Jesus, Miracle-Worker
Miracles are for many uplifting signs that assure one of the reality of God’s presence in the world. Miracles convince many that God made the world and God governs the world. Evidence of this belief can be seen in today’s world as millions of people have journeyed to places thought to be holy. Jerusalem, the “Holy City,” the place of theophany for three world religions has been visited by millions. In other parts of the world millions of believers, and skeptics, have visited sites that visionaries claim have been visited by Mary, the mother of Jesus, and cures granted. Among the most famous sites are Lourdes, Fatima, and Knock. They all receive approval from the Roman Catholic Church as worthy of belief. Many claim healings at these Marian apparition sites and, in response to skepticism, investigations have been made of these claims. They are carried out by doctors who have affirmed that some of the people have experienced an unexplainable change to wholeness again. Yet, many do not believe that miracles are possible. John P. Meier articulates well the general attitude among academics today when he writes, “If a full debate on the possibility and reality of miracles were to take place on American university campuses today – a highly unlikely event – such a debate would be tolerated in many quarters only with a strained smile that could hardly mask a sneer.” This attitude is largely intellectual resistance toward the possibility of miracles in general and particularly those of Jesus in the Gospels. Although interestingly, a Gallup poll found in 1989 that about 82 percent of Americans responded that they did believe that in this modern day miracles are performed by God’s power and among those polled were not only the poor and un-educated, but also well-educated people of wealth, including scientist and doctors.
Hence, interpretation of the biblical text has been difficult, especially when it comes to an understanding of the miracles of Jesus. Especially, in this modern age, a literal understanding of Jesus’ miracle stories is nearly impossible to anyone other than a fundamentalist Christian; and for others the stories may be no more than an invention of the early Christian community reflecting their faith in Jesus after his resurrection. It is a struggle to believe in the historicity of the miracles of Jesus as they are recorded in the New Testament and still be considered a reasonable person today.
Philosophies of the Modern Mind and Miracles as Divine Acts
The world is changing and peoples understanding of the world has changed throughout history. Modern concepts have been built of several developments in thought over the centuries, which frame the academic approach to miracles. In order to understand more clearly the search for the historicity of miracles a look at some of the teachings of influential philosophers may help to illuminate that search.
Beginning then with Cicero who presents an argument against God performing miracles; he explains the world in a way that all things in the material world happen because they can happen within the confines of nature. Just because some events can not be explained at that moment does not mean that there is not an explanation to be found. Thus, what some report as miracles, are in fact natural occurrences, only they lack human understanding at this time. This philosophy of Cicero, which is also held by E. P. Sanders, does not depend on a theological explanation of why things happen. However, it does fail to acknowledge that miracles are usually associated with God and some religious belief.
If one were to consult the philosopher Voltaire about whether or not nature permits such extraordinary happenings he would contend that a miracle contradicts Divine Law. The idea of Divine Law, according to Voltaire, is that God made it to order the universe. Therefore, to say that God goes against the Divine Laws of nature in order to prove God’s presence is illogical, because the Divine Laws perfectly express God’s nature. It is inconsistent reasoning to conclude that through the breaking of a Divine Law God makes present a message from God’s self. The problem then with the miracles of Jesus in the Gospels is that they break the Divine Law in order to prove God’s existence. Jesus’ miracles support his message about the coming of God’s kingdom and therefore the miracle not only signals God’s presence and favor in the message, the miracle of healing will itself witness to God’s will in the world. Hence, for those who follow Voltaire’s logic this creates a problem of consistency.
Time passed and education expanded in the western world, further challenging ‘unexplained’ faith in miracles during the Age of Reason in the 17th and 18th centuries. Scholasticism has placed layers of methodologies over understanding and explaining the world and all in it. These philosophies and methodologies of scholasticism are not compatible with the ancient views of the biblical people which believed that God caused illness and removed it from a persons life (Exod 15:26). Health for the Jewish people was based on how well the Israelites kept the commandments of God.
A closer look at the ancient Hebrew/ Greco-Roman world will help to contextualize the miracle stories of Jesus and to become familiar with Jesus’ own time. The miracle stories of Jesus are best understood within the literary tradition of the 1st century C.E. The believability of the historicity of Jesus’ miracles depend not on modern scientific methods of research, nor on historical documentation of the cures, rather, the miracles of Jesus remain a reasonable conclusion based on the writings attesting to them.
