"It's the fourth watch on the sea of Galilee around 30AD" "The disciples have left Jesus behind to pray on the mountain" "They're making their way back home" "Suddenly the disciples see Jesus Walking on the water." "The gospels say the disciples were terrified" "No wonder" "For centuries critics have claimed that Jesus' miracles never happened all that they were purely illusions." "Can ancient miracles be recreated using 21st Century technology?" "We ask Brock Gill, a Christian and an illusionist to put each one to the test" "The name Galilee, the raising of the widow's son" "On the Golan Heights" "The multiplication of loves and fishes" "And on the sea of Galilee the miracle of the Walking on water" "Was he a magician, was he an illusionist, was he a hypnotist, was he a paranormalist?" "Or was he just a master of psychology?" "I mean what was the deal?" "Or, was he a real miracle worker?" "Brock's mission is like nothing else he's ever attempted to test the miracles of Jesus a man he believes to be the son of God" "The New Testament says that Jesus could take a small boy's lunch and multiply it to feed over 5,000 people" "He could heal almost every sickness and disease" "He could even bring people back to life" "Not even his enemies deny that Jesus was a miracle worker" "Both the Jewish Talmud and the Koran acknowledge Jesus as a maker of miracles" "Flavios Deceivus the leading Roman historian of the 1st Century said Jesus performed wonders" "But the most obvious evidence was the crowds" "The evidence that Jesus performed miracles is overwhelming" "What persuades me is that large crowds followed Jesus." "And why did they?" "It was because they were sick" "And if Jesus didn't heal they wouldn't have followed him lt was the large crowds I think that prove that Jesus really was a worker of miracles" "But if Jesus could work such miracles by what power did he do them?" "His enemies of the time claim he did so by the power of magic" "2,000 years later, the view that Jesus was a magician lives on in scholarly books and articles." "So was Jesus a magician?" "As a Christian this is a question that has intrigued Brock Gill" "Let me tell you man, I gave my life to that Jesus." "And let me tell you he completely changed my life I've always been fascinated by miracles since a kid reading the stories they were so like outside of the ordinary that I always liked the idea of being able to" "walk across the water I'm sure would impress my friends" "But Brock is also professional magician." "Master of the art of illusion - he can make people appear to float in the air..." "And he can magically disappear from a box" "Brock also takes his magic to the streets where performing illusions catches the attention of passers by" "It's as an illusionist but its fascination with the miracles of Jesus has grown" "The cool thing about miracles for me is to see how Jesus used them to draw a crowd" "Even though what I do is just an illusion I do things that draw crowds" "To examine the miracles Brock will download the bible both in English and the original languages they were written in" "He will also scour other ancient sources for evidence" "And consult with the leading scholars in the world" "The first thing he discovers is that" "Jesus was not the only miracle worker in antiquity" "When historian Kim Stratton looked at the evidence for wonder workers she was surprised by how many there were" "Pythagoras was believed to have been able to appear in two places at once, also to have performed some healings lmpetaclius who was a 5th Century philosopher and miracle worker, claimed to have power over weather." "Honey, the circle drawer who was the 1st Century" "Jewish miracle worker, could cause rain" "Jesus was not alone but there are clues in the New Testament that he was different from other miracle workers" "As a rule miracles workers Healed, cast out demons, and tried to control the weather to help people out" "Jesus did all that and more" "Larry Hurtado, professor of biblical studies at Edinburgh University has long been intrigued by the miracles of Jesus" "And what he is finding is that almost without exception the miracles are often like riddles," "It's as if Jesus is using the miracles to say something important" "Our problem is that we are often so ignorant of the biblical material that we read them and they make no sense to us, so they look encoded to us" "We have to decode them, we have to unpack them ln order to test the miracles," "Brock will need to crack the code of the miracles and to do that he will need to see for himself" "Where the miracles took place" "There might be something that wasn't written down... that will give us a clue if there is some type of method used to do these miracles" "As Brock studies the miracles in the New