The Bible details how Jesus brought a man back from the dead using the sound of his voice, but ancient artwork may show that Christ used a little bit of magic.
A fourth-century painting of the story discovered in Rome shows Jesus holding what some archaeologists claimed is a magician’s wand.
Other paintings dating around the same time also depicts Christ holding a wand-like object while performing famous miracles like multiplying loaves of bread and healing the sick.
Ancient paintings of Jesus holding what appears to be a wand has led some researchers to believe early Christians thought of him as a magician. This image was painted in the fourth century, although the exact date is unknown, and was found at the Via Anapo catacomb in Rome
However, some researchers have suggested that these masterpieces actually depict Jesus holding a staff, which was likely portrayed as a way to connect him to the prophet Moses who was more well known at the time.
Regardless, historians believe early Christians saw their Lord and Savior as a magician.
According to the Bible, Jesus performed miracles through the power of God and his ability to heal people and bring them back from the dead while also producing food and drink elevated him above Roman gods in the eyes of Christians.
The fantastical feats may have caused some people to turn to the superstitious belief that Jesus was a magician to explain his actions.
‘I mean, here’s this group that gets together in the morning and drinks wine and says it’s blood and eats bread and says it’s flesh,’ Lee Jefferson, the chair of the religion program at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky told Live Science in 2020.
‘You can probably understand why people thought it was superstitious.’
The belief that Jesus was a magician may have translated into paintings dating back to the early third century that depict Christ holding a wand, experts explained.
One of the earliest records of wands being used was in the 9th Century BC when people who practiced the ancient religion Zoroastrianism used wand-like objects made from small rods or sticks during sacred rituals.
One of the most referenced artworks was a fourth-century AD painting found in the Via Anapo catacomb in Rome, showing Jesus multiplying seven loaves of bread.
In one painting, Jesus holds a wand over the cadaver of Lazarus before he performs the miracle of raising him from the dead. This image was painted in the fourth century, although the exact date is unknown, and was found at the Catacomb of Via Latina in Rome
A carving is displayed on the door of the Santa Sabina Church in Rome showing Jesus using a wand to raise Lazarus from the dead and turning water into wine. The carving was created on a wooden door in 432 AD which is displayed in the Santa Sabina Church in Rome
In the painting which was discovered in 1578, he appears to be waving a wand over the bread, pointing it down toward the objects.
Another fourth-century painting was found in the Via Latina catacomb showing Jesus holding a thin wand in front of a shrine that contained the cadaver of Lazarus.
This is one of the most popular scenes depicted in early Christian funerary art, according to Biblical Archaeology.
In John 11:4, the story says that Lazarus became sick and died, but when his sister Mary called on Jesus to come heal his friend, he told his disciples: ‘This sickness is not to end in death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.’
Jesus chose not to heal Lazarus but to let him die so he could later raise him from the grave and the miracle would force his disciples to believe he was the son of God.
A similar carving was also displayed on a wooden door on the Santa Sabina Church in Rome that depicts 18 scenes from the Old and New Testament.
The door was created in 432 AD, showing Jesus using a long object to perform miracles, including raising Lazarus from the dead and turning water into wine.
Despite the images, evidence suggests that most of Jesus’ followers didn’t perceive his actions as magic, but rather as miracles performed through God.
‘You would not want your demigod to be called a magician because it makes them seem less powerful,’ Jefferson told Live Science.
Christian figures, like the third-century scholar Origen, who was the head of a Christian university in Alexandria, defended Jesus against the philosopher Celsus’ who was a vocal critic of Christianity and spread accusations that he was a magician.
Origen ‘spilled a lot of ink talking about how Jesus’ wondrous deeds weren’t magic because they were aimed at things like moral reformation and salvation instead of the sorts of parlor trickery displayed by marketplace sorcerers,’ Dr Shaily Patel, a professor of early Christianity at Virginia Tech told the Daily Beast.
It is likely, however, that the artwork doesn’t portray a wand at all but is a staff recognizant of other notable figures, according to experts.
Moses was one such person portrayed for using a staff to part the Red Sea and later used it to provide drinking water to Israelites during their escape from Egypt.
At the time, people would have been familiar with Moses but wouldn’t necessarily have known who Jesus was, experts have explained.
To combat this, paintings may have been created of him performing miracles with a type of staff to connect him to the prophet.
‘He’s kind of like a new Moses,’ Jefferson told Live Science.
A staff was recognized as a symbol of power, similar to how a scroll would have been associated with someone wise or well-read.
‘They see that person holding the object and they can understand,’ Felicity Harley-McGowan, an art historian at Yale Divinity School told the outlet.
‘The staff is a sign of [Jesus’] authority.’