Hence it was a better expedient which the older harmonists [1267]

adopted, and which has been approved by some modern critics. [1268] In

consideration of the last-named difference, they here distinguished two

events, and held that Jesus cured a blind man first on his entrance

into Jericho (according to Luke), and then again on his departure from

that place (according to Matthew and Luke). Of the other divergency,

relative to the number, these harmonists believed that they had

disencumbered themselves by the supposition that Matthew connected in

one event the two blind men, the one cured on entering and the other on

leaving Jericho, and gave the latter position to the cure of both. But

if so much weight is allowed to the statement of Matthew relative to

the locality of the cure, as to make it, in conjunction with that of

Mark, a reason for supposing two cures, one at each extremity of the

town, I know not why equal credit should not be given to his numerical

statement, and Storr appears to me to proceed more consistently when,

allowing equal weight to both differences, he supposes that Jesus on

his entrance into Jericho, cured one blind man (Luke) and subsequently

on his departure two (Matthew). [1269] The claim of Matthew is thus

fully vindicated, but on the other hand that of Mark is denied. For if

the latter be associated with Matthew, as is here the case, for the

sake of his locality, it is necessary to do violence to his numerical

statement, which taken alone would rather require him to be associated

with Luke; so that to avoid impeaching either of his statements, which

on this system of interpretation is not admissible, his narrative must

be equally detached from that of both the other Evangelists. Thus we

should have three distinct cures of the blind at Jericho: 1st, the cure

of one blind man on the entrance of Jesus, 2nd, that of another on his

departure, and 3rd, the cure of two blind men, also during the

departure; in all, of four blind men. Now to separate the second and

third cases is indeed difficult. For it will not be maintained that

Jesus can have gone out by two different gates at the same time, and it

is nearly as difficult to imagine that having merely set out with the

intention of leaving Jericho, he returned again into the town, and not

until afterwards took his final departure. But, viewing the case more

generally, it is scarcely an admissible supposition, that three

incidents so entirely similar thus fell together in a group. The

accumulation of cures of the blind is enough to surprise us; but the

behaviour of the companions of Jesus is incomprehensible; for after

having seen in the first instance, on entering Jericho, that they had

acted in opposition to the designs of Jesus by rebuking the blind man

for his importunity, since Jesus called the man to him, they

nevertheless repeated this conduct on the second and even on the third

occasion. Storr, it is true, is not disconcerted by this repetition in

at least two incidents of this kind, for he maintains that no one knows

whether those who had enjoined silence on going out of Jericho were not

altogether different persons from those who had done the like on

entering the town: indeed, supposing them to be the same, such a

repetition of conduct which Jesus had implicitly disapproved, however

unbecoming, was not therefore impossible, since even the disciples who

had been present at the first miraculous feeding, yet asked, before the

second, whence bread could be had for such a multitude?—but this is

merely to argue the reality of one impossibility from that of another,

as we shall presently see when we enter on the consideration of the two

miraculous feedings. Further, not only the conduct of the followers of

Jesus, but also almost every feature of the incident must have been

repeated in the most extraordinary manner. In the one case as in the

other, the blind men cry, Have mercy upon us, (or me,) thou son of

David; then (after silence has been enjoined on them by the spectators)

Jesus commands that they should be brought to him: he next asks what

they will that he should do to them; they answer, that we may receive

our sight; he complies with their wish, and they gratefully follow him.

That all this was so exactly repeated thrice, or even twice, is an

improbability amounting to an impossibility; and we must suppose,

according to the hypothesis adopted by Sieffert in such cases, a

legendary assimilation of different facts, or a traditionary variation

of a single occurrence. If, in order to arrive at a decision, it be

asked: what could more easily happen, when once the intervention of the

legend is presupposed, than that one and the same history should be

told first of one, then of several, first of the entrance, then of the

departure? it will not be necessary to discuss the other possibility,

since this is so incomparably more probable that there cannot be even a

momentary hesitation in embracing it as real. But in thus reducing the

number of the facts, we must not with Sieffert stop short at two, for

in that case not only do the difficulties with respect to the

repetition of the same incident remain, but we fall into a want of

logical sequency in admitting one divergency (in the number) as

unessential, for the sake of removing another (in the locality). If it

be further asked, supposing only one incident to be here narrated,

which of the several narratives is the original one? the statements as

to the locality will not aid us in coming to a decision; for Jesus

might just as well meet a blind man on entering as on leaving Jericho.

The difference in the number is more likely to furnish us with a basis

for a decision, and it will be in favour of Mark and Luke, who have

each only one blind man; not, it is true, for the reason alleged by

Schleiermacher, [1270] namely, that Mark, by his mention of the blind

man’s name, evinces a more accurate acquaintance with the

circumstances; for Mark, from his propensity to individualize out of

his own imagination, ought least of all to be trusted with respect to

names which are given by him alone. Our decision is founded on another

circumstance.

It seems probable that Matthew was led to add a second blind man by his

recollection of a previous cure of two blind men narrated by him alone

(ix. 27 ff.). Here, likewise, when Jesus is in the act of

departure,—from the place, namely, where he had raised the ruler’s

daughter,—two blind men follow him (those at Jericho are sitting by the

way side), and in a similar manner cry for mercy of the Son of David,

who here also, as in the other instance, according to Matthew,

immediately cures them by touching their eyes. With these similarities

there are certainly no slight divergencies; nothing is here said of an

injunction to the blind men to be silent, on the part of the companions

of Jesus; and, while at Jericho Jesus immediately calls the blind men

to him, in the earlier case, they come in the first instance to him

when he is again in the house; further, while there he asks them, what

they will have him to do to them? here he asks, if they believe him

able to cure them? Lastly, the prohibition to tell what had happened,

is peculiar to the earlier incident. The two narratives standing in

this relation to each other, an assimilation of them might have taken

place thus: Matthew transferred the two blind men and the touch of

Jesus from the first anecdote to the second; the form of the appeal

from the blind men, from the second to the first.

The two histories, as they are given, present but few data for a

natural explanation. Nevertheless the rationalistic commentators have

endeavoured to frame such an explanation. When Jesus in the earlier

occurrence asked the blind men whether they had confidence in his

power, he wished, say they, to ascertain whether their trust in him

would remain firm during the operation, and whether they would

punctually observe his further prescriptions; [1271] having then

entered the house, in order to be free from interruption, he examined,

for the first time, their disease, and when he found it curable

(according to Venturini [1272] it was caused by the fine dust of that

country), he assured the sufferers that the result should be according

to the measure of their faith. Hereupon Paulus merely says briefly,

that Jesus removed the obstruction to their vision; but he also must

have imagined to himself something similar to what is described in

detail by Venturini, who makes Jesus anoint the eyes of the blind men

with a strong water prepared beforehand, and thus cleanse them from the

irritating dust, so that in a short time their sight returned. But this

natural explanation has not the slightest root in the text; for neither

can the faith (πίστις) required from the patient imply anything else

than, as in all similar cases, trust in the miraculous power of Jesus,

nor can the word ἥψατο, he touched, signify a surgical operation, but

merely that touch which appears in so many of the evangelical curative

miracles, whether as a sign or a conductor of the healing power of

Jesus; of further prescriptions for the completion of the cure there is

absolutely nothing. It is not otherwise with the cure of the blind at

Jericho, where, moreover, the two middle Evangelists do not even

mention the touching of the eyes.

If then, according to the meaning of the narrators, the blind

instantaneously receive their sight as a consequence of the simple word

or touch of Jesus, there are the same difficulties to be encountered

here as in the former case of the lepers. For a disease of the eyes,

however slight, as it is only engendered gradually by the reiterated

action of the disturbing cause, is still less likely to disappear on a

word or a touch; it requires very complicated treatment, partly

surgical, partly medical, and this must be pre-eminently the case with

blindness, supposing it to be of a curable kind. How should we

represent to ourselves the sudden restoration of vision to a blind eye

by a word or a touch? as purely miraculous and magical? That would be

to give up thinking on the subject. As magnetic? There is no precedent

of magnetism having influence over a disease of this nature. Or,

lastly, as psychical? But blindness is something so independent of the

mental life, so entirely corporeal, that the idea of its removal at

all, still less of its sudden removal by means of a mental operation,

is not to be entertained. We must therefore acknowledge that an

historical conception of these narratives is more than merely difficult

to us; and we proceed to inquire whether we cannot show it to be

probable that legends of this kind should arise unhistorically.

We have already quoted the passage in which, according to the first and

third gospels, Jesus in reply to the messengers of the Baptist who had

to ask him whether he were the ἐρχόμενος (he that should come), appeals

to his works. Now he here mentions in the very first place the cure of

the blind, a significant proof that this particular miracle was

expected from the Messiah, his words being taken from Isa. xxxv. 5, a

prophecy interpreted messianically; and in a rabbinical passage above

cited, among the wonders which Jehovah is to perform in the messianic

times, this is enumerated, that he oculos cæcorum aperiet, id quod per

Elisam fecit. [1273] Now Elisha did not cure a positive blindness, but

merely on one occasion opened the eyes of his servant to a perception

of the supersensual world, and on another, removed a blindness which

had been inflicted on his enemies in consequence of his prayer (2 Kings

vi. 17–20). That these deeds of Elisha were conceived, doubtless with

reference to the passage of Isaiah, as a real opening of the eyes of

the blind, is proved by the above rabbinical passage, and hence cures

of the blind were expected from the Messiah. [1274] Now if the

Christian community, proceeding as it did from the bosom of Judaism,

held Jesus to be the messianic personage, it must manifest the tendency

to ascribe to him every messianic predicate, and therefore the one in

question.

The narrative of the cure of a blind man at Bethsaida, and that of the

cure of a man that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, which

are both peculiar to Mark (viii. 22 ff., vii. 32 ff.), and which we

shall therefore consider together, are the especial favourites of all

rationalistic commentators. If, they exclaim, in the other evangelical

narratives of cures, the accessory circumstances by which the facts

might be explained were but preserved as they are here, we could prove

historically that Jesus did not heal by his mere word, and profound

investigators might discover the natural means by which his cures were

effected! [1275] And in fact chiefly on the ground of these narratives,

in connexion with particular features in other parts of the second

gospel, Mark has of late been represented, even by theologians who do

not greatly favour this method of interpretation, as the patron of the

naturalistic system. [1276]

In the two cures before us, it is at once a good augury for the

rationalistic commentators that Jesus takes both the patients apart

from the multitude, for no other purpose, as they believe, than that of

examining their condition medically, and ascertaining whether it were

susceptible of relief. Such an examination is, according to these

commentators, intimated by the Evangelist himself, when he describes

Jesus as putting his fingers into the ears of the deaf man, by which

means he discovered that the deafness was curable, arising probably

from the hardening of secretions in the ear, and hereupon, also with

the finger, he removed the hindrance to hearing. Not only are the

words, he put his fingers into his ears, ἔβαλε τοὺς δακτύλους εἰς τὰ

ὦτα, interpreted as denoting a surgical operation, but the words, he

touched his tongue, ἥψατο τῆς γλώσσης, are supposed to imply that Jesus

cut the ligament of the tongue in the degree necessary to restore the

pliancy which the organ had lost. In like manner, in the case of the

blind man, the words, when he had put his hands upon him, ἐπιθεὶς τὰς

χεῖρας αὐτῷ, are explained as probably meaning that Jesus by pressing

the eyes of the patient removed the crystalline lens which had become

opaque. A further help to this mode of interpretation is found in the

circumstance that both to the tongue of the man who had an impediment

in his speech, and to the eyes of the blind man, Jesus applied spittle.