Testament he notices that the gospel writers always make a point of identifying the location of the miracles" "The miracle of the raising of the widow's son takes place in the town of Maine" "In the miracle of the loves and fishes" "Jesus takes the crowd to a deserted area on the Golan Heights" "The miracle of the walking on water takes place not far from the village of Dessailler" "But Brock also notices another type of clue odd unexpected or hard to explain actions by Jesus" "In the miracle of the loaves and the fishes" "Jesus orders the crowd to sit in groups of 50s or 100s ln the miracle of the walking on water" "At first Jesus does not walk towards the disciples, but passes them by" "So how and why did Jesus work his miracles?" "Next Brock travels to the site of the type of miracle that Jesus performed several times" "The raising of dead people back to life" "The gospels say that one day" "Jesus brings back to life the son of a widow" "The town of Maine still exists in Galilee" "Brock travels there in the hope of finding clues" "Was this a miracle or an illusion?" "And is it the kind illusion Brock himself can recreate?" "wait a minute, do you have any change?" "do you like to have a..." "Yes Sir" "Brock is a professional magician from Nashville at home doing illusions in the street as much as on the stage I know this sounds ridiculous but I want you to hold these and see if you can kind of make them balance on top of each other" "OK" "You kidded me?" "Can I touch it?" "That is cool... I'm very amazed" "Brock is also a Christian, Curious about the miracles of Jesus" "He's travelling through Galilee in northern Israel on a personal mission to find out the secret of Jesus' miracles" "You know I've studied different things like the art of illusion and magic and hypnotism" "And now I'm travelling here to the country to see if there is any type of clue as to how Jesus did his miracles" "Brock's quest brings him to the Galilean town of Maine" "Just 20 miles south of Nazareth" "Sorry, sorry about that." "Here we are, we just ran over Maine" "The gospels say that Jesus performed a famous miracle here" "The story goes that Jesus arrives in Maine on the occasion of a funeral" "The dead man was the only son of a widow lt was a tragic blow for the poor woman" "First her husband died" "All her hopes would have been Wrapped up in her only son" "Now her son too was gone" "His sudden death would have left her potentially destitute" "The gospels say that when Jesus heard about the woman's plight his heart went out to her" "No magician can raise the dead." "But Brock wants to know if the man couldn't been a death like sleep?" "First century Jews knew about a medicine from the mandrake plant used to treat fevers" "Some sceptics claim that an overdose could have put the widow's son into a coma for two days" "But in fact the smallest overdose would have easily killed the son" "Jesus could not have raised him from a death like sleep" "As Brock tries to understand this miracle" "He stumbles across an important clue" "Maine was already famous as a miracle hot spot" "The Old Testament reveals that" "Jewish holy men had carried out similar miracles one thousand years earlier..." "The story goes that one day a great Jewish profit Elijah was approached by a woman." "She was a widow" "And her young child, her only son had just died" "The similarities of Jesus arriving in Maine are uncanny, but in fact, the parallels run even deeper" "When the widow takes Elijah to see her son" "Elijah restores the son back to life" "The same characters..." "The same circumstances..." "And the same outcome..." "Elijah raised the dead, Jesus raised the dead" "Was he trying to prove a point?" "Was he trying to get something across?" "Why did that happen?" "Why did he do that?" "There's a clue to why Jesus performed this miracle in the crowd's reaction" "Elijah!" "The great prophet!" "Elijah!" "For Old Testament expert Renita Weems this is compelling evidence" "That the crowd believed Jesus was Elijah reincarnated" "There were probably those who did think that he was Elijah and I think that people tend to kind of reach back in their history to say how do we pay this man, you know where do we place him, how do we understand him?" "So I don't doubt there were those who believe he was Elijah" "But why was Jesus trying to replicate Elijah's miracle?" "To find out Brock heads for the eastern shores of the sea of Galilee to examine some of Jesus' other miracles" "One of the best known is the miracle of the loaves and fishes" "The multiplication of scraps of food to feed the crowd of 5,000" "As a magician Brock is perfectly placed to find out whether or not it was just an illusion" "Jesus multiplied bread and fish, I can multiply cards and coins and balls and things like