I've been trying to find the origin of the Christian idea of the supernatural. I looked up its etymology (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=supernatural) and found that the word was first used in 1450. That's right on the boundary between the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance period, around the time of the fall of Constantinople (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Constantinople).
Similar ideas had been around at least since the time of Plato (~428-348 BC) and his idea of the ideal realm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_idealism).
The term supernatural does not appear in the Bible at all. I wonder, did early Christians have a natural interpretation of the Bible (http://www.indopedia.org/The_supernatural_in_monotheistic_religions.html)? The creeping supernaturalization idea intrigues me: as knowledge about nature progresses (for example during the Renaissance), some stuff in the Bible can no longer be explained in natural terms and gets elevated to supernatural status.
Does anyone know anything about this?