MIRACLES OF JESUS.
§ 91.
JESUS CONSIDERED AS A WORKER OF MIRACLES.
That the Jewish people in the time of Jesus expected miracles from the
Messiah is in itself natural, since the Messiah was a second Moses and
the greatest of the prophets, and to Moses and the prophets the
national legend attributed miracles of all kinds: by later Jewish
writings it is rendered probable; [1165] by our gospels, certain. When
Jesus on one occasion had (without natural means) cured a blind and
dumb demoniac, the people were hereby led to ask: Is not this the son
of David? (Matt. xii. 23), a proof that a miraculous power of healing
was regarded as an attribute of the Messiah. John the Baptist, on
hearing of the works of Jesus (ἔργα), sent to him with the inquiry, Art
thou he that should come (ἐρχόμενος)? Jesus, in proof of the
affirmative, merely appealed again to his miracles (Matt. xi. 2 ff.
parall.). At the Feast of Tabernacles, which was celebrated by Jesus in
Jerusalem, many of the people believed on him, saying, in justification
of their faith, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these
which this man hath done? (John vii. 31).
But not only was it predetermined in the popular expectation that the
Messiah should work miracles in general,—the particular kinds of
miracles which he was to perform were fixed, also in accordance with
Old Testament types and declarations. Moses dispensed meat and drink to
the people in a supernatural manner (Exod. xvi. 17): the same was
expected, as the rabbins explicitly say, from the Messiah. At the
prayer of Elisha, eyes were in one case closed, in another, opened
supernaturally (2 Kings vi.): the Messiah also was to open the eyes of
the blind. By this prophet and his master, even the dead had been
raised (1 Kings xvii.; 2 Kings iv.): hence to the Messiah also power
over death could not be wanting. [1166] Among the prophecies, Isa.
xxxv. 5, 6 (comp. xlii. 7) was especially influential in forming this
portion of the messianic idea. It is here said of the messianic times:
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf
unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of
the dumb shall sing. These words, it is true, stand in Isaiah in a
figurative connexion, but they were early understood literally, as is
evident from the circumstance that Jesus describes his miracles to the
messengers of John (Matt. xi. 5) with an obvious allusion to this
prophetic passage.
Jesus, in so far as he had given himself out and was believed to be the
Messiah, or even merely a prophet, had to meet this expectation when,
according to several passages already considered (Matt. xii. 38, xvi.
1, parall.), his Pharisaic enemies required a sign from him; when,
after the violent expulsion of the traders and money-changers from the
temple, the Jews desired from him a sign that should legitimate such an
assumption of authority (John ii. 18); and when the people in the
synagogue at Capernaum, on his requiring faith in himself as the sent
of God, made it a condition of this faith that he should show them a
sign (John vi. 30).
According to the gospels, Jesus more than satisfied this demand made by
his cotemporaries on the Messiah. Not only does a considerable part of
the evangelical narratives consist of descriptions of his miracles; not
only did his disciples after his death especially call to their own
remembrance and to that of the Jews the δυνάμεις (miracles) σημεῖα
(signs) and τέρατα (wonders) wrought by him (Acts ii. 22; comp. Luke
xxiv. 19): but the people also were, even during his life, so well
satisfied with this aspect of his character that many believed on him
in consequence (John ii. 23; comp. vi. 2), contrasted him with the
Baptist who gave no sign (John x. 41), and even believed that he would
not be surpassed in this respect by the future Messiah (John vii. 31).
The above demands of a sign do not appear to prove that Jesus had
performed no miracles, especially as several of them occur immediately
after important miracles, e.g. after the cure of a demoniac, Matt. xii.
38; and after the feeding of the five thousand, John vi. 30. This
position indeed creates a difficulty, for how the Jews could deny to
these two acts the character of proper signs it is not easy to
understand; the power of expelling demons, in particular, being rated
very highly (Luke x. 17). The sign demanded on these two occasions must
therefore be more precisely defined according to Luke xi. 16 (comp.
Matt xvi. 1; Mark viii. 11), as a sign from heaven, σημεῖον ἐξ οὐρανοῦ,
and we must understand it to be the specifically messianic sign of the
Son of Man in heaven, σημεῖον τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ (Matt.
xxiv. 30). If however it be preferred to sever the connexion between
these demands of a sign and the foregoing miracles, it is possible that
Jesus may have wrought numerous miracles, and yet that some hostile
Pharisees, who had not happened to be eyewitnesses of any of them, may
still have desired to see one for themselves.
That Jesus censures the seeking for miracles (John iv. 48) and refuses
to comply with any one of the demands for a sign, does not in itself
prove that he might not have voluntarily worked miracles in other
cases, when they appeared to him to be more seasonable. When in
relation to the demand of the Pharisees, Mark viii. 12, he declares
that there shall be no sign given to this generation τῇ γενεᾷ ταύτῇ, or
Matt xii. 39 f., xvi. 4; Luke xi. 29 f., that there shall no sign be
given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet, it would appear that by
this generation, γενεὰ, which in Matthew and Luke he characterizes as
evil and adulterous, he could only mean the Pharisaic part of his
cotemporaries who were hostile to him, and that he intended to declare,
that to these should be granted either no sign at all, or merely the
sign of Jonas, that is, as he interprets it in Matthew, the miracle of
his resurrection, or as modern expositors think, the impressive
manifestation of his person and teaching. But if we take the words οὐ
δοθήσεται αὐτῇ in the sense that his enemies were to obtain no sign
from him, we encounter two difficulties: on the one hand, things must
have chanced singularly if among the many miracles wrought by Jesus in
the greatest publicity, not one fell under the observation of Pharisees
(moreover Matt. xii. 24 f. parall. contradicts this, for there
Pharisees are plainly supposed to be present at the cure of the blind
and dumb demoniac): on the other hand, if signs personally witnessed
are here intended, the enemies of Jesus certainly did not see his
resurrection, or his person after he was risen. Hence the above
declaration cannot well mean merely that his enemies should be excluded
from an actual sight of his miracles. There is yet another expedient,
namely, to suppose that the expression οὐ δοθήσεται αὐτῇ refers to a
sign which should conduce to the good of the subject of which it is
predicated: but all the miracles of Jesus happened equally with his
original mission and his resurrection at once for the benefit of that
subject and the contrary, namely, in their object for its benefit, in
their result not so. Nothing therefore remains but to understand the
γενεὰ of the cotemporaries of Jesus generally, and the δίδοσθαι to
refer to observation generally, mediate or immediate: so that thus
Jesus would appear to have here repudiated the working of miracles in
general.
This is not very consistent with the numerous narratives of miracles in
the gospels, but it accords fully with the fact that in the preaching
and epistles of the apostles, a couple of general notices excepted
(Acts ii. 22, x. 38 f.), the miracles of Jesus appear to be unknown,
and everything is built on his resurrection: on which the remark may be
ventured that it could neither have been so unexpected nor could it
have formed so definite an epoch, if Jesus had previously raised more
than one dead person, and had wrought the most transcendent miracles of
all kinds. This then is the question: Ought we, on account of the
evangelical narratives of miracles, to explain away that expression of
Jesus, or doubt its authenticity; or ought we not, rather, on the
strength of that declaration, and the silence of the apostolic
writings, to become distrustful of the numerous histories of miracles
in the gospels?
This can only be decided by a close examination of these narratives,
among which, for a reason that will be obvious hereafter, we give the
precedence to the expulsions of demons.
§ 92.
THE DEMONIACS, CONSIDERED GENERALLY.
While in the fourth gospel, the expressions δαιμόνιον ἔχειν to have a
demon, and δαιμονιζόμενος, being a demoniac, appear nowhere except in
the accusations of the Jews against Jesus, and as parallels to
μαίνεσθαι, to be mad (viii. 48 f., x. 20 f.; comp. Mark iii. 22, 30;
Matt. xi. 18), the synoptists may be said to represent demoniacs as the
most frequent objects of the curative powers of Jesus. When they
describe the commencement of his ministry in Galilee, they give the
demoniacs δαιμονιζομένους [1167] a prominent place among the sufferers
whom Jesus healed (Matt iv. 24; Mark i. 34), and in all their summary
notices of the ministry of Jesus in certain districts, demoniacs play a
chief part (Matt. viii. 16 f.; Mark i. 39, iii. 11 f.; Luke vi. 18).
The power to cast out devils is before anything else imparted by Jesus
to his disciples (Matt. x. 1, 8; Mark iii. 15, vi. 7; Luke ix. 1), who
to their great joy succeed in using it according to their wishes (Luke
x. 17, 20; Mark vi. 13).
Besides these summary notices, however, several cures of demoniacs are
narrated to us in detail, so that we can form a tolerably accurate idea
of their peculiar condition. In the one whose cure in the synagogue at
Capernaum is given by the Evangelists as the first of this kind (Mark
i. 23 ff.; Luke iv. 33 ff.), we find, on the one hand, a disturbance of
the self-consciousness, causing the possessed individuals to speak in
the person of the demon, which appears also in other demoniacs, as for
example, the Gadarenes (Matt. viii. 29 f. parall.); on the other hand,
spasms and convulsions with savage cries. This spasmodic state has, in
the demoniac who is also called a lunatic (Matt. xvii. 14 ff. parall.),
reached the stage of manifest epilepsy; for sudden falls, often in
dangerous places, cries, gnashing of the teeth, and foaming, are known
symptoms of that malady. [1168] The other aspect of the demoniacal
state, namely, the disturbance of the self-consciousness, amounts in
the demoniac of Gadara, by whose lips a demon, or rather a plurality of
these evil spirits, speaks as a subject, to misanthropic madness, with
attacks of maniacal fury against himself and others. [1169] Moreover,
not only the insane and epileptic, but the dumb (Matt. ix. 32; Luke xi.
14; Matt. xii. 22, the dumb demoniac is also blind) and those suffering
from a gouty contraction of the body (Luke xiii. 11 ff.), are by the
evangelists designated more or less precisely as demoniacs.