that, so I may be able to shed some light on whether Jesus used the same types of methods" "Did he use slight of hand?" "Or was it real supernatural power?" "The feeding of the 5,000 is not only a spectacular miracle but it is also full of puzzling pieces of information" "Can his clues bring us closer to understanding the secret of Jesus' miracles?" "I just want you to watch" "We take this coin right here..." "and see what happens" "We'll try and do it with this wind..." "Brock Gill is an illusionist mixing stage illusions and street magic" "Oh, my god..." "Brock has always been intrigued by Jesus' miracles" "He is travelling through Israel to find out how and why Jesus worked his miracles" "His first case study was a type of miracle that Jesus performed many times - the raising of dead people back to life" "Brock found no evidence of trickery instead he discovered that this miracle was not unique" "The miracle was a carbon copy of one performed by the great Jewish prophet Elijah a thousand years earlier" "There's a mystery there;" "it's something I can't figure out ls there something that Jesus was trying to say to us or to them?" "To find out Brock wants to take a closer look at one of Jesus' most famous wonders" " the miracle of the loaves and fishes" "His first task is to establish the precise location of the miracle" "The gospels say that the crowds gathered together in a deserted place not far from Bethsaida" "The ruins of Bethsaida lie just east at the Jordan Delta" "And east of Bethsaida are the Golan Heights, as deserted today as they were the time of Jesus" "That suggests the miracle of the loaves and fishes took place of the foothills of the Golan Heights" "East of the sea of Galilee" "According to the gospels 5,000 people left their villages to come and hear Jesus speak" "Biblical scholar Larry Hurtado believes the size of the crowd is in line with historical records" "It is possible to have large number of pilgrim crowds" "That do know that observant Jews put off and have made an attempt to go to Jerusalem most of all during Passover Time" "The population of the city probably doubled, and you would have had perhaps as many as 100,000 people" "The gospels say that when Jesus arrived to speak he ran into trouble" "Apparently the people were hungry, they were clambering for food" "The disciples pleaded with Jesus to send the crowds back to their villages to get some food, but Jesus had a different idea" "Instead he told them to get the crowd to sit down in groups of 50s and 100s and to gather what food was available" "But all they had was a few scraps of food - 5 loaves and 2 fishes to feed a multitude of 5,000" "The crowds were getting more and more agitated, but Jesus was undaunted" "5 loaves and 2 fishes, it would take a miracle to feed them all" "And yet the food kept on coming" "By any standards this was an extraordinary moment" "So how did Jesus do it?" "And why?" "As an illusionist Brock too is an expert in multiplication" "But it's one thing to multiply cards, quite another to multiply thousands of loaves and fishes" "He had to have a lot of cooks on hand getting ready to prepare some food and gathering that amount of food in advance probably would have stirred up the town, they would have known" "All the bakeries in town would be booked for a week in advance you know" "Another possibility is that Jesus used his charisma to put the crowd in the grip of a mass delusion" "But Dr Archie Hart, a psychologist and an hypnotist in his own right doubts that hypnosis can be this effective" "Well the most common explanation would be that there was some sort of mass hysteria or delusion" "Perhaps because these people were hungry, thirsty and their senses were not working properly" "And that by some skilful sermon he said to them you have now all, your stomachs will be full, you will have all been fed..." "The problem is that it's almost impossible to create a delusional effect in this large number of people" "Maybe I could get 20 people to believe something had happened that didn't really happen" "But 5,000 people out in the field, kids running around..." "As a rule, in any group of people the proportion susceptible to hypnosis is 10 -25%" "As a hypnotist himself" "Brock is only too aware of the problems that would have created for Jesus" "Let's say he hypnotised 90% of the 20,000 that could have been here" "That 10% was a whole lot of people and guess what?" "They would have went home and said Jesus is a great hypnotist" "What a great show that was" "And they would all go home hungry" "Neither slight of hand nor hypnosis adequately explained the miracles" "So Brock looks for clues elsewhere" "The location for one could be key, the site of the miracle is quite clearly described by the gospels as a deserted and