Ancient people were gullible and prescientific, so reports of miracles in the Bible are better explained by legend growth than by events.

Why people find it persuasive

People in antiquity believed in omens, oracles, and wonder-workers; many miracle stories circulated about figures like Apollonius of Tyana. It seems rational to discount all such reports as products of a credulous culture.

Important distinctions

• • Credulity as a cultural trait versus the claims made about specific events.
• • Whether ancients could tell that virgins do not conceive and the dead stay dead.
• • General skepticism versus case-by-case analysis.

Christian response

• • Ancients knew that dead people stay dead; the gospel stories present resurrection as astonishing (Matthew 28:17, Luke 24:11), not routine.
• • Historians evaluate each report by its date, sources, and plausibility of alternative explanations; blanket discounting is itself an unargued assumption.
• • The reports of Apollonius come from Philostratus over a century later, while resurrection preaching appears in 1 Corinthians 15 within roughly two decades.
• • Craig Keener's Miracles (2011) documents modern miracle claims across cultures, showing that credulity is not limited to antiquity.

Christian counterresponse

Early sources include hostile witnesses admitting something unusual, such as the claim that the disciples stole the body (Matthew 28:13-15). The issue is whether the best explanation requires an unusual event.