No, the Virgin Mary did not appear at Zeitoun in 1968
and other miracles
I’ve been a reader of Bentham’s newsletter for months now. From shrimp donations to arguments for God, his blog really exemplifies what it means to read someone with a different perspective from yours.
I’ve read several of his posts which apparently prove that God exists. They mostly boil down to anthropic-adjacent arguments, which I have never found convincing, but his version is complex enough that I can’t follow along to decide if I agree with it or not.
But I still want to engage with the conversation, so I’ve taken varying degrees of interest in examples of miracles that he’s brought up from time to time, such as the flying saint, and most recently, the appearance of mother Mary in Zeitoun. Since he takes this as actual proof of Christianity’s legitimacy, I think it’s worth digging into the first hand accounts of this event - because if real - it’s definitely worth converting.
While I don’t have time to dig into all of these miracles, I am particularly enamored with this one because of how recently it occurred. So, unlike pringles, we’ll have to settle for just one for now.
I too, have seen miracles
Years ago, when I was a Christian, I remember my parents taking me to a revival. Revival services are basically sermons that occur weekly, like a normal church, except with more passion and dancing and singing etc. The idea is that it’s more interactive and focused on personal experience than your typical Sunday sermon, example below:
One day, the pastors wife, who was in a wheelchair (car accident), was wheeled out on the stage. At a particularly raucous moment in service, the pastor prayed over her and after much cheering, she got up and began to walk for a moment before returning to the chair and sitting down.
The atmosphere was Jubilant. This truly was a miracle. My mother told me as much, and if you do a little searching on youtube, you can see plenty of videos of the same thing happening.
My point is less about the miraculousness of the supposed miracle and more about the reactions to it. Church members heavily exaggerated the story, including my parents. The idea that she gave up the wheelchair and was completely recovered was false, as she continued to use it and I’m sure continued physical therapy for years afterwards. But this didn’t stop the congregation from interpreting it as a sign from God.
So before you take their testimony at face value, the point is to remember that people do in fact exaggerate things. Even a congregation of hundreds can exaggerate things, as can thousands, and hundreds of thousands etc. A wheelchair bound person briefly standing is retold as “they experienced a complete divine recovery.” A flash of light is interpreted as a fully formed, clearly outlined figure of Mary. Even minor attestations of being visited can spread far and wide as evidence of divine intervention.
But we live in a world with skeptics, and sometimes they can throw cold water on the magic of life. As a child, I relished in spoiling the magic of Santa for another kid. Joe Nickel spoiled a pretty impressive series of paranormal hoaxes.
And a professor, Dr. Cynthia Nelson of the American University in Cairo, arrived at the virgin Mary sighting and wrote about her account of the episode in detail. This blog post is a summary of her account.
What was the Virgin Mary sighting?
First, we can read about the most bullish description of the Mary sightings from Emma Donnelly, think of this as the “she stood out of the wheelchair, never to use it again” telling of events.
On April 2, Muslim garage attendant Farouk Mohammad Atwa and a coworker noticed a woman dressed in white standing on the roof of the Coptic Orthodox Church of St. Mary. Assuming that she was a nun with suicidal intentions, Atwa frantically ran over, shouting, “Lady, don’t jump!”
She remained silent and stoic, her hands clasped and her head bowed in silent reverence. The shouts of the two men attracted a small crowd. Those who saw the woman were filled with confusion and awe. One of the Church custodians voiced what everyone was thinking: “Could that be the Virgin Mary?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the people agreed that the radiant woman standing over them could be no one but the Queen of Heaven. Although she was visible for only a few minutes, it soon became clear that it was not a solitary occurrence.
For the next three years, Mary returned regularly to Zeitoun. Sometimes, the apparitions occurred as often as two to three times a week. The miraculous appearances drew thousands to Zeitoun from all over the world, all to encounter the Holy Virgin. At the peak, an estimated 250,000 people came each night in hopes of simply glimpsing the Mother of God.
The appearances also followed a pattern. First, spectators would witness a brilliant ball of light “as bright as a million suns.” The light would slowly morph to take on the form of the Virgin Mary. She wore long blue and white robes that flowed in the breeze. A halo of blinding light surrounded the crown on her head. Some people saw only the Virgin. Others claimed they saw her with the infant Lord, a 12-year-old Jesus, or her husband, St. Joseph. She was also reported to occasionally carry a cross or an olive branch, the universal symbol for peace.
Over the three-year span of the apparitions, Mary never uttered a word. She remained in a constant state of prayer, and her actions and body language spoke volumes. Sometimes, she would glide around the domes that decorated the Church’s roof. Other times, she fell to her knees before the cross above the front entrance. At times, she stood still as a statue for hours on end, her flowing garments the only indication of her corporeality. Occasionally, she would acknowledge the crowds with a gentle smile and a silent blessing.
Mary did a lot of things, but it basically depended on her mood. She’d flip and fly through the air, sometimes gliding over the dome, levitating perfectly still, even bringing Jesus and Joseph along for the ride. And never a word.
