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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. [462]
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.
[Contents] § 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 [463]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.156
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, aservantwhowasdearto the centurion; in Matthew, the latter calls him ὁ παῖς μοῦ, which may equally mean either a sonor 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
a paralyticgrievouslytormented; 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, wasreadytodie, and paralysis is not generally a rapidly fatal malady.157 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: quodquisperaliumfacit, etc.158 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.159 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 [464]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
σοι, Gothyway,andasthou hastbelievedsoshallitbedoneuntothee, the other, πορεύου, ὁ υἱὸς σου ζῇ, Gothyway,thysonliveth; and the conclusion of Matthew also, καὶ ἰάθη ὁ
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, atthesamehourin 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,160 [465]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.161
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:162 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 readytodie, 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,Iam notworthythatthoushouldestcomeundermyroof, in Luke he adds by the mouth of his messenger, whereforeneitherthoughtImyself worthytocomeuntothee, 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 thathewas worthyforwhomheshoulddothis,forhelovethournationandhas builtusasynagogue: a recommendation the tenor of which is not unlike what Luke (Acts x. 22 ) makes the [466]messengers of Cornelius say to Peter to induce him to return with them, namely, that the centurion was a justman,andonethatfearethGod,andin goodreportamongallthenationoftheJews. 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 centurion163 runs counter to the express words of the Evangelist, who by the expressions:
hesent theelders beseechinghim, 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, troublenotthemaster(Luke viii. 49 ), so here he puts into the mouth of the second envoys, the words, κύριε μὴ σκύλλον, Lord,troublenotthyself, 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.164 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 [467]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 (= רﬠַכ) 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: hewashealedintheself-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 [468]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 yeseesignsandwondersyewillnotbelieve, 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.165 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.166 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 [469]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 atthepointof deathis 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.167 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, speaktheword, of ἑνὶ τῶν μαθητῶν, to oneofthydisciples, 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,168 [470]ministering angels,169 or merely the word and the curative power of Jesus;170 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.171 According to Olshausen, indeed, this distant influence has its analogies; namely, in animal magnetism.172 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 [471]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.
[Contents]
§ 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, onanotherSabbath.173 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, Isitlawfultohealonthesabbathdays?is held up as a specimen of invented dialogue;174 we may with equal justice characterize in the same way the question lent to Jesus by the two intermediate Evangelists; while their much praised175 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,176 or even by a sprain, according to Venturini’s supposition.177 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,
(שׁביתּו), 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 tobewitheredorwastedawayis applied to an epileptic, a drying up and shrinking of that [472]member.178 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.179 As, however, a cure merely by means of a conjuration otherwise lawful, was forbidden on the
sabbath, a fact which Paulus himself elsewhere adduces;180 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;181 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;182 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.183
Decisive evidence, alike for the necessity of viewing this as a miraculous cure, and for the possibility of explaining the origin of the anecdote, is to be obtained by a closer examination of the Old Testament narrative already mentioned, 1 Kings xiii. 1 ff. . A prophet out of Judah threatened Jeroboam, while offering incense
on his idolatrous altar, with the destruction of the altar and the overthrow of his false worship; the king with outstretched hand commanded that this prophet of evil should be seized, when suddenly his hand dried up so that he could not draw it again towards him, and the altar was rent. On the entreaty of the king, however, the prophet besought Jehovah for the restoration of the hand, and its full use was again granted.184 Paulus also refers to this narrative in the same connexion, but only for the purpose of applying to it his natural method of explanation; he observes that Jeroboam’s anger may have produced a transient convulsive rigidity of the muscles and so forth, in the hand just stretched out with such impetuosity. But who does not see that [473]we have here a legend designed to glorify the monotheistic order of prophets, and to hold up to infamy the Israelitish idolatry in the person of its founder Jeroboam? The man of God denounces on the idolatrous altar quick and miraculous destruction; the idolatrous king impiously stretches forth his hand against the man of God; the hand is paralyzed, the idolatrous altar falls asunder into the dust, and only on the intercession of the prophet is the king restored. Who can argue about the miraculous and the natural in what is so evidently a mythus? And who can fail to perceive in our evangelical narrative an imitation of this Old Testament legend, except that agreeably to the spirit of Christianity the withering of the hand appears, not as a retributive miracle, but as a natural disease, and only its cure is ascribed to Jesus; whence also the outstretching of the hand is not, as in the case of Jeroboam, the criminal cause of the infliction, continued as a punishment, and the drawing of it back again a sign of cure; but, on the contrary, the hand which had previously been drawn inwards, owing to disease, can after the completion of the cure be again extended. That, in other instances, about that period,