The idea of these sufferers presupposed in the gospels and shared by
their authors, is that a wicked, unclean spirit (δαιμόνιον, πνεῦμα
ἀκάθαρτον), or several have taken possession of them (hence their
condition is described by the expressions δαιμόνιον ἔχειν,
δαιμονίζεσθαι, to have a demon, to be a demoniac), speak through their
organs (thus Matt. viii. 31, οἱ δαίμονες παρεκάλουν αὐτὸν λέγοντες),
and put their limbs in motion at pleasure (thus Mark ix. 20, τὸ πνεῦμα
ἐσπάραξεν αὐτὸν), until, forcibly expelled by a cure, they depart from
the patient (ἐκβάλλειν, ἐξέρχεσθαι). According to the representation of
the Evangelists, Jesus also held this view of the matter. It is true
that when, as a means of liberating the possessed, he addresses the
demons within them (as in Mark ix. 25; Matt. viii. 32; Luke iv. 35), we
might with Paulus [1170] regard this as a mode of entering into the
fixed idea of these more or less insane persons, it being the part of a
physical physician, if he would produce any effect, to accommodate
himself to this idea, however strongly he may in reality be convinced
of its groundlessness. But this is not all; Jesus, even in his private
conversations with his disciples, not only says nothing calculated to
undermine the notion of demoniacal possession, but rather speaks
repeatedly on a supposition of its truth; as e.g. in Matt. x. 8, where
he gives the commission, Cast out devils; in Luke x. 18 ff.; and
especially in Matt. xvii. 21, parall., where he says, This kind goeth
not out but by prayer and fasting. Again, in a purely theoretical
discourse, perhaps also in the more intimate circle of his disciples,
Jesus gives a description quite accordant with the idea of his
cotemporaries of the departure of the unclean spirit, his wandering in
the wilderness, and his return with a reinforcement (Matt. xii. 43
ff.). With these facts before us, the attempt made by generally
unprejudiced inquirers, such as Winer, [1171] to show that Jesus did
not share the popular opinion on demoniacal possession, but merely
accommodated his language to their understanding, appears to us a mere
adjustment of his ideas by our own. A closer examination of the
last-mentioned passage will suffice to remove every thought of a mere
accommodation on the part of Jesus. It is true that commentators have
sought to evade all that is conclusive in this passage, by interpreting
it figuratively, or even as a parable, [1172] in every explanation of
which (if we set aside such as that given by Olshausen [1173] after
Calmet), the essential idea is, that superficial conversion to the
cause of Jesus is followed by a relapse into aggravated sin. [1174]
But, I would fain know, what justifies us in abandoning the literal
interpretation of this discourse? In the propositions themselves there
is no indication of a figurative meaning, nor is it rendered probable
by the general style of teaching used by Jesus, for he nowhere else
presents moral relations in the garb of demoniacal conditions; on the
contrary, whenever he speaks, as here, of the departure of evil
spirits, e.g. in Matt. xvii. 21, he evidently intends to be understood
literally. But does the context favour a figurative interpretation?
Luke (xi. 24 ff.) places the discourse in question after the defence of
Jesus against the Pharisaic accusation, that he cast out devils by
Beelzebub: a position which is undoubtedly erroneous, as we have seen,
but which is a proof that he at least understood Jesus to speak
literally—of real demons. Matthew also places the discourse near to the
above accusation and defence, but he inserts between them the demand of
a sign, together with its refusal, and he makes Jesus conclude with the
application, Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. This
addition, it is true, gives the discourse a figurative application to
the moral and religious condition of his cotemporaries, but only thus:
Jesus intended the foregoing description of the expelled and returning
demon literally, though he made a secondary use of this event as an
image of the moral condition of his cotemporaries. At any rate Luke,
who has not the same addition, gives the discourse of Jesus, to use the
expression of Paulus, as a warning against demoniacal relapses. That
the majority of theologians in the present day, without decided support
on the part of Matthew, and in decided contradiction to Luke, advocate
the merely figurative interpretation of this passage, appears to be
founded in an aversion to ascribe to Jesus so strongly developed a
demonology, as lies in his words literally understood. But this is not
to be avoided, even leaving the above passage out of consideration. In
Matt. xii. 25 f. 29, Jesus speaks of a kingdom and household of the
devil, in a manner which obviously outsteps the domain of the merely
figurative: but above all, the passage already quoted, Luke x. 18–20,
is of such a nature as to compel even Paulus, who is generally so fond
of lending to the hallowed personages of primitive Christian history
the views of the present age, to admit that the kingdom of Satan was
not merely a symbol of evil to Jesus, and that he believed in actual
demoniacal possession. For he says very justly, that as Jesus here
speaks, not to the patient or to the people, but to those who
themselves, according to his instructions, cured demoniacs, his words
are not to be explained as a mere accommodation, when he confirms their
belief that the spirits are subject unto them, and describes their
capability of curing the malady in question, as a power over the power
of the enemy. [1175] In answer also to the repugnance of those with
whose enlightenment a belief in demoniacal possession is inconsistent,
to admit that Jesus held that belief, the same theologian justly
observes that the most distinguished mind may retain a false idea,
prevalent among his cotemporaries, if it happen to lie out of his
peculiar sphere of thought. [1176]
Some light is thrown on the evangelical conception of the demoniacs, by
the opinions on this subject which we find in writers more or less
cotemporary. The general idea that evil spirits had influence on men,
producing melancholy, insanity, and epilepsy, was early prevalent among
the Greeks [1177] as well as the Hebrews; [1178] but the more distinct
idea that evil spirits entered into the human body and took possession
of its members was not developed until a considerably later period, and
was a consequence of the dissemination of the Oriental, particularly
the Persian pneumatology among both Hebrews and Greeks. [1179] Hence we
find in Josephus the expressions δαιμόνια τοῖς ζῶσιν εἰσδυόμενα, [1180]
ἐνκαθεζόμενα [1181] (demons entering into the living, settling
themselves there), and the same ideas in Lucian [1182] and
Philostratus. [1183]
Of the nature and origin of these spirits nothing is expressly stated
in the gospels, except that they belong to the household of Satan
(Matt. xii. 26 ff. parall.), whence the acts of one of them are
directly ascribed to Satan (Luke xiii. 16). But from Josephus, [1184]
Justin Martyr, [1185] and Philostratus, [1186] with whom rabbinical
writings agree, [1187] we learn that these demons were the disembodied
souls of wicked men; and modern theologians have not scrupled to
attribute this opinion on their origin to the New Testament also.
[1188] Justin and the rabbins more nearly particularize, as spirits
that torment the living, the souls of the giants, the offspring of
those angels who allied themselves to the daughters of men; the rabbins
further add the souls of those who perished in the deluge, and of those
who participated in building the tower of Babel; [1189] and with this
agree the Clementine Homilies, for, according to them also, these souls
of the giants, having become demons, seek to attach themselves, as the
stronger, to human souls, and to inhabit human bodies. [1190] As,
however, in the continuation of the passage first cited, Justin
endeavours to convince the heathens of immortality from their own
ideas, the opinion which he there expresses, of demons being the souls
of the departed in general, can scarcely be regarded as his, especially
as his pupil Tatian expressly declares himself against it; [1191] while
Josephus affords no criterion as to the latent idea of the New
Testament, since his Greek education renders it very uncertain whether
he presents the doctrine of demoniacal possession in its original
Jewish, or in a Grecian form. If it must be admitted that the Hebrews
owed their doctrine of demons to Persia, we know that the Deves of the
Zend mythology were originally and essentially wicked beings, existing
prior to the human race; of these two characteristics, Hebraism as such
might be induced to expunge the former, which pertained to Dualism, but
could have no reason for rejecting the latter. Accordingly, in the
Hebrew view, the demons were the fallen angels of Gen. vi., the souls
of their offspring the giants, and of the great criminals before and
immediately after the deluge, whom the popular imagination gradually
magnified into superhuman beings. But in the ideas of the Hebrews,
there lay no motive for descending beyond the circle of these souls,
who might be conceived to form the court of Satan. Such a motive was
only engendered by the union of the Græco-roman culture with the
Hebraic: the former had no Satan, and consequently no retinue of
spirits devoted to his service, but it had an abundance of Manes,
Lemures, and the like,—all names for disembodied souls that disquieted
the living. Now, the combination of these Græco-roman ideas with the
above-mentioned Jewish ones, seems to have been the source of the
demonology of Josephus, of Justin, and also of the later rabbins; but
it does not follow that the same mixed view belongs to the New
Testament. Rather, as this Græcised form of the doctrine in question is
nowhere positively put forth by the evangelical writers, while on the
contrary the demons are in some passages represented as the household
of Satan: there is nothing to contravene the inference to be drawn from
the unmixedly Jewish character of thought which reigns in the
synoptical gospels on all other subjects (apart from Christian
modifications); namely, that we must attribute to them the pure and
original Jewish conception of the doctrine of demons.
It is well known that the older theology, moved by a regard for the
authority of Jesus and the Evangelists, espoused the belief in the
reality of demoniacal possession. The new theology, on the contrary,
especially since the time of Semler, [1192] in consideration of the
similarity between the condition of the demoniacs in the New Testament
and many naturally diseased subjects of our own day, has begun to refer
the malady of the former also to natural causes, and to ascribe the
evangelical supposition of supernatural causes to the prejudices of
that age. In modern days, on the occurrence of epilepsy, insanity, and
even a disturbance of the self-consciousness resembling the condition
of the possessed described in the New Testament, it is no longer the
custom to account for them by the supposition of demoniacal influence:
and the reason of this seems to be, partly that the advancement in the
knowledge of nature and of mind has placed at command a wider range of
facts and analogies, which may serve to explain the above conditions
naturally: partly that the contradiction, involved in the idea of
demoniacal possession, is beginning to be at least dimly perceived.
For—apart from the difficulties which the notion of the existence of a
devil and demons entails—whatever theory may be held as to the relation
between the self-consciousness and the bodily organs, it remains
absolutely inconceivable how the union between the two could be so far
dissolved, that a foreign self-consciousness could gain an entrance,
thrust out that which belonged to the organism, and usurp its place.
Hence for every one who at once regards actual phenomena with
enlightened eyes, and the New Testament narratives with orthodox ones,
there results the contradiction, that what now proceeds from natural
causes, must in the time of Jesus have been caused supernaturally.
In order to remove this inconceivable difference between the conditions
of one age and another, avoiding at the same time any imputation on the
New Testament, Olshausen, whom we may fairly take as the representative
of the mystical theology and philosophy of the present day, denies both
that all states of the kind in question have now a natural cause, and
that they had in the time of Jesus invariably a supernatural cause.
With respect to our own time he asks, if the apostles were to enter our
mad-houses, how would they name many of the inmates? [1193] We answer,
they would to a certainty name many of them demoniacs, by reason of
their participation in the ideas of their people and their age, not by
reason of their apostolic illumination; and the official who acted as
their conductor would very properly endeavour to set them right:
whatever names therefore they might give to the inmates of our asylums,
our conclusions as to the naturalness of the disorders of those inmates
would not be at all affected. With respect to the time of Jesus, this
theologian maintains that the same forms of disease were, even by the
Jews, in one case held demoniacal, in another not so, according to the
difference in their origin: for example, one who had become insane
through an organic disorder of the brain, or dumb through an injury of
the tongue, was not looked on as a demoniac, but only those, the cause
of whose condition was more or less psychical. Of such a distinction in
the time of Jesus, Olshausen is manifestly bound to give us instances.