Sources of Credibility
A means for determining whether or not an event is close to the life of Jesus is to find multiple attestations to it. When looking at the entire body of Jesus’ miracles one finds many independent sources which add credibility to their existence during Jesus’ lifetime. The healing stories in the various Gospel sources are about healings of leprosy, blindness, and the paralysis, and bodily deformation as well as exorcisms. These healings have ample independent sources testifying to their probability as an event in Jesus’ life. Their sources are found in Mark, Q (Quelle), M (only in Matthew), L (only in Luke), and John. The synoptic Gospels (Mark 1:32-34), John’s Gospel (John 20:30), the Q-source to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke (Matt 11:21-24; Luke 10:13-15), the Acts of the Apostles (2:22;10:37-39), the Epistles (Heb 2:3-4), the Gospel of Thomas, and the Talmudic tradition all attest to Jesus as being a man who lived and worked many miracles. The letter to the Hebrews states that God’s testimony in Jesus was accompanied by “signs, wonders, various acts of power” (Heb 2:4).
However, there are still others which are more difficult to judge because they are found in only one independent source, and they occur only once as a type of healing. The double miracle story of the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage and the raising from the dead of Jarius’ daughter in Mark 5:21-43 has not the clear multiple independent sources attributed to it, and yet it has its own literary evidence that reveal high probability that the raising of the daughter of Jairus goes back to a real event in the life of Jesus. An exegesis of Mark 5:21-43 will use the historical critical method as well as literary and form criticism of the text to shed light on the question, “did Jesus perform miracles of healing in his day?”
Various people lived in Jesus’ time who have been said to cast out demons, heal the sick, and cause nature miracles. These historical figures have led some to claim that Jesus was like them, and that the number and grandeur of his miracles described in the New Testament was only an elaboration by the early Christian community. Some have classified Jesus as a 1st-century exorcist like that of Eleazar and Akiba, and while Jesus was an exorcist, this as the sum total of his ministry has been disputed by Meier as “hardly an adequate description of him.” Some literary evidence that leads beyond the 1st-century exorcists is that in the Gospel sources there are six exorcisms plus Mary Magdalene mentioned, whereas there are fifteen distinct stories of healings plus the summary listings of Jesus’ many miracles in both Matt 11:2-6 and Luke 7:18-23 from the Q source. It is clear that according to the Gospels Jesus is remembered by the first and second generation of Christians as one who healed many bodily ills.
Greco-Roman Healers
Two systems cross over in the ancient world which makes a modern interpretation of Jesus’ miracles difficult to understand. Regarding healings in the ancient Palestinian and Greco-Roman world a mixture of both a health care system was in operation which mixed with the religious system. The health care system involved the communication between the physician and the patient, the therapeutic activities and the evaluation of the outcome. While in the religious system a compilation of beliefs, expectations, norms and expected behaviors are at work that would often get mixed in the health care field of the ancient world. This can be seen in a healing account taken from TEXT 1.3 CURING A MUTE BOY, Inscriptiones Graecae, 4. 1.121-22.5in the 3rd century B.C.E.:
He came as a suppliant to the temple for his voice. When he had performed the preliminary
sacrifices and fulfilled the usual rites, thereupon the temple servant who brings in the fire for
the god, looking at the boy’s father, demanded he should promise to bring within a year the
thank-offering for the cure if he obtained that for which he had come. But the boy suddenly said,
“I promise.” His father was startled at this and asked him to repeat it. The boy repeated the words
and after that became well.
Healing stories like this can be compared to a healing story of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark where Jesus removes a speech impediment of a deaf man by putting “his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned and said to him, ‘Ephphatha!’ (that is, ‘Be opened!’)” (Mark 7:33). These comparisons which seem to mirror magical elements and ritualistic healings cause many to question the evangelist’s sources for the healing story. However, some significant differences set Jesus’ healing story apart from the Greco-Roman healing stories: Jesus heals by a direct command ‘Ephphatha!’ even though he performs a physical procedure it is not like the ritual in the temple and he does not collect a payment (such as in the form of a thank-offering). Furthermore, the Aramaic is preserved in the text which probably indicates an early event that can be connected to the words Jesus actually spoke.