the power of working cures of this kind was in the East ascribed to the favourites of the gods, may be seen from a narrative already adduced, in which, together with the cure of blindness, the restoration of a diseased hand is attributed to Vespasian.185
But this curative miracle does not appear independently and as an object by itself: the history of it hinges on the fact that the cure was wrought on the Sabbath, and the point of the whole lies in the words by which Jesus vindicates his activity in healing on the Sabbath against the Pharisees. In Luke and Mark this defence consists in the question, Isitlawfultodogoodonthesabbathdays, ortodoevil,tosavelifeortodestroyit?in Matthew, in a part of this question, together with the aphorism on saving the sheep which might fall into the pit on the sabbath. Luke, who has not this saying on the present occasion, places it (varied by the substitution of ὄνος ἢ βοῦς, anassoranoxfor πρόβατον sheep, and of φρέαρ, wellor pitfor βόθυνος, ditch) in connexion with the cure of an ὑδρωπικὸς a manwhohadthedropsy(xiv. 5 ); a narrative which has in general a striking similarity to the one under consideration. Jesus takes food in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, where, as in the other instance in the synagogue, he is watched (here, ἦσαν παρατηρούμενοι, there, παρετήρουν). A dropsical person is present; as, there, a man with a withered hand. In the synagogue, according to Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus, εἰ ἔξεστι τοῖς σάββασι θεραπεύειν; Isitlawfultohealonthesabbathdays?According to Mark and Luke, Jesus asks them whether it be lawfultosavelife, etc.: so, here, he asks them, εἰ ἔξεστι τῷ σαββατῷ θεραπερύειν; Isit lawfultohealonthesabbath?whereupon in both histories the interrogated parties are silent (in that of the withered hand, Mark: οἱ δέ ἐσιώπων; in that of the dropsical patient, Luke: οἱ δὲ ἡσύχασαν). Lastly, in both histories we have the saying about the animal fallen
into a pit, in the one as an epilogue to the cure, in the other (that of Matthew) as a prologue. A natural explanation, which has not been left untried even with this cure of the dropsy,186 seems more than usually a vain labour, where, as in this case, we have before us no particular narrative, resting on its own historical basis, but a mere variation on the theme of the sabbath cures, and the text on the endangered domestic animal, which might come to one (Matthew) in connexion with the cure of a withered hand, to another (Luke) with the cure of a dropsical patient, and to a third in a different connexion still; for there is yet a third Story of a miraculous cure with which a similar saying is associated. Luke, [474]namely, narrates (xiii. 10 ff. ) the cure of a woman bowed down by demoniacal influence, as having been performed by Jesus on the sabbath; when to the indignant remonstrance of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus replies by asking, whether every one does not loose his ox or ass from the stall on the sabbath, and lead him away to watering? a question which is undeniably a variation of the one given above. So entirely identical does this history appear with the one last named, that Schleiermacher comes to this conclusion: since in the second there is no reference to the first, and since consequently the repetition is not excused by confession, the two passages Luke xiii. 10 , and xiv. 5 , cannot have been written one after the other by the same author.187
Thus we have here, not three different incidents, but only three different frames in which legend has preserved the memorable and thoroughly popular aphorism on the domestic animal, to be rescued or tended on the sabbath. Yet, unless we would deny to Jesus so original and appropriate an argument, there must lie at the foundation a cure of some kind actually performed by him on the sabbath; not, however, a miraculous one. We have seen that Luke
unites the saying with the cure of a demoniacal patient: now it might have been uttered by Jesus on the occasion of one of those cures of demoniacs of which, under certain limitations, we have admitted the natural possibility. Or, when Jesus in cases of illness among his followers applied the usual medicaments without regard to the sabbath, he may have found this appeal to the practical sense of men needful for his vindication. Or lastly, if there be some truth in the opinion of rationalistic commentators that Jesus, according to the oriental and more particularly the Essene custom, occupied himself with the cure of the body as well as of the soul, he may, when complying with a summons to the former work on the sabbath, have had occasion for such an apology. But in adopting this last supposition, we must not, with these commentators, seek in the particular supernatural cures which the gospels narrate, the natural reality; on the contrary, we must admit that this is totally lost to us, and that the supernatural has usurped its place.188 Further, it cannot have been cures in general with which that saying of Jesus was connected; but any service performed by him or his disciples which might be regarded as a rescuing or preservation of life, and which was accompanied by external labour, might in his position with respect to the Pharisaic party, furnish an occasion for such a defence.