Whence could the Jews of that age have acquired their knowledge of the
latent natural causes of these conditions—whence the criterion by which
to distinguish an insanity or imbecility originating in a malformation
of the brain, from one purely psychical? Was not their observation
limited to outward phenomena, and those of the coarsest character? The
nature of their distinctions seems to be this: the state of an
epileptic with his sudden falls and convulsions, or of a maniac in his
delirium, especially if, from the reaction of the popular idea
respecting himself he speaks in the person of another, seems to point
to an external influence which governs him; and consequently, so soon
as the belief in demoniacal possession existed among the people, all
such states were referred to this cause, as we find them to be in the
New Testament: whereas in dumbness and gouty contraction or lameness,
the influence of an external power is less decidedly indicated, so that
these afflictions were at one time ascribed to a possessing demon, at
another not so. Of the former case we find an example in the dumb
persons already mentioned, Matt. ix. 32, xii. 22, and in the woman, who
was bowed down, Luke xiii. 11; of the latter, in the man who was deaf
and had an impediment in his speech, Mark vii. 32 ff., and in the many
paralytics mentioned in the gospels. The decision for the one opinion
or the other was however certainly not founded on an investigation into
the origin of the disease, but solely on its external symptoms. If then
the Jews, and with them the Evangelists, referred the two chief classes
of these conditions to demoniacal influence, there remains for him who
believes himself bound by their opinion, without choosing to shut out
the lights of modern science, the glaring inconsistency of considering
the same diseases as in one age natural, in another supernatural.
But the most formidable difficulty for Olshausen, in his attempted
mediation between the Judaical demonology of the New Testament and the
intelligence of our own day, arises from the influence of the latter on
his own mind—an influence which renders him adverse to the idea of
personal demons. This theologian, initiated in the philosophy of the
present age, endeavours to resolve the host of demons, which in the New
Testament are regarded as distinct individuals, into a system of
emanations, forming the continuity of a single substance, which indeed
sends forth from itself separate powers, not, however, to subsist as
independent individuals, but to return as accidents into the unity of
the substance. This cast of thought we have already observed in the
opinions of Olshausen concerning angels, and it appears still more
decidedly in his demonology. Personal demons are too repugnant, and as
Olshausen himself expresses it, [1194] the comprehension of two
subjects in one individual is too inconceivable to find a ready
acceptation. Hence it is everywhere with vague generality that a
kingdom of evil and darkness is spoken of; and though a personal prince
is given to it, its demons are understood to be mere effluxes and
operations, by which the evil principle manifests itself. But the most
vulnerable point of Olshausen’s opinion concerning demons is this: it
is too much for him to believe that Jesus asked the name of the demon
in the Gadarene; since he himself doubts the personality of those
emanations of the kingdom of darkness, it cannot, he thinks, have been
thus decidedly supposed by Christ;—hence he understands the question,
What is thy name? (Mark v. 9) to be addressed, not to the demon, but to
the man, [1195] plainly in opposition to the whole context, for the
answer, Legion, appears to be in no degree the result of a
misunderstanding, but the right answer—the one expected by Jesus.
If, however, the demons are, according to Olshausen’s opinion,
impersonal powers, that which guides them and determines their various
functions is the law which governs the kingdom of darkness in relation
to the kingdom of light. On this theory, the worse a man is morally,
the closer must be the connexion between him and the kingdom of evil,
and the closest conceivable connexion—the entrance of the power of
darkness into the personality of the man, i.e. possession—must always
occur in the most wicked. But historically this is not so: the
demoniacs in the gospels appear to be sinners only in the sense that
all sick persons need forgiveness of sins; and the greatest sinners
(Judas for example) are spared the infliction of possession. The common
opinion, with its personal demons, escapes this contradiction. It is
true that this opinion also, as we find for instance, in the Clementine
Homilies, firmly maintains it to be by sin only that man subjects
himself to the ingress of the demon; [1196] but here there is yet scope
for the individual will of the demon, who often, from motives not to be
calculated, passes by the worst, and holds in chase the less wicked.
[1197] On the contrary, if the demons are considered, as by Olshausen,
to be the actions of the power of evil in its relation to the power of
goodness; this relation being regulated by laws, everything arbitrary
and accidental is excluded. Hence it evidently costs that theologian
some pains to disprove the consequence, that according to his theory
the possessed must always be the most wicked. Proceeding from the
apparent contest of two powers in the demoniacs, he adopts the position
that the state of demoniacal possession does not appear in those who
entirely give themselves up to evil, and thus maintain an internal
unity of disposition, but only in those in whom there exists a struggle
against sin. [1198] In that case, however, the above state, being
reduced to a purely moral phenomenon, must appear far more frequently;
every violent inward struggle must manifest itself under this form, and
especially those who ultimately give themselves up to evil must, before
arriving at this point, pass through a period of conflict, that is of
possession. Olshausen therefore adds a physical condition, namely, that
the preponderance of evil in the man must have weakened his corporeal
organization, particularly the nervous system, before he can become
susceptible of the demoniacal state. But since such disorders of the
nervous system may occur without any moral fault, who does not see that
the state which it is intended to ascribe to demoniacal power as its
proper source, is thus referred chiefly to natural causes, and that
therefore the argument defeats its own object? Hence Olshausen quickly
turns away from this side of the question, and lingers on the
comparison of the δαιμονιζόμενος (demoniac) with the πονηρὸς (wicked);
whereas he ought rather to compare the former with the epileptic and
insane, for it is only by this means that any light can be thrown on
the nature of possession. This shifting of the question from the ground
of physiology and psychology to that of morality and religion, renders
the discussion concerning the demoniacs one of the most useless which
Olshausen’s work contains. [1199]
Let us then relinquish the ungrateful attempt to modernize the New
Testament conception of the demoniacs, or to judaize our modern
ideas;—let us rather, in relation to this subject, understand the
statements of the New Testament as simply as they are given, without
allowing our investigations to be restricted by the ideas therein
presented, which belonged to the age and nation of its writers. [1200]
The method adopted for the cure of the demoniacal state was, especially
among the Jews, in conformity with what we have ascertained to have
been the idea of its nature. The cause of the malady was not supposed
to be, as in natural diseases, an impersonal object or condition, such
as an impure fluid, a morbid excitement or debility, but a
self-conscious being; hence it was treated, not mechanically or
chemically, but logically, i.e. by words. The demon was enjoined to
depart; and to give effect to this injunction, it was coupled with the
names of beings who were believed to have power over demons. Hence the
main instrument against demoniacal possession was conjuration, [1201]
either in the name of God, or of angels, or of some other potent being,
e.g. the Messiah (Acts xix. 13), with certain forms which were said to
be derived from Solomon. [1202] In addition to this, certain roots,
[1203] stones, [1204] fumigations and amulets [1205] were used, in
obedience to traditions likewise believed to have been handed down from
Solomon. Now as the cause of the malady was not seldom really a
psychical one, or at least one lying in the nervous system, which may
be acted on to an incalculable extent by moral instrumentality, this
psychological treatment was not altogether illusory! for by exciting in
the patient the belief that the demon by which he was possessed, could
not retain his hold before a form of conjuration, it might often effect
the removal of the disorder. Jesus himself admits that the Jewish
exorcists sometimes succeeded in working such cures (Matt. xii. 27).
But we read of Jesus that without conjuration by any other power, and
without the appliance of any further means, he expelled the demons by
his word. The most remarkable cures of this kind, of which the gospels
inform us, we are now about to examine.
§ 93.
CASES OF THE EXPULSION OF DEMONS BY JESUS, CONSIDERED SINGLY.
Among the circumstantial narratives which are given us in the three
first gospels of cures wrought by Jesus on demoniacs, three are
especially remarkable: the cure of a demoniac in the synagogue at
Capernaum, that of the Gadarenes possessed by a multitude of demons,
and lastly, that of the lunatic whom the disciples were unable to cure.
In John the conversion of water into wine is the first miracle
performed by Jesus after his return from the scene of his baptism into
Galilee; but in Mark (i. 23 ff.) and Luke (iv. 33 ff.) the cure of a
demoniac in the synagogue of Capernaum has this position. Jesus had
produced a deep impression by his teaching, when suddenly, a demoniac
who was present, cried out in the character of the demon that possessed
him, that he would have nothing to do with him, that he knew him to be
the Messiah who was come to destroy them—the demons; whereupon Jesus
commanded the demon to hold his peace and come out of the man, which
happened amid cries and convulsions on the part of the demoniac, and to
the great astonishment of the people at the power thus exhibited by
Jesus.
Here we might, with rationalistic commentators, represent the case to
ourselves thus: the demoniac, during a lucid interval, entered the
synagogue, was impressed by the powerful discourse of Jesus, and
overhearing one of the audience speak of him as the Messiah, was seized
with the idea that the unclean spirit by which he was possessed, could
not maintain itself in the presence of the holy Messiah; whence he fell
into a paroxysm, and expressed his awe of Jesus in the character of the
demon. When Jesus perceived this, what was more natural than that he
should make use of the man’s persuasion of his power, and command the
demon to come out of him, thus laying hold of the maniac by his fixed
idea; which according to the laws of mental hygiene, might very
probably have a favourable effect. It is under this view that Paulus
regards the occasion as that on which the thought of using his
messianic fame as a means of curing such sufferers, first occurred to
Jesus. [1206]
But many difficulties oppose themselves to this natural conception of
the case. The demoniac is supposed to learn that Jesus was the Messiah
from the people in the synagogue. On this point the text is not merely
silent, but decidedly contradicts such an opinion. The demon, speaking
through the man, evidently proclaims his knowledge of the Messiahship
of Jesus, in the words, οἶδά δε τίς εἶ κ.τ.λ., not as information
casually imparted by man, but as an intuition of his demoniacal nature.
Further, when Jesus cries, Hold thy peace! he refers to what the demon
had just uttered concerning his messiahship; for it is related of Jesus
that he suffered not the demons to speak because they knew him (Mark i.
34; Luke iv. 41), or because they made him known (Mark iii. 12). If
then Jesus believed that by enjoining silence on the demon he could
hinder the promulgation of his messiahship, he must have been of
opinion, not that the demoniac had heard something of it from the
people in the synagogue, but contrariwise that the latter might learn
it from the demoniac; and this accords with the fact, that at the time
of the first appearance of Jesus, in which the Evangelists place the
occurrence, no one had yet thought of him as the Messiah.
If it be asked, how the demoniac could discover that Jesus was the
Messiah, apart from any external communication, Olshausen presses into
his service the preternaturally heightened activity of the nervous
system, which, in demoniacs as in somnambules, sharpens the presentient
power, and produces a kind of clear-sightedness, by means of which such
a man might very well discern the importance of Jesus as regarded the
whole realm of spirits. The evangelical narrative, it is true, does not
ascribe that knowledge to a power of the patient, but of the demon
dwelling within him, and this is the only view consistent with the
Jewish ideas of that period. The Messiah was to appear, in order to
overthrow the demoniacal kingdom (ἀπολέσαι ἡμᾶς, comp. 1 John iii. 8;
Luke x. 18 f.) [1207] and to cast the devil and his angels into the
lake of fire (Matt. xxv. 41; Rev. xx. 10) [1208]: it followed of course
that the demons would recognize him who was to pass such a sentence on
them. [1209] This however might be deducted as an admixture of the
opinion of the narrator, without damage to the rest of the narrative;
but it must first be granted admissible to ascribe so extensive a
presentient power to demoniacal subjects. Now, as it is in the highest
degree improbable that a nervous patient, however intensely excited,
should recognize Jesus as the Messiah, at a time when he was not
believed to be such by any one else, perhaps not even by himself; and
as on the other hand this recognition of the Messiah by the demon so
entirely agrees with the popular ideas;—we must conjecture that on this
point the evangelical tradition is not in perfect accordance with
historical truth, but has been attuned to those ideas. [1210] There was
the more inducement to this, the more such a recognition of Jesus on
the part of the demons would redound to his glory. As when adults
disowned him, praise was prepared for him out of the mouth of babes
(Matt. xxi. 16)—as he was convinced that if men were silent, the very
stones would cry out (Luke xix. 40): so it must appear fitting, that
when his people whom he came to save would not acknowledge him, he
should have the involuntary homage of demons, whose testimony, since
they had only ruin to expect from him, must be impartial, and from
their higher spiritual nature was to be relied on.