Saliva has in itself, particularly in the opinion of ancient

physicians, [1277] a salutary effect on the eyes; as, however, it in no

case acts so rapidly as instantaneously to cure blindness and a defect

in the organs of speech, it is conjectured, with respect to both

instances, that Jesus used the saliva to moisten some medicament,

probably a caustic powder; that the blind man only heard the spitting

and saw nothing of the mixture of the medicaments, and that the deaf

man, in accordance with the spirit of the age, gave little heed to the

natural means, or that the legend did not preserve them. In the

narrative of the deaf man the cure is simply stated, but that of the

blind man is yet further distinguished, by its representing the

restoration of his sight circumstantially, as gradual. After Jesus had

touched the eyes of the patient as above mentioned, he asked him if he

saw aught; not at all, observes Paulus, in the manner of a

miracle-worker, who is sure of the result, but precisely in the manner

of a physician, who after performing an operation endeavours to

ascertain if the patient is benefited. The blind man answers that he

sees, but first indistinctly, so that men seem to him like trees. Here

apparently the rationalistic commentator may triumphantly ask the

orthodox one: if divine power for the working of cures stood at the

command of Jesus, why did he not at once cure the blind man perfectly?

If the disease presented an obstacle which he was not able to overcome,

is it not clear from thence that his power was a finite, ordinarily

human power? Jesus once more puts his hands on the eyes of the blind

man, in order to aid the effect of the first operation, and only then

is the cure completed. [1278]

The complacency of the rationalistic commentators in these narratives

of Mark, is liable to be disturbed by the frigid observation, that,

here also, the circumstances which are requisite to render the natural

explanation possible are not given by the Evangelists themselves, but

are interpolated by the said commentators. For in both cures Mark

furnishes the saliva only; the efficacious powder is infused by Paulus

and Venturini: it is they alone who make the introduction of the

fingers into the ears first a medical examination and then an

operation; and it is they alone who, contrary to the signification of

language, explain the words ἐπιτιθέναι τὰς χεῖρας ἐπὶ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς,

to lay the hands upon the eyes, as implying a surgical operation on

those organs. Again, the circumstance that Jesus takes the blind man

aside, is shown by the context (vii. 36, viii. 26) to have reference to

the design of Jesus to keep the miraculous result a secret, not to the

desire to be undisturbed in the application of natural means: so that

all the supports of the rationalistic explanation sink beneath it, and

the orthodox one may confront it anew. This regards the touch and the

spittle either as a condescension towards the sufferers, who were

thereby made more thoroughly sensible to whose power they owed their

cure; or as a conducting medium for the spiritual power of Christ, a

medium with which he might nevertheless have dispensed. [1279] That the

cure was gradual, is on this system accounted for by the supposition,

that Jesus intended by means of the partial cure to animate the faith

of the blind man, and only when he was thus rendered worthy was he

completely cured; [1280] or it is conjectured that, owing to the malady

being deep-seated, a sudden cure would perhaps have been dangerous.

[1281]

But by these attempts to interpret the evangelical narratives,

especially in the last particular, the supernaturalistic theologians,

who bring them forward, betake themselves to the same ground as the

rationalists, for they are equally open to the charge of introducing

into the narratives what is not in the remotest degree intimated by the

text. For where, in the procedure of Jesus towards the blind man, is

there a trace that his design in the first instance was to prove and to

strengthen the faith of the patient? In that case, instead of the

expression, He asked him if he saw aught, which relates only to his

external condition, we must rather have read, as in Matt. ix. 28,

Believe ye that I am able to do this? But what shall we say to the

conjecture that a sudden cure might have been injurious! The curative

act of a worker of miracles is (according to Olshausen’s own opinion)

not to be regarded as the merely negative one of the removal of a

disease, but also as the positive one of an impartation of new and

fresh strength to the organ affected, whence the idea of danger from an

instantaneous cure when wrought by miraculous agency, is not to be

entertained. Thus no motive is to be discovered which could induce

Jesus to put a restraint on the immediate action of his miraculous

power, and it must therefore have been restricted, independently of his

volition, by the force of the deep-seated malady. This, however, is

entirely opposed to the idea of the gospels, which represent the

miraculous power of Jesus as superior to death itself; it cannot

therefore have been the meaning of our Evangelists. If we take into

consideration the peculiar characteristics of Mark as an author, it

will appear that his only aim is to give dramatic effect to the scene.

Every sudden result is difficult to bring before the imagination: he

who wishes to give to another a vivid idea of a rapid movement, first

goes through it slowly, and a quick result is perfectly conceivable

only when the narrator has shown the process in detail. Consequently a

writer whose object it is to assist as far as may be the imagination of

his reader, will wherever it is possible exhibit the propensity to

render the immediate mediate, and when recording a sudden result, still

to bring forward the successive steps that led to it. [1282] So here

Mark, or his informant, supposed that he was contributing greatly to

the dramatic effect, when he inserted between the blindness of the man

and the entire restoration of his sight, the partial cure, or the

seeing men as trees, and every reader will say, from his own feeling,

that this object is fully achieved. But herein, as others also have

remarked, [1283] Mark is so far from manifesting an inclination to the

natural conception of such miracles, that he, on the contrary, not

seldom labours to aggrandize the miracle, as we have partly seen in the

case of the Gadarene, and shall yet have frequent reason to remark. In

a similar manner may also be explained why Mark in these narratives

which are peculiar to him (and elsewhere also, as in vi. 13, where he

observes that the disciples anointed the sick with oil), mentions the

application of external means and manifestations in miraculous cures.

That these means, the saliva particularly, were not in the popular

opinion of that age naturally efficacious causes of the cure, we may be

convinced by the narrative concerning Vespasian quoted above, as also

by passages of Jewish and Roman authors, according to which saliva was

believed to have a magical potency, especially against diseases of the

eye. [1284] Hence Olshausen perfectly reproduces the conception of that

age when he explains the touch, saliva, and the like, to be conductors

of the superior power resident in the worker of miracles. We cannot

indeed make this opinion ours, unless with Olshausen we proceed upon

the supposition of a parallelism between the miraculous power of Jesus

and the agency of animal magnetism: a supposition which, for the

explanation of the miracles of Jesus, especially of the one before us,

is inadequate and therefore superfluous. Hence we put this means merely

to the account of the Evangelist. To him also we may then doubtless

refer the taking aside of the blind man, the exaggerated description of

the astonishment of the people, (ὑπερπερισσῶς ἐξπλήσσοντο ἅπαντες, vii.

37,) and the strict prohibition to tell any man of the cure. This

secrecy gave the affair a mysterious aspect, which, as we may gather

from other passages, was pleasing to Mark. We have another trait

belonging to the mysterious in the narratives of the cure of the deaf

man, where Mark says, And looking up to heaven he sighed (vii. 34).

What cause was there for sighing at that particular moment? Was it the

misery of the human race, [1285] which must have been long known to

Jesus from many melancholy examples? Or shall we evade the difficulty

by explaining the expression as implying nothing further than silent

prayer or audible speech? [1286] Whoever knows Mark will rather

recognise the exaggerating narrator in the circumstance that he

ascribes to Jesus a deep emotion, on an occasion which could not indeed

have excited it, but which, being accompanied by it, had a more

mysterious appearance. But above all, there appears to me to be an air

of mystery in this, that Mark gives the authoritative word with which

Jesus opened the ears of the deaf man in its original Syriac form,

ἐφφαθὰ, as on the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, this

Evangelist alone has the words ταλιθὰ κοῦμι (v. 41). It is indeed said

that these expressions are anything rather than magical forms; [1287]

but that Mark chooses to give these authoritative words in a language

foreign to his readers, to whom he is obliged at the same time to

explain them, nevertheless proves that he must have attributed to this

original form a special significance, which, as it appears from the

context, can only have been a magical one. This inclination to the

mysterious we may now retrospectively find indicated in the application

of those outward means which have no relation to the result; for the

mysterious consists precisely in the presentation of infinite power

through a finite medium, in the combination of the strongest effect

with apparently inefficacious means.

If we have been unable to receive as historical the simple narrative

given by all the synoptical writers of the cure of the blind man at

Jericho, we are still less prepared to award this character to the

mysterious description, given by Mark alone, of the cure of a blind man

at Bethsaida, and we must regard it as a product of the legend, with

more or less addition from the evangelical narrator. The same judgment

must be pronounced on his narrative of the cure of the deaf man who had

an impediment in his speech κωφὸς μογιλάλος; for, together with the

negative reasons already adduced against its historical credibility,

there are not wanting positive causes for its mythical origin, since

the prophecy relating to the messianic times, τότε ὦτα κωφῶν

ἀκούσονται—τρανὴ δὲ ἔσται γλῶσσα μογιλάλων, the ears of the deaf shall

be unstopped, the tongue of the dumb shall sing (Isa. xxxv. 5, 6), was

in existence, and according to Matt. xi. 5, was interpreted literally.

If the narratives of Mark which we have just considered, seem at the

first glance to be favourable to the natural explanation, the narrative

of John, chap. ix., must, one would think, be unfavourable and

destructive to it; for here the question is not concerning a blind man,

whose malady having originated accidentally, might be easier to remove,

but concerning a man born blind. Nevertheless, as the expositors of

this class are sharp-sighted, and do not soon lose courage, they are

able even here to discover much in their favour. In the first place,

they find that the condition of the patient is but vaguely described,

however definite the expression, blind from his birth, τυφλὸν ἐκ

γενετῆς may seem to sound. The statement of time which this expression

includes, Paulus, it is true, refrains from overthrowing (though his

forbearance is unwilling and in fact incomplete): hence he has the more

urgent necessity for attempting to shake the statement as to quality.

Τυφλὸς is not to signify total blindness, and as Jesus tells the man to

go to the pool of Siloam, not to get himself led thither, he must have

still had some glimmering of eye-sight, by means of which he could

himself find the way thither. Still more help do the rationalistic

commentators find for themselves in the mode of cure adopted by Jesus.

He says beforehand (v. 4) he must work the works of him that sent him

while it is day, ἕως ἡμέρα ἐστὶν, for in the night no man can work; a

sufficient proof that he had not the idea of curing the blind man by a

mere word, which he might just as well have uttered in the night—that,

on the contrary, he intended to undertake a medical or surgical

operation, for which certainly daylight was required. Further, the

clay, πηλὸς, which Jesus made with his spittle, and with which he

anointed the eyes of the blind man, is still more favourable to the

natural explanation than the expression πτύσας having spit, in a former

case, and hence it is a fertile source of questions and conjectures.