remote area" "As he looks through the Old Testament" "Brock finds that a similar miracle took place in a deserted and remote area" "More than a thousand years earlier" "Moses too had performed a very similar miracle" "The book of Exodus says that Moses crossed the Red Sea and greets Sinai wilderness" "When they arrive in the Wilderness" "Moses too is mobbed by hungry crowds" "Day after day the Hebrews complain to Moses about the lack of food" "Brock then spots another clue - this time in an order given by Jesus just before the miracle" "He instructs the crowd to sit in companies of 50s and 100s" "According to the Old Testament" "Moses too often ordered the Hebrews to sit down in companies of 50 and 100 these were the typical sizes of military companies" "Larry Hurtado doesn't believe these parallels are just a coincidence to look at the way in which Moses after they crossed the Red Sea they are out in the Sinai wilderness and Moses is pictured as organising the companies of 50s and 100s," "with managers over each one of them" "And so here Jesus is pictured as almost like a new Moses reorganising this crowd a kind of mini Israel ln fact parallels go much deeper" "Jesus multiplied fishes and loaves" "Moses too multiplied food ln the evenings the skies above the Hebrew camp were swarming with quails" "In the morning the ground was covered with the red of heaven, manna - a streaked white powdery substance" "The manna's might be slightly different" "Similarities continued until the very end" "Both crowds feast on the plentiful food ln the Sinai Moses ordered the Hebrews to gather their leftovers out of baskets" "Jesus ordered his people to do the same" "When Jesus fed the multitudes in the wilderness they would have immediately thought of Moses" "The people would have been amazed, they would have wanted - is this another Moses?" "Jesus' miracle would have electrified the crowd" "The atmosphere was certainly electric" "The gospels say the crowds hailed Jesus as their liberator there and then" "But this discovery has only made Brock's quest even more puzzling" "We don't talk much about Old Testament figures when we think of miracles" "We kind of focus on Jesus but what we have to remember is" "Jesus wasn't the first person ever to do a miracle" "So I want to know if there was some purpose for the similarities" "If there was a purpose it should become obvious in every miracle" "So Brock decides to examine the miracle that follows right after the loaves and fishes" "As the disciples return home they suddenly see Jesus Walking on the sea" "At least one magician claimed it is possible to create the illusion of walking on water" "But is that how Jesus did it?" " OK, you ready?" " Yes" "Now this is what we are going to do." "The illusionist Brock Gill draws crowds by performing magic tricks" "He is a Christian who sees the parallels in what he does and what Jesus did in the 1st Century" "Now he's on a quest to find how Jesus performed the miracles" "My goodness." "So far he's found that raising the dead" "And multiplying food could not have been illusions" "But he's also discovered that neither miracle were unique" "The prophet Elijah had also raised the dead" "And Moses too had fed a multitude" "There seems to be a lot of similarities between Jesus, his miracles and other miracles that have been done by other people before him such as Moses and Elijah" "Maybe they had the same sorts of power I think they just started to scratch the surface" "1st Century Jews would have known The Old Testament miracles intimately" "They would have been important teachings" "But Brock wanted to know if the parallel between Old and New Testament repeats itself in other miracles" "Next on his list is one of the most famous miracles of all" "The night Jesus walked on water" "after the miracle of the loaves and fishes the disciples headed home to the village of Bethsaida" "Later that night during the fourth watch they saw Jesus" "Apostles say the disciples' thought they'd seen a ghost" "In a strange development at first Jesus wasn't walking towards them" "The gospels say that Jesus intended to pass them by" "This famous miracle has mystified people for centuries - how could Jesus have defied gravity and walked on water?" "Walking on water is a particular challenge of magicians" "Brock will seek help from one of the greatest inventors of modern illusions in the world" "Well I want to see if we can recreate walking on water through the use of modern day methods of illusion - if we can trick people" "Maybe we'll come up with something that maybe shows or explains how Jesus walked on water as well" "To try and find out exactly what happened" "Brock re-reads a story for clues" "The gospels said that Jesus was not walking towards the disciples but was passing