In the above history of the cure of a demoniac, we have a case of the
simplest kind; the cure of the possessed Gadarenes on the contrary
(Matt. viii. 28 ff.; Mark v. 1 ff.; Luke viii. 26 ff.) is a very
complex one, for in this instance we have, together with several
divergencies of the Evangelists, instead of one demon, many, and
instead of a simple departure of these demons, their entrance into a
herd of swine.
After a stormy passage across the sea of Galilee to its eastern shore,
Jesus meets, according to Mark and Luke, a demoniac who lived among the
tombs, [1211] and was subject to outbreaks of terrific fury against
himself [1212] and others; according to Matthew, there were two. It is
astonishing how long harmonists have resorted to miserable expedients,
such as that Mark and Luke mention only one because he was particularly
distinguished by wildness, or Matthew two, because he included the
attendant who guarded the maniac, [1213] rather than admit an essential
difference between the two narratives. Since this step has been gained,
the preference has been given to the statement of the two intermediate
Evangelists, from the consideration that maniacs of this class are
generally unsociable; and the addition of a second demoniac by Matthew
has been explained by supposing that the plurality of the demons spoken
of in the narratives became in his apprehension a plurality of
demoniacs. [1214] But the impossibility that two maniacs should in
reality associate themselves, or perhaps be associated merely in the
original legend, is not so decided as to furnish in itself a ground for
preferring the narrative in Mark and Luke to that in Matthew. At least
if it be asked, which of the two representations could the most easily
have been formed from the other by tradition, the probability on both
sides will be found equal. For if according to the above supposition,
the plurality of demons might give rise to the idea of a plurality of
demoniacs, it may also be said, conversely: the more accurate
representation of Matthew, in which a plurality of demoniacs as well as
of demons was mentioned, did not give prominence to the specifically
extraordinary feature in the case, namely, that one man was possessed
by many demons; and as, in order to exhibit this, the narrative when
reproduced must be so expressed as to make it clear that many demons
inhabited one man, this might easily occasion by degrees the opposition
of the demoniac in the singular to the plural number of the demons. For
the rest, the introduction of Matthew’s narrative is concise and
general, that of the two others circumstantially descriptive; another
difference from which the greater originality of the latter has been
deduced. [1215] But it is quite as probable that the details which Luke
and Mark have in common, namely, that the possessed would wear no
clothing, broke all fetters, and wounded himself with stones, are an
arbitrary enlargement on the simple characteristic, exceeding fierce,
which Matthew gives, with the consequence that no one could pass by
that way,—as that the latter is a vague abridgment of the former.
This scene between Jesus and the demoniac or demoniacs opens, like the
other, with a cry of terror from the latter, who, speaking in the
person of the possessing demon, exclaims that he wishes to have nothing
to do with Jesus, the Messiah, from whom he has to expect only torment.
Two hypotheses have been framed, to explain how the demoniac came at
once to recognize Jesus as the Messiah: according to one, Jesus was
even then reputed to be the Messiah on the Peræan shore; [1216]
according to the other, some of those who had come across the sea with
Jesus had said to the man (whom on account of his fierceness no one
could come near!) that the Messiah had just landed at such a spot:
[1217] but both are alike groundless, for it is plain that in this
narrative, as in the former, the above feature is a product of the
Jewish-Christian opinion respecting the relation of the demons to the
Messiah. [1218] Here, however, another difference meets us. According
to Matthew, the possessed, when they see Jesus, cry: What have we to do
with thee? Art thou come to torment us?—according to Luke, the demoniac
falls at the feet of Jesus and says beseechingly, Torment me not; and
lastly, according to Mark, he runs from a distance to meet Jesus, falls
at his feet and adjures him by God not to torment him. Thus we have
again a climax: in Matthew, the demoniac, stricken with terror,
deprecates the unwelcome approach of Jesus; in Luke, he accosts Jesus,
when arrived, as a suppliant; in Mark, he eagerly runs to meet Jesus,
while yet at a distance. Those commentators who here take Mark’s
narrative as the standard one, are obliged themselves to admit, that
the hastening of a demoniac towards Jesus whom he all the while
dreaded, is somewhat of a contradiction; and they endeavour to relieve
themselves of the difficulty, by the supposition that the man set off
to meet Jesus in a lucid moment, when he wished to be freed from the
demon, but being heated by running, [1219] or excited by the words of
Jesus, [1220] he fell into the paroxysm in which, assuming the
character of the demon, he entreated that the expulsion might be
suspended. But in the closely consecutive phrases of Mark, Seeing—he
ran—and worshipped—and cried—and said, ἰδὼν—ἔδραμε—καὶ προσεκύνησε—καὶ
κράξας—εἶπε· there is no trace of a change in the state of the
demoniac, and the improbability of his representation subsists, for one
really possessed, if he had recognized the Messiah at a distance, would
have anxiously avoided, rather than have approached him; and even
setting this aside, it is impossible that one who believed himself to
be possessed by a demon inimical to God, should adjure Jesus by God, as
Mark makes the demoniac do. [1221] If then his narrative cannot be the
original one, that of Luke, which is only so far the simpler that it
does not represent the demoniac as running towards Jesus and adjuring
him, is too closely allied to it to be regarded as the nearest to the
fact. That of Matthew is without doubt the purest, for the
terror-stricken question, Art thou come to destroy us before the time?
is better suited to a demon, who, as the enemy of the Messiah’s
kingdom, could expect no forbearance from the Messiah than the entreaty
for clemency in Mark and Luke; though Philostratus, in a narrative
which might be regarded as an imitation of this evangelical one, has
chosen the latter form. [1222]
From the course of the narratives hitherto, it would appear that the
demons, in this as in the first narrative, addressed Jesus in the
manner described, before anything occurred on his part; yet the two
intermediate Evangelists go on to state, that Jesus had commanded the
unclean spirit to come out of the man. When did Jesus do this? The most
natural answer would be: before the man spoke to him. Now in Luke the
address of the demoniac is so closely connected with the word
προσέπεσε, he fell down, and then again with ἀνακράξας, having cried
out, that it seems necessary to place the command of Jesus before the
cry and the prostration, and hence to consider it as their cause. Yet
Luke himself rather gives the mere sight of Jesus as the cause of those
demonstrations on the part of the demoniac, so that his representation
leaves us in perplexity as to where the command of Jesus should find
its place. The case is still worse in Mark, for here a similar
dependence of the successive phrases thrusts back the command of Jesus
even before the word ἔδραμε, he ran, so that we should have to imagine
rather strangely that Jesus cried to the demon, ἔξελθε, Come out, from
a distance. Thus the two intermediate Evangelists are in an error with
regard either to the consecutive particulars that precede the command
or to the command itself, and our only question is, where may the error
be most probably presumed to lie? Here Schleiermacher himself admits,
that if in the original narrative an antecedent command of Jesus had
been spoken of, it would have been given in its proper place, before
the prayer of the demons, and as a quotation of the precise words of
Jesus; whereas the supplementary manner in which it is actually
inserted, with its abbreviated and indirect form (in Luke; Mark changes
it after his usual style, into a direct address), is a strong
foundation for the opinion that it is an explanatory addition furnished
by the narrator from his own conjecture. [1223] And it is an extremely
awkward addition, for it obliges the reader to recast his conception of
the entire scene. At first the pith of the incident seems to be, that
the demoniac had instantaneously recognized and supplicated Jesus; but
the narrator drops this original idea, and reflecting that the prayer
of the demon must have been preceded by a severe command from Jesus, he
corrects his previous omission, and remarks that Jesus had given his
command in the first instance.
To their mention of this command, Mark and Luke annex the question put
by Jesus to the demon: What is thy name? In reply, a multitude of
demons make known their presence, and give as their name, Legion. Of
this episode Matthew has nothing. In the above addition we have found a
supplementary explanation of the former part of the narrative: what if
this question and answer were an anticipatory introduction to the
sequel, and likewise the spontaneous production of the legend or the
narrator? Let us examine the reasons that render it probable: the wish
immediately expressed by the demons to enter the herd of swine, does
not in Matthew presuppose a multitude of demons in each of the two
possessed, since we cannot know whether the Hebrews were not able to
believe that even two demons only could possess a whole herd of swine:
but a later writer might well think it requisite to make the number of
the evil spirits equal the number of the swine. Now, what a herd is in
relation to animals, an army or a division of an army is in relation to
men and superior beings, and as it was required to express a large
division, nothing could more readily suggest itself than the Roman
legion, which term in Matt. xxvi. 53, is applied to angels, as here to
demons. But without further considering this more precise estimate of
the Evangelists, we must pronounce it inconceivable that several demons
had set up their habitation in one individual. For even if we had
attained so far as to conceive how one demon by a subjection of the
human consciousness could possess himself of a human organization,
imagination would still fail us to conceive that many personal demons
could at once possess one man. For as possession means nothing else,
than that the demon constitutes himself the subject of the
consciousness, and as consciousness can in reality have but one focus,
one central point: it is under every condition absolutely inconceivable
that several demons should at the same time take possession of one man.
Manifold possession could only exist in the sense of an alternation of
possession by various demons, and not as here in that of a whole army
of them dwelling at once in one man, and at once departing from him.
All the narratives agree in this, that the demons (in order, as Mark
says, not to be sent out of the country, or according to Luke, into the
deep) entreated of Jesus permission to enter into the herd of swine
feeding near; that this was granted them by Jesus; and that forthwith,
owing to their influence, the whole herd of swine (Mark, we must not
ask on what authority, fixes their number at about two thousand) were
precipitated into the sea and drowned. If we adopt here the point of
view taken in the gospel narratives, which throughout suppose the
existence of real demons, it is yet to be asked: how can demons,
admitting even that they can take possession of men,—how, we say, can
they, being at all events intelligent spirits, have and obtain the wish
to enter into brutal forms? Every religion and philosophy which rejects
the transmigration of souls, must, for the same reason, also deny the
possibility of this passage of the demons into swine; and Olshausen is
quite right in classing the swine of Gadara in the New Testament with
Balaam’s ass in the Old, as a similar scandal and stumbling block.