Whence did John know that Jesus took nothing more than spittle and dust

to make his eye-salve? Was he himself present, or did he understand it

merely from the narrative of the cured blind man? The latter could not:

with his then weak glimmering of sight, correctly see what Jesus took:

perhaps Jesus while he mixed a salve out of other ingredients

accidentally spat upon the ground, and the patient fell into the error

of supposing that the spittle made part of the salve. Still more: while

or before Jesus put something on the eyes, did he not also remove

something by extraction or friction, or otherwise effect a change in

the state of these organs? This would be an essential fact which might

easily be mistaken by the blind man and the spectators for a merely

accessory circumstance. Lastly, the washing in the pool of Siloam which

was prescribed to the patient was perhaps continued many days—was a

protracted cure by means of the bath—and the words ἦλθε βλέπων he came

seeing, do not necessarily imply that he came thus after his first

bath, but that at a convenient time after the completion of his cure,

he came again seeing. [1288]

But, to begin at the beginning, the meaning here given to ἡμέρα and νὺξ

is too shallow even for Venturini, [1289] and especially clashes with

the context (v. 5), which throughout demands an interpretation of the

words with reference to the speedy departure of Jesus. [1290] As to the

conjecture that the clay was made of medicinal ingredients of some kind

or other, it is the more groundless, since it cannot be said here, as

in the former case, that only so much is stated as the patient could

learn by his hearing or by a slight glimmering of light, for, on this

occasion, Jesus undertook the cure, not in private, but in the presence

of his disciples. Concerning the further supposition of previous

surgical operations, by which the anointing and washing, alone

mentioned in the text, are reduced to mere accessories, nothing more is

to be said, than that by this example we may see how completely the

spirit of natural explanation despises all restraints, not scrupling to

pervert the clearest words of the text in support of its arbitrary

combinations. Further, when, from the circumstance that Jesus ordered

the blind man to go to the pool of Siloam, it is inferred that he must

have had a share of light, we may remark, in opposition to this, that

Jesus merely told the patient whither he should go (ὑπάγεν); how he was

to go, whether alone or with a guide, he left to his own discretion.

Lastly, when the closely connected words he went his way, therefore,

and washed and came seeing, ἀπῆλθεν οὖν καὶ ἐνίψατο καὶ ἦλθε βλέπων (v.

7; comp. v. 11) are stretched out into a process of cure lasting

several weeks, it is just as if the words veni, vidi, vici, were

translated thus: After my arrival I reconnoitred for several days,

fought battles at suitable intervals, and finally remained conqueror.

Thus here also the natural explanation will not serve us, and we have

still before us the narrative of a man born blind, miraculously cured

by Jesus. That the doubts already expressed as to the reality of the

cures of the blind, apply with increased force to the case of a man

born blind, is self-evident. And they are aided in this instance by

certain special critical reasons. Not one of three first Evangelists

mentions this cure. Now, if in the formation of the apostolic

tradition, and in the selection which it made from among the miracles

of Jesus, any kind of reason was exercised, it must have taken the

shape of the two following rules: first, to choose the greater miracles

before those apparently less important; and secondly, those with which

edifying discourses were connected, before those which were not thus

distinguished. In the first respect, it is plain that the cure of a man

blind from his birth, as the incomparably more difficult miracle, was

by all means to be chosen rather than that of a man in whom blindness

had supervened, and it is not to be conceived why, if Jesus really gave

sight to a man born blind, nothing of this should have entered into the

evangelical tradition, and from thence into the synoptical gospels. It

is true that with this consideration of the magnitude of the miracles,

a regard to the edifying nature of the discourses connected with them

might not seldom come into collision, so that a less striking, but from

the conversations which it caused, a more instructive miracle, might be

preferred to one more striking, but presenting less of the latter kind

of interest. But the cure of the blind man in John is accompanied by

very remarkable conversations, first, of Jesus with the disciples,

then, of the cured man with the magistrates, and lastly of Jesus with

the cured man, such as there is no trace of in the synoptical cures of

the blind; conversations in which, if not the entire course of the

dialogue, at least some aphoristic pearls (as v. 4, 5, 39), were

admirably suited to the purpose of three first Evangelists. These

writers, therefore, could not have failed to introduce the cure of the

man born blind into their histories, instead of their less remarkable

and less edifying cures of the blind, if the former had made a part of

the evangelical tradition whence they drew. It might possibly have

remained unknown to the general Christian tradition, if it had taken

place at a time and under circumstances which did not favour its

promulgation—if it had been effected in a remote corner of the country,

without further witnesses. But Jesus performed this miracle in

Jerusalem, in the circle of his disciples; it made a great sensation in

the city, and was highly offensive to the magistracy, hence the affair

must have been known if it had really occurred; and as we do not find

it in the common evangelical tradition, the suspicion arises that it

perhaps never did occur.

But it will be said, the writer who attests it is the Apostle John.

This, however, is too improbable, not only on account of the incredible

nature of the contents of the narrative, which could thus hardly have

proceeded from an eyewitness, but also from another reason. The

narrator interprets the name of the pool, Siloam, by the Greek

ἀπεσταλμένος (v. 7); a false explanation, for one who is sent is called

‏שָׁלוּחַ‎, whereas ‏שִּׁלחַ‎ according to the most probable interpretation

signifies a waterfall. [1291] The Evangelist, however, chose the above

interpretation, because he sought for some significant relation between

the name of the pool, and the sending thither of the blind man, and

thus seems to have imagined that the pool had by a special providence

received the name of Sent, because at a future time the Messiah, as a

manifestation of his glory, was to send thither a blind man. [1292]

Now, we grant that an apostle might give a grammatically incorrect

explanation, in so far as he is not held to be inspired, and that even

a native of Palestine might mistake the etymology of Hebrew words, as

the Old Testament itself shows; nevertheless, such a play upon words

looks more like the laboured attempt of a writer remote from the event,

than of an eye-witness. The eye-witness would have had enough of

important matters in the miracle which he had beheld, and the

conversation to which he had listened; only a remote narrator could

fall into the triviality of trying to extort a significant meaning from

the smallest accessory circumstance. Tholuck and Lücke are highly

revolted by this allegory, which, as the latter expresses himself,

approaches to absolute folly, hence they are unwilling to admit that it

proceeded from John, and regard it as a gloss. As, however, all

critical authorities, except one of minor importance, present this

particular, such a position is sheer arbitrariness, and the only choice

left us is either with Olshausen, to edify ourselves by this

interpretation as an apostolic one, [1293] or, with the author of the

Probabilia, to number it among the indications that the fourth gospel

had not an apostolic origin. [1294]

The reasons which might prevent the author of the fourth gospel, or the

tradition whence he drew, from resting contented with the cures of the

blind narrated by the synoptical writers, and thus induce the one or

the other to frame the history before us, are already pointed out by

the foregoing remarks. The observation has been already made by others,

that the fourth Evangelist has fewer miracles than the synoptical

writers, but that this deficiency in number is compensated by a

superiority in magnitude. [1295] Thus while the other Evangelists have

simple paralytics cured by Jesus, the fourth gospel has one who had

been lame thirty-eight years; while, in the former, Jesus resuscitates

persons who had just expired, in the latter, he calls back to life one

who had lain in the grave four days, in whom therefore it might be

presumed that decomposition had begun; and so here, instead of a cure

of simple blindness, we have that of a man born blind,—a heightening of

the miracle altogether suited to the apologetic and dogmatic tendency

of this gospel. In what way the author, or the particular tradition

which he followed, might be led to depict the various details of the

narrative, is easily seen. The act of spitting, πτύειν, was common in

magical cures of the eyes; clay, πηλὸς, was a ready substitute for an

eye-salve, and elsewhere occurs in magical proceedings; [1296] the

command to wash in the pool of Siloam may have been an imitation of

Elisha’s order, that the leper Naaman should bathe seven times in the

river Jordan. The conversations connected with the cure partly proceed

from the tendency of the Gospel of John already remarked by Storr,

namely, to attest and to render as authentic as possible both the cure

of the man, and the fact of his having been born blind, whence the

repeated examination of the cured man, and even of his parents; partly

they turn upon the symbolical meaning of the expressions, blind and

seeing, day and night,—a meaning which it is true is not foreign to the

synoptical writers, but which specifically belongs to the circle of

images in favour with John.

§ 96.

CURES OF PARALYTICS. DID JESUS REGARD DISEASES AS PUNISHMENTS?

An important feature in the history of the cure of the man born blind

has been passed over, because it can only be properly estimated in

connexion with a corresponding one in the synoptical narratives of the

cure of a paralytic (Matt. ix. 1 ff.; Mark ii. 1 ff.; Luke v. 17 ff.),

which we have in the next place to consider. Here Jesus first declares

to the sick man: ἀφέωνταί σοί αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σου, thy sins are forgiven

thee, and then as a proof that he had authority to forgive sins, he

cures him. It is impossible not to perceive in this a reference to the

Jewish opinion, that any evil befalling an individual, and especially

disease, was a punishment of his sins; an opinion which, presented in

its main elements in the Old Testament (Lev. xxvi. 14 ff.; Deut.

xxviii. 15 ff.; 2 Chron. xxi. 15, 18 f.) was expressed in the most

definite manner by the later Jews. [1297] Had we possessed that

synoptical narrative only, we must have believed that Jesus shared the

opinion of his cotemporary fellow-countrymen on this subject, since he

proves his authority to forgive sins (as the cause of disease) by an

example of his power to cure disease (the consequence of sin). But, it

is said, there are other passages where Jesus directly contradicts this

Jewish opinion; whence it follows, that what he then says to the

paralytic was a mere accommodation to the ideas of the sick man,

intended to promote his cure. [1298]

The principal passage commonly adduced in support of this position, is

the introduction to the history of the man born blind, which was last

considered (John ix. 1–3). Here the disciples, seeing on the road the

man whom they knew to have been blind from his birth, put to Jesus the

question, whether his blindness was the consequence of his own sins, or

of those of his parents? The case was a peculiarly difficult one on the

Jewish theory of retribution. With respect to diseases which attach

themselves to a man in his course through life, an observer who has

once taken a certain bias, may easily discover or assume some peculiar

delinquencies on the part of this man as their cause. With respect to

inborn diseases, on the contrary, though the old Hebraic opinion (Exod.

xx. 5; Deut. v. 9; 2 Sam. iii. 29), it is true, presented the

explanation that by these the sins of the fathers were visited on their

posterity: yet as, for human regulations, the Mosaic law itself

ordained that each should suffer for his own sins alone (Deut. xxiv.

16; 2 Kings xiv. 6); and as also, in relation to the penal justice of

the Divine Being, the prophets predicted a similar dispensation (Jer.

xxxi. 30; Ezek. xviii. 19 f.); rabbinical acumen resorted to the

expedient of supposing, that men so afflicted might probably have

sinned in their mother’s womb, [1299] and this was doubtless the notion

which the disciples had in view in their question, v. 2. Jesus says, in

answer, that neither for his own sin nor for that of his parents, did

this man come into the world blind; but in order that by the cure which

he, as the Messiah, would effect in him, he might be an instrument in

manifesting the miraculous power of God. This is generally understood

as if Jesus repudiated the whole opinion, that disease and other evils

were essentially punishments of sin. But the words of Jesus are

expressly limited to the case before him; he simply says, that this

particular misfortune had its foundation, not in the guilt of the

individual, but in higher providential designs. The supposition that

his expressions had a more general sense, and included a repudiation of

the entire Jewish opinion, could only be warranted by other more

decided declarations from him to that effect. As, on the contrary,

according to the above observations, a narrative is found in the

synoptical gospels which, simply interpreted, implies the concurrence

of Jesus in the prevalent opinion, the question arises: which is

easier, to regard the expression of Jesus in the synoptical narratives

as an accommodation, or that in John as having relation solely to the

case immediately before him?—a question which will be decided in favour

of the latter alternative by every one who, on the one hand, knows the

difficulties attending the hypothesis of accommodation as applied to

the expressions of Jesus in the gospels, and on the other, is

clear-sighted enough to perceive, that in the passage in question in

the fourth gospel, there is not the slightest intimation that the

declaration of Jesus had a more general meaning.

