The Miracles of Jesus Christ,
as Reviewed by Leading Periodicals of His Day

 

From The Wine Pharisee:

There is no greater buzz among Galilean oenophiles today then the wines of a young Nazarene named Jesus Christ.  The effusive response to his most recent release, crafted especially for a wedding in Cana, all but dominated what was meant to be the bride's day.  Be that as it may, Mr. Christ has a long way to go before he can be considered a great vintner by the standards of Jerusalem, let alone those of Rome.  The wine was lacking in structure and terroir, with an overwhelming bouquet of frankincense and discordant notes of myrrh, stylus clay and the inferior leather of Corinth dominating the palate.  One wonders, moreover, how a wine so obviously deficient in resin and lead can possibly age well.  Drink now, if you must drink it at all.

 

From The Bethany Journal of Medicine:
It has long been this publication's policy to ignore all manner of quackery and pseudoscience.  Men without rigorous medical training have no business engaging in healing and we are loath to dignify their obviously fraudulent ‘efforts’ within our pages.  While our editorial stance remains unchanged, the hue and cry over the so-called ‘miracles’ of one Jesus Christ has reached such a pitch that we feel we must speak out.  Leprosy is and always has been an incurable condition; it beggars belief that an unlearned carpenter from Nazareth has somehow hit upon a secret that has eluded the finest scientific minds of our age.  Doing the impossible has always been the calling card of the flim-flam man and snake oil salesman.
While despicable, this sort of grift is commonplace.  But Christ does not stop there, and reaches the height of audacity with the supposed ‘raising from the dead’ of the local man Lazarus.  Flatly, it is impossible that a man can be brought back from past the threshold of death, and it is BJM's unshakable position that a fraud has been perpetrated on a gullible public.  Those who place their trust in the hands of this or any other self-appointed faith healer do so at their own risk; for ourselves, we remain committed to safe and scientifically proven medical procedures such as bloodletting and trephination.

 

From The Galilee Gourmand:

There's no denying the extreme popularity of Jesus Christ's ventures into food service.  At the Gourmand, however, we remain skeptical of the gimmickry and culinary populism that are Christ's hallmark as chef and restaurateur.  His concept of "feeding the multitudes," so-described by one of his spokesmen, seems to us nothing less than an invitation to blandness and mediocrity. His latest franchise at Tabgha shows little or no improvement from Mr. Christ's initial foray at Bethsaida.  The food is offered as an all-you-can-eat proposition--or is it really all-you-can-stomach?  Fish, bread, bread, fish; it is only fair to give credit where due and point out that the protein being served is remarkably fresh, nonetheless the lack of artifice in the presentation quickly grows cloying.  Still more troubling are the allegations, heard at both locations, of bread being recirculated.  And about that bread; would it kill the man to leaven it with yeast or some other agent?  While 5,000 turned out for the initial ‘feeding,’ this publication is heartened to note that only 4,000 were in attendance at Tabgha.   The Gourmand is cautiously optimistic that the public may be catching on to this one trick donkey.