2005, 13–14). (For more on possession see Nickell 2001.)
Peerdeman's devotees cite local bishop J. M. Punt's conclusion that “the apparitions of the Lady of All Nations in Amsterdam consist of a supernatural origin.” In reaching this decision, Punt (2002) cited many reports of “healings” attributed in some way to Peerdeman. However, the “healings” thus far attributed to Peerdeman appear unexceptional. (For more on healings see part 3.)
In contrast to Punt's opinion that the apparitions had a “supernatural origin,” an investigating commission found quite the opposite. Appointed by an earlier bishop in 1955, the group included a psychiatrist, psychologist, priest, seminary teachers, and a deacon of Amsterdam's parishes. According to their report, the committee was “deeply shocked…. The messages do not come from Heaven,” they insisted, maintaining that the Holy Virgin had never revealed herself in such a manner. They added, “We recognize therefore that all these revelations in whatever manner have a purely natural origin.”
In explaining, they observed that “gradually one sees, as it were, a shift in persons.” That is, at first Peerdeman's experiences were about herself; then later she projected her own persona onto the Virgin Mary. The commission's president characterized Peerdeman's visions as “banal, brusque, and acerbic” (Van der Ven 2002) and concluded that the supposed visionary suffered from egocentricity (Van der Ven 2002).
Over the years, the Catholic press reportedly “demonized” her (perhaps appropriately, given the irony of her having acted in a demon-possessed manner), and she was often described by Catholic officials as “an hysteric” (El-Fers 2002). Objectively, there seems to be nothing in the claims of Ida Peerdeman that cannot be explained as the result of imagination, suggestion, or, possibly, pious deception.
While visiting Argentina for the 2005 Primera Conferencia Iberoamericana Sobre Pensamiento Crítico (“First Latin American Conference on Critical Thinking”) in Buenos Aires, I was also able to take a look at some local mysteries with which I already had some familiarity. These included a haunted cemetery, tales of animal mutilation by the dreaded chupacabras, and miracles of popular saints. Here is a brief look at the latter.
UNOFFICIAL SAINTS
Until quite recently, Roman Catholicism was the official religion of Argentina, and it still dominates the daily lives of its people. In addition to their formal faith, however, Argentinians often seek help from a number of popular, unofficial saints. They represent a spreading folk Catholicism that often diverges from orthodoxy and even includes Spiritualist practices.
Like official saints, popular saints are often believed to work miracles. For instance, there is “the Robin Hood of Corrientes,” the gaucho, Antonio Gil. An army deserter in the 1850s, Gil was hanged on an espinillo tree, but before dying he supposedly warned the commanding sergeant that his son would become deathly ill and could only recover by means of the sergeant praying for Gil's soul. Upon the boy's recovery, his repentant father carved an espinillo cross, which he placed at Gil's death site. Today, as many as one hundred thousand pilgrims visit the site each year on the anniversary of his death, crediting Gaucho Gil with miracles and life-transforming experiences (Bernhardson 2004, 186, 273, 606).
Even more popular than Gil is legendary Maria Antonia Deolinda Correa, known as the Difunta (meaning “Defunct,” as the deceased are called in the countryside). A pious legend tells how she followed her husband, a conscript during the civil wars of the nineteenth century, and died in the desert of thirst. However, when her body was discovered by passing muleteers, her infant son was found alive, “miraculously” feeding at her lifeless breast.
Adding to the implausibility of an infant surviving on milk from a corpse is the limited evidence that the Difunta even existed. Nevertheless, the legend was so resonant among the local folk that they transformed the waterless site into a shrine. Today it is visited by pilgrims who stand in line to visit a chamber that hol
ds an effigy of the prostrate Difunta with her infant at her breast (Bernhardson 2004, 273–74).
There are many other popular saints, including the faith healer Madre María Salomè. Sardonically, novelist Thomás Eloy Martinez has called his fellow Argentines “cadaver cultists” for being so devoted to the dead (Bernhardson 2004, 606–607). Not all of the unofficial saints, however, are widely believed to work miracles, and perhaps the most famous—or infamous—of all has had her status slip.
EVITA
Alternately reviled and beloved as “Evita,” Maria Eva Duarte Perón (1919–1952) was the controversial first lady of Argentina from the election of her husband Juan Perón in 1946 until her death from cancer in 1952. A former film actress, she lent her charisma and ambition to the popular causes of assisting the poor, improving education, and helping to achieve women's suffrage. Nevertheless, Juan Perón's increasingly demagogic methods cost him the support of the Catholic Church, and his wife's death diminished his appeal among workers. He was ousted by the military in 1955.
In her last speech, she had stated, “I will be with my people, dead or alive.” Perón helped the mythologizing process by having her body mummified and placed on display while a monument was being prepared. A popular movement sought to have the church make her a saint. Her followers installed altars to “Santa Evita” in their homes, and over one hundred thousand requests for her canonization flooded the Vatican, many crediting her with the requisite miracles (McInnis 2001; Fouché 2002; “Evita Biography” 2005; Mosca 2005).
Instead, after Perón was deposed in 1955, the church conspired with the new regime to spirit away her body. It was buried in Milan, Italy, by the sisters of the Society of St. Paul. There, under the false name Maria Maggi, it reposed for fourteen years. Meanwhile, the anti-Peronists attempted to efface her memory, tearing down statues of her and burning copies of her autobiography, The Sense of My Life.