It is true that according to correct principles of interpretation, one

Evangelist ought not to be explained immediately by another, and in the

present case it is very possible that while the synoptical writers

ascribe to Jesus the common opinion of his age, the more highly

cultivated author of the fourth gospel may make him reject it: but that

he also confined the rejection of the current opinion on the part of

Jesus to that single case, is proved by the manner in which he

represents Jesus as speaking on another occasion. When, namely, Jesus

says to the man who had been lame thirty-eight years (John v.) and had

just been cured, μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε, ἵνα μὴ χεῖρόν τί σοι γένηται (v. 14),

Sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee; this is equivalent to

his saying to the paralytic whom he was about to cure, ἀφέωνταί σοι αἱ

ἁμαρτίαι σου, thy sins are forgiven thee: in the one case disease is

removed, in the other threatened, as a punishment of sin. But here

again the expositors, to whom it is not agreeable that Jesus should

hold an opinion which they reject, find a means of evading the direct

sense of the words. Jesus, say they, perceived that the particular

disease of this man was a natural consequence of certain excesses, and

warned him from a repetition of these as calculated to bring on a more

dangerous relapse. [1300] But an insight into the natural connexion

between certain excesses and certain diseases as their consequence, is

far more removed from the mode of thinking of the age in which Jesus

lived, than the notion of a positive connexion between sin in general

and disease as its punishment; hence, if we are nevertheless to ascribe

the former sense to the words of Jesus, it must be very distinctly

conveyed in the text. But the fact is that in the whole narrative there

is no intimation of any particular excess on the part of the man; the

words μηκέτι ἁμάρτανε relate only to sin in general, and to supply a

conversation of Jesus with the sick man, in which he is supposed to

have acquainted the former with the connexion between his sufferings

and a particular sin, [1301] is the most arbitrary fiction. What

exposition! for the sake of evading a result which is dogmatically

unwelcome, to extend the one passage (John ix.) to a generality of

meaning not really belonging to it, to elude the other (Matt. ix.) by

the hypothesis of accommodation, and forcibly to affix to a third (John

v.) a modern idea; whereas if the first passage be only permitted to

say no more than it actually says, the direct meaning of the other two

may remain unviolated!

But another passage, and that a synoptical one, is adduced in

vindication of the superiority of Jesus to the popular opinion in

question. This passage is Luke xiii. 1 ff., where Jesus is told of the

Galileans whom Pilate had caused to be slain while they were in the act

of sacrificing, and of others who were killed by the falling of a

tower. From what follows, we must suppose the informants to have

intimated their opinion that these calamities were to be regarded as a

divine visitation for the peculiar wickedness of the parties so

signally destroyed. Jesus replied that they must not suppose those men

to have been especially sinful; they themselves were in no degree

better, and unless they repented would meet with a similar destruction.

Truly it is not clear how in these expressions of Jesus a repudiation

of the popular notion can be found. If Jesus wished to give his voice

in opposition to this, he must either have said: you are equally great

sinners, though you may not perish bodily in the same manner; or: do

you believe that those men perished on account of their sins? No! the

contrary may be seen in you, who, notwithstanding your wickedness, are

not thus smitten with death. On the contrary, the expressions of Jesus

as given by Luke can only have the following sense: that those men have

already met with such calamities is no evidence of their peculiar

wickedness, any more than the fact that you have been hitherto spared

the like, is an evidence of your greater worth, on the contrary,

earlier or later, similar judgments falling on you will attest your

equal guilt:—whereby the supposed law of the connexion between the sin

and misfortune of every individual is confirmed, not overthrown. This

vulgar Hebrew opinion concerning sickness and evil, is indeed in

contradiction with that esoteric view, partly Essene, partly Ebionite,

which we have found in the introduction to the Sermon on the Mount, the

parable of the rich man, and elsewhere, and according to which the

righteous in this generation are the suffering, the poor and the sick;

but both opinions are clearly to be seen in the discourses of Jesus by

an unprejudiced exegesis, and the contradiction, which we find between

them authorizes us neither to put a forced construction on the one

class of expressions, nor to deny them to have really come from Jesus,

since we cannot calculate how he may have solved for himself the

opposition between two ideas of the world, presented to him by

different sides of the Jewish culture of that age.

As regards the above-mentioned cure, the synoptical writers make Jesus

in his reply to the messengers of the Baptist, appeal to the fact that

the lame walked (Matt. xi. 5), and at another time the people wonder

when, among other miracles, they see the maimed to be whole and the

lame to walk (Matt. xv. 31). In the place of the lame, χωλοὶ,

paralytics, παραλυτικοὶ are elsewhere brought forward (Matt. iv. 24),

and especially in the detailed histories of cures relating to this kind

of sufferers (as Matt. ix. 1 ff. parall., viii. 5, parall.),

παραλυτικοὶ, and not χωλοὶ, are named. The sick man at the pool of

Bethesda (John v. 5) belongs probably to the χωλοῖς spoken of in v. 3;

there also ξηροὶ, withered, are mentioned, and in Matt. xii. 9 ff.

parall. we find the cure of a man who had a withered hand. As however

the three last named cures will return to us under different heads, all

that remains here for our examination is the cure of the paralytic

Matt. ix. 1 ff. parall.

As the definitions which the ancient physicians give of paralysis,

though they all show it to have been a species of lameness, yet leave

it undecided whether the lameness was total or partial; [1302] and as,

besides, no strict adherence to medical technicalities is to be

expected from the Evangelists, we must gather what they understand by

paralytics from their own descriptions of such patients. In the present

passage, we read of the paralytic that he was borne on a bed κλίνη, and

that to enable him to arise and carry his bed was an unprecedented

wonder παράδοξον, whence we must conclude that he was lame, at least in

the feet. While here there is no mention of pains, or of an acute

character of disease, in another narrative (Matt. viii. 6) these are

evidently presupposed when the centurion says that his servant is sick

of the palsy, grievously tormented, βέβληται—παραλυτικὸς, δεινως

βασανιζόμενος; so that under paralytics in the gospels we have at one

time to understand a lameness without pain, at another a painful, gouty

disease of the limbs. [1303]

In the description of the scene in which the paralytic (Matt. ix. 1 ff.

parall.) is brought to Jesus, there is a remarkable gradation in the

three accounts. Matthew says simply, that as Jesus, after an excursion

to the opposite shore, returned to Capernaum, there was brought to him

a paralytic, stretched on a bed. Luke describes particularly how Jesus,

surrounded by a great multitude, chiefly Pharisees and scribes, taught

and healed in a certain house, and how the bearers, because on account

of the press they could not reach Jesus, let the sick man down to him

through the roof. If we call to mind the structure of oriental houses,

which had a flat roof, to which an opening led from the upper story;

[1304] and if we add to this the rabbinical manner of speaking, in

which to the via per portum (‏דרך פתחים‎) was opposed the via per

tectum (‏דרך נגיך‎) as a no less ordinary way for reaching the ὑπερῳον

upper story or chamber, [1305] we cannot under the expression καθιέναι

διὰ τῶν κεράμων, to let down through the tiling, understand anything

else than that the bearers—who, either by means of stairs leading

thither directly from the street, or from the roof of a neighbouring

house, gained access to the roof of the house in which Jesus was,—let

down the sick man with his bed, apparently by cords, through the

opening already existing in the roof. Mark, who, while with Matthew he

places the scene at Capernaum, agrees with Luke in the description of

the great crowd and the consequent ascent to the roof, goes yet further

than Luke, not only in determining the number of the bearers to be

four, but also in making them, regardless of the opening already

existing, uncover the roof and let down the sick man through an

aperture newly broken.

If we ask here also in which direction, upwards or downwards, the

climax may most probably have been formed, the narrative of Mark, which

stands at the summit, has so many difficulties that it can scarcely be

regarded as nearest the truth. For not only have opponents asked, how

could the roof be broken open without injury to those beneath? [1306]

but Olshausen himself admits that the disturbance of the roof, covered

with tiles, partakes of the extravagant. [1307] To avoid this, many

expositors suppose that Jesus taught either in the inner court, [1308]

or in the open air in front of the house, [1309] and that the bearers

only broke down a part of the parapet in order to let down the sick man

more conveniently. But both the phrase, διὰ τῶν κεράμων, in Luke, and

the expressions of Mark, render this conception of the thing

impossible, since here neither can στέγῃ mean parapet, nor ἀποστεγάζω

the breaking of the parapet, while ἐξορύττω can only mean the breaking

of a hole. Thus the disturbance of the roof subsists, but this is

further rendered improbable on the ground that it was altogether

superfluous, inasmuch as there was a door in every roof. Hence help has

been sought in the supposition that the bearers indeed used the door

previously there, but because this was too narrow for the bed of the

patient, they widened it by the removal of the surrounding tiles.

[1310] Still, however, there remains the danger to those below, and the

words imply an opening actually made, not merely widened.

But dangerous and superfluous as such a proceeding would be in reality,

it is easy to explain how Mark, wishing further to elaborate the

narrative of Luke, might be led to add such a feature. Luke had said

that the sick man was let down, so that he descended in the midst

before Jesus, ἔμπροσθεν τοῦ Ἰησοῦ. How could the people precisely hit

upon this place, unless Jesus accidentally stood under the door of the

roof, except by breaking open the roof above the spot where they knew

him to be (ἀπεστέγασαν τὴν στέγην ὅπου ἦν)? [1311] This trait Mark the

more gladly seized because it was adapted to place in the strongest

light the zeal which confidence in Jesus infused into the people, and

which was to be daunted by no labour. This last interest seems to be

the key also to Luke’s departure from Matthew. In Matthew, who makes

the bearers bring the paralytic to Jesus in the ordinary way, doubtless

regarding the laborious conveyance of the sick man on his bed as itself

a proof of their faith, it is yet less evident wherein Jesus sees their

faith. If the original form of the history was that in which it appears

in the first gospel, the temptation might easily arise to make the

bearers devise a more conspicuous means of evincing their faith, which,

since the scene was already described as happening in a great crowd,

might appear to be most suitably found in the uncommon way in which

they contrived to bring their sick man to Jesus.

But even the account of Matthew we cannot regard as a true narrative of

a fact. It has indeed been attempted to represent the result as a

natural one, by explaining the state of the man to be a nervous

weakness, the worst symptom of which was the idea of the sick man that

his disease must continue as a punishment of his sin; [1312] reference

has been made to analogous cases of a rapid psychical cure of lameness;

[1313] and a subsequent use of long-continued curative means has been

supposed. [1314] But the first and last expedients are purely

arbitrary; and if in the alleged analogies there may be some truth, yet

it is always incomparably more probable that histories of cures of the

lame and paralytic in accordance with messianic expectation, should be

formed by the legend, than that they should really have happened. In

the passage of Isaiah already quoted (xxxv. 6), it was promised in

relation to the messianic time: then shall the lame man leap as a hart,

τότε ἁλεῖται ὡς ἕλαφος ὁ χωλὸς, and in the same connexion, v. 3, the

prophet addresses to the feeble knees γόνατα παραλελυμένα the

exhortation, Be strong, ἰσχύσατε, which, with the accompanying

particulars, must have been understood literally, of a miracle to be

expected from the Messiah, since Jesus, as we have already mentioned,

among other proofs that he was the ἐρχόμενος adduced this: χωλοὶ

περιπατοῦσι, the lame walk.

§ 97.

INVOLUNTARY CURES.

Occasionally in their general statements concerning the curative power

of Jesus, the synoptical writers remark, that all kinds of sick people

only sought to touch Jesus, or to lay hold on the hem of his garment,

in order to be healed, and that immediately on this slight contact, a

cure actually followed (Matt. xiv. 36; Mark iii. 10, vi. 56; Luke vi.

