The Miracle of the Holy Fire: a Pious Orthodox Fraud

Every year on Holy Saturday (the day before Easter), thousands of Orthodox faithful (both Eastern and Oriental Orthodox) gather at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where they participate in a so-called miraculous ritual – the Miracle of the Holy Fire. To be concise, the ritual consists of many Orthodox faithful gathering with unlit candles outside of the alleged tomb of Jesus, which is itself housed inside the church of the Holy Sepulcher (and there is decent evidence that it is the authentic place of Jesus’ burial). They wait for the Greek Orthodox Patriarch to enter the tomb with his unlit candles and come out with a supernatural flame – the Holy Fire. The Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem enters the tomb and makes a short prayer; it appears that sometimes some other clerics accompany him. After the short prayer it is alleged by the faithful that his candle(s) lights up miraculously. He then walks out of the tomb and hands the fire off to other people, starting with clerics. It is also alleged that the fire doesn’t burn for the initial few minutes (many in the interwebs claim around 30 minutes, or even exactly 33 minutes for the age of Christ). So we have the two following extraordinary claims here:

(1) The patriarch’s candles are supernaturally lit in the tomb,

and that

(2) The fire doesn’t burn for a few minutes after its miraculous descent.

I will now examine these two claims, starting with the second first, as it is the easiest to disprove.

(2) is clearly false. We have thousands of people attending this Holy Saturday ritual in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher every year. And a significant number of the people have recording devices with them; in fact it is almost always broacast live by some stations. If (2) were true, then videos of people putting their hand in the fire for ten seconds or more would have surfaced by now. Unsurprisingly, we have no such videos. The videos that I have seen online attempting to document the non-burning quality of the flames (e.g., this one) are just of people waving around the edge of the candle flame very quickly over their bodies, not really impressive feats – and certainly not ones that require an appeal to the supernatural. And the pictures probably just caught that very small timeframe where a part of the person’s body goes over the flame. There are images of skeptics and people in totally different contexts doing the same thing with candle flames. Here are some such images:

As you can see, there is nothing remotely supernatural about such feats. Again, if (2) were actually true, then we would have expected there to be videos of people keeping their hands in the supposed holy flame for more than ten seconds. In fact, we should expect some videos demonstrating these for a lot longer intervals, since the claim is that it doesn’t burn for a few minutes. But of course we have neither type of video. Therefore, (2) is clearly false.

Now, just because (2) is false does not necessarily mean that (1) is also false. So what about (1)? Well, (1) is not as easy to disprove as (2). But this not surprising in the slightest, since skeptics, cameras, and the like are not allowed with the patriarch in the tomb when the alleged miracle happens. Nevertheless, the evidence for (1) is almost non-existent. People are not allowed in the Tomb when the patriarch enters and “retrieves” the alleged holy fire. [1] So it doesn’t seem like we have good positive testimonial evidence from people in a position to know that the patriarch’s candle is supernaturally lit. Even a cursory look at the alleged historical testimonial evidence for the genuineness of this miracle reveals that none of the these people actually witnessed the candle being supernaturally lit. All we can responsibly infer from these testimonies, and I will assume that they are properly and accurately referenced, is that this ritualistic practice can be dated to around the ninth century at the earliest. Indeed, the absence of early documentary evidence for this ritual is itself suggestive of its non-supernatural character; but I will say no more in this regards, as a philosophical and historical excursus is beyond the scope of this blog post.

