Ed Ranks the Miracles of Jesus

No way this one could be controversial, right?

10. Pulling a Coin from a Fish's Mouth

Tilapia and a Tyrian four shekel coin? NICE CATCH!

There is a reason that this lame-ass miracle is only in one of the four gospels (Matthew 17:24-27), and that's because it is a lame-ass miracle.  Pulling a coin from a fish's mouth? Really?! Is Jesus a shitty street magician?  Is Jesus David Blaine? Maybe Jesus can do that thing where he asks you which of the three cups the ball is under too. Maybe Jesus can steal your nose (spoiler: it's just his thumb placed in-between his middle and ring fingers). People were too easily impressed in the first century.  I'd also be remiss if I didn't note that Matthew doesn't actually say that this happened. It says that Jesus told Peter to go catch a fish and pull a coin from its mouth. It doesn't say that Peter did it and that actually happened. I guess it's supposed to be implied. But maybe Peter did it and nothing happened at all and he was like, "Oh Jesus, that prankster! He got me again!" Technically nothing in the bible contracts that possibility. 

9. Cursing a Fig Tree

Fuck this particular tree.

Mark (11:12–2) and Matthew (21:18–22) tell a story about Jesus being hungry and seeing a fig tree. But fig trees don't produce figs all year. They only produce figs in-season. You know, like all other plant life. Because that's how botany works. Jesus got angry that the fig tree didn't have any figs on it even though it wasn't fig season, and so he cursed the tree so that it would wither away and die. If every miracle was like this miracle, your general impression of Jesus would be that he's sort of a giant dick. In the book of Matthew, his disciples are super impressed by his ability to do this and are like, "Whoa, man! Awesome!"  If I were one of his disciples, I would have been like, "Dude, if you're going to perform a miracle... don't kill the tree. Just make the tree grow some figs out of season! Then we can eat them." I bet if I would have said that, Jesus would have been like, "Oh yeah, that's a much better idea. Thanks, Ed."

8. Transfiguration 

The three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 17:1–8, Mark 9:2–8, Luke 9:28–36) all mention that Jesus went up to a mountain and began to shine brightly.  I'm sorry to break it to everyone, but to me it just sounds like Jesus slapped on some bronzer in the morning and got a really bitchin' tan. Or if we're going to take the "glowing" thing literally, then maybe the mountain was made of uranium-235. If that's the case, then maybe Pontius Pilate did Jesus a solid with that execution thing rather than him going out slowly and painfully over the course of many years like Marie Curie.

7. Exorcisms

Jesus performed seven major exorcisms of evil spirits, including at the synagogue of Capernaum (Mark 1:21–28;  Luke 4:31–37), the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39; Matthew 8:28-34), and so on. Look, it was a ton of exorcisms. I'm not going to cite every single one of those. According to exactly zero of the biblical accounts did any of the exorcisms involve a girl's head spinning around and vomiting. This is really a shame.

6.  Walking on Water

Starting at $11,999.

Walking on water (Mark 6:45–53, Matthew 14:22–34; John 6:15–21) sounds pretty cool. But you know what's even cooler than WALKING on water? Waverunning on water. If Jesus really wanted to impress, he would have met his disciples on a Yamaha WaveRunner Performance Race Series VXR.  Its 4-cylinder, 4-stroke, 1.8 Liter High Output Yamaha Marine Engine with a Fuel Capacity of 18.5 gallons would have been the perfect way to show his disciples that Yamaha Revs Your Heart® and is agile, powerful and seriously fun. He could have even shown how riders can switch from forward to neutral to reverse with one pull of the throttle resulting in easier deceleration, reversing and docking. Yamaha is the most reliable and and innovative personal watercraft (PWC) on the market.

5. Turning Water into Wine

He could have also turned water into this. But He didn't.

There is probably a reason that the four canonical gospels jump from Jesus being a baby all the way to Jesus being a grown-ass man.  And that reason is that this whole "water to wine" thing probably meant that Jesus had some wild teenage years and the courts were forced to expunge his juvy record. Can you imagine all the frat parties that Jesus must have gone to where he made the whole place lit? His buddies wanted to go out and spend money on booze and he was like, "Nah, cuz. I got this." Oh sure, the bible only mentions one wedding in Cana (John 2:1-11) where Jesus did this after the party ran out of wine. But do you really think that was the ONLY time he did this? If you KNOW you can turn water into wine, that's not something you're only going to do once.

4. Feeding the Multitude

In all four gospels (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:12-17; John 6:1-14), Jesus feeds 5000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish. I know, I know... maybe you're thinking that these were just really BIG loafs of bread and perhaps the fish were Whale Sharks. But furthermore, in Matthew (15:32-39) and Mark (8:1-9), he does this a second time by feeding 4000 people with seven loaves and a few small fish.  Yeah, this time it specifically notes that the fish are small. This is pretty impressive, and I don't think we're supposed to imply that he just gave everyone really small portions like a fancy, expensive restaurant. Although I guess the accounts don't necessarily mean that Jesus didn't do some sort of stone soup type of thing to get everyone to understand the value of sharing. Honestly, getting people to understand the value of sharing sounds like a pretty cool, Jesus-ey thing to do.

3. Calming the Storm

Jesus can control the weather (Matthew 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25). This means Jesus is essentially Storm from X-Men. Which is awesome.

2.  Healing People 

"Bam! Healed! Now how do you want to handle the co-pay?"

As with the exorcism thing above, Jesus heals a TON of people. This is Jesus's M.O. When Jesus wants to prove he's got awesome miracle powers, all he has to do is heal someone. I'm not going to cite specific gospels for this one... but just know that he does a bunch of healing. Blindness. Leprosy. Paralysis. Withered Hands. Dropsy. Infirmity. Bleeding. The deaf mute of Decapolis. The centurion's servant. Peter's Mother-in-Law. He gives Malchus a new ear. The daughter of Jairus is "healed" according to the gospels of Mark and Luke (the story is different in Matthew, but I'll get to that below). Personally, I think Jesus was wasting his time with that whole carpentry thing. Really, he should have opened up an HMO.

1. Resurrection of the Dead

Yellow robe guy's reaction is EVERYTHING.

Look, if you're going to impress someone with miracles, then resurrecting the dead is a pretty damn solid way to do that.  Everyone knows about the Raising of Lazarus (John 11:1–44). I especially enjoy how in the Gospel of John, Jesus is being cryptic and mysterious about it and is talking in code. He's like, "Our friend Lazarus is asleep, but I am going to awaken him." Then his disciples are all like, "Oh, I guess that's cool, Jesus. But waking up an asleep guy isn't that impressive. We could do that." Then Jesus sighs deeply and is like, "No, you idiots. I mean he's dead and I'm going to bring him back." I'm not lying. That literally happens in the bible. Jesus's friends are too dumb to get his subtlety so he has to mansplain it to them. ANYWAY, the bible includes more than just raising Lazarus. There is also the story of the Young Man from Nain (Luke 7:11–17) as well as the Matthew (9:18–26) version of the daughter of Jairus where the daughter is dead rather than just sick. And I suppose he raises himself from the dead too, right? Does that one count?