19). In these cases Jesus operated, not, as we have hitherto always

seen, with a precise aim towards any particular sufferer, but on entire

masses, without taking special notice of each individual; his power of

healing appears not here, as elsewhere, to reside in his will, but in

his body and its coverings; he does not by his own voluntary act

dispense its virtues, but is subject to have them drawn from him

without his consent.

Of this species of cure again a detailed example is preserved to us, in

the history of the woman who had an issue of blood, which all the

synoptical writers give, and interweave in a peculiar manner with the

history of the resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, making Jesus

cure the woman on his way to the ruler’s house (Matt. ix. 20 ff.; Mark

v. 25 ff.; Luke viii. 43 ff.). On comparing the account of the incident

in the several Evangelists, we might in this instance be tempted to

regard that of Luke as the original, because it seems to offer an

explanation of the uniform connexion of the two histories. As, namely,

the duration of the woman’s sufferings is fixed by all the narrators at

twelve years, so Luke, whom Mark follows, gives twelve years also as

the age of the daughter of Jairus; a numerical similarity which might

be a sufficient inducement to associate the two histories in the

evangelical tradition. But this reason is far too isolated by itself to

warrant a decision, which can only proceed from a thorough comparison

of the three narratives in their various details. Matthew describes the

woman simply as γυνὴ αἱμοῤῥοοῦσα δώδεκα ἔτη, which signifies that she

had for twelve years been subject to an important loss of blood,

probably in the form of excessive menstruation. Luke, the reputed

physician, shows himself here in no degree favourable to his

professional brethren, for he adds that the woman had spent all her

living on physicians without obtaining any help from them. Mark, yet

more unfavourable, says that she had suffered many things of many

physicians, and was nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. Those who

surround Jesus when the woman approaches him are, according to Matthew,

his disciples, according to Mark and Luke, a thronging multitude. After

all the narrators have described how the woman, as timid as she was

believing, came behind Jesus and touched the hem of his garment, Mark

and Luke state that she was immediately healed, but that Jesus, being

conscious of the egress of curative power, asked who touched me? The

disciples, astonished, ask in return, how he can distinguish a single

touch amidst so general a thronging and pressure of the crowd.

According to Luke, he persists in his assertion; according to Mark, he

looks inquiringly around him in order to discover the party who had

touched him: then, according to both these Evangelists, the woman

approaches trembling, falls at His feet and confesses all, whereupon

Jesus gives her the tranquillizing assurance that her faith has made

her whole. Matthew has not this complex train of circumstances; he

merely states that after the touch Jesus looked round, discovered the

woman, and announced to her that her faith had wrought her cure.

This difference is an important one, and we need not greatly wonder

that it induced Storr to suppose two separate cures of women afflicted

in the same manner. [1315] To this expedient he was yet more decidedly

determined by the still wider divergencies in the narrative of the

resuscitation of the daughter of Jairus, a narrative which is

interlaced with the one before us; it is, however, this very

interlacement which renders it totally impossible to imagine that

Jesus, twice, on both occasions when he was on his way to restore to

life the daughter of a Jewish ruler (ἄρχων), cured a woman who had had

an issue of blood twelve years. While, on this consideration, criticism

has long ago decided for the singleness of the fact on which the

narratives are founded, it has at the same time given the preference to

those of Mark and Luke as the most vivid and circumstantial. [1316]

But, in the first place, if it be admitted that Mark’s addition ἀλλὰ

μᾶλλον εἰς τὸ χεῖρον ἐλθοῦσα, but rather grew worse, is merely a

finishing touch from his own imagination to the expression οὐκ ἴσχυσεν

ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς θεραπευθῆναι neither could be healed of any, which he found

in Luke; there seems to be the same reason for regarding this

particular of Luke’s as an inference of his own by which he has

amplified the simple statement αἱμοῤῥοοῦσα δώδεκα ἔτη, which Matthew

gives without any addition. If the woman had been ill twelve years, she

must, it was thought, during that period have frequently had recourse

to physicians: and as, when contrasted with the inefficiency of the

physicians, the miraculous power of Jesus, which instantaneously

wrought a cure, appeared in all the more brilliant a light; so in the

legend, or in the imagination of the narrators, there grew up these

additions. What if the same observation applied to the other

differences? That the woman according to Matthew also, only touched

Jesus from behind, implied the effort and the hope to remain concealed;

that Jesus immediately looked round after her, implied that he was

conscious of her touch. This hope on the part of the woman became the

more accountable, and this consciousness on the part of Jesus the more

marvellous, the greater the crowd that surrounded Jesus and pressed

upon him; hence the companionship of the disciples in Matthew is by the

other two Evangelists changed into a thronging of the multitude

(βλέπεις τὸν ὄχλον συνθλίβοντά σε). Again, Matthew mentions that Jesus

looked round after the woman touched him; on this circumstance the

supposition might be founded that he had perceived her touch in a

peculiar manner; hence the scene was further worked up, and we are

shown how Jesus, though pressed on all sides, had yet a special

consciousness of that particular touch by the healing power which it

had drawn from him; while the simple feature ἐπιστραφεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν

αὐτὴν, he turned him about, and when he saw her, in Matthew, is

transformed into an inquiry and a searching glance around upon the

crowd to discover the woman, who then is represented as coming forward,

trembling, to make her confession. Lastly, on a comparison of Matt xiv.

36, the point of this narrative, even as given in the first gospel,

appears to lie in the fact that simply to touch the clothes of Jesus

had in itself a healing efficacy. Accordingly, in the propagation of

this history, there was a continual effort to make the result follow

immediately on the touch, and to represent Jesus as remaining, even

after the cure, for some time uncertain with respect to the individual

who had touched him, a circumstance which is in contradiction with that

superior knowledge elsewhere attributed to Jesus. Thus, under every

aspect, the narrative in the first gospel presents itself as the

earlier and more simple, that of the second and third as a later and

more embellished formation of the legend.

As regards the common substance of the narratives, it has in recent

times been a difficulty to all theologians, whether orthodox or

rationalistic, that the curative power of Jesus should have been

exhibited apart from his volition. Paulus and Olshausen agree in the

opinion, [1317] that the agency of Jesus is thus reduced too completely

into the domain of physical nature; that Jesus would then be like a

magnetiser who in operating on a nervous patient is conscious of a

diminution of strength, or like a charged electrical battery, which a

mere touch will discharge. Such an idea of Christ, thinks Olshausen, is

repugnant to the Christian consciousness, which determines the fulness

of power resident in Jesus to have been entirely under the governance

of his will; and this will to have been guided by a knowledge of the

moral condition of the persons to be healed. It is therefore supposed

that Jesus fully recognized the woman even without seeing her, and

considering that she might be spiritually won over to him by this

bodily succour, he consciously communicated to her an influx of his

curative power; but in order to put an end to her false shame and

constrain her to a confession, he behaved as if he knew not who had

touched him. But the Christian consciousness, in cases of this kind,

means nothing else than the advanced religious culture of our age,

which cannot appropriate the antiquated ideas of the Bible. Now this

consciousness must be neutral where we are concerned, not with the

dogmatical appropriation, but purely with the exegetical discovery of

the biblical ideas. The interference of this alleged Christian

consciousness is the secret of the majority of exegetical errors, and

in the present instance it has led the above named commentators astray

from the evident sense of the text. For the question of Jesus in both

the more detailed narratives τίς ὁ ἁψάμενός μου; who touched me?

repeated as it is in Luke, and strengthened as it is in Mark by a

searching glance around, has the appearance of being meant thoroughly

in earnest; and indeed it is the object of these two Evangelists to

place the miraculous nature of the curative power of Jesus in a

particularly clear light by showing that the mere touching of his

clothes accompanied by faith, no previous knowledge on his part of the

person who touched, nor so much as a word from him, being requisite,

was sufficient to obtain a cure. Nay, even originally, in the more

concise account of Matthew, the expressions προσελθοῦσα ὄπισθεν ἥφατο

having come behind him, she touched, and ἐπιστραθεὶς καὶ ἰδὼν αὐτὴν he

turned him about, and when he saw her, clearly imply that Jesus knew

the woman only after she had touched him. If then, it is not to be

proved that Jesus had a knowledge of the woman previous to her cure and

a special will to heal her; nothing remains for those who will not

admit an involuntary exhibition of curative power in Jesus, but to

suppose in him a constant general will to cure, with which it was only

necessary that faith on the part of the diseased person should concur,

in order to produce an actual cure. But that, notwithstanding the

absence of a special direction of the will to the cure of this woman on

the part of Jesus, she was restored to health, simply by her faith,

without even touching his clothes, is assuredly not the idea of the

Evangelists. On the contrary, it is their intention to substitute for

an individual act of the will on the part of Jesus, the touch on the

part of the sick person; this it is which, instead of the former,

brings into action the latent power of Jesus: so that the materialistic

character of the representation is not in this way to be avoided.

A step further was necessary to the rationalistic interpretation, which

not only with modern supranaturalism regards as incredible the

unconscious efflux of curative power from Jesus, but also denies in

general any efflux of such power, and yet wishes to preserve

unattainted the historical veracity of the Evangelists. According to

this system, Jesus was led to ask who touched him, solely because he

felt himself held back in his progress; the assertion that

consciousness of a departure of power, δύναμις ἐξελθοῦσα, was the cause

of his question, is a mere inference of the two narrators, of whom the

one, Mark, actually gives it as his own observation; and it is only

Luke who incorporates it with the question of Jesus. The cure of the

woman was effected by means of her exalted confidence, in consequence

of which when she touched the hem of Jesus she was seized with a

violent shuddering in her whole nervous system, which probably caused a

sudden contraction of the relaxed vessels; at the first moment she

could only believe, not certainly know that she was cured, and only by

degrees, probably after the use of means recommended to her by Jesus,

did the malady entirely cease. [1318] But who can represent to himself

the timid touch of a sick woman whose design was to remain concealed,

and whose faith rendered her certain of obtaining a cure by the

slightest touch, as a grasp which arrested the progress of Jesus,

pressed upon as he was, according to Mark and Luke, by the crowd?

Further, what a vast conception of the power of confidence is demanded

by the opinion, that it healed a disease of twelve years’ duration

without the concurrence of any real force on the part of Jesus! Lastly,

if the Evangelists are supposed to have put into the mouth of Jesus an

inference of their own (that healing efficacy had gone out of him)—if

they are supposed to have described a gradual cure as an instantaneous

one; then, with the renunciation of these particulars all warrant for

the historical reality of the entire narrative falls to the ground, and

at the same time all necessity for troubling ourselves with the natural

interpretation.

