A miracle is defined as "A special manifestation, or sign, of the presence and power of God in human history" (McBrien, 1224). While miracles are generally most likely to be associated with the Christian Church and faith, including the miracles that are identified in the Old Testament or "Hebrew Bible," miracles were not unknown in pre-Christian classical antiquity. Among the ancient Greeks, for example, miracles often were observed as a result of the interaction of one of the Gods in the lives of humans.
For the ancient Greeks, as Smith (77 -- 79) noted, the belief that the gods of Olympus were interested in and connected to the lives of ordinary men and women was integral to their religious system. Gods such as Zeus, his daughter Athena, Diana, Venus, and others took a personal interest in the fate of favored mortals. Venus, for example, so loved Trojan Paris that she arranged for him to meet and conquer the heart of Helen. At the same time, many of the Olympians were equally interested in stirring up dissent and turmoil among humans and used their miracle-making power to that end.
However, it is with the Old Testament and events taking place in the "Cradle of Civilization" (the Near and Middle East) that the most well-known miracles took place. McBrien (2339) noted that there is no actual word for "miracles" in the Bible; the Old Testament, for example, speaks of "signs," "wonders," "acts of power," and "portents." All of Creation, depicted in the Book of Genesis, followed by the Great Flood in which God saved Noah and his family, have been characterized as miracles by Homer Smith (77). The most important in the Old Testament are those acts by which Yahweh delivered Israel from Egypt through the agency of Moses and led them to Cannan (the Exodus) (McBrien 339). Moses was the vehicle chosen by Yahweh to liberate the enslaved Israelites from their captivity; later, Elisha and Elijah would hav
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