Miracles: An Encyclopedia of People, Places, and Supernatural Events from Antiquity to the Present

Miracles give hope to the hopeless and exemplify the intersection of the divine and the mundane. They have shaped world history and continue to influence us through their presence in films, television, novels, and popular culture. This encyclopedia provides a unique resource on the philosophical, historical, religious, and cross-cultural conceptions of miracles that cut across denominational lines. • Provides the most authoritative exposition of miracles across history currently available in English—a highly useful resource for inquirers on miraculous phenomenon • Goes far beyond discussions of specific miracle stories to explore their provenance, cultic aspects, philosophical underpinnings, and psychological roots • Covers some of the major aspects of miraculous phenomena through entries drawn from the humanities, social and behavioral sciences, and the hard sciences, particularly physics and natural biology • Presents accounts of miracles with a range of expert interpretations of those events, thereby supporting the Common Core State Standards for History and English Language Arts, CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RH.11-12.3 • Supplies more than a dozen primary documents—each introduced by a headnote—that give students historic accounts of miracles and related texts for in-depth analysis