In fact, if we only examine the narrative before us somewhat more

closely, and compare it with kindred anecdotes, we cannot remain in

doubt as to its proper character. As here and in some other passages it

is narrated of Jesus, that the sick were cured by the bare touch of his

clothes: so in the Acts we are told that the handkerchiefs σουδάρια and

aprons σιμικίνθια of Paul cured all kinds of sick persons to whom they

were applied (xix. 11 f.), and that the very shadow of Peter was

believed to have the same efficacy (v. 15); while the apocryphal

gospels represent a mass of cures to have been wrought by means of the

swaddling bands of the infant Jesus, and the water in which he was

washed. [1319] In reading these last histories, every one knows that he

is in the realm of fiction and legend; but wherein are the cures

wrought by the pocket-handkerchiefs of Paul to be distinguished from

those wrought by the swaddling bands of Jesus, unless it be that the

latter proceeded from a child, the former from a man? It is certain

that if the story relative to Paul were not found in a canonical book,

every one would deem it fabulous, and yet the credibility of the

narratives should not be concluded from the assumed origin of the book

which contains them, but on the contrary, our judgment of the book must

be founded on the nature of its particular narratives. But again,

between these cures by the pocket-handkerchiefs and those by the touch

of the hem of the garment, there is no essential distinction. In both

cases we have the contact of objects which are in a merely external

connexion with the worker of the miracle; with the single difference,

that this connexion is with regard to the pocket-handkerchiefs an

interrupted one, with regard to the clothes a continuous one; in both

cases again, results which, even according to the orthodox view, are

only derived from the spiritual nature of the men in question, and are

to be regarded as acts of their will in virtue of its union with the

divine, are reduced to physical effects and effluxes. The subject thus

descends from the religious and theological sphere to the natural and

physical, because a man with a power of healing resident in his body,

and floating as an atmosphere around him, would belong to the objects

of natural science, and not of religion. But natural science is not

able to accredit such a healing power by sure analogies or clear

definitions; hence these cures, being driven from the objective to the

subjective region, must receive their explanation from psychology. Now

psychology, taking into account the power of imagination and of faith,

will certainly allow the possibility that without a real curative power

in the reputed miracle-worker, solely by the strong confidence of the

diseased person that he possesses this power, bodily maladies which

have a close connexion with the nervous system may be cured: but when

we seek for historical vouchers for this possibility, criticism, which

must here be called to aid, will soon show that a far greater number of

such cures has been invented by the faith of others, than has been

performed by the parties alleged to be concerned. Thus it is in itself

by no means impossible, that through strong faith in the healing power

residing even in the clothes and handkerchiefs of Jesus and the

apostles, many sick persons on touching these articles were conscious

of real benefit; but it is at least equally probable, that only after

the death of these men, when their fame in the church was ever on the

increase, anecdotes of this kind were believingly narrated, and it

depends on the nature of the accounts, for which of the two

alternatives we are to decide. In the general statement in the Gospels

and the Acts, which speak of whole masses having been cured in the

above way, this accumulation at any rate is traditional. As to the

detailed history which we have been examining, in its representation

that the woman had suffered twelve years from a very obstinate disease,

and one the least susceptible of merely psychical influence, and that

the cure was performed by power consciously emitted from Jesus, instead

of by the imagination of the patient: so large a portion betrays itself

to be mythical that we can no longer discern any historical elements,

and must regard the whole as legendary.

It is not difficult to see what might give rise to this branch of the

evangelical miraculous legend, in distinction from others. The faith of

the popular mind, dependent on the senses, and incapable of

apprehending the divine through the medium of thought alone, strives

perpetually to draw it down into material existence. Hence, according

to a later opinion, the saint must continue to work miracles when his

bones are distributed as relics, and the body of Christ must be present

in the transubstantiated host; hence also, according to an idea

developed much earlier, the curative power of the men celebrated in the

New Testament must be attached to their body and its coverings. The

less the church retained of the words of Jesus, the more tenaciously

she clung to the efficacy of his mantle, and the further she was

removed from the free spiritual energy of the apostle Paul, the more

consolatory was the idea of carrying home his curative energy in a

pocket-handkerchief.

§ 98.

CURES AT A DISTANCE.

The cures performed at a distance are, properly speaking, the opposite

of these involuntary cures. The latter are effected by mere corporeal

contact without a special act of the will; the former solely by the act

of the will without corporeal contact, or even local proximity. But

there immediately arises this objection: if the curative power of Jesus

was so material that it dispensed itself involuntarily at a mere touch,

it cannot have been so spiritual that the simple will could convey it

over considerable distances; or conversely, if it was so spiritual as

to act apart from bodily presence, it cannot have been so material as

to dispense itself independently of the will. Since we have pronounced

the purely physical mode of influence in Jesus to be improbable, free

space is left to us for the purely spiritual, and our decision on the

latter will therefore depend entirely on the examination of the

narratives and the facts themselves.

As proofs that the curative power of Jesus acted thus at a distance,

Matthew and Luke narrate to us the cure of the sick servant of a

centurion at Capernaum, John that of the son of a nobleman βασιλικὸς,

at the same place (Matt. viii. 5 ff.; Luke vii. 1 ff.; John iv. 46

ff.); and again Matthew (xv. 22 ff.), and Mark (vii. 25 ff.), that of

the daughter of the Canaanitish woman. Of these examples, as in the

summary narration of the last there is nothing peculiar, we have here

to consider the two first only. The common opinion is, that Matthew and

Luke do indeed narrate the same fact, but John one distinct from this,

since his narrative differs from that of the two others in the

following particulars: firstly, the place from which Jesus cures, is in

the synoptical gospels the place where the sick man resides,

Capernaum,—in John a different one, namely, Cana; secondly, the time at

which the synoptists lay the incident, namely, when Jesus is in the act

of returning home after his Sermon on the Mount, is different from that

assigned to it in the fourth gospel, which is immediately after the

return of Jesus from the first passover and his ministry in Samaria;

thirdly, the sick person is according to the former the slave,

according to the latter the son of the suppliant; but the most

important divergencies are those which relate, fourthly, to the

suppliant himself, for in the first and third gospels he is a military

person (an ἑκατόνταρχος), in the fourth a person in office at court

(βασιλικὸς), according to the former (Matt. v. 10 ff.), a Gentile,

according to the latter without doubt a Jew; above all, the synoptists

make Jesus eulogize him as a pattern of the most fervent, humble faith,

because, in the conviction that Jesus could cure at a distance, he

prevented him from going to his house; whereas in John, on the

contrary, he is blamed for his weak faith which required signs and

wonders, because he thought the presence of Jesus in his house

necessary for the purpose of the cure. [1320]

These divergencies are certainly important enough to be a reason, with

those who regard them from a certain point of view, for maintaining the

distinction of the fact lying at the foundation of the synoptical

narratives from that reported by John: only this accuracy of

discrimination must be carried throughout, and the diversities between

the two synoptical narratives themselves must not be overlooked. First,

even in the designation of the person of the patient they are not

perfectly in unison; Luke calls him δοῦλος ἔντιμος, a servant who was

dear to the centurion; in Matthew, the latter calls him ὁ παῖς μοῦ,

which may equally mean either a son or a servant, and as the centurion

when speaking (v. 9) of his servant, uses the word δοῦλος, while the

cured individual is again (v. 13) spoken of as ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ, it seems

most probable that the former sense was intended. With respect to his

disease, the man is described by Matthew as παραλυτικὸς δεινῶς

βασανιζόμενος a paralytic grievously tormented; Luke is not only silent

as to this species of disease, but he is thought by many to presuppose

a different one, since after the indefinite expression κακῶς ἔχων,

being ill, he adds, ἤμελλε τελευτᾶν, was ready to die, and paralysis is

not generally a rapidly fatal malady. [1321] But the most important

difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, that

all which according to Matthew the centurion does in his own person, is

in Luke done by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the

entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the

Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from

entering his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions

some friends to act in his stead. To reconcile this difference, it is

usual to refer to the rule: quod quis per alium facit, etc. [1322] If

then it be said, and indeed no other conception of the matter is

possible to expositors who make such an appeal,—Matthew well knew that

between the centurion and Jesus everything was transacted by means of

deputies, but for the sake of brevity, he employed the figure of speech

above alluded to, and represented him as himself accosting Jesus: Storr

is perfectly right in his opposing remark, that scarcely any historian

would so perseveringly carry that metonymy through an entire narrative,

especially in a case where, on the one hand, the figure of speech is by

no means so obvious as when, for example, that is ascribed to a general

which is done by his soldiers; and where, on the other hand, precisely

this point, whether the person acted for himself or through others, is

of some consequence to a full estimate of his character. [1323] With

laudable consistency, therefore, Storr, as he believed it necessary to

refer the narrative of the fourth gospel to a separate fact from that

of the first and third, on account of the important differences; so, on

account of the divergencies which he found between the two last,

pronounces these also to be narratives of two separate events. If any

one wonder that at three different times so entirely similar a cure

should have happened at the same place (for according to John also, the

patient lay and was cured at Capernaum), Storr on his side wonders how

it can be regarded as in the least improbable that in Capernaum at two

different periods two centurions should have had each a sick servant,

and that again at another time a nobleman should have had a sick son at

the same place; that the second centurion (Luke) should have heard the

history of the first, have applied in a similar manner to Jesus, and

sought to surpass his example of humility, as the first centurion

(Matthew), to whom the earlier history of the nobleman (John) was

known, wished to surpass the weak faith of the latter; and lastly, that

Jesus cured all the three patients in the same manner at a distance.

But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to Jesus

to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating

on the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus

pronounced the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so

singular in its kind that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded

as impossible, and even the supposition that it occurred twice only,

has difficulties; hence it is our task to ascertain whether the three

narratives may not be traced to a single root.

Now the narrative of the fourth Evangelist which is most generally held

to be distinct, has not only an affinity with the synoptical narratives

in the outline already given; but in many remarkable details either one

or the other of the synoptists agrees more closely with John than with

his fellow synoptist. Thus, while in designating the patient as παῖς,

Matthew may be held to accord with the υἱὸς of John, at least as

probably as with the δοῦλος of Luke; Matthew and John decidedly agree

in this, that according to both the functionary at Capernaum applies in

his own person to Jesus, and not as in Luke by deputies. On the other

hand, the account of John agrees with that of Luke in its description

of the state of the patient; in neither is there any mention of the

paralysis of which Matthew speaks, but the patient is described as near

death, in Luke by the words ἤμελλε τελευτᾷν, in John by ἤμελλεν

ἀποθνήσκειν, in addition to which it is incidentally implied in the

latter, v. 52, that the disease was accompanied by a fever, πυρετὸς. In

the account of the manner in which Jesus effected the cure of the

patient, and in which his cure was made known, John stands again on the

side of Matthew in opposition to Luke. While namely, the latter has not

an express assurance on the part of Jesus that the servant was healed,

the two former make him say to the officer, in very similar terms, the

one, ὕπαγε, καὶ ὡς ἐπίστευσας γενηθήτω σοι, Go thy way, and as thou

hast believed so shall it be done unto thee, the other, πορεύου, ὁ υἱὸς

σου ζῇ, Go thy way, thy son liveth; and the conclusion of Matthew also,

καὶ ἰάθη ὁ παῖς αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ ὥρᾳ ἐκείνῃ, has at least in its form more

resemblance to the statement of John, that by subsequent inquiry the

father ascertained it to be ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ὥρᾳ, at the same hour in which

Jesus had spoken the word that his son had begun to amend, than to the

statement of Luke, that the messengers when they returned found the

sick man restored to health. In another point of this conclusion,

however, the agreement with John is transferred from Matthew again to

Luke. In both Luke and John, namely, a kind of embassy is spoken of,

which towards the close of the narrative comes out of the house of the

officer; in the former it consists of the centurion’s friends, whose

errand it is to dissuade Jesus from giving himself unnecessary trouble;

in the latter, of servants who rejoicingly meet their master and bring

him the news of his son’s recovery. Unquestionably where three

narratives are so thoroughly entwined with each other as these, we

ought not merely to pronounce two of them identical and allow one to

stand for a distinct fact, but must rather either distinguish all, or

blend all into one. The latter course was adopted by Semler, after

older examples, [1324] and Tholuck has at least declared it possible.