[1224] This theologian, however, rather evades than overcomes the
difficulty, by the observation that we are here to suppose, not an
entrance of the individual demons into the individual swine, but merely
an influence of all the evil spirits on the swine collectively. For the
expression, εἰσελθεῖν εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, to enter into the swine, as it
stands opposed to the expression, ἐξελθεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, to go out
of the man, cannot possibly mean otherwise than that the demons were to
assume the same relation to the swine which they had borne to the
possessed man; besides, a mere influence could not preserve them from
banishment out of the country or into the deep, but only an actual
habitation of the bodies of the animals: so that the scandal and
stumbling block remain. Thus the prayer in question cannot possibly
have been offered by real demons, though it might by Jewish maniacs,
sharing the ideas of their people. According to these ideas it is a
torment to evil spirits to be destitute of a corporeal envelopment,
because without a body they cannot gratify their sensual desires;
[1225] if therefore they were driven out of men they must wish to enter
into the bodies of brutes, and what was better suited to an impure
spirit πνεῦμα ἀκάθαρτον, than an impure animal ζῶον ἀκάθαρτον, like a
swine? [1226] So far, therefore, it is possible that the Evangelists
might correctly represent the fact, only, in accordance with their
national ideas, ascribing to the demons what should rather have been
referred to the madness of the patient. But when it is further said
that the demons actually entered the swine, do not the Evangelists
affirm an evident impossibility? Paulus thinks that the Evangelists
here as everywhere else identify the possessed men with the possessing
demons, and hence attribute to the latter the entrance into the swine,
while in fact it was only the former, who, in obedience to their fixed
idea, rushed upon the herd. [1227] It is true that Matthew’s expression
ἀπῆλθον εἰς τοὺς χοίρους, taken alone, might be understood of a mere
rushing towards the swine; not only however, as Paulus himself must
admit, does the word εἰσελθόντες in the two other Evangelists
distinctly imply a real entrance into the swine; but also Matthew has
like them before the word ἀπῆλθον, they entered, the expression
ἐξελθόντες οἱ δαίμονες, the demons coming out (sc. ἐκ τῶν ἀνθρώπων out
of the men): thus plainly enough distinguishing the demons who entered
the swine from the men. [1228] Thus our Evangelists do not in this
instance merely relate what actually happened, in the colours which it
took from the false lights of their age; they have here a particular,
which cannot possibly have happened in the manner they allege.
A new difficulty arises from the effect which the demons are said to
have produced in the swine. Scarcely had they entered them, when they
compelled the whole herd to precipitate themselves into the sea. It is
reasonably asked, what then did the demons gain by entering into the
animals, if they immediately destroyed the bodies of which they had
taken possession, and thus robbed themselves of the temporary abode for
which they had so earnestly entreated? [1229] The conjecture, that the
design of the demons in destroying the swine, was to incense the minds
of their owners against Jesus, which is said to have been the actual
result, [1230] is too far-fetched; the other conjecture that the
demoniacs, rushing with cries on the herd, together with the flight of
their keepers, terrified the swine and chased them into the water,
[1231]—even if it were not opposed as we have seen to the text,—would
not suffice to explain the drowning of a herd of swine amounting to
2,000, according to Mark; or only a numerous herd, according to the
general statement of Matthew. The expedient of supposing that in truth
it was only a part of the herd that was drowned, [1232] has not the
slightest foundation in the evangelical narrative. The difficulties
connected with this point are multiplied by the natural reflection that
the drowning of the herd would involve no slight injury to the owners,
and that of this injury Jesus was the mediate author. The orthodox,
bent on justifying Jesus, suppose that the permission to the demons to
enter into the swine was necessary to render the cure of the demoniac
possible, and, they argue, brutes are assuredly to be killed that man
may live; [1233] but they do not perceive that they thus, in a manner
most inconsistent with their point of view, circumscribe the power of
Jesus over the demoniacal kingdom. Again, it is supposed, that the
swine probably belonged to Jews, and that Jesus intended to punish them
for their covetous transgression of the law, [1234] that he acted with
divine authority, which often sacrifices individual good to higher
objects, and by lightning, hail and inundations causes destruction to
the property of many men, [1235] in which case, to accuse God of
injustice would be absurd. [1236] But to adopt this expedient is to
confound, in a way the most inadmissible on the orthodox system,
Christ’s state of humiliation with his state of exaltation: it is to
depart, in a spirit of mysticism, from the wise doctrine of Paul, that
he was made under the law, γενόμενος ὑπὸ νόμον (Gal. iv. 4), and that
he made himself of no reputation ἑαυτόν ἐκένωσε (Phil. ii. 7): it is to
make Jesus a being altogether foreign to us, since in relation to the
moral estimate of his actions, it lifts him above the standard of
humanity. Nothing remains, therefore, but to take the naturalistic
supposition of the rushing of the demoniacs among the swine, and to
represent the consequent destruction of the latter as something
unexpected by Jesus, for which therefore he is not responsible: [1237]
in the plainest contradiction to the evangelical account, which makes
Jesus, even if not directly cause the issue, foresee it in the most
decided manner. [1238] Thus there appears to attach to Jesus the charge
of an injury done to the property of another, and the opponents of
Christianity have long ago made this use of the narrative. [1239] It
must be admitted that Pythagoras in a similar case acted far more
justly, for when he liberated some fish from the net, he indemnified
the fishermen who had taken them. [1240]
Thus the narrative before us is a tissue of difficulties, of which
those relating to the swine are not the slightest. It is no wonder
therefore that commentators began to doubt the thorough historical
truth of this anecdote earlier than that of most others in the public
life of Jesus, and particularly to sever the connexion between the
destruction of the swine and the expulsion of the demons by Jesus. Thus
Krug thought that tradition had reversed the order of these two facts.
The swine according to him were precipitated into the sea before the
landing of Jesus, by the storm which raged during his voyage, and when
Jesus subsequently wished to cure the demoniac, either he himself or
one of his followers persuaded the man that his demons were already
gone into those swine and had hurled them into the sea; which was then
believed and reported to be the fact. [1241] K. Ch. L. Schmidt makes
the swine-herds go to meet Jesus on his landing; during which interim
many of the untended swine fall into the sea; and as about this time
Jesus had commanded the demon to depart from the man, the bystanders
imagine that the two events [1242] stood in the relation of cause and
effect. The prominent part which is played in these endeavours at
explanation, by the accidental coincidence of many circumstances,
betrays that maladroit mixture of the mythical system of interpretation
with the natural which characterizes the earliest attempts, from the
mythical point of view. Instead of inventing a natural foundation, for
which we have nowhere any warrant, and which in no degree explains the
actual narrative in the gospels, adorned as it is with the miraculous;
we must rather ask, whether in the probable period of the formation of
the evangelical narratives, there are not ideas to be found from which
the story of the swine in the history before us might be explained?
We have already adduced one opinion of that age bearing on this point,
namely, that demons are unwilling to remain without bodies, and that
they have a predilection for impure places, whence the bodies of swine
must be best suited to them: this does not however explain why they
should have precipitated the swine into the water. But we are not
destitute of information that will throw light on this also. Josephus
tells us of a Jewish conjuror who cast out demons by forms and means
derived from Solomon, that in order to convince the bystanders of the
reality of his expulsions, he set a vessel of water in the
neighbourhood of the possessed person, so that the departing demon must
throw it down and thus give ocular proof to the spectators that he was
out of the man. [1243] In like manner it is narrated of Apollonius of
Tyana, that he commanded a demon which possessed a young man, to depart
with a visible sign, whereupon the demon entreated that he might
overturn a statue that stood near at hand; which to the great
astonishment of the spectators actually ensued in the very moment that
the demon went out of the youth. [1244] If then the agitation of some
near object, without visible contact, was held the surest proof of the
reality of an expulsion of demons: this proof could not be wanting to
Jesus; nay, while in the case of Eleazar, the object being only a
little (μικρὸν) removed from the exorciser and the patient, the
possibility of deception was not altogether excluded, Matthew notices
in relation to Jesus, more emphatically than the two other Evangelists,
the fact that the herd of swine was feeding a good way off (μακρὰν),
thus removing the last remnant of such a possibility. That the object
to which Jesus applied this proof, was from the first said to be a herd
of swine, immediately proceeded from the Jewish idea of the relation
between unclean spirits and animals, but it furnished a welcome
opportunity for satisfying another tendency of the legend. Not only did
it behove Jesus to cure ordinary demoniacs, such as the one in the
history first considered; he must have succeeded in the most difficult
cures of this kind. It is the evident object of the present narrative,
from the very commencement, with its startling description of the
fearful condition of the Gadarene, to represent the cure as one of
extreme difficulty. But to make it more complicated, the possession
must be, not simple, but manifold, as in the case of Mary Magdalene,
out of whom were cast seven demons (Luke viii. 2), or in the demoniacal
relapse in which the expelled demon returns with seven worse than
himself (Matt. xii. 45); whence the number of the demons was here made,
especially by Mark, to exceed by far the probable number of a herd. As
in relation to an inanimate object, as a vessel of water or a statue,
the influence of the expelled demons could not be more clearly
manifested by any means, than by its falling over contrary to the law
of gravity; so in animals it could not be more surely attested in any
way, than by their drowning themselves contrary to their instinctive
desire of life. Only by this derivation of our narrative from the
confluence of various ideas and interests of the age, can we explain
the above noticed contradiction, that the demons first petition for the
bodies of the swine as a habitation, and immediately after of their own
accord destroy this habitation. The petition grew, as we have said, out
of the idea that demons shunned incorporeality, the destruction, out of
the ordinary test of the reality of an exorcism;—what wonder if the
combination of ideas so heterogeneous produced two contradictory
features in the narrative?
The third and last circumstantially narrated expulsion of a demon has
the peculiar feature, that in the first instance the disciples in vain
attempt the cure, which Jesus then effects with ease. The three
synoptists (Matt. xvii. 14 ff.; Mark ix. 14 ff.; Luke ix. 37 ff.)
unanimously state that Jesus having descended with his three most
confidential disciples from the Mount of the Transfiguration, found his
other disciples in perplexity, because they were unable to cure a
possessed boy, whom his father had brought to them.
In this narrative also there is a gradation from the greatest
simplicity in Matthew, to the greatest particularity of description in
Mark; and here again this gradation has led to the conclusion that the
narrative of Matthew is the farthest from the fact, and must be made
subordinate to that of the two other Evangelists. [1245] In the
introduction of the incident in Matthew, Jesus, having descended from
the mountain, joins the multitude (ὄχλος), whereupon the father of the
boy approaches, and on his knees entreats Jesus to cure his child; in
Luke, the multitude (ὄχλος) meet Jesus; lastly, in Mark, Jesus sees
around the disciples a great multitude, among whom were scribes
disputing with them; the people, when they see him, run towards him and
salute him, he inquires what is the subject of dispute, and on this the
father of the boy begins to speak. Here we have a climax in relation to
the conduct of the people; in Matthew, Jesus appears to join them by
accident; in Luke, they come to meet him; and in Mark, they run towards
him to salute him. The last Evangelist has the singular remark: And
straightway all the people, when they saw him, were greatly amazed.