them by" "Where was Jesus heading?" "Once again the location of the miracle might just be the clue which reveals how Jesus walked on the water" "We know Jesus had stayed behind to pray on the hill east of the sea" "We also know that the disciples were heading home to Bethsaida" "They met just before dawn" "So they most likely saw Jesus where the sea in Galilee meets the Jordan Delta" "if Jesus was passing the disciples by perhaps he was heading to the western shores of the Delta" "But why would Jesus want to cross to the other side of the Jordan Delta?" "Well there's a clue in the pattern that Brock had observed so far" "When Jesus raised the widow's son he was copying Elijah" "When he fed the 5,000 he was copying Moses" "Could Jesus be copying Moses again?" "After all, Moses crossed the Red Sea by parting the water" "Maybe." "But Brock finds clues with Jesus was also copying Joshua" "Joshua was Moses' right hand man" "Joshua's job was to take the Hebrews and the Arc of the Covenant across to Jordan into the promised land." "But the Jordan was impossible to cross" "So Joshua prayed for a miracle" "The Old Testament says the Jordan Waters receded" "Joshua crossed the Jordan, and conquered the promised land" "And the similarities don't end there" "Both Joshua and Jesus crosse the Jordan from the east" "With Joshua were 12 priests carrying the Arc of the Covenant" "On the fishing boat were 12 disciples." "But the most direct parallel was in their names" "Jesus is a Latin name ln the original Hebrew, Jesus would have been called Joshua" "His name Jesus Joshua is the same and that would have suggested some possible connections" "It would have at least made people wonder is that significant;" "is the name significant?" "And we have the coincidences on the one hand Joshua performing a kind of miracle" "Over the waters and the name Jesus these are again winks and nudges that are intended to say do you see the significance?" "If Jesus was heading for the western side of the Jordan then it might explain how Jesus walked on water" "Maybe he wasn't walking on water at all; maybe it was an illusion" "Perhaps Jesus walked across on hidden sand banks" "Brock steps into the river to find out for himself" "Well it seems to be about almost waist deep, a muddy bottom, real slippery, and it's," "There's definitely not looking like I'm walking on the water lf he crossed here it wouldn't be very spectacular that's for sure I don't think anyone would ever believe that this is a kind of miracle," "not at all" "This is just walking in shallow water." "Anyone can do this" "This is not very easy" "Even if this part here was more shallow like late in the summer there's no way to walk across this because at some point it gets really really deep" "There's no-one that's going to say oh look he's walking on water, they're just going to say some idiot's out there walking in the water, you know" "The shallow water theory also fails to make sense of one crucial episode in the gospels" "Jesus invites Peter to walk on the water too" "So did Peter too walk on hidden sandbanks?" "Well not according to the gospels" "The problem with the shallow water theory is this " "Peter was actually walking on the water with Jesus" "And then this happened" "It couldn't have been shallow water because you sink lf Peter sank then that strongly suggests that Jesus was walking in deeper water, where there are no sandbanks to assist him" "So could Jesus have done that?" "In his truck" "Brock carries many of the props he needs for his stage illusions but walking on water is one that has defied all illusionists ancient or modern" "So Brock turns to the world's leading inventor of illusions before him" "Like Brock" "André Kole is a Christian whose been fascinated by the miracles of Jesus;" "in particular the walking on water" "For the first time" "André tried to perform this most difficult of illusions on a lake" "Gingerly André steps onto the water trying to maintain his balance" "He shows that he is neither standing on a submerged platform nor suspended by wires," "is it the kind of trickery that could have fooled the disciples in the middle of the night?" "André Kole doubts it lt is thoroughly inconceivable that he could have fooled 12 people" "They would have had to have been in on it and I made several trips to California to work with my builders, to solve the problems, because in order to have a convincing demonstration of walking on water since people believe that you have something under the water or" "you are hanging from something up above you got to go through all the proofs that I did, showing there is nothing above and running the hoops and the rods around my feet" "We need to get two more illusions put on the truck for tonight's show" "But perhaps the single most