Of the two cures on the sabbath narrated in the fourth gospel, one has already been considered with the cures of the blind; the other (v. 1 ff. ) might have been numbered among the cures of paralytics, but as the patient is not so designated, it was admissible to reserve it for our present head. In the porches of the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, Jesus found a man who, as it subsequently appears, had been lame for thirty-eight years; this sufferer he enables by a word to stand up and carry home his bed, but, as it was the sabbath, he
thus draws down on himself the hostility of the Jewish hierarchy. Woolston189 and many later writers have thought to get clear of this history in a singular manner, by the supposition that Jesus here did not cure a real sufferer but merely unmasked a hypocrite.190 The sole reason which can with any plausibility be urged in favour of this notion, is that the cured [475]man points out Jesus to his enemies as the one who had commanded him to carry his bed on the sabbath (v. 15 ; comp. 11 ff. ), a circumstance which is only to be explained on the ground that Jesus had enjoined what was unwelcome. But that notification to the Pharisees might equally be given, either with a friendly intention, as in the case of the man born blind (John ix. 11 , 25 ), or at least with the innocent one of devolving the defence of the alleged violation of the sabbath on a stronger than himself.191 The Evangelist at least gives it as his opinion that the man was really afflicted, and suffered from a wearisome disease, when he describes him as havinghadaninfirmitythirty-eightyears, τριάκοντα
(v. 5 ): for the forced interpretation once put on this passage by Paulus, referring the thirty-eight years to the man’s age, and not to the duration of his disease, he has not even himself ventured to reproduce.192 On this view of the incident it is also impossible to explain what Jesus says to the cured man on a subsequent meeting (v. 14 ): Beholdthouart madewhole;sinnomorelestaworsethingcomeuntothee.Even Paulus is compelled by these words to admit that the man had a real infirmity, though only a trifling one:—in other words he is compelled to admit the inadequacy of the idea on which his explanation of the incident is based, so that here again we retain a miracle, and that not of the smallest.
In relation to the historical credibility of the narrative, it may certainly be held remarkable that so important a sanative institution
as Bethesda is described to be by John, is not mentioned either by Josephus or the rabbins, especially if the popular belief connected a miraculous cure with this pool:193 but this affords nothing decisive. It is true that in the description of the pool there lies a fabulous popular notion, which appears also to have been received by the writer (for even if v. 4 be spurious, something similar is contained in the words κίνησις τοῦ ὕδατος, v. 3 , and ταραχθῇ, v. 7 ). But this proves nothing against the truth of the narrative, since even an eyewitness and a disciple of Jesus may have shared a vulgar error. To make credible, however, such a fact as that a man who had been lame eight-and-thirty years, so that he was unable to walk, and completely bed-ridden, should have been perfectly cured by a word, the supposition of psychological influence will not suffice, for the man had no knowledge whatever of Jesus, v. 13 ; nor will any physical analogy, such as magnetism and the like, serve the purpose: but if such a result really happened, we must exalt that by which it happened above all the limits of the human and the natural. On the other hand, it ought never to have been thought a difficulty194 that from among the multitude of the infirm waiting in the porches of the pool, Jesus selected one only as the object of his curative power, since the cure of him whose sufferings had been of the longest duration was not only particularly adapted, but also sufficient, to glorify the miraculous power of the Messiah. Nevertheless, it is this very trait which suggests a suspicion that the narrative has a mythical character. On a great theatre of disease, crowded with all kinds of sufferers, Jesus, the exalted and miraculously gifted physician, appears and selects the one who is afflicted with the most obstinate malady, that by his restoration he may present the most brilliant proof of his miraculous power. We have already remarked that the fourth gospel, instead of extending
the curative agency of Jesus over large masses and to a great variety of diseases, as the synoptical gospels do, concentrates it on a few cases which proportionately gain in intensity: [476]thus here, in the narrative of the cure of a man who had been lame thirty-eight years, it has far surpassed all the synoptical accounts of cures performed on persons with diseased limbs, among whom the longest sufferer is described in Luke xiii. 11 , only as a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. Without doubt the fourth Evangelist had received some intimation (though, as we have gathered from other parts of his history, it was far from precise) of cures of this nature performed by Jesus, especially of that wrought on the paralytic, Matt. ix. 2 ff. parall., for the address to the patient, and the result of the cure are in this narrative in John almost verbally the same as in that case, especially according to Mark’s account.195 There is even a vestige in this history of John, of the circumstance that in the synoptical narrative the cure appears in the light of a forgiveness of sins: for as Jesus in the latter consoles the patient, before the cure, with the assurance, thysinsare forgiventhee, so in the former, he warns him, after the cure, in the words, sinnomore, etc. For the rest, this highly embellished history of a miraculous cure was represented as happening on the sabbath, probably because the command to take up the bed which it contained appeared the most suitable occasion for the reproach of violating the sabbath.
[Contents] § 100.
RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.
The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood (Matt. ix. 18 f. ; 23–26 ; Mark v. 22 ff. ; Luke viii. 41 ff. ). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally as ἄρχων εἷς acertainruler, without any name; the two others as a rulerofthesynagogue namedJairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the
information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and [477]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.196 But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthew ἄρτι ἐτελεύτησε mean, as Kuinöl maintains,197 estmortiproxima, nor can that of Mark, ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Luke ἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.198
Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eyewitness;199 while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.200 Now
