BBC show asks: Did Jesus use any magic?

NASHVILLE â€”  Illusionist Brock Gill never figured Jesus for a master magician.

As an evangelical Christian, Gill always accepted the biblical accounts of Jesus’ miracles as just that -- miracles.

But when the BBC asked him to investigate whether Jesus could have used magic, hypnotism or some other trick to create the illusion of miracles, Gill couldn’t refuse.

“I’ve always been fascinated by miracles, ever since I was a kid reading the Bible stories,� says Gill, host of the three-hour “Miracles of Jesus,� which will be shown at 1 p.m. next Saturday on the Discovery Channel.

At the outset, the show makes clear he’s a Christian. But Gill says he set aside his personal beliefs to approach the stories with an open mind.

“Before I got into really doing the investigation, I did research on some of the skeptics’ views and there were some quite convincing ideas. It rattled me a little bit,� says Gill, a 30-year-old with a religion degree from East Texas Baptist University. “I thought, ‘I really want to find the truth here.’ �

Producer Jean-Claude Bragard says Gill was a natural choice for host. Gill’s act includes levitation, escaping from a sealed coffin filled with water and making coins multiply.

“We realized we didn’t need an academic to lead the program, but we needed somebody who was interested and knowledgeable about Scripture and particularly interested in the miracles,� Bragard says.

Even if an atheist had been chosen as host, Bragard says, the conclusions wouldn’t have changed.

The show uses interviews with scholars and dramatizations of Bible stories to investigate seven miracles, including the multiplication of bread and fish, the conversion of water into wine, the raising of the dead, and walking on water.

One segment questions whether Jesus could have hypnotized a large crowd to convince them he had multiplied bread and fish to feed everyone. In another, Gill sloshes across sandbars in the Sea of Galilee to see if Jesus could have appeared to walk on water by staying in the shallows.

In each case, the program’s conclusion is that Jesus probably couldn’t have tricked people into believing they had witnessed a miracle.