compelling reason why Jesus could not have created the illusion of walking on water is the equipment and staff he would have needed" "It is only one of several warehouses in which André stores the equipment he needs to create his illusions lt takes about 8 hours every night to present our show, to set it up, pack it down" "And I just don't think Jesus would have had the trucks and the warehouses and the thousands of dollars - where did he get the thousands of dollars to build this stuff?" "Like the raising of the dead and the multiplication of food, the walking on water seems to defy all rational explanation" "And it also confirms one of Brock's suspicions ln every instance Jesus is copying the miracles of earlier Old Testament figures lt doesn't look like there was any kind of tricks that he was using to any of these" "But there are similarities so to what Jesus did and Elijah did and Moses did" "These similarities could be vital clues" "Do they finally tell us how and why Jesus did his miracles?" "In his quest to find out how Jesus performed the miracles illusionist and Christian Brock Gill has stumbled on an even greater mystery." "In every instance" "Jesus seemed to be repeating a miracle by an Old Testament figure" "First Elijah, then Moses, and finally Joshua" "To find out why Brock wants to understand the beliefs hopes and fears of people at the time of Jesus" "The thing is these Old Testament figures seem to be so important to the people of that day" "When Jesus raised someone from the dead they yelled out Elijah" "Why was Elijah such a big deal?" "Why was Moses such a big deal?" "Why was Joshua such a big deal to the people then?" "The Jewish scriptures reveal that the Jews believe they were in the midst of a holy war between the forces of good and evil" "The forces of evil were the Romans they had been occupying the Holy Land for over a century," "but the Jews were not downcast" "They believed deliverance was just around the corner" "I think people can live without a lot of things but they cannot live without hope" "That life will get better, can get better and that someone, someone is coming who will liberate us" "That there will be some kind of liberator who God would send to liberate God's people" "The Jews were expecting a saviour" "But there was a disagreement as to who that might be" "Some Jews expected Elijah to come back" "Elijah was believed not to have died," "But to have been taken up in a fiery chariot up to heaven" "So still alive in heaven he is then expected later on in history to return as the forerunner of the messiah so you can understand how the crowd will have seen Jesus as a great prophet" "Perhaps also Elijah reincarnated" "But many other Jews were also expecting a military leader like Moses lt's very likely that if he saw himself in some sense as an heir of prophets, of Moses" "Moses would have been one of the logical figures" "He was the figure who founds so to speak Israel as a nation, reads through the exodus, through the wilderness, and through the miracle stories." "There he is the agent of divine purposes" "And again Joshua too acted as a powerful role model" "And the coincidence of their names would not have been lost on the people" "After all it was not Moses who actually brought the Israelites into the land that had been promised them by Yahweh lt wasn't Moses but Joshua" "As Brock nears the end of his quest we reflect on the implications of this discovery" "He's already found out that Jesus' miracles could not be recreated as fakes." "Drugs are far more likely to have killed the widow's son than to have revived him" "And no magician could have multiplied enough loaves and fishes to feed thousands" "Nor could such a large crowd fall under the spell of hypnosis" "True, the miracle of the walking on water can be re-created but only using modern technology" "As an illusionist and a Christian" "Brock has often had to deal with the claims if Jesus was a magician" "His journey through the holy land has convinced him otherwise I've had people ask that" "You know my answer is and there's no way that he could have done it because we illusionists, magicians, entertainers, we can't even touch that stuff, man I mean we only have our clues, not even a clue" "But for Brock the clearest sign that Jesus was not a magician was the intention behind his miracles" "Jesus did not show off his powers with brash new tricks like a magician would instead Jesus replicates the miracles of great Old Testament figures" "At the heart of Jesus' miracles there is a religious message" "That he was the Jews long awaited saviour" "The question is what kind of saviour did Jesus think he was?" "A Prophet, a military leader or someone else altogether?" "After 2,000 years that remains one of the greatest mysteries ever"