Moreover, there are writings in the Greco-Roman world which offers many examples of miracle-workers. Those such as the gods Asclepius, Paieon and Dione, as well as humans: Pythagoras, and Apollonius of Tyana who were known for healings and miracles. One of the more well known was Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius was a holy man of the 1st-century C.E. and among the miracles recorded in The Life of Apollonius of Tyana are exorcisms, as well as healings of an injured hip, a blind man, and a paralyzed hand. There are stories of him even raising a young lady from the dead by way of a magical spell on her wedding day. In the Life of Pythagoras between 232-325 C.E. it is recorded that Pythagoras, a philosopher probing nature, had a special ability to perform nature miracles by calming winds, causing floods to subside and quieting storms for the purpose of safe passing across the sea. It is even recorded that the Caucas River called out “Greetings Pythagoras” and that “Myriads of most divine and most amazing things…are related of the man.” One can see a parallel in Jesus’ calming of the storm at sea (Matt 8: 23-27). This miracle story only has one Gospel source and so it is questionable as to whether it is an event in the life of Jesus or if it was an invention of the early community to make a theological assertion about Jesus, especially because there are evidences of other such stories circulating in the following centuries. Other examples are the gods Paieon and Dione, of both male and female deities. Both gods and goddesses held healing power in ancient Greece, yet they healed differently. An example of this can be found with Paieon a god who heals by “‘scattering medicines that still pain’” and the goddess Dione who heals by touch as “‘with both hands [she] stroked away from her arm the ichor.’”
Lastly, here is mentioned the god Asclepius who most greatly resembles Jesus in both origins and number of healings. Asclepius was born from Coronis, a woman of the earth who was impregnated by the god Apollo, the god of wholeness; similarly Jesus was born of Mary the wife of Joseph, but conceived by the holy Spirit (Matt 1:18-25). Asclepius becomes a great healer after he himself becomes deathly ill, and is entrusted to a great healer Chiron who nurtures him back to health and then teaches Asclepius the skills of a healer. Out of jealously Asclepius is killed by the Cyclops’ thunderbolt and he is then divinized. His devotees were drawn to him because of his humanity and compassion. He was not patron of wars or armies, nor did he possess a throne or appear selfish, but people from all stratum of society found refuge in him. The belief that Asclepius had healing power originated with the myth of his divine father Apollo, who is the god of wholeness. His healings have been recorded from the third century B.C.E. and also into second century C.E. There have been many accounts of those raised from the dead, e.g. in Inscriptiones Graecae are accounts of several blind men receiving sight, a boy receiving his voice after being mute, the healing of a paralyzed hand, and the cure of a sick stomach and throat. Because of Temples dedicated to him and the renown he had as patron of health and wholeness, many miracles in the ancient Greco-Roman times were attributed to him. His temples were a major part of the health care system in the first century C.E. While for other healers few miracles have been recorded, many are recorded for Asclepius. Thus in comparison with Jesus’ many Gospel miracles only Asclepius came near that amount of healings. All of these parallels raise questions as to how much the early Christian community was influenced by these surrounding stories that existed at the time of Jesus’ life and during the formation of the New Testament texts.
The Jewish Healer
Jesus was a Jew and in Matthew’s Gospel it is said that Jesus’ mission was to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matt 10: 6), which puts his healing stories in a Jewish context as well as in the cultural context of the Greco-Roman world. Beginning then with the Jewish tradition and scriptures similarities will be drawn between Jesus and the Jewish tradition. Jews were known as miracle-workers because of their association with the wisdom of Solomon. The Jews were believed to have a special ability in performing exorcisms. While exorcisms were not a theme in the Hebrew Bible they were well known in the 1st-century C.E.