What could there possibly be so greatly to amaze the people in the
arrival of Jesus with some disciples? This remains, in spite of all the
other means of explanation that have been devised, so thorough a
mystery, that I cannot find so absurd as Fritzsche esteems it, the idea
of Euthymius, that Jesus having just descended from the Mount of
Transfiguration, some of the heavenly radiance which had there shone
around him was still visible, as on Moses when he came down from Sinai
(Exod. xxxiv. 29 f.). That among this throng of people there were
scribes who arraigned the disciples on the ground of their failure, and
involved them in a dispute, is in and by itself quite natural; but
connected as it is with the exaggerations concerning the behaviour of
the multitude, this feature also becomes suspicious, especially as the
other two Evangelists have it not; so that if it can be shown how the
narrator might be led to insert it by a mental combination of his own,
we shall have sufficient warrant for renouncing it. Shortly before
(viii. 11), on the occasion of the demand of a sign from Jesus by the
Pharisees, Mark says, ἥρξαντο συζητεῖν αὐτῷ, they began to question
with him, apparently on the subject of his ability to work miracles;
and so here when the disciples show themselves unable to perform a
miracle, he represents the scribes (the majority of whom belonged to
the Pharisaic sect), as συζητοῦντας τοῖς μαθηταῖς, questioning with the
disciples. In the succeeding description of the boy’s state there is
the same gradation as to particularity, except that Matthew is the one
who alone has the expression σεληνιάζεται (is lunatic), which it is
unfair to make a reproach to him, [1246] since the reference of
periodical disorders to the moon was not uncommon in the time of Jesus.
[1247] Mark alone calls the spirit that possessed the dumb boy (v. 17),
and deaf (v. 25). The emission of inarticulate sounds by epileptics
during their fits, might be regarded as the dumbness of the demon, and
their incapability of noticing any words addressed to them, as his
deafness.
When the father has informed Jesus of the subject of dispute and of the
inability of the disciples to relieve the boy, Jesus breaks forth into
the exclamation, O faithless and perverse generation, etc. On a
comparison of the close of the narrative in Matthew, where Jesus, when
his disciples ask him why they could not cast out the demon, answers;
Because of your unbelief, and proceeds to extol the power of faith,
even though no larger than a grain of mustard seed, as sufficient to
remove mountains (v. 19 ff.): it cannot be doubted that in this
expression of dissatisfaction Jesus apostrophizes his disciples, in
whose inability to cast out the demon, he finds a proof of their still
deficient faith. [1248] This concluding explanation of the want of
power in the disciples, by their unbelief, Luke omits: and Mark not
only imitates him in this, but also interweaves (v. 21–24), a by-scene
between Jesus and the father, in which he first gives an amplified
description of the symptoms of the child’s malady, drawn partly from
Matthew, partly from his own resources, and then represents the father,
on being required to believe, as confessing with tears the weakness of
his faith, and his desire that it may be strengthened. Taking this
together with the mention of the disputative scribes, we cannot err in
supposing the speech of Jesus, O faithless generation, etc., in Mark
and also in Luke to refer to the people, as distinguished from the
disciples; in Mark, more particularly to the father, whose unbelief is
intimated to be an impediment to the cure, as in another case (Matt.
ix. 2), the faith of relatives appears to further the desired object.
As however both the Evangelists give this aspect to the circumstances,
because they do not here give the explanation of the inefficiency of
the disciples by their unbelief, together with the declaration
concerning the power of faith to remove mountains: we must inquire
whether the connexion in which they place these discourses is more
suitable than this in which they are inserted by Matthew. In Luke the
declaration: If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, etc. (neither
he nor Mark has, Because of your unbelief), occurs xvii. 5, 6, with
only the slight variation, that instead of the mountain a tree is
named; but it is here destitute of any connexion either with the
foregoing or the following context, and has the appearance of a short
stray fragment, with an introduction, no doubt fictitious (of the same
kind as Luke xi. 1, xiii. 23), in the form of an entreaty from the
disciples: Lord, increase our faith. Mark gives the sentence on the
faith which removes mountains as the moral of the history of the cursed
fig tree, where Matthew also has it a second time. But to this history
the declaration is totally unsuitable, as we shall presently see; and
if we are unwilling to content ourselves with ignorance of the occasion
on which it was uttered, we must accept its connexion in Matthew as the
original one, for it is perfectly appropriate to a failure of the
disciples in an attempted cure. Mark has sought to make the scene more
effective by other additions, beside this episode with the father; he
tells us that the people ran together that they might observe what was
passing, that after the expulsion of the demon the boy was as one dead,
insomuch that many said, he is dead; but that Jesus, taking him by the
hand, as he does elsewhere with the dead (Matt. ix. 25), lifts him up
and restores him to life.
After the completion of the cure, Luke dismisses the narrative with a
brief notice of the astonishment of the people; but the two first
synoptists pursue the subject by making the disciples, when alone with
Jesus, ask him why they were not able to cast out the demon? In Matthew
the immediate reply of Jesus accounts for their incapability by their
unbelief; but in Mark, his answer is, This kind goeth not out but by
prayer and fasting, which Matthew also adds after the discourse on
unbelief and the power of faith. This seems to be an unfortunate
connexion of Matthew’s; for if fasting and praying were necessary for
the cure, the disciples, in case they had not previously fasted, could
not have cast out the demon even if they had possessed the firmest
faith. [1249] Whether these two reasons given by Jesus for the
inability of the disciples can be made consistent by the observation,
that fasting and prayer are means of strengthening faith; [1250] or
whether we are to suppose with Schleiermacher an association of two
originally unrelated passages, we will not here attempt to decide. That
such a spiritual and corporeal discipline on the part of the exorcist
should have effect on the possessed, has been held surprising: it has
been thought with Porphyry, [1251] that it would rather be to the
purpose that the patient should observe this discipline, and hence it
has been supposed that the προσευχὴ καὶ νηστεία, prayer and fasting,
were prescribed to the demoniac as a means of making the cure radical.
[1252] But this is evidently in contradiction to the text. For if
fasting and praying on the part of the patient were necessary for the
success of the cure, it must have been gradual and not sudden, as all
cures are which are attributed to Jesus in the gospels, and as this is
plainly enough implied to be by the words, καὶ ἐθεραπεύθη ὁ παῖς ἀπὸ
τῆς ὥρας ἐκείνης, and the child was cured from that very hour, in
Matthew, and the word ἰάσατο, he cured, placed between ἐπετίμησε κ.τ.λ.
Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and ἀπέδωκε κ.τ.λ. delivered him
again to his father, in Luke. It is true Paulus turns the above
expression of Matthew to his advantage, for he understands it to mean
that from that time forward the boy, by the application of the
prescribed discipline, gradually recovered. But we need only observe
the same form of expression where it elsewhere occurs as the final
sentence in narratives of cures, to be convinced of the impossibility
of such an interpretation. When, for example, the story of the woman
who had an issue of blood closes with the remark (Matt. ix. 22) καὶ
ἐσώθη ἡ γυνὴ ἀπὸ ὥρας ἐκείνης, this will hardly be translated, et
exinde mulier paulatim servabatur: it can only mean: servata est (et
servatam se præbuit) ab illo temporis momento. Another point to which
Paulus appeals as a proof that Jesus here commenced a cure which was to
be consummated by degrees, is the expression of Luke, ἀπέδωκεν αὐτὸν τῷ
πατρὶ αὐτοῦ, he delivered him again to his father, which, he argues,
would have been rather superfluous, if it were not intended to imply a
recommendation to special care. But the more immediate signification of
ἀποδίδωμι is not to deliver or give up, but to give back; and therefore
in the above expression the only sense is: puerum, quem sanandum
acceperat, sanatum reddidit, that is, the boy who had fallen into the
hands of a strange power—of the demon—was restored to the parents as
their own. Lastly, how arbitrary is it in Paulus to take the expression
ἐκπορεύεται, goeth out (Matt. v. 21), in the closer signification of a
total departure, and to distinguish this from the preliminary departure
which followed on the bare word of Jesus (v. 18)! Thus in this case, as
in every other, the gospels present to us, not a cure which was
protracted through days and weeks, but a cure which was instantaneously
completed by one miracle: hence the fasting and prayer cannot be
regarded as a prescription for the patient.
With this whole history must be compared an analogous narrative in 2
Kings iv. 29 ff. Here the prophet Elisha attempts to bring a dead child
to life, by sending his staff by the hands of his servant Gehazi, who
is to lay it on the face of the child; but this measure does not
succeed, and Elisha is obliged in his own person to come and call the
boy to life. The same relation that exists in this Old Testament story
between the prophet and his servant, is seen in the New Testament
narrative between the Messiah and his disciples: the latter can do
nothing without their master, but what was too difficult for them, he
effects with certainty. Now this feature is a clue to the tendency of
both narratives, namely, to exalt their master by exhibiting the
distance between him and his most intimate disciples; or, if we compare
the evangelical narrative before us with that of the demoniacs of
Gadara, we may say: the latter case was made to appear one of extreme
difficulty in itself; the former, by the relation in which the power of
Jesus, which is adequate to the occasion, is placed to the power of the
disciples, which, however great in other instances, was here
insufficient.
Of the other more briefly narrated expulsions of demons, the cure of a
dumb demoniac and of one who was blind also, has been already
sufficiently examined in connexion with the accusation of a league with
Beelzebub: as also the cure of the woman who was bowed down, in our
general considerations on the demoniacs. The cure of the possessed
daughter of the Canaanitish woman (Matt. xv. 22 ff.; Mark vii. 25 ff.)
has no further peculiarity than that it was wrought by the word of
Jesus at a distance: a point of which we shall speak later.
According to the evangelical narratives, the attempt of Jesus to expel
the demon succeeded in every one of these cases. Paulus remarks that
cures of this kind, although they contributed more than anything else
to impress the multitude with veneration for Jesus, were yet the
easiest in themselves, and even De Wette sanctions a psychological
explanation of the cures of demoniacs, though of no others. [1253] With
these opinions we cannot but agree; for if we regard the real character
of the demoniacal state as a species of madness accompanied by a
convulsive tendency of the nervous system, we know that psychical and
nervous disorders are most easily wrought upon by psychical
influence;—an influence to which the surpassing dignity of Jesus as a
prophet, and eventually even as the Messiah himself, presented all the
requisite conditions. There is, however, a marked gradation among these
states, according as the psychical derangement has more or less fixed
itself corporeally, and the disturbance of the nervous system has
become more or less habitual, and shared by the rest of the
organization. We may therefore lay down the following rule: the more
strictly the malady was confined to mental derangement, on which the
word of Jesus might have an immediate moral influence, or in a
comparatively slight disturbance of the nervous system, on which he
would be able to act powerfully through the medium of the mind, the
more possible was it for Jesus by his word λόγῳ (Matt. viii. 16), and
instantly παραχρῆμα (Luke xiii. 13), to put an end to such states: on
the other hand, the more the malady had already confirmed itself, as a
bodily disease, the more difficult is it to believe that Jesus was able
to relieve it in a purely psychological manner and at the first moment.
