9 Scientific Explanations For Famous Bible Stories

9. Healing Miracles

In the bible, Jesus performs a great many healing miracles that appear to demonstrate his heavenly abilities (as well as bumping up is Thoroughly Top Bloke status). From curing the blind to healing lepers to allowing a paralysed man to walk again, it all seems pretty miraculous, but there might be a more earthly explanation.

In ancient times, understanding of the human body and disease was very limited. As in "Got a disease? It's probably demons, off to the leper colony with you" kind of limited.

The incredible account of Jesus telling a paralysed man to "take up his bed and walk" appears to depict a feat of miraculous healing. However, whilst it is possible that the man may have had a psychosomatic illness, it is much more likely that he wasn't actually paralysed in the first place. It's not exactly unheard of for beggars to feign a terrible illness in order to attract sympathy and therefore money.

When it comes to healing leprosy, we again run into the issue of a misdiagnosis. People were so fearful of lepers that it was common to overreact to even mild skin lesions, just in case they were leprosy. Eczema, rashes and even acne could be misdiagnosed as leprosy, and so it would seem like a total miracle when they went away on their own.

The "instant" aspect of the many healing stories are likely to be embellishments to make them more exciting.

The healing of the blind man is interesting. On a much smaller scale, many faith healers emulate this miracle by curing people of their poor eyesight. The way they do this is by lying them on the floor, this causes the liquid inside the eyeball to shift, temporarily changing the shape (which is usually the cause of poor eyesight) and often leading to short-term improved vision. The effect wears off very quickly.

However, many people regard the healing of the blind man to be metaphorical (a strong argument for many bible stories), representing his blindness to God.