Some miracles stories from the Hebrew Bible correspond in kind to some of Jesus’ miracles, and they raise exegetical questions as to whether or not the evangelist was making a theological statement by inventing similar stories or whether there was an historical event behind them. There are those performed by the prophet of Yahweh Elijah who multiplied the flour and oil for a widow so that she, he and her son could eat during the time of drought (1 Kgs 17:1-24), and also the miracles of Elisha his successor who is said to have multiplied oil for a widow (2 Kgs 4:1-7) to redeem her son from slavery. Jesus in comparison turns water to wine to save the wedding couple from embarrassment (Jn 2:1-12). Elisha raises a boy from the dead (2 Kgs 4:32-35). Jesus raises Jairus’ daughter from the dead (Mark 5:41-42) and Lazarus (Jn 11: 43-44). Elisha feeds a hundred men after multiplying twenty barley loaves (2 Kgs 4:42-44) and Jesus feeds a group of about 5,000 men not counting women and children after multiplying five loaves and two fishes (Matt 14:17-21). Elisha also heals Naaman from leprosy (2 Kgs 5) and Jesus is also known for healing lepers (Matt 8:1-4).
Among Jewish miracle-workers who were contemporary around the time of Jesus’, was Onias who Josephus the historian mentions in his writings as “being a righteous man and dear to God, had once in a rainless period prayed to God to end the drought, and God had heard his prayer and sent the rain….” It was also said that Onias healed the hearing of someone and performed other miraculous deeds, and that he was a holy man of prayer and good words. He lived about a half a century before the coming of Jesus. According to the Babylonian Talmud, Hanan ha-Nehba the grandson of Onias also had the gift of bringing rain to earth through his prayers, and Onias’ other grandson Hilkiah was known to be a miracle-worker, although not a healer. These grandsons lived just before the coming of Jesus, living at the end of the 1st-century B.C.E. to the early decades of the 1st-century C.E. Others who lived in the area of Galilee during the middle of the 1st-century C.E. was Hanian ben Dosa who was known for bringing rain to earth, healing many and working wonders. The Babylonian Talmud writes that a voice from heaven called Hanina “my son” who sustains the whole world. Lastly is the mention of two exorcists: one by the name of Eleazar who exorcized by the use of a root prescribed by Solomon, and the second is anonymous but is known for healing and forgiving sins centuries before Jesus. All of these miracle-workers, healers and exorcists show that there were others in history that were said to have performed wondrous deeds similar in part to those of Jesus. One of the most striking differences which will be elaborated upon later is ‘how’ Jesus performed miracles, which he did most often by the command of his word.
Jesus, Word of יהוה Revealed
The Hebrew people also had their own approach to wholeness and well-being, which can be found in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Israelite religion is a religion of the word. Their system of belief is based on the covenant with God through the Torah (Exod 34:27). Most commonly known are the Ten Commandments or the “ten words” (Exod 34:28) that God gave to Moses, but totally there were 613 commandments given to the Israelites to keep. All of these commandments are kept in the five books of the Torah. The word of God is essential to the worship of the Jewish people and their connection with God comes through the word spoken by God. It is the living word of God that reveals God’s will and which has enduring meaning across centuries (Isa 40:8, 59:21; Ps 119:89). There is an attitude in the Hebrew Scriptures toward the power of the word of Yahweh that reveals an ongoing relationship with the God who speaks to them. The book of Isaiah declares of Yahweh, “So shall my word be … it shall not return to me void, but shall do my will, achieving the end for which I sent it” (Isa 55:11). The God of Israel is a God who speaks with intelligence each present moment as the name Yahweh literally translated “I will be” indicates.
Jesus was unique in many ways among other healers, but similar to יהוה with the authority of his word by which he brought about miracles. Jesus was a miracle-worker and healer whose deeds were marked with power from within in personal encounters. Taking the pericope of the raising of Jairus’ daughter for an example, one can see traces of a healing story that contain qualities of the God of Israel, and literary pieces which lend credibility to its historicity even though the healing story of Jairus’ daughter is only found in one Gospel source, with the understanding that Matthew (9:18-26) and Luke (8:40-56) had copied the story from Mark (5:21-43). It is unique in historical credibility in many ways.