But with such expositors the next object is so to explain the

divergencies of the three narratives, that no one of the Evangelists

may seem to have said anything false. With respect to the rank of the

applicant, they make the βασιλικὸς in John a military officer, for whom

the ἑκατόνταρχος of the two others would only be a more specific

designation; as regards the main point, however, namely, the conduct of

the applicant, it is thought that the different narrators may have

represented the event in different periods of its progress; that is,

John may have given the earlier circumstance, that Jesus complained of

the originally weak faith of the suppliant, the synoptists only the

later, that he praised its rapid growth. We have already shown how it

has been supposed possible, in a yet easier manner, to adjust the chief

difference between the two synoptical accounts relative to the mediate

or immediate entreaty. But this effort to explain the contradictions

between the three narratives in a favourable manner is altogether vain.

There still subsist these difficulties: the synoptists thought of the

applicant as a centurion, the fourth Evangelist as a courtier; the

former as strong, the latter as weak in faith; John and Matthew

imagined that he applied in his own person to Jesus; Luke, that out of

modesty he sent deputies. [1325]

Which then represents the fact in the right way, which in the wrong? If

we take first the two synoptists by themselves, expositors with one

voice declare that Luke gives the more correct account. First of all,

it is thought improbable that the patient should have been, as Matthew

says, a paralytic, since in the case of a disease so seldom fatal the

modest centurion would scarcely have met Jesus to implore his aid

immediately on his entrance into the city: [1326] as if a very painful

disease such as is described by Matthew did not render desirable the

quickest help, and as if there were any want of modesty in asking Jesus

before he reached home to utter a healing word. Rather, the contrary

relation between Matthew and Luke seems probable from the observation,

that the miracle, and consequently also the disease of the person cured

miraculously, is never diminished in tradition but always exaggerated;

hence the tormented paralytic would more probably be heightened into

one ready to die, μέλλων τελευτᾲν, than the latter reduced to a mere

sufferer. But especially the double message in Luke is, according to

Schleiermacher, a feature very unlikely to have been invented. How if,

on the contrary, it very plainly manifested itself to be an invention?

While in Matthew the centurion, on the offer of Jesus to accompany him,

seeks to prevent him by the objection: Lord, I am not worthy that thou

shouldest come under my roof, in Luke he adds by the mouth of his

messenger, wherefore neither thought I myself worthy to come unto thee,

by which we plainly discover the conclusion on which the second embassy

was founded. If the man declared himself unworthy that Jesus should

come to him, he cannot, it was thought, have held himself worthy to

come to Jesus; an exaggeration of his humility by which the narrative

of Luke again betrays its secondary character. The first embassy seems

to have originated in the desire to introduce a previous recommendation

of the centurion as a motive for the promptitude with which Jesus

offered to enter the house of a Gentile. The Jewish elders, after

having informed Jesus of the case of disease, add that he was worthy

for whom he should do this, for he loveth our nation and has built us a

synagogue: a recommendation the tenor of which is not unlike what Luke

(Acts x. 22) makes the messengers of Cornelius say to Peter to induce

him to return with them, namely, that the centurion was a just man, and

one that feareth God, and in good report among all the nation of the

Jews. That the double embassy cannot have been original, appears the

most clearly from the fact, that by it the narrative of Luke loses all

coherence. In Matthew all hangs well together: the centurion first

describes to Jesus the state of the sufferer, and either leaves it to

Jesus to decide what he shall next do, or before he prefers his request

Jesus anticipates him by the offer to go to his house, which the

centurion declines in the manner stated. Compare with this his strange

conduct in Luke: he first sends to Jesus by the Jewish elders the

request that he will come and heal his servant, but when Jesus is

actually coming, repents that he has occasioned him to do so, and asks

only for a miraculous word from Jesus. The supposition that the first

request proceeded solely from the elders and not from the centurion

[1327] runs counter to the express words of the Evangelist, who by the

expressions: ἀπέστειλε—πρεσβυτέρους—ἐρωτῶν αὐτὸν, he sent—the

elders—beseeching him, represents the prayer as coming from the

centurion himself; and that the latter by the word ἐλθὼν meant only

that Jesus should come into the neighbourhood of his house, but when he

saw that Jesus intended actually to enter his house, declined this as

too great a favour,—is too absurd a demeanour to attribute to a man who

otherwise appears sensible, and of whom for this reason so capricious a

change of mind as is implied in the text of Luke, was still less to be

expected. The whole difficulty would have been avoided, if Luke had put

into the mouth of the first messengers, as Matthew in that of the

centurion, only the entreaty, direct or indirect, for a cure in

general; and then after Jesus had offered to go to the house where the

patient lay, had attributed to the same messengers the modest rejection

of this offer. But on the one hand, he thought it requisite to furnish

a motive for the resolution of Jesus to go into the Gentile’s house;

and on the other, tradition presented him with a deprecation of this

personal trouble on the part of Jesus: he was unable to attribute the

prayer and the deprecation to the same persons, and he was therefore

obliged to contrive a second embassy. Hereby, however, the

contradiction was only apparently avoided, since both embassies are

sent by the centurion. Perhaps also the centurion who was unwilling

that Jesus should take the trouble to enter his house, reminded Luke of

the messenger who warned Jairus not to trouble the master to enter his

house, likewise after an entreaty that he would come into the house;

and as the messenger says to Jairus, according to him and Mark, μὴ

σκύλλε τὸν διδάσκαλον, trouble not the master (Luke viii. 49), so here

he puts into the mouth of the second envoys, the words, κύριε μὴ

σκύλλον, Lord, trouble not thyself, although such an order has a reason

only in the case of Jairus, in whose house the state of things had been

changed since the first summons by the death of his daughter, and none

at all in that of the centurion whose servant still remained in the

same state.

Modern expositors are deterred from the identification of all the three

narratives, by the fear that it may present John in the light of a

narrator who has not apprehended the scene with sufficient accuracy,

and has even mistaken its main drift. [1328] Were they nevertheless to

venture on a union, they would as far as possible vindicate to the

fourth gospel the most original account of the facts; a position of

which we shall forthwith test the security, by an examination of the

intrinsic character of the narratives. That the suppliant is according

to the fourth Evangelist a βασιλικὸς, while according to the two others

he is an ἑκατόνταρχος, is an indifferent particular from which we can

draw no conclusion on either side; and it may appear to be the same

with the divergency as to the relation of the diseased person to the

one who entreats his cure. If, however, it be asked with reference to

the last point, from which of the three designations the other two

could most easily have arisen? it can scarcely be supposed that the

υἱὸς of John became in a descending line, first the doubtful term παῖς,

and then δοῦλος; and even the reverse ascending order is here less

probable than the intermediate alternative, that out of the ambiguous

παῖς (= ‏כַעַר‎) there branched off in one direction the sense of

servant, as in Luke; in the other, of son, as in John. We have already

remarked, that the description of the patient’s state in John, as well

as in Luke, is an enhancement on that in Matthew, and consequently of

later origin. As regards the difference in the locality, from the point

of view now generally taken in the comparative criticism of the

gospels, the decision would doubtless be, that in the tradition from

which the synoptical writers drew, the place from which Jesus performed

the miracles was confounded with that in which the sick person lay, the

less noted Cana being absorbed in the celebrated Capernaum; whereas

John, being an eye-witness, retained the more correct details. But the

relation between the Evangelists appears to stand thus only when John

is assumed to have been an eye-witness; if the critic seeks, as he is

bound to do, to base his decision solely on the intrinsic character of

the narratives, he will arrive at a totally different result. Here is a

narrative of a cure performed at a distance, in which the miracle

appears the greater, the wider the distance between the curer and the

cured. Would oral tradition, in propagating this narrative, have the

tendency to diminish that distance, and consequently the miracle, so

that in the account of John, who makes Jesus perform the cure at a

place from which the nobleman does not reach his son until the

following day, we should have the original narrative, in that of the

synoptists on the contrary, who represent Jesus as being in the same

town with the sick servant, the one modified by tradition? Only the

converse of this supposition can be held accordant with the nature of

the legend, and here again the narrative of John manifests itself to be

a traditional one. Again, the preciseness with which the hour of the

patient’s recovery is ascertained in the fourth gospel has a highly

fictitious appearance. The simple expression of Matthew, usually found

at the conclusion of histories of cures: he was healed in the self-same

hour, is dilated into an inquiry on the part of the father as to the

hour in which the son began to amend, an answer from the servants that

yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him, and lastly the

result, that in the very hour in which Jesus had said, Thy son liveth,

the recovery took place. This is a solicitous accuracy, a tediousness

of calculation, that seems to bespeak the anxiety of the narrator to

establish the miracle, rather than to show the real course of the

event. In representing the βασιλικὸς as conversing personally with

Jesus, the fourth gospel has preserved the original simplicity of the

narrative better than the third; though as has been remarked, the

servants who come to meet their master in the former seem to be

representatives of Luke’s second embassy. But in the main point of

difference, relative to the character of the applicant, it might be

thought that, even according to our own standard, the preference must

be given to John before the two other narrators. For if that narrative

is the more legendary, which exhibits an effort at aggrandizement or

embellishment, it might be said that the applicant whose faith is in

John rather weak, is in Luke embellished into a model of faith. It is

not, however, on embellishment in general that legend or the inventive

narrator is bent, but on embellishment in subservience to their grand

object, which in the gospels is the glorification of Jesus; and viewed

in this light, the embellishment will in two respects be found on the

side of John. First, as this Evangelist continually aims to exhibit the

pre-eminence of Jesus, by presenting a contrast to it in the weakness

of all who are brought into communication with him, so here this

purpose might be served by representing the suppliant as weak rather

than strong in faith. The reply, however, which he puts into the mouth

of Jesus, Unless ye see signs and wonders ye will not believe, has

proved too severe, for which reason it reduces most of our commentators

to perplexity. Secondly, it might seem unsuitable that Jesus should

allow himself to be diverted from his original intention of entering

the house in which the patient was, and thus appear to be guided by

external circumstances; it might be regarded as more consistent with

his character that he should originally resolve to effect the cure at a

distance instead of being persuaded to this by another. If then, as

tradition said, the suppliant did nevertheless make a kind of

remonstrance, this must have had an opposite drift to the one in the

synoptical gospels, namely, to induce Jesus to a journey to the house

where the patient lay.

In relation to the next question, the possibility and the actual course

of the incident before us, the natural interpretation seems to find the

most pliant material in the narrative of John. Here, it is remarked,

Jesus nowhere says that he will effect the patient’s cure, he merely

assures the father that his son is out of danger (ὁ υἱός σου ζῇ), and

the father, when he finds that the favourable turn of his son’s malady

coincides with the time at which he was conversing with Jesus, in no

way draws the inference that Jesus had wrought the cure at a distance.

Hence, this history is only a proof that Jesus by means of his profound

acquaintance with semeiology, was able, on receiving a description of

the patient’s state, correctly to predict the course of his disease;

that such a description is not here given is no proof that Jesus had

not obtained it; while further this proof of knowledge is called a

σημεῖον (v. 54) because it was a sign of a kind of skill in Jesus which

John had not before intimated, namely, the ability to predict the cure

of one dangerously ill. [1329] But, apart from the misinterpretation of

the word σημεῖον, and the interpolation of a conversation not intimated

in the text; this view of the matter would place the character and even

the understanding of Jesus in the most equivocal light. For if we

should pronounce a physician imprudent, who in the case of a patient

believed to be dying of fever, should even from his own observation of

the symptoms, guarantee a cure, and thus risk his reputation: how much

more rashly would Jesus have acted, had he, on the mere description of

a man who was not a physician, given assurance that a disease was

attended with no danger? We cannot ascribe such conduct to him, because

it would be in direct contradiction with his general conduct, and the

impression which he left on his cotemporaries. If then Jesus merely

predicted the cure without effecting it, he must have been assured of

it in a more certain manner than by natural reasoning,—he must have

known it in a supernatural manner. This is the turn given to the

narrative by one of the most recent commentators on the gospel of John.

