‘Were loaves and fishes put under a basket, for Jesus to lift up 
in a sort of “Hey presto!” way?’

A former bishop once compared the resurrection to ‘a conjuring trick with bones’. But what exactly might we mean when we say ‘miracle’? James Barrett considers

'It’s a curious account, I think, in that it lacks any description of how this feeding was actually done.' | Photo: tatadonets / iStock.

Recently I took a family trip to see a close-up magic show at the headquarters of the Magic Circle, near Euston station. In the interval there was an opportunity to look at the museum, which featured books hundreds of years old that, despite their age, described tricks very similar to those we had just seen.

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