# Therese Snakebite Raising (Congo 1960) ## Intro Around 1960, in a village in the Republic of the Congo, a two-year-old girl named Thérèse cried out that a snake had bitten her. When her mother, Antoinette Malombe, reached her, the child was not breathing. There was no doctor in the village. Her mother strapped her to her back and ran to a neighboring village, where a family friend, an evangelist named Coco Moïse, was ministering. He prayed for the child, and she began to breathe again. By the next day she was well. Asked later how long her daughter had gone without breathing, the mother worked it out from the journey between the two villages and said about three hours. Thérèse grew up with no sign of brain damage, finished seminary studies in Cameroon, and now serves in ministry in Congo. The case is known because Thérèse is the sister-in-law of New Testament scholar Craig Keener. He heard the story for years in the family, then interviewed her mother and checked it with the evangelist. It is filed in the reported tier: two named eyewitnesses and a careful interviewer, but no medical examination and no record made at the time. ![Shaded relief map of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), with Brazzaville in the south, the country where the raising took place](/codex/assets/republic-of-the-congo-relief-map-cia-1990.jpg) _The Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville). Map: United States Central Intelligence Agency, 1990, public domain, via [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Republic_of_Congo_Map.jpg)._ **The 30-second version:** > Around 1960 in a Congolese village, two-year-old Thérèse was bitten by a snake and found not breathing. With no doctor nearby, her mother carried her to the next village, where an evangelist prayed and she started breathing again. Her mother estimates about three hours had passed. She suffered no brain damage and is now a seminary-trained minister. Craig Keener, her brother-in-law, interviewed the mother and the evangelist, and both confirmed it. It rests on eyewitness testimony, not medical records, so it illustrates the pattern rather than proving it. ## In full Craig S. Keener reports the case in *Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts* (2011), among the raising accounts he collected from eyewitnesses, and has retold it in a *Christianity Today* interview with Tim Stafford (December 2011), in his own *Christianity Today* article "Do the Dead Still Rise?" (2019), and in recorded lectures on Matthew and Acts. The subject, Thérèse, is the sister of his wife, Médine Moussounga Keener. The primary witnesses are her mother, Antoinette Malombe (known locally as Madame Jacques), whom Keener interviewed directly during a 2008 visit to Congo-Brazzaville, and the evangelist Coco N'Gomo Moïse (spellings vary across transcripts), whom Keener consulted and who confirmed the account as the other eyewitness. The reported facts are a snakebite, observed cessation of breathing, a run of roughly three hours on foot to the next village, prayer, resumed breathing, full recovery by the next day, and no later neurological deficit. No physician saw the child, no record was made in 1960, and the duration is the mother's estimate. Under the Miracles schema that places the case in Tier 3: named witnesses and a scholar's interview, but no professional witness and no contemporaneous documentation. ## Summary A two-year-old girl, Thérèse, was found not breathing after a snakebite around 1960 in a village in the Republic of the Congo. Her mother, Antoinette Malombe, carried her to a neighboring village, where the evangelist Coco N'Gomo Moïse prayed for her and she began breathing again; she was well the next day and grew up without brain damage. The account was investigated by her brother-in-law, Craig S. Keener, who interviewed the mother and consulted the evangelist in 2008, and published it in *Miracles* (2011) and in *Christianity Today*. ## The event 1. **The bite.** Thérèse, about two years old, cried out that she had been bitten by a snake. Keener dates the event to around 1960. 2. **Not breathing.** By the time her mother reached her, the child was not breathing and did not respond. 3. **No medical help.** There was no medical care in the village. Antoinette Malombe strapped her daughter to her back and set out on foot for a neighboring village. 4. **The evangelist.** A family friend, the evangelist Coco N'Gomo Moïse, was ministering in that village. He prayed for the child, and she began breathing again. 5. **The next day.** Thérèse was well the following day. 6. **Afterward.** She showed no brain damage. As an adult she completed seminary studies in Cameroon (Keener elsewhere says a master's degree) and returned to minister in Congo. **The three hours.** Keener asked the mother how long the child had gone without breathing. She had to reconstruct it from the journey between the two villages and estimated about three hours. The point of the figure is that brain cells begin to die within minutes of losing oxygen, so even a fraction of that time would be expected to leave lasting damage. ## Witnesses + documentation - **Antoinette Malombe**, the mother, known locally as Madame Jacques: eyewitness to the bite, the absence of breathing, the journey and the recovery. Interviewed by Keener directly. - **Coco N'Gomo Moïse**, evangelist and family friend: eyewitness to the child's condition on arrival and to her revival during prayer. Keener reports that he was consulted and confirmed the account. - **Thérèse** herself, too young to remember the event, is the living outcome: an adult with ministerial training and no neurological deficit. - **Craig S. Keener**, New Testament scholar (Asbury Theological Seminary): heard the account from extended family for years and verified it with the eyewitnesses in 2008, on a visit to his wife's native Congo-Brazzaville. - **Published record:** - Craig S. Keener, *Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts* (Baker Academic, 2011), among its eyewitness raising accounts. - Tim Stafford, "It's Okay to Expect a Miracle" (interview with Keener), *Christianity Today*, December 2011. - Craig S. Keener, "Do the Dead Still Rise?" *Christianity Today*, July 2019. - Keener's recorded lectures on Matthew (session 3) and Acts (lecture 5), transcribed by Biblical eLearning. ## Verification **What was checked:** 1. **Two eyewitnesses, separately.