Abstract
The study reviews the problems of interpreting the traditions about miracles performed by Jesus and suggest their place in a historically reliable portrait of Jesus. It assumes a scholarly consensus about the historicity of Jesus' miracles: in general, Jesus was remembered as someone who performed deeds that were perceived as miraculous.
This is confirmed and specified by three items in the tradition of the sayings of Jesus, which are examined more closely: the "Beelzebul controversy", Jesus' reply to John the Baptist, and the dispute about a "sign from heaven". All these instances present Jesus' miracles in the perspective of embarrassment, which enhances the historical reliability of such traditions: in one respect or another, the extraordinary deeds of Jesus do not seem to supply a satisfactory confirmation of his divine authority.
It is also difficult to find any unifying pattern that would organise the miracle part of the Jesus tradition - probably a sign that there was little need to fill the gaps in the remembrances. Only a certain part of the Jesus miracle tradition shows traces of post-Easter formation: such traces are less clearly discernible in the stories about resurrecting the dead and quite obvious in the "nature miracles".
The study concludes with the issue of the relevance of the miracle tradition in the historical perspective and suggests two categories that may be useful for such reflection: credibility and surprise.