Beyond Your Imagination

I was researching the development of magic in the late antiquity period of Roman empire for my web analytics company. And that is when I stumpled upon a very interesting fact. You probably would be surprised to hear it, as I was. But in the first and second centuries CE, in the opinion of the Roman empire citizens, three men were considered greatest magicians of all times: Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, … and Jesus Christ.

So, why Jesus? From pagan Roman point of view Jesus was a typical miracle-worker. He exorcised daemons, healed the sick, made prophecies and raised the dead. Time went by and Christianity grew. Eventually, it became seen as a threat to established traditions of ancient religion in the Greco-Roman. That is why Jesus was accused of being a magic user. And, naturally, this accusation later was switched on all early Christians as well.

Pagan people of Rome including scholars read into Christian texts too much looking for clues to prove that Jesus was a magician. As we know, Gospels told a life story full of features common to divinely touched figures. For example, Jesus’ divine origin, his miraculous birth, and his facing of a powerful daemon. The gospel of Matthew even mentions briefly that Jesus was taken to Egypt as an infant. Well, hostile forces among pagan Roman scholars used Gospel to explain Jesus’s knowledge of magic. According to one negative story, Jesus came back from Egypt tattooed with spells. It was also argued that Jesus was mad, which was often associated with people of great power.

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