** Keener did not rely on family lore. He interviewed the mother and then consulted the evangelist, who confirmed the account independently as the other eyewitness. 2. **A stable account.** The core details (snakebite, no breathing, the carry to the next village, the evangelist's prayer, recovery by the next day, no brain damage) are the same in the 2011 interview, the 2015 and 2019 magazine accounts, and the later lectures. 3. **A checkable outcome.** Thérèse's later life (seminary training and years of ministry) is a public fact that rules out the severe brain injury expected after prolonged loss of oxygen. **Naturalistic explanations considered:** - **She was breathing shallowly and no one noticed.** This is the strongest natural explanation, and it cannot be excluded without a medical examination. Against it, the mother found her not breathing and unresponsive, and the evangelist, the second adult eyewitness, confirmed the account when Keener consulted him. - **Snakebite paralysis mimicking death.** Some snake venoms paralyze the breathing muscles, and patients can look dead while the heart still beats. But without breathing support, paralysis of breathing is itself fatal within minutes, so the explanation does not account for survival over the time reported. - **The three hours is too high.** The figure is the mother's estimate, reconstructed from travel time. It may be too long. Even a much shorter interval without breath carries a serious risk of brain injury in a small child, and none followed. **Caveats and remaining uncertainties:** - **No physician, no record.** No doctor examined the child, and nothing was written down at the time. That is the decisive reason the case is Tier 3. - **Family witnesses.** The mother is Keener's mother-in-law and the evangelist was a family friend. Keener says openly that the account came from within the family. - **Unknown details.** The village, the exact date and the species of snake are not given in the published accounts, and Thérèse's surname is not published. These are omitted here rather than guessed. ## Apologetic value - **Answers "nobody is raised today."** The case is one of several eyewitness raising accounts Keener gathered to test the claim that such reports do not exist. It shows they do, with named witnesses who can be asked. - **Why it changed a scholar.** Keener says this was not his most dramatic account but the one that affected him most, because it came from within his own family. That is a useful point against the charge that miracle reports come only from credulous strangers. - **The biblical pattern.** A child restored after prayer echoes Elijah and the widow's son ([1 Kings 17:17-24](/codex/1-kings-17-17-24/)), Jesus raising Jairus's daughter ([Mark 5:41](/codex/mark-5-41/)), and Peter raising Tabitha ([Acts 9:36-42](/codex/acts-9-36-42/)). The snakebite recalls Paul shaking off the viper on Malta ([Acts 28:3-6](/codex/acts-28-3-6/)) and Jesus's word in [Luke 10:19](/codex/luke-10-19/). - **How to deploy it.** Use it as an illustration, not as proof. Lead with a Tier 1 or Tier 2 case, then use this one to show that the pattern also appears in places without hospitals, and that a careful scholar checked it with the eyewitnesses. Do not claim it was medically confirmed. ## Scholarship Published academic works this page draws on. - Craig S. Keener, *Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts*, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011). Keener told *Christianity Today* (December 2011) that he collected seven eyewitness accounts of people raised from the dead and that one was his sister-in-law, Thérèse; Seedbed's 2012 series on the book reports that one of the book's seven eyewitness raising accounts came from his own family. ## See also - [Miracles](/codex/miracles/), master hub - _schema, the vetting standard this entry follows - [Don Piper (Resurrection 1989)](/codex/don-piper-resurrection-1989/), another reported raising, with EMS and witness documentation - [Barbara Cummiskey Snyder (Wheaton 1981)](/codex/barbara-cummiskey-snyder-wheaton-1981/), a Protestant healing that Keener also investigated - [STEPP Mozambique Study (Brown 2010)](/codex/stepp-mozambique-study-brown-2010/), peer-reviewed study of healing prayer in Africa - [Argument from Miracles](/codex/argument-from-miracles/), the argument this case illustrates - [David Hume](/codex/david-hume/), whose claim that miracle reports lack credible witnesses this case presses on - [Naturalism](/codex/naturalism/), the worldview such cases press against
## Common questions this page answers **Q: What happened to Craig Keener's sister-in-law Thérèse?** Around 1960, when she was about two, Thérèse was bitten by a snake in a village in the Republic of the Congo and found not breathing. Her mother carried her to a neighboring village, where an evangelist prayed, and she began breathing again. She was well the next day and grew up with no brain damage. **Q: How long was Thérèse without breathing?** Her mother estimated about three hours, working it out from the time it took to carry her between the two villages. It is an estimate, not a measured figure, and no doctor examined the child. **Q: How did Craig Keener verify the snakebite raising?** He had heard the story in the family for years. In 2008, visiting Congo-Brazzaville, he interviewed the mother, Antoinette Malombe, and consulted the evangelist, Coco Moïse, who confirmed it as the other eyewitness. **Q: Is the Thérèse raising medically documented?** No. There was no doctor in the village and no record was made at the time. That is why the case is filed as reported (Tier 3): it rests on two named eyewitnesses and a scholar's interviews, not on medical evidence. **Q: Are people really raised from the dead today?** Craig Keener collected a number of eyewitness accounts of raisings in his book *Miracles* (2011), including this one from his own family. Most lack medical records, so they illustrate the pattern rather than prove it, but they answer the claim that no such reports exist.