But the fun didn’t stop there:
The Virgin’s appearances in Zeitoun were accompanied by a slew of miraculous events. People reported seeing large, glowing doves fly across the sky in a cross-shaped formation. Mary herself was said to smell of sweet incense so strong it seemed to come from “millions of censors.” Thousands of onlookers, skeptics included, recounted mysterious flashing lights and shooting stars appearing in the sky at the time of the apparitions. One witness described them as “a shower of diamonds made of light.” There were also reports of unexplained healings, including curing of blindness, polio, paralysis, cancer, and other terminal illnesses.
Donnelly ends with some words of inspiration:
It can be easy to get so caught up in all the noise that one can lose sight of what’s important. Making yourself heard seems to become the most important thing. It’s important to make one’s voice heard, but not at the expense of what’s really important. Mary’s silent reverence and her connection with the Lord, despite the crowds and cacophony below her, was never broken. She reminded us that only one thing gives people a clear view of what’s important: It’s not making yourself heard to other people, but making yourself known to God.
The most compelling part of the story is when the speaker mentioned that “skeptics were there, and even they were dumbfounded!” That brings us to one such skeptic, who I think provides an interesting point of view.
Supernatural or sociological?
After the Six-Day War, in a district some fifteen miles north of Cairo, there occurred an event that for several months became the focus of attention not only for thousands of Egyptians of different religions and social backgrounds but also hundreds of foreigners, members of the international press, resident scholars and diplomats, representatives of Western Christianity, and the perennial tourists. This event, known locally as the Apparition of Zeitoun, involves the alleged multiple appearances of the Virgin Mary on the dome of a Coptic Christian church in the district of Zeitoun. The Copts are an Egyptian Christian minority who are descendants of the original Egyptian population at the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century and who were never converted to Islam.
…
I would like, first, to describe the events surrounding the apparitions, particularly during the initial months; second, to seek an understanding of how Egyptians construct their social world by asking the Egyptians themselves how they perceive and interpret the apparition of the Virgin Mary; and third, as an anthropologist, to examine this phenomenon in the context of its broader implications for people’s perceptions of reality, for relations between Christians and Muslims, for the role of the supernatural in the everyday lives of Egyptians, and the manner in which they cope with stress in general, as well as the sociopolitical setting of contemporary Egypt.
On Tuesday evening, April 2, 1968, around midnight, two workers left the garage facing the Church of the Holy Virgin. One of them, a Muslim, notices “a figure dressed in white on top of the dome of the Church. I thought she was going to commit suicide and shouted to her to be careful. My friend called the police and I woke up the doorkeeper. He comes out and looks and cries ‘It is the Virgin,’ and runs to call the priest.” This is the testimony of the worker as reported in the major newspapers as accounts of the apparition increased over the next weeks.
And describes her late arrival to the scene:
On April 15, I arrived at the church around 10:00 P.M. with a Coptic friend and her sister-in-law. There were a thousand to fifteen hundred people quietly milling about the streets around the church. It was difficult, but still possible, for cars to navigate. Several private cars were parked along the side of the street, and people were gathered outside the church waiting for “something to happen.” Most people had come by car to Zeitoun that evening and, judging from the manner in which they were dressed (Western business suits and fashionable dresses), they represented the urban middle and upper classes. The atmosphere was subdued and reverent. There were several Europeans from embassies and foreign businesses, who had come mostly out of curiosity.
While waiting, using colloquial Arabic, I engaged some Egyptians near me in a conversation about the apparition. Many claimed to have seen her and had returned to see her again; others had come in hopes of seeing her. One informant, who had been present on April 2 and had returned each night for the past two weeks, said the Virgin usually appears after midnight. (I was reminded of having read somewhere that midnight marks the center of time for Christendom!) As we were talking, a white-shirted figure appeared in one of the windows of the church, and the crowd broke into shouts but soon realized that it was nothing but a human figure.
Disappointing, but the fun did in fact start:
On another visit a week later, toward the end of April, the crowds had multiplied by the thousands, and a particular side street next to the church had been described “as where the Virgin is more easily seen.” Talking with a woman in her late fifties, the daughter of a very famous Cairo surgeon, I learned that her own daughter, an honor student in chemistry at Cairo University, who had seen the Virgin on April 12, insisted that her mother accompany her again to Zeitoun. She described her experience: “She was like a statue, hands folded in front, head veiled and bent. She rose up in the sky completely and was illuminated. I first saw the halo, then I saw the Virgin completely. She came down between the palm tree and the dome on this side street here.” As we were talking, the crowd began pointing to the palm tree and exclaiming “It’s the Virgin-she looks like a nun, and she is swaying to and fro as if she were blessing us!”
When I looked to where the crowds were pointing, I, too, thought I saw a light through the branches of the trees, and as I tried to picture a nunlike figure in those branches, I could trace the outline of a figure. But as I thought to myself that this is just an illusion of the light reflecting through the branches, the image of the nun would leave my field of vision. Still, there was no doubt in my mind that there was a light and that if I looked for the image, it would come into focus. I immediately “explained” this perceptual experience as an illusion caused by reflected light. But the source of the light was a mystery, for the streetlights had been disconnected all around the church for several days. And within another week, all the trees around the church would be cut.