The criteria of dissimilarity is met in many ways in the miracle of Jairus’ daughter being raised. It is rare in the healing accounts of the Gospels that a petitioner for a healing would be named. Some have thought that the name “Jairus” was the clue for understanding the whole passage in which the girl was raised to new life. The meaning of Jairus means “awaken” or “enlighten.” The scholar Pesch thought that the story was constructed with this symbolic meaning based on the name of Jairus along with the Old Testament stories of the raising of the dead by Elijiah-Elisha the prophet. There is not much to support this notion that a name would contain so much transformative power in the story, nor that the stories of the Hebrew Bible could be connected to this story through a name which means “awaken.” Therefore the mention of the name of Jairus, a Hebrew name literally translated “he [God] will enlighten” would be an unlikely literary device for a non-Jewish audience to make the connection with the Old Testament stories of Elijiah-Elisha and the raising of the dead. On the contrary, it would help validate the story as a real life event.
Moreover, the petitioner being a synagogue official makes it even more unlikely that the evangelist would invent this part of the story if it were not based on some historical truth, because of the tensions between the early Christian community and the Jewish community in the 1st century C.E. Matthew’s version of the story in 9:18 reduces the petitioner to “a ruler” which could likely reflect the historical tensions between the Jewish and Christian communities and Matthew’s desire to keep out any references to a favor being bestowed upon one of the Jewish leaders. This element of the story contributes to the criteria of dissimilarity and so supports the likeliness of there being a true encounter.
One of the most unusual and sparse historical clues found in the Gospels which indicates that the writing is close to an original event of Jesus’ life is a transliteration of Aramaic in the text. Mark’s Gospel is the only Gospel to contain the two commands spoken by Jesus in the Aramaic. In the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter to life the Aramaic transliteration talitha koum is the climatic command of the entire episode. These two words can be seen as a special glimpse into the life of Jesus or as an unattractive remnant of antiquity’s magical formulas that Mark has preserved in his Gospel. As stated before, Mark is the only evangelist to have elements of Aramaic commands in his Gospel, which leads some to conclude that this may have been an earlier version and the others not wanting to associate magical healing formulas with Jesus’ healings took the words out of the story. The other command is in Mark 7:34 when Jesus uses the word ephphatha meaning “be opened” to heal a deaf man with a speech impediment. Some might say that this is reflective of the ancient Hellenistic magical miracle stories in which foreign phrases are used to illicit a healing. Or another explanation which would linguistically lead to historical support for the healing story’s closeness to an event of Jesus’ life is that these are words that Jesus did speak and they have been preserved because the oral tradition has handed them down to this evangelist. Jesus’ unique way of healing compared to many other healing practices of the ancient world was with the authority of his command. While his method is dissimilar to other healers of that time, Jesus’ authority is strikingly similar to the spirit of the Jewish faith and especially that of ‘Torah.’ It was by the power of God’s word that the creation was brought of out chaos (Gen 1:1-31) and it was by הדברים האלה “these words” that Yahweh cut the covenant with the Israelites (Exod 34:27) and now it is by the words of Jesus, ταλιθα κουμ “little girl arise” that life is brought back into the world (Mark 5:41).
Moreover, the grammar does tend to lend historical credibility to Jesus’ healings. The correct grammar in Aramaic if Jesus were to address the girl with the command “little girl, I say to you, arise” (Mark 5:41) would be talitha koumi, noting the “i” on the end for the feminine. This feminine form is found in later manuscripts and it seems that those who knew correct Aramaic took the liberty to correct the words of Jesus. However if left in the masculine form one could conclude that talitha koum is what Jesus actually said, because it more than likely was the popular speech used by the common people. There also exists other signs of Semitic substratum in this story, indicating its circulating in the Aramaic in Palestine, before it got to the final editing that is found in Mark’s Gospel. Thus, talitha koum provides greater literary evidence for the credibility of this story making it closer to an historical action of Jesus than other healings in the Gospels.
The Power of God/Jesus or Simply Magic
Another aspect of the spoken word that differs from obedience to the divine command, even the command of Jesus for the dead to come back to life, is the magical sense that was popular at the time of Jesus. In ancient times the spoken word could be religiously superstitious. Words took on a performative function in the culture. In the ancient Mediterranean culture the spoken word had a semi-material identity when spoken and was believed to have the power to accomplish in reality that which was spoken over the person. This can be seen in some of the Greco-Roman healing recipes. The same can be held regarding names in the ancient world. There was a sense that the reality, the presence of the person was carried some how in the power of the name. An example of this belief can be found in Luke 9:49 when the disciple John protests: “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow in our company.”