So is there any tangible evidence that the patriarch’s candle is supernaturally and not naturally lit? Well, many of the pious faithful claim that Israeli guards search the patriarch before he goes into the tomb. If this were true, and if we could rule out that there is some sort of igniting mechanism in the tomb, then this would indeed be some evidence for the genuineness of the miracle. But it is just not true; as a matter of fact Israeli guards do not search the patriarch before he enters the tomb. Prior to entering, and as as a sign of humility, the patriarch just takes off all of his clerical garments apart from a white sticharion, the most basic of priestly vestments. And it is not the Israeli security guards but other clerics who help him do this. The Israeli guards appear to just be there for security, and this is probably how the urban legend that they search him originated. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Here is a video of the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem disrobing and entering the tomb; and here is another one. You can see that the Israeli guards don’t really touch him at all. It would be trivially easy for the patriarch to sneak in a match or a lighter. Moreover, we have no good evidence that the tomb is even searched by people unsympathetic to the miracle prior to the patriarch’s entrance. As we have seen, Israeli security personnel don’t even search who enters. So the possibility that there is some igniting mechanism inside the tomb remains very real. [2]

All in all, there is no good evidence for this alleged miracle, evidence which would overcome its low prior probability. For those not acquainted with Bayesian probability theory, the probability of a proposition P is equivalent to the probability of P prior to consideration of the specific evidence for P. So if I roll a fair die, I know that the prior probability that it will land on a 6 is 1/6, or about 16.7%. But if my friend tells me that someone has weighted the die to be biased towards sixes, then the probability that it will fall on a 6 is obviously going to be greater than 16.7%. My consideration of this relevant piece of information raises the probability that I will roll a 6, yielding a posterior probability greater than 16.7%. The posterior probability of P is just equivalent to the probability of P posterior to consideration of the specific evidence for P. Miraculous claims have low prior probabilities, which is why the supposed miracle of the Holy Fire has a low prior probability. But that doesn’t mean that consideration of specific evidence cannot overcome low prior probabilities to yield a high posterior probability. The prior probability that a paralyzed friend of yours was healed is very low. Your default position should be to disbelieve this claim unless you come across adequate evidence of its truth. Perhaps ten highly reliable witnesses, some of them atheists, independently reported that this man was instantaneously healed after he partook in the Eucharist communion. And perhaps there are medical documents prior to the alleged healing that document your friend’s paralysis. The conglomeration of these facts would be sufficient to overcome the low prior probability that a miracle actually happened, yielding a posterior probability greater than .50. But this is very unusual; the evidence for miraculous claims is usually insufficient to overcome the low prior probability for their occurrence. So one would be unjustified in believing in them. The miracle of the Holy Fire seems like no exception here, as there is hardly any positive evidence that overcomes the low prior probability. Reasonable and unbiased people should agree that the prior probability of this miracle is low, and that this low prior probability is not overcome by the specific evidence.

In conclusion, no reasonable and objective person should believe in the miracle of the Holy Fire. The evidence for its authenticity is pretty much nonexistent. It is clearly a pious fraud perpetrated by some of the orthodox hierarchy who are afraid that revealing the truth would cause a massive scandal among the faithful. Shame on them. Sincere and ethical non-religious people are a lot closer to God than these frauds.

EDIT1: I spoke to a priest who has a priest friend very close to the event in question. He states that the patriarch just naturally lights the candles. This is some positive evidence that the miracle in question is in fact no such thing.

EDIT2: Here’s a recent testimony Armenian bishop who apparently works in or around the Church. He is speaking to an Israeli journalist and explicitly says the fire is lit from a lamp!

[1] Here are a few first-hand but unsourced testimonies floating out there in the interwebs; I will refrain from citing them until I can independently verify the sources (and, as we shall soon see, I do the same for the negative testimonies)

[2] Indeed, we apparently have second-hand testimony of this from clerics, and even orthodox bishops, floating out there in the interwebs. But I will not cite what they allegedly say here because I cannot access and independently verify the sources myself. Also circulating on the interwebs is the alleged prayer that the patriarch apparently utters before the alleged miracle, and it seems to imply that the flame is naturally lit. My sense is that these are accurate testimonies, as the relevant sources are cited to the page – unlike the alleged positive testimony I’ve seen – and as far as I have seen critics do not dispute them but attempt to explain them away. However, out of an abundance of scholarly care I will refrain from citing them, as I cannot independently verify the sources. So bear in mind the case against the genuineness of the miracle is very likely stronger than the admittedly quick one being made in this post.