From this rule results a second: namely, that to any extensive
psychological influence on the part of Jesus the full recognition of
his dignity as a prophet was requisite; whence it follows that at times
and in districts where he had long had that reputation, he could effect
more in this way than where he had it not.
If we apply these two measures to the cures in the gospels, we shall
find that the first, viz., that of the demoniac in the synagogue at
Capernaum, is not, so soon as we cease to consider the Evangelist’s
narrative of it circumstantially correct, altogether destitute of
probability. It is true that the words attributed to the demon seem to
imply an intuitive knowledge of Jesus; but this may be probably
accounted for by the supposition that the widely-spread fame of Jesus
in that country, and his powerful discourse in the synagogue, had
impressed the demoniac with the belief, if not that Jesus was the
Messiah, as the Evangelists say, at least that he must be a prophet: a
belief that would give effect to his words. As regards the state of
this demoniac we are only told of his fixed idea (that he was
possessed), and of his attacks of convulsions; his malady may therefore
have been of the less rooted kind, and accessible to psychological
influence. The cure of the Gadarenes is attended with more difficulty
in both points of view. Firstly, Jesus was comparatively little known
on the eastern shore; and secondly, the state of these demoniacs is
described as so violent and deep-seated a mania, that a word from Jesus
could hardly suffice to put an end to it. Here therefore the natural
explanation of Paulus will not suffice, and if we are to regard the
narrative as having any foundation in fact, we must suppose that the
description of the demoniac’s state, as well as other particulars, has
been exaggerated by the legend. The same judgment must be passed in
relation to the cure of the boy who was lunatic, since an epilepsy
which had existed from infancy (Mark v. 21) and the attacks of which
were so violent and regular, must be too deeply rooted in the system
for the possibility of so rapid and purely psychological a cure to be
credible. That even dumbness and a contraction of many years’ duration,
which we cannot with Paulus explain as a mere insane imagination that
speech or an erect carriage was not permitted, [1254]—that these
afflictions should disappear at a word, no one who is not committed to
dogmatical opinions can persuade himself. Lastly, least of all is it to
be conceived, that even without the imposing influence of his presence,
the miracle-worker could effect a cure at a distance, as Jesus is said
to have done on the daughter of the Canaanitish woman.
Thus in the nature of things there is nothing to prevent the admission,
that Jesus cured many persons who suffered from supposed demoniacal
insanity or nervous disorder, in a psychical manner, by the ascendancy
of his manner and words (if indeed Venturini [1255] and Kaiser [1256]
are not right in their conjecture, that patients of this class often
believed themselves to be cured, when in fact the crisis only of their
disorder had been broken by the influence of Jesus; and that the
Evangelists state them to have been cured because they learned nothing
further of them, and thus knew nothing of their probable relapse). But
while granting the possibility of many cures, it is evident that in
this field the legend has not been idle, but has confounded the easier
cases, which alone could be cured psychologically, with the most
difficult and complicated, to which such a treatment was totally
inapplicable. [1257] Is the refusal of a sign on the part of Jesus
reconcilable with such a manifestation of power as we have above
defined,—or must even such cures as can be explained psychologically,
but which in his age must have seemed miracles, be denied in order to
make that refusal comprehensible? We will not here put this alternative
otherwise than as a question.
If in conclusion we cast a glance on the gospel of John, we find that
it does not even mention demoniacs and their cure by Jesus. This
omission has not seldom been turned to the advantage of the Apostle
John, the alleged author, as indicating a superior degree of
enlightenment. [1258] If however this apostle did not believe in the
reality of possession by devils, he must have had, as the author of the
fourth gospel, according to the ordinary view of his relation to the
synoptical writers, the strongest motives for rectifying their
statements, and preventing the dissemination of what he held to be a
false opinion, by setting the cures in question in a true light. But
how could the Apostle John arrive at the rejection of the opinion that
the above diseases had their foundation in demoniacal possession?
According to Josephus it was at that period a popular Jewish opinion,
from which a Jew of Palestine who, like John, did not visit a foreign
land until late in life, would hardly be in a condition to liberate
himself; it was, according to the nature of things and the synoptical
accounts, the opinion of Jesus himself, John’s adored master, from whom
the favourite disciple certainly would not be inclined to swerve even a
hair’s breadth. But if John shared with his cotemporaries and with
Jesus himself the notion of real demoniacal possession, and if the cure
of demoniacs formed the principal part, nay, perhaps the true
foundation of the alleged miraculous powers of Jesus: how comes it that
the Apostle nevertheless makes no mention of them in his gospel? That
he passed over them because the other Evangelists had collected enough
of such histories, is a supposition that ought by this time to be
relinquished, since he repeats more than one history of a miracle which
they had already given; and if it be said that he repeated these
because they needed correction,—we have seen, in our examination of the
cures of demoniacs, that in many a reduction of them to their simple
historical elements would be very much in place. There yet remains the
supposition that, the histories of demoniacs being incredible or
offensive to the cultivated Greeks of Asia Minor, among whom John is
said to have written, he left them out of his gospel for the sake of
accommodating himself to their ideas. But we must ask, could or should
an apostle, out of mere accommodation to the refined ears of his
auditors, withhold so essential a feature of the agency of Jesus?
Certainly this silence, supposing the authenticity of the three first
gospels, rather indicates an author who had not been an eye-witness of
the ministry of Jesus; or, according to our view, at least one who had
not at his command the original tradition of Palestine, but only a
tradition modified by Hellenistic influence, in which the expulsions of
demons, being less accordant with the higher culture of the Greeks,
were either totally suppressed or kept so far in the background that
they might have escaped the notice of the author of the gospel.
§ 94.
CURES OF LEPERS.
Among the sufferers whom Jesus healed, the leprous play a prominent
part, as might have been anticipated from the tendency of the climate
of Palestine to produce cutaneous disease. When, according to the
synoptical writers, Jesus directs the attention of the Baptist’s
messengers to the actual proofs which he had given of his Messiahship
(Matt. ix. 5), he adduces among these, the cleansing of lepers; when,
on the first mission of the disciples, he empowers them to perform all
kinds of miracles, the cleansing of lepers is numbered among the first
(Matt. x. 8), and two cases of such cures are narrated to us in detail.
One of these cases is common to all the synoptical writers, but is
placed by them in two different connexions: namely, by Matthew,
immediately after the delivery of the Sermon on the Mount (viii. 1
ff.); by the other Evangelists, at some period, not precisely marked,
at the beginning of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee (Mark i. 40 ff.;
Luke v. 12 ff.). According to the narratives, a leper comes towards
Jesus, and falling on his knees, entreats that he may be cleansed; this
Jesus effects by a touch, and then directs the leper to present himself
to the priest in obedience to the law, that he may be pronounced clean
(Lev. xiv. 2 ff.). The state of the man is in Matthew and Mark
described simply by the word λεπρὸς, a leper; but in Luke more
strongly, by the words, πλήρης λέπρας, full of leprosy. Paulus, indeed,
regards the being thus replete with leprosy as a symptom that the
patient was curable (the eruption and peeling of the leprosy on the
entire skin being indicative of the healing crisis); and accordingly,
that commentator represents the incident to himself in the following
manner. The leper applied to Jesus in his character of Messiah for an
opinion on his state, and, the result being favourable, for a
declaration that he was clean (εἰ θέλεις, δύνασαί με καθαρίσαι), which
might either spare him an application to the priest, or at all events
give him a consolatory hope in making that application. Jesus
expressing himself ready to make the desired examination (θέλω),
stretched out his hand, in order to feel the patient, without allowing
too near an approach while he was possibly still capable of
communicating contagion; and after a careful examination, he expressed,
as its result, the conviction that the patient was no longer in a
contagious state (καθαρίσθητι), whereupon quickly and easily (εὐθέως)
the leprosy actually disappeared. [1259]
Here, in the first place, the supposition that the leper was precisely
at the crisis of healing is foreign to the text, which in the two first
Evangelists speaks merely of leprosy, while the πλήρης λέπρας of the
third can mean nothing else than the Old Testament expression מְצֹרָע
כַּשָּׁלֶג (Exod. iv. 6, Num. xii. 10; 2 Kings v. 27), which, according to
the connexion in every instance, signifies the worst stage of leprosy.
That the word καθαρίζειν in the Hebraic and Hellenistic use of the
Greek language, might also mean merely to pronounce clean is not to be
denied, only it must retain the signification throughout the passage.
But that after having narrated that Jesus had said, Be thou clean,
καθαρίσθητι, Matthew should have added καὶ εὐθέως ἐκαθαρίσθη κ.τ.λ. in
the sense that thus the sick man was actually pronounced clean by
Jesus, is, from the absurd tautology such an interpretation would
introduce, so inconceivable, that we must here, and consequently
throughout the narrative, understand the word καθαρίζεσθαι of actual
cleansing. It is sufficient to remind the reader of the expressions
λεπροὶ καθαρίζονται, the lepers are cleansed (Matt. xi. 5), and λεπροὺς
καθαρίζετε, cleanse the lepers (Matt. x. 8), where neither can the
latter word signify merely to pronounce clean, nor can it have another
meaning than in the narrative before us. But the point in which the
natural interpretation the most plainly betrays its weakness, is the
disjunction of θέλω, I will, from καθαρίσθητι, be thou clean. Who can
persuade himself that these words, united as they are in all the three
narratives, were separated by a considerable pause—that θέλω was spoken
during or more properly before the manipulation, καθαρίσθητι after,
when all the Evangelists represent the two words as having been uttered
by Jesus without separation whilst he touched the leper? Surely, if the
alleged sense had been the original one, at least one of the
Evangelists, instead of the words ἥψατο αὐτοῦ ὁ Ἰησοῦς λέγων· θέλω,
καθαρίσθητι, Jesus touched him, saying, I will, be thou clean, would
have substituted the more accurate expression, ὁ Ἰ. ἀπεκρίνατο· θέλω,
καὶ ἁψάμενος αὐτοῦ εἶπε· καθαρίσθητι, Jesus answered, I will; and
having touched him, said: be thou clean. But if καθαρίσθητι was spoken
in one breath with θέλω, so that Jesus announces the cleansing simply
as a result of his will without any intermediate examination, the
former word cannot possibly signify a mere declaration of cleanness, to
which a previous examination would be requisite, and it must signify an
actual making clean. It follows, therefore, that the word ἅπτεσθαι in
this connexion is not to be understood of an exploratory manipulation,
but, as in all other narratives of the same class, of a curative touch.