The 1st-century C.E. Jew did not separate the natural world from the supernatural world in those ancient times. Evidence of this is seen in the language itself. The Hebrew word carries the meaning of both “wind and spirit” both an element of the earth and of the spiritual world. The same also applies to the Greco-Roman world as can be seen in the word πνυμα, meaning “wind, spirit, or breath.” It is both the symbol of earthly life in Genesis 6:17 and the wind of heaven in Gen 8:1, and the breath of God in Ps 33:6. For the ancient Hebrew people the word was performative especially when used deliberately. The unseen forces of nature and the unseen forces of the spiritual realm where always present.
Mercy, Faith and Healing
Furthermore, Jesus’ words and deeds, especially those of his healings, reveal the divine nature so completely that he initiates the rule of God on earth. When the evangelist Mark identifies the motivation of Jesus’ healings he says, “When he saw the vast crowd, his heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things” (6:34). The word used for “moved with pity” is εσπλαγχνισθη the noun σπλαγχνον means inner most self or feeling, heart, affection because of God’s tender mercy. The חסד of God, literally “loving mercy” of God; from which one can never repay fully God’s goodness is most characteristic of God in the Hebrew Bible. When Jesus heals and teaches because he is deeply moved with pity for the crowds, he is in being and in deed revealing God’s glory. Another aspect about Jesus’ healings that sets him apart from the other healers of his day is that his healings point to the God of Israel and his messages about the kingdom of God.
Thus far the healing story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter has been looked at as an individual story, yet in all three synoptic Gospels this healing story is part of a double healing story, along with that of the woman with a hemorrhage. In Mark’s Gospel the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage is sandwiched between the petition of Jairus and the raising of his daughter vv. 24-34. This kind of sandwiching is a technique used several times by Mark in his Gospel [cf. Mark 3:19b-21(22-30); 5: 6b-13 (14-29)30; 11:12-14 (15-19) 20-25; 14:53(54)55-64(66-73)]. The original story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter could have been vv. 22-23, 35-37a, 38-43 of chapter five in Mark. Verses 21, 24, and possibly 37 and 40 make good bridges for the two different stories. The changes are not great, but the story of Jairus could stand independent from the hemorrhaging woman, which would indicate that both of them come from earlier healing story traditions. The inserted story does prolong the outcome of the raising of the girl, and there are literary parallels which also highlight theological messages about the nature of Jesus when looked at the two together.
The story of the hemorrhaging woman presents a woman who is physically ill and ritually impure for twelve years. Like wise the sandwiched healing story of the woman who was cured of a hemorrhage could be claimed as a parallel healing event emphasizing the twelve years of the girl and the twelve years of the illness of the woman to say that they were both completely in need of new life without them necessarily coming from an historical origin. The girl had lost her life to death, and thus was impure by death. The woman was alive but had lost her life to sickness and to being religiously cast out of society, because she was in a constant state of impurity (Lev 15:25-27, 31). Jesus saves both of them from dire states and brings them life again! The reason mentioned in the text for the woman’s cure is her faith (Mark 5:34). In the Greek text it reads, η πιστις σου σεσωκεν σε, translated “your faith has saved you.” Faith statements like this are mixed with the miracle accounts in the Gospels and so some may interpret them as professions of faith rather than as historical. Both persons in this healing episode experienced salvation and received wholeness, which would be a reminder to the early faith community of their own salvation from this world and their eventual eschatological wholeness to come.
