The Jar of Oil | Robert Boucheron

     Do you believe in miracles? By “miracle” I mean not a rare or extraordinary event, but one that is supernatural, contrary to the laws of physics. It occurs once, so it cannot be verified or duplicated by an independent observer. It is known only by what a witness says. As a sample of a miracle, consider 2 Kings, Chapter 4, in the New Revised Standard Version:

Now the wife of a member of the company of prophets cried to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the Lord, but a creditor has come to take my two children as slaves.” Elisha said to her, “What shall I do for you? Tell me, what do you have in the house?” She answered, “Your servant has nothing in the house, except a jar of oil.” He said, “Go outside, borrow vessels from all your neighbors, empty vessels and not just a few. Then go in, and shut the door behind you and your children, and start pouring into all these vessels; when each is full, set it aside.” So she left him and shut the door behind her and her children; they kept bringing vessels to her, and she kept pouring. When the vessels were full, she said to her son, “Bring me another vessel.” But he said to her, “There are no more.” Then the oil stopped flowing. She came and told the man of God, and he said, “Go and sell the oil and pay your debts, and you and your children can live on the rest.”
    

The prophet Elisha lived around 850 B. C. In this story, he does not bless the jar, or touch it, or even predict what will happen. He simply tells the widow what to do. She and the children do not have names, nor does the village. Like a fairy tale, the story has no setting in time or space. There is no weather and no physical description. Does the widow pick up the jar to pour, or does she use a ladle? The family is in the house with the door closed, so maybe it is too dark to see inside the jar. It might be set into the floor, as found in archaeological sites.
     Olive oil was expensive, a valuable trade commodity in the Mediterranean world. The story has themes of abundance, the flow of wealth, and the good fortune of the widow. Her children can be seized as collateral for debt, so the story is in part about their redemption. But there is no weeping or rejoicing.
     A footnote in The New Oxford Annotated Bible says: “In ancient times, miracle stories were considered to be one of the best ways of portraying the importance of a religious leader.” As in the stories of Moses and Joshua commanding the elements, Elisha has the power to make the jar of oil produce more than is physically possible.
     In Europe in the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment, serious thinkers came to grips with the miracle. David Hume wrote in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in 1748:
As the violations of truth are more common in the testimony concerning religious miracles, than in that concerning any other matter of fact, this must diminish very much the authority of the former testimony, and make us form a general resolution, never to lend any attention to it, with whatsoever specious pretense it may be covered.
     Hume’s decorous language drapes an extreme position: the miracle story is a lie. If a lie presupposes an intent to deceive, and if deception is for some end, then Hume misunderstood. The writer of this story wants to show the power of Elisha, and by extension the power of God. A magic trick is a paltry way to accomplish this goal. That is, if three thousand years ago, people had the same brain capacity as people today and the same ability to reason.
     When we read the story, what is happening? A transaction is taking place between storyteller and reader, more than the simple transfer of information. Louise Rosenblatt examined this idea in 1978 in “The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work.” Rosenblatt focused on the individual reader. The transaction takes place in the reader’s mind—or doesn’t—and suggests that the question “Does he believe the story?” should be reworded as “Does he buy it?” The information is loaded, and the facts do not make sense. He weighs the probabilities, considers the source, and measures what he is told against what he already knows. All of this happens quickly, and some of it happens unconsciously. Does the story have enough vivid detail or emotional heft or seductive charm to make him believe?
     The reader brings his own baggage into the transaction, among other things the “willing suspension of disbelief,” as Samuel Taylor Coleridge called it. From childhood, we want to hear stories, and we want to believe them. When animals talk, as in fables, we know that the story is not to be taken literally. Those who write fiction say that it contains a truth that goes beyond the literal meaning of the words they write. Poetry is more figurative and allusive than fiction, but the difference is in degree, not in kind. Rosenblatt’s idea applies to both.
     The ancient Hebrew writer did not write for literary magazines. He did write imaginative literature, and his methods are those of fiction writers today. They create characters, they use dialogue, they give the essential detail, and they omit all else. Like a motivational speaker, they exclude failed attempts and focus on the exceptional case, in which the hero beats the odds.
     The miracle story pops up in a modern form in the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, published in 1946. This book probably did more than any other to popularize yoga in America. Yogananda draws parallels between his Hindu faith and Christianity, including tales of miraculous healing. He claims to be scientific and rational as he tracks down stories of a saint who never eats, and of a guru who appears in two places at once, a miracle that the Catholic Church calls “bilocation.” While the details are modern, the stories follow an ancient pattern. And they challenge the reader, asking: “Do you buy this?”
     For readers steeped in science, the answer is no. Michael Shermer, a public speaker and writer in Los Angeles, has made a career as a “skeptic.” He founded the Skeptics Society in 1992, and a magazine called Skeptic. He writes a column for Scientific American, and one of his books is titled Why People Believe Weird Things (1997). Shermer debunks popular legends such as Bigfoot, UFOs, and “ancient aliens,” the subject of a television show. He trumpets the scientific method, and he explains how verification works.
     In his energetic defense of reason, Shermer acknowledges that humans are prone to irrational belief. But the divine does not exist, so the miracle stories of Yogananda and the story of the jar of oil must be false. Is Shermer stuck with Hume in the eighteenth century, waging war with the forces of superstition, “a voice crying in the wilderness” for his vision of the truth?
     The polemic style can be self-defeating. When sides are sharply drawn, and the reader must join one side or the other, the choice is no longer intellectual, but social. Shall I join this party or that one? Do I believe in the supernatural, or do I believe that everything in the universe is explicable, with enough data and time to interpret it?
     To return to the jar of oil, note that the story echoes one in 1 Kings, Chapter 17. In a time of famine, the prophet Elijah begs for food from a widow who has “a handful of meal in a jar, and a little oil in a jug.” Elijah says to the widow:
First make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterwards make something for yourself and your son. . . . The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail until the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.
     The Elijah story contains two things that the later story lacks, the jar of meal and “the word of the Lord.” But the jug of oil seems to be the same as the jar in the Elisha story. Is it made of clay, round and heavy, with a close-fitting lid? Or is it imaginary, a word on the page, a metaphor?
     The good reader asks these questions. The good writer invites us to look beyond. In the zone between telling and understanding—in the transaction—lies the truth of the story. The jar of oil is as real as it can be, and as symbolic as it must be.

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