In support of his natural explanation of this incident, Paulus appeals
to the rule, that invariably the ordinary and regular is to be
presupposed in a narrative where the contrary is not expressly
indicated. [1260] But this rule shares the ambiguity which is
characteristic of the entire system of natural interpretation, since it
leaves undecided what is ordinary and regular in our estimation, and
what was so in the ideas of the author whose writings are to be
explained. Certainly, if I have a Gibbon before me, I must in his
narratives presuppose only natural causes and occurrences when he does
not expressly convey the contrary, because to a writer of his
cultivation, the supernatural is at the utmost only conceivable as a
rare exception. But the case is altered when I take up an Herodotus, in
whose mode of thought the intervention of higher powers is by no means
unusual and out of rule; and when I am considering a collection of
anecdotes which are the product of Jewish soil, and the object of which
is to represent an individual as a prophet of the highest rank—as a man
in the most intimate connexion with the Deity, to meet with the
supernatural is so completely a thing of course, that the rule of the
rationalists must here be reversed, and we must say: where, in such
narratives, importance is attached to results which, regarded as
natural, would have no importance whatever,—there, supernatural causes
must be expressly excluded, if we are not to presuppose it the opinion
of the narrator that such causes were in action. Moreover, in the
history before us, the extraordinary character of the incident is
sufficiently indicated by the statement, that the leprosy left the
patient immediately on the word of Jesus. Paulus, it is true,
contrives, as we have already observed, to interpret this statement as
implying a gradual, natural healing, on the ground that εὐθέως, the
word by which the Evangelists determine the time of the cure,
signifies, according to the different connexions in which it may occur,
in one case immediately, in another merely soon, and unobstructedly.
Granting this, are we to understand the words εὐθέως ἐξέβαλεν αὐτὸν,
which follow in close connexion in Mark (v. 43), as signifying that
soon and without hindrance Jesus sent the cleansed leper away? Or is
the word to be taken in a different sense in two consecutive verses?
We conclude, then, that in the intention of the evangelical writers the
instantaneous disappearance of the leprosy in consequence of the word
and touch of Jesus, is the fact on which their narratives turn. Now to
represent the possibility of this to one’s self is quite another task
than to imagine the instantaneous release of a man under the grasp of a
fixed idea, or a permanently invigorating impression on a nervous
patient. Leprosy, from the thorough derangement of the animal fluids of
which it is the symptom, is the most obstinate and malignant of
cutaneous diseases; and that a skin corroded by this malady should by a
word and touch instantly become pure and healthy, is, from its
involving the immediate effectuation of what would require a long
course of treatment, so inconceivable, [1261] that every one who is
free from certain prejudices (as the critic ought always to be) must
involuntarily be reminded by it of the realm of fable. And in the
fabulous region of Oriental and more particularly of Jewish legend, the
sudden appearance and disappearance of leprosy presents itself the
first thing. When Jehovah endowed Moses, as a preparation for his
mission into Egypt, with the power of working all kinds of signs,
amongst other tokens of this gift he commanded him to put his hand into
his bosom, and when he drew it out again, it was covered with leprosy;
again he was commanded to put it into his bosom, and on drawing it out
a second time it was once more clean (Exod. iv. 6, 7). Subsequently, on
account of an attempt at rebellion against Moses, his sister Miriam was
suddenly stricken with leprosy, but on the intercession of Moses was
soon healed (Num. xii. 10 ff.). Above all, among the miracles of the
prophet Elisha the cure of a leper plays an important part, and to this
event Jesus himself refers (Luke iv. 27.). The Syrian general, Naaman,
who suffered from leprosy, applied to the Israelitish prophet for his
aid; the latter sent to him the direction to wash seven times in the
river Jordan, and on Naaman’s observance of this prescription the
leprosy actually disappeared but was subsequently transferred by the
prophet to his deceitful servant Gehazi (2 Kings v.). I know not what
we ought to need beyond these Old Testament narratives to account for
the origin of the evangelical anecdotes. What the first Goël was
empowered to do in the fulfilment of Jehovah’s commission, the second
Goël must also be able to perform and the greatest of prophets must not
fall short of the achievements of any one prophet. If then, the cure of
leprosy was without doubt included in the Jewish idea of the Messiah;
the Christians, who believed the Messiah to have really appeared in the
person of Jesus, had a yet more decided inducement to glorify his
history by such traits, taken from the Mosaic and prophetic legend;
with the single difference that, in accordance with the mild spirit of
the New Covenant (Luke ix. 55 f.) they dropped the punitive side of the
old miracles.
Somewhat more plausible is the appeal of the rationalists to the
absence of an express statement, that a miraculous cure of the leprosy
is intended in the narrative of the ten lepers, given by Luke alone
(xvii. 12 ff.). Here neither do the lepers expressly desire to be
cured, their words being only, Have mercy on us; nor does Jesus utter a
command directly referring to such a result, for he merely enjoins them
to show themselves to the priests: and the rationalists avail
themselves of this indirectness in his reply, as a help to their
supposition, that Jesus, after ascertaining the state of the patients,
encouraged them to subject themselves to the examination of the
priests, which resulted in their being pronounced clean, and the
Samaritan returned to thank Jesus for His encouraging advice. [1262]
But mere advice does not call forth so ardent a demonstration of
gratitude as is here described by the words ἔπεσεν ἐπὶ πρόσωπον, he
fell down on his face; still less could Jesus desire that because his
advice had had a favourable issue, all the ten should have returned,
and returned to glorify God—for what? that he had enabled Jesus to give
them such good advice? No: a more real service is here presupposed; and
this the narrative itself implies, both in attributing the return of
the Samaritan to his discovery that he was healed (ἰδὼν ὅτι ἰάθη), and
in making Jesus indicate the reason why thanks were to be expected from
all, by the words: οὐχὶ οἱ δέκα ἐκαθαρίσθησαν; Were there not ten
cleansed? Both these expressions can only by an extremely forced
interpretation be made to imply, that because the lepers saw the
correctness of the judgment of Jesus in pronouncing them clean, one of
them actually returned to thank him, and the others ought to have
returned. But that which is most decisive against the natural
explanation is this sentence: And as they went they were cleansed, ἐν
τῷ ὑπάγειν αὐτοὺς ἐκαθαρίσθησαν. If the narrator intended, according to
the above interpretation, merely to say: the lepers having gone to the
priest, and showed themselves to him, were pronounced clean: he must at
least have said: πορευθέντες ἐκαθαρίσθησαν, having made the journey
they were cleansed, whereas the deliberate choice of the expression ἐν
τῷ ὑπάγειν (while in the act of going), incontestibly shows that a
healing effected during the journey is intended. Thus here also we have
a miraculous cure of leprosy, which is burdened with the same
difficulties as the former anecdote; the origin of which is, however,
as easily explained.
But in this narrative there is a peculiarity which distinguishes it
from the former. Here there is no simple cure, nay, the cure does not
properly form the main object of the narrative: this lies rather in the
different conduct of the cured, and the question of Jesus, were there
not ten cleansed, etc. (v. 17), forms the point of the whole, which
thus closes altogether morally, and seems to have been narrated for the
sake of the instruction conveyed. [1263] That the one who appears as a
model of thankfulness happens to be a Samaritan, cannot pass without
remark, in the narrative of the Evangelist who alone has the parable of
the Good Samaritan. As there two Jews, a priest and a Levite, show
themselves pitiless, while a Samaritan, on the contrary, proves
exemplarily compassionate: so here, nine unthankful Jews stand
contrasted with one thankful Samaritan. May it not be then (in so far
as the sudden cure of these lepers cannot be historical) that we have
here, as well as there, a parable pronounced by Jesus, in which he
intended to represent gratitude, as in the other case compassion, in
the example of a Samaritan? It would then be with the present narrative
as some have maintained it to be with the history of the temptation.
But in relation to this we have both shown, and given the reason, that
Jesus never made himself immediately figure in a parable, and this he
must have done if he had given a narrative of ten lepers once healed by
him. If then we are not inclined to relinquish the idea that something
originally parabolic is the germ of our present narrative, we must
represent the case to ourselves thus: from the legends of cures
performed by Jesus on lepers, on the one hand; and on the other, from
parables in which Jesus (as in that of the compassionate Samaritan)
presented individuals of this hated race as models of various virtues,
the Christian legend wove this narrative, which is therefore partly an
account of a miracle and partly a parable.
§ 95.
CURES OF THE BLIND.
One of the first places among the sufferers cured by Jesus is filled
(also agreeably to the nature of the climate [1264]) by the blind, of
whose cure again we read not only in the general descriptions which are
given by the Evangelists (Matt. xv. 30 f.; Luke vii. 21), and by Jesus
himself (Matt. xi. 5), of his messianic works, but also in some
detailed narratives of particular cases. We have indeed more of these
cures than of the kind last noticed, doubtless because blindness, as a
malady affecting the most delicate and complicated of organs, admitted
a greater diversity of treatment. One of these cures of the blind is
common to all the synoptical writers; the others (with the exception of
the blind and dumb demoniac in Matthew, whom we need not here
reconsider) are respectively peculiar to the first, second, and fourth
Evangelists.
The narrative common to all the three synoptical writers is that of a
cure of blindness wrought by Jesus at Jericho, on his last journey to
Jerusalem (Matt. xx. 29 parall.): but there are important differences
both as to the object of the cure, Matthew having two blind men, the
two other Evangelists only one; and also as to its locality, Luke
making it take place on the entrance of Jesus into Jericho, Matthew and
Mark on his departure out of Jericho. Moreover the touching of the
eyes, by which, according to the first evangelist, Jesus effected the
cure, is not mentioned by the two other narrators. Of these differences
the latter may be explained by the observation, that though Mark and
Luke are silent as to the touching, they do not therefore deny it: the
first, relative to the number cured, presents a heavier difficulty. To
remove this it has been said by those who give the prior authority to
Matthew, that one of the two blind men was possibly more remarkable
than the other, on which account he alone was retained in the first
tradition; but Matthew, as an eye-witness, afterwards supplied the
second blind man. On this supposition Luke and Mark do not contradict
Matthew, for they nowhere deny that another besides their single blind
man was healed; neither does Matthew contradict them, for where there
are two, there is also one. [1265] But when the simple narrator speaks
of one individual in whom something extraordinary has happened, and
even, like Mark, mentions his name, it is plain that he tacitly
contradicts the statement that it happened in two individuals—to
contradict it expressly there was no occasion. Let us turn then to the
other side and, taking the singular number of Mark and Luke as the
original one, conjecture that the informant of Matthew (the latter
being scarcely on this hypothesis an eye-witness) probably mistook the
blind man’s guide for a second blind man. [1266] Hereby a decided
contradiction is admitted, while to account for it an extremely
improbable cause is superfluously invented. The third difference
relates to the place; Matthew and Mark have ἐκπορευομένων ἀπὸ, as they
departed from, Luke, ἐν τῷ ἐγγίζειν εἰς Ἱεριχὼ, as they came nigh to
Jericho. If there be any whom the words themselves fail to convince
that this difference is irreconcilable, let them read the forced
attempts to render these passages consistent with each other, which
have been made by commentators from Grotius down to Paulus.