There is also the power that goes out of Jesus for the healing and this is done without him humanly willing it. The miracle seems to happen by a will and a force outside of Jesus, and the woman seems to be in control of this healing encounter. Jesus simply confirms the outcome and tells her to be healed (probably meaning for her to follow the ritual prescription for her purification after the blood has stopped flowing). The focus is on her faith and the power that is in Jesus. Jesus explains that it is her faith that heals her. This could be considered a magical healing, and the evangelist wants the community to understand that it is faith in God -faith in Jesus that brings life and not the recitation of formulas. It was a common underlying belief in the Greco-Roman world that power resided in holy persons, objects or words. Divine power was transmittable through the material world, especially through holy people. In the healing of the woman with a hemorrhage the power of faith in God is emphasized and further emphasized is that the power of God is in Jesus. This is shown in the story because Jesus was not engaged in any kind of healing process with the woman prior to the healing, yet he was involved in the process of her cure. Thus in this healing story there is dissimilarity with the practices of the times because Jesus is not acting like the healers of his day. Mark’s emphasis is on God’s power in Jesus which is accessible by faith. This healing story reinforces the belief not only in Jesus’ healing power but that his preaching about God’s kingdom is uniquely linked to his healing ministry. This has been tied to the raising of the twelve year old girl by Mark’s doubling of the two stories.
The woman with a hemorrhage sought healing by approaching Jesus and it is she who reached out to touch him. “She said, ‘If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured” (Mark 5:28). Her desire to touch his clothes could reflect the ancient belief that what ever surrounds the holy person, whatever clothes they have on also is a means for divine communicating, which could be interpreted as magic by those witnessing healing power. Even in an account of Hanan ha-Nehba in the Babylonian Talmud the children sent by the Rabbi to Hanan ha-Nehba to pray for rain would often take hold of the hem of his cloak. In Matthew 9:20 and Luke 8:44 she touches the tassel on his cloak, which since ancient Israel has been the extension of the person’s authority (1 Sam 24: 5-12). However, it could have also been the woman’s way of reaching Jesus, although she was considered unclean by Jewish law, because of her flow of blood from the hemorrhage (Lev 15; Num 5:1-4). By Jesus’ contact with the woman he then would become unclean, and all who would touch her in the crowd would become unclean. Yet the story places this healing within the personal encounter between the woman and Jesus. It is unique to Jesus’ healing stories that he meets people in faith, and they are able to not only find healing, but also deep peace and an interior wholeness. Jesus did not allow the healing to end with his healing power but looked for the woman so he could speak about her healing. He said to her “your faith has saved you. Go in peace and be cured of your affliction” (Mark 5:34).
The miracles of Jesus are placed within the context of faith in God and in Jesus, which faith is found not only in the miracle itself, but also in Jesus’ preaching. In this double healing account Jesus states the reason for the miracle, “Daughter, your faith has saved you” (Mark 5:34). He did not attribute it to her touching his clothes, or to that power in him for healing, but directed it back to God and to her belief that he was God’s messenger. Jesus’ healings are strongly connected with his preaching ministry. They often happen in an episodic way while he is on the way to another place to preach the good news that the Kingdom of God has come. These two encounters happen “when Jesus had crossed again to the other side” (Mark 5:21) of the Sea of Galilee; after these two miracles Mark writes that Jesus “departed from there and came to his native place” (Mark 6:1).
Conclusion
In conclusion, there were many miracle-workers in the time of Jesus. Both humans and gods were sought for exorcisms, healings and miracles of nature. Both the Jewish people and the Hellenistic peoples had varying ways of looking for cures and each ascribed different reasons for sickness. In the Greco-Roman world, the god Asclepius was the most renowned for healing, and his temples became places that many turned to in their need and found healing. Jesus, a Jewish miracle-worker, is the only one to whose miracles compare with the number and kind of healings that are attributed to Asclepius. Only Asclepius known from legend, spanned about 400 years and the instances of healings are not systematically recorded together. Jesus who lived and ministered for at most three and a half years left behind many healing stories recorded in the New Testament writings. Jesus’ healing stories stand alone, however, in comparison to all other healing stories because he encounters his petitioners in a personal way and heals with the command of his own authority. Not all healing stories qualify as historical events in the life of Jesus, and they appear to be more stories of faith from the early Christian community. The double account of Jairus’ daughter raised and the hemorrhaging woman healed illustrates both. While there’s evidence the raising of the daughter of Jairus comes from a group of Aramaic Palestinian healing stories, thus lending probability to its historical reality in the life of Jesus, the hemorrhaging woman that was sandwiched in the middle does not present solid evidence and may have come from the early community of believers. Therefore, these stories remind the reader that miracles remain truly a matter of faith and that the modern scientific mind will come up short for answers when investigating an ancient text for proof. The evidence left by the Gospels is four different testimonies of faith.