He puts the question, whether we have here a miracle of knowledge or of

power; and as there is no mention of an immediate effect from the words

of Jesus, while elsewhere in the fourth gospel the superior knowledge

of Jesus is especially held up to our view, he is of opinion that

Jesus, by means of his higher nature, merely knew that at that moment

the dangerous crisis of the disease was past. [1330] But if our gospel

frequently exhibits the superior knowledge of Jesus, this proves

nothing to the purpose, for it just as frequently directs our attention

to his superior power. Further, where the supernatural knowledge of

Jesus is concerned, this is plainly stated (as i. 49, ii. 25, vi. 64),

and hence if a supernatural cognizance of the already effected cure of

the boy had been intended, John would have made Jesus speak on this

occasion as he did before to Nathanael, and tell the father that he

already saw his son on his bed in an ameliorated state. On the

contrary, not only is there no intimation of the exercise of superior

knowledge, but we are plainly enough given to understand that there was

an exercise of miraculous power. When the sudden cure of one at the

point of death is spoken of, the immediate question is, What brought

about this unexpected change? and when a narrative which elsewhere

makes miracles follow on the word of its hero, puts into his mouth an

assurance that the patient lives, it is only the mistaken effort to

diminish the marvellous, which can prevent the admission, that in this

assurance the author means to give the cause of the cure.

In the case of the synoptical narratives, the supposition of a mere

prediction will not suffice, since here the father (Matt. v. 8)

entreats the exercise of healing power, and Jesus (v. 13), accedes to

this entreaty. Hence every way would seem to be closed to the natural

interpretation (for the distance of Jesus from the patient made all

physical or psychical influence impossible), if a single feature in the

narrative had not presented unexpected help. This feature is the

comparison which the centurion institutes between himself and Jesus. As

he need only speak a word in order to see this or that command

performed by his soldiers and servants, so, he concludes, it would cost

Jesus no more than a word to restore his servant to health. Out of this

comparison it has been found possible to extract an intimation that as

on the side of the centurion, so on that of Jesus, human proxies were

thought of. According to this, the centurion intended to represent to

Jesus, that he need only speak a word to one of his disciples, and the

latter would go with him and cure his servant, which is supposed to

have forthwith happened. [1331] But as this would be the first instance

in which Jesus had caused a cure to be wrought by his disciples, and

the only one in which he commissions them immediately to perform a

particular cure, how could this peculiar circumstance be silently

presupposed in the otherwise detailed narrative of Luke? Why, since

this narrator is not sparing in spinning out the rest of the

messenger’s speech, does he stint the few words which would have

explained all—the simple addition after εἰπὲ λόγῳ, speak the word, of

ἑνὶ τῶν μαθητῶν, to one of thy disciples, or something similar? But,

above all, at the close of the narrative, where the result is told,

this mode of interpretation falls into the greatest perplexity, not

merely through the silence of the narrator, but through his positive

statement. Luke, namely, concludes with the information that when the

friends of the centurion returned into the house, they found the

servant already recovered. Now, if Jesus had caused the cure by sending

with the messengers one or more of his disciples, the patient could

only begin gradually to be better after the disciples had come into the

house with the messengers; he could not have been already well on their

arrival. Paulus indeed supposes that the messengers lingered for some

time listening to the discourse of Jesus, and that thus the disciples

arrived before them; but how the former could so unnecessarily linger,

and how the Evangelist could have been silent on this point as well as

on the commission of the disciples, he omits to explain. Whether

instead of the disciples, we hold that which corresponds on the side of

Jesus to the soldiers of the centurion to be demons of disease, [1332]

ministering angels, [1333] or merely the word and the curative power of

Jesus; [1334] in any case there remains to us a miracle wrought at a

distance.

This kind of agency on the part of Jesus is, according to the admission

even of such commentators as have not generally any repugnance to the

miraculous, attended with special difficulty, because from the want of

the personal presence of Jesus, and its beneficial influence on the

patient, we are deprived of every possibility of rendering the cure

conceivable by means of an analogy observable in nature. [1335]

According to Olshausen, indeed, this distant influence has its

analogies; namely, in animal magnetism. [1336] I will not directly

contest this, but only point out the limits within which, so far as my

knowledge extends, this phenomenon confines itself in the domain of

animal magnetism. According to our experience hitherto, the cases in

which one person can exert an influence over another at a distance are

only two: first, the magnetizer or an individual in magnetic relation

to him can act thus on the somnambule, but this distant action must

always be preceded by immediate contact,—a preliminary which is not

supposed in the relation of Jesus to the patient in our narrative;

secondly, such an influence is found to exist in persons who are

themselves somnambules, or otherwise under a disordered state of the

nerves: neither of which descriptions can apply to Jesus. If thus such

a cure of distant persons as is ascribed to Jesus in our narratives,

far outsteps the extreme limits of natural causation, as exhibited in

magnetism and the kindred phenomena; then must Jesus have been, so far

as the above narratives can lay claim to historical credit, a

supernatural being. But before we admit him to have been so really, it

is worth our while as critical inquirers, ta examine whether the

narrative under consideration could not have arisen without any

historical foundation; especially as by the very fact of the various

forms which it has taken in the different gospels it shows itself to

contain legendary ingredients. And here it is evident that the

miraculous cures of Jesus by merely touching the patient, such as we

have examples of in that of the leper, Matt. viii. 3, and in that of

the blind men, Matt. ix. 29, might by a natural climax rise, first into

the cure of persons when in his presence, by a mere word, as in the

case of the demoniacs, of the lepers, Luke xvii. 14, and other

sufferers; and then into the cure even of the absent by a word; of

which there is a strongly marked precedent in the Old Testament. In 2

Kings v. 9 ff. we read that when the Syrian general Naaman came before

the dwelling of the prophet Elisha that he might be cured of his

leprosy, the prophet came not out to meet him, but sent to him by a

servant the direction to wash himself seven times in the river Jordan.

At this the Syrian was so indignant that he was about to return home

without regarding the direction of the prophet. He had expected, he

said, that the prophet would come to him, and calling on his God,

strike his hand over the leprous place; that without any personal

procedure of this kind, the prophet merely directed him to go to the

river Jordan and wash, discouraged and irritated him, since if water

were the thing required, he might have had it better at home than here

in Israel. By this Old Testament history we see what was ordinarily

expected from a prophet, namely, that he should be able to cure when

present by bodily contact; that he could do so without contact, and at

a distance, was not presupposed. Elisha effected the cure of the

leprous general in the latter manner (for the washing was not the cause

of cure here, any more than in John ix., but the miraculous power of

the prophet, who saw fit to annex its influence to this external act),

and hereby proved himself a highly distinguished prophet: ought then

the Messiah in this particular to fall short of the prophet? Thus our

New Testament narrative is manifested to be a necessary reflection of

that Old Testament story. As, there, the sick person will not believe

in the possibility of his cure unless the prophet comes out of his

house; so here according to one edition of the story the applicant

likewise doubts the possibility of a cure, unless Jesus will come in to

his house; according to the other editions, he is convinced of the

power of Jesus to heal even without this; and all agree that Jesus,

like the prophet, succeeded in the performance of this especially

difficult miracle.

§ 99.

CURES ON THE SABBATH.

Jesus, according to the gospels, gave great scandal to the Jews by not

seldom performing his curative miracles on the sabbath. One example of

this is common to the three synoptical writers, two are peculiar to

Luke, and two to John.

In the narrative common to the three synoptical writers, two cases of

supposed desecration of the sabbath are united; the plucking of the

ears of corn by the disciples (Matt. xii. 1 parall.), and the cure of

the man with the withered hand by Jesus (v. 9 ff. parall.). After the

conversation which was occasioned by the plucking of the corn, and

which took place in the fields, the two first Evangelists continue as

if Jesus went from this scene immediately into the synagogue of the

same place, to which no special designation is given, and there, on the

occasion of the cure of the man with the withered hand, again held a

dispute on the observance of the sabbath. It is evident that these two

histories were originally united only on account of the similarity in

their tendency; hence it is to the credit of Luke, that he has

expressly separated them chronologically by the words ἐν ἑτέρῳ σαββάτῳ,

on another Sabbath. [1337] The further inquiry, which narrative is here

the more original? we may dismiss with the observation, that if the

question which Matthew puts into the mouth of the Pharisees, Is it

lawful to heal on the sabbath days? is held up as a specimen of

invented dialogue; [1338] we may with equal justice characterize in the

same way the question lent to Jesus by the two intermediate

Evangelists; while their much praised [1339] description of Jesus

calling to the man to stand forth in the midst, and then casting

reproving glances around, may be accused of having the air of dramatic

fiction.

The narratives all agree in representing the affliction under which the

patient laboured, as a χεὶρ ξηρὰ, or ἐξηραμμένη. Indefinite as this

expression is, it is treated too freely when it is understood, as by

Paulus, to imply only that the hand was injured by heat, [1340] or even

by a sprain, according to Venturini’s supposition. [1341] For when, in

order to determine the signification in which this term is used in the

New Testament we refer, as it is proper to do, to the Old Testament, we

find (1 Kings xiii. 4) a hand which, on being stretched out, ἐξηράνθη

(‏וַתִּיבַשׁ‎), described as incapable of being drawn back again, so that we

must understand a lameness and rigidity of the hand; and on a

comparison of Mark ix. 18, where the expression ξηραίνεσθαι to be

withered or wasted away is applied to an epileptic, a drying up and

shrinking of that member. [1342] Now from the narrative before us a

very plausible argument may be drawn in favour of the supposition, that

Jesus employed natural means in the treatment of this and other

diseases. Only such cures, it is said, were prohibited on the sabbath

as were attended with any kind of labour; thus, if the Pharisees, as it

is here said, expected Jesus to transgress the sabbatical laws by

effecting a cure, they must have known that he was not accustomed to

cure by his mere word, but by medicaments and surgical operations.

[1343] As, however, a cure merely by means of a conjuration otherwise

lawful, was forbidden on the sabbath, a fact which Paulus himself

elsewhere adduces; [1344] as moreover there was a controversy between

the schools of Hillel and Schammai, whether it were permitted even to

administer consolation to the sick on the sabbath; [1345] and as again,

according to an observation of Paulus, the more ancient rabbins were

stricter on the point of sabbatical observance than those whose

writings on this subject have come down to us; [1346] so the cures of

Jesus, even supposing that he used no natural means, might by captious

Pharisees be brought under the category of violations of the sabbath.

The principal objection to the rationalistic explanation, namely, the

silence of the Evangelists as to natural means, Paulus believes to be

obviated in the present case by conceiving the scene thus: at that

time, and in the synagogue, there was indeed no application of such

means; Jesus merely caused the hand to be shown to him, that he might

see how far the remedies hitherto prescribed by him (which remedies

however are still a bare assumption) had been serviceable, and he then

found that it was completely cured; for the expression ἀποκατεστάθη,

used by all the narrators, implies a cure completed previously, not one

suddenly effected in the passing moment. It is true that the context

seems to require this interpretation, since the outstretching of the

hand prior to the cure would appear to be as little possible, as in 1

Kings xiii. 4, the act of drawing it back: nevertheless the Evangelists

give us only the word of Jesus as the source of the cure; not natural

means, which are the gratuitous addition of expositors. [1347]