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The woman beside me was convinced it was the Virgin, which reveals once again that what the eye sees is the consequence not so much of psychological processes but of intellectual, emotional, and ideational concerns.
What’s basically happening here is that by this point, the crowds had gotten huger and huger, and they became more reticent to interpret any narrowly visually stimulating phenomena as miraculous. Our resident skeptic was able to see something, but clearly was not seeing what the rest of the crowd was seeing.
I encourage you to read the rest, but she concludes with this:
The most important issue to grasp here is that the apparition of the Virgin also symbolizes the conditions of modern pluralism in Egyptian society. By pluralism, I mean a situation in which there is more than one worldview available to the members of society, a situation in which there is competition between worldviews.
How people cope with the stress of national disaster tells us much about what is essential to their identity, their cultural premises as to what is real; what their specific modes of interpreting events in history are; what sorts of societal tensions are intensified under the threat of disaster. The Six-Day War did not create these reactions; it was a catalyst that exposed the pulsing nature of the society itself. For a people frustrated and made anxious by the contemporary circumstances of history, the Apparition of Zeitoun expresses the yearning for salvation from suffering, the hope of a millennial dream. Where people are seeking answers to fundamental questions, they choose value systems and personalities that express their yearnings. And it seems to me that the appearance of the Virgin symbolizes the disillusionment with secular political explanations and a turning toward the religious—to a deeper level of existence in terms of which it all makes sense.
This legend was included in Bentham’s blogpost, The Best Argument For Christianity as evidence for Christianity.
The boring story is that there’s not an actual phenomenon causing anything meaningful to appear. This event was preceded by major conflicts in the area and after one legend turned into another, turned into another, ended up drawing big crowds participating in a sort of autonomous revival - reacting to the slightest stimulus with adulation and praise, which is what I experienced when I was in a similar situation, and is what Dr. Nelson experienced as well. This explains why, over the course of several years, no one from an established secular organization such as the US embassy in Cairo, or the New York Times for example, did not acquire evidence of the event that they attest is real.1
The reason this event didn’t cause her to convert to Christianity is obvious. When you actually experience these events, they are much duller and more sociological than they are claimed to be.
Bentham’s response:
A bit busy, so I can't write out a long response, but ping me in a week, and I'll have it be more comprehensive. A few comments:
1) I am far, far less confident in the miracle stuff than the philosophical arguments. Don't use them as litmus tests for how much you should trust my religious arguments, as they're the religious arguments I'm least confident in. Much more confident, for instance, in the expected efficacy of the shrimp welfare project than the Zeitoun stuff--I probably only have a credence of a bit below .5 in the miracle of Zeitoun being veridical.
2) Seems consistent with the miracle report that God would miraculously make a light appear and would have people's perceptions of it be influenced by their precepts and culture. The miracle doesn't have to involve Mary appearing looking as she normally did.
First of all, I appreciate the kind words and the willingness to read my stuff, despite disagreeing a lot. I appreciate it when people rule others in not out. I haven't read your blog much, but looks good!
Second of all, even if we grant Nelson's account, it's wildly unclear where the lights came from. This is what's most puzzling--that the lights continued to appear only over the Church over the course of years, even though all the streetlights and so on were disconnected. What would explain it? The police investigated--they found nothing!
Doesn't seem that surprising on the divinity explanation that a skeptic from very far away wouldn't see anything--there was already a giant crowd. Your theory, aside from leaving the lights unexplained (lights do not ordinarily continually reappear over the same spot for three years despite every plausible light source being disconnected) also fails to explain the early sightings, wherein people mistook the light for Mary. This is not a typical property of lights.
Which is all fine and dandy, but in my opinion the burden of proof rests on the person making a positive claim which is not only exceptional, but also goes against the status quo. Religious people testifying that religious things happened does not meaningfully shift the burden of proof onto skeptics.
"So You are the Christ
You're the great Jesus Christ
Prove to me that You're divine
Change my water into wine
That's all You need do
And I'll know it's all true ..."
(King Herod's song, Jesus Christ Superstar)
There's saying, people have walked from wheelchairs, but nobody has ever regrown an amputated limb. If all the supposed miracles are vague and likely misinterpretations, that tells you something about the quality of the evidence.
You'd think Mary might come over and have a chat with all the worshipers, instead of appearing and flying around all the time.
They've done some convincing studies on how easily influenceable eye-witnesses are in the recalling of certain events in the context of witnessed crimes. Eye-witnesses are notoriously unreliable, and a little suggesting upon their first recall can drastically alter the nature of how events are recalled, and lock in that altered memory as the "real" one.
According to the Innocence Project, 69% of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA evidence involved eyewitness misidentifications.
Eye-witness accounts of events are indeed evidence, and more people all claiming to have witnessed the same thing is even stronger evidence, but that heuristic breaks down under certain circumstances. When there's a notable thing that has only eye witness accounts as evidence, it seems more likely that it's one of these exceptions to the rule, rather than something actually bizarre.