• The servant of the Gentile centurion “is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress” (Matt 8:6). The Greek expression for being “in terrible distress,” deinōs basanizomenos, is the language of antiquity, and we must expand it: he is being distressed by the demons of sickness. When, in the course of the narrative, the centurion tells Jesus that his soldiers obey him to the letter and expects the same from Jesus he is obviously referring to the demons that cause illness. The centurion is convinced that the demons must also obey Jesus to the letter.
• Within the narrative about the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law Luke alters his Markan model. While Mark had written “he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up” (Mark 1:31), Luke instead has: “then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her” (Luke 4:39). Thus Jesus shouts at the fever as if it were a demon. He speaks a word of power, as in an exorcism. He yells at the illness as once God had yelled at the powers of chaos (Pss 17:16; 67:31; 75:7; 103:7; 105:9, LXX).
• Paul too attributes his illness, which apparently was accompanied by painful distortions of vision (Gal 4:13-15), to a “messenger of Satan” who repeatedly beats him with its fists (2 Cor 12:7-9).
It makes very good sense to distinguish the stilling of the storm on the lake (Mark 4:35-41) from the healing of demoniacs, and yet we must see that in this narrative Jesus acts like an exorcist. He “shouts at the wind” and commands it as if it were a demon: “Peace! Be still!” (cf. Mark 1:25). And then the lake becomes calm, just as possessed people become quiet, even comatose, immediately after their healing (cf. Mark 9:26). Jesus’ action was altogether plausible to people in antiquity: water, especially deep water, was regarded as the residence of demons, just as the desert was. Therefore, in Mark 4:35-41, the narrative types of “rescue miracle” and “exorcism” are intermingled.
It could not be otherwise. For people in Israel, as for people everywhere in antiquity, chaos threatened from all sides. It revealed itself in a variety of illnesses, in lameness, in disfigurement, in wounds, in social isolation, in the powers of nature, and above all in death. People in ancient Israel would have said that the underworld threatens us everywhere. In Jesus’ time people were convinced that demonic powers were a constant danger. The most horrible power of all was death—and it too was occupied by demons. Hebrews 2:14 says that the devil has the power of death.
When Jesus heals sick people, drives out demons, calms the waters, and raises the dead, the basic happening is the same in all cases: he confronts the powers of chaos, conquers demons, heals the damaged and distorted world, so that the reign of God may become visible and creation attain to the integrity and beauty God intends for it.
We are already—it was pretty much inevitable—involved in the history of how people have dealt with Jesus’ miracles. That is a broad field, but it cannot be altogether avoided. Precisely from the way in which people have dealt with the miracle stories in the four gospels over the last three hundred years we can learn a great deal about how to approach these miracles in appropriate fashion. How have people treated Jesus’ miracles?
Enlightenment
Biblical miracles have lived a hard life since the European Enlightenment. While before that they were almost a matter of course, something that illuminated Jesus’ divinity, afterward they became an embarrassment. Nowadays they are sometimes simply disputed. The principle of analogy is applied; it can be formulated, somewhat simplified, as: “What does not happen now did not happen then either. If no one today can walk on a lake, Jesus did not walk on water.”
The theologians of the Enlightenment period found the matter somewhat more difficult, of course. Since they did not want to frivolously deny the miracle stories found in the Bible, some of them undertook to explain those stories “rationally” and make them “understandable” for enlightened people. With authors such as K. F. Bahrdt (1740–1792), K. H. G. Venturini (1768–1849), or H. E. G. Paulus (1761–1851), this could take abstruse forms.9 Since “secret orders” had been growing in Europe since the eighteenth century, it seemed plausible that there were such “secret orders” in Jesus’ time as well. And who might have belonged to such a society? Obviously, the mysterious Essenes. So Jesus belonged to the Essenes and shared their goaclass="underline" bringing the superstitious people to a genuine religion of reason.
Of course, in doing so Jesus had to use some slick means in order to reach the people to begin with. Therefore, even though he only wanted to be a wise enlightener, he appeared in the role of Messiah and worked with well-organized and skillfully applied staging. For the multiplication of the loaves, for example, bread had already been collected in a cave; it was then handed to Jesus out of the darkness by Essene assistants and distributed by the disciples. The Syrophoenician woman’s daughter received medicine from a disciple who took it from Jesus’ portable medicine chest while Jesus himself engaged the mother in conversation. To walk on the lake Jesus used floating planks. And so on.
We smile at this, and yet the rationalizations of Jesus’ miracles have continued until today. How often do we still hear that the miraculous multiplication of loaves consisted in the fact that, after Jesus’ table prayer, some of those assembled reached into their pockets, took out some bread, and shared it with their neighbors. That was infectious. Because eventually all shared their bread with one another, everyone was satisfied. Or we read with astonishment that the calming of the storm was nothing more than that after Jesus’ word of command the storm simply subsided, not in nature, but in the perception of the disciples. Jesus took away their fear.
As much as all that falls short of the essence of Jesus’ miracles, the attempts at explanation are right about one thing: reason may not be dismissed when we are faced with miracles. Rationality must also have access to Jesus’ miracles.
History of Religions
Does this rational access consist in the application of the techniques of comparative religion? Yes and no! Obviously, Jesus’ miracles must be compared to all those reported in the Old Testament, in Judaism, and in antiquity. As a result we see that, in fact, there are a few well-attested miracles there as well, and their historicity cannot be doubted. These include, for example, the healing of two men by Vespasian (9–79 CE), recounted for us by Tacitus and Suetonius.10 According to Tacitus (ca. 58–120 CE) this happened in the year 70.
Vespasian had just been named emperor, but his rule was not yet secured. While he waited in Alexandria for favorable weather in order to be able to sail for Rome he was badgered by two sick men who wanted him to heal them. One was blind and the other scarcely had the use of one of his hands any longer. The blind man begged Vespasian to spread the imperial saliva on his eyes and eyeballs. The other asked the emperor to touch his crippled hand with the sole of his foot. At first Vespasian found the idea ridiculous, but as the two sick men continued to bother him he began to like the idea. Of course, he did not want to embarrass himself, so first he obtained a medical opinion. The doctors were ambivalent. A healing might be possible, and it could be brought about by natural causes. But it might also be that the gods wanted to help Vespasian. Ultimately, the emperor attempted the healing in the presence of the assembled crowd. “He was convinced,” Tacitus writes, “that there were no limits to his destiny: nothing now seemed incredible.” And behold: the hand was healed and the blind man could see again.
There can be no doubt about this event. The charism of healing was expected of a new emperor or king, and not only then. The idea endured in Europe beyond the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century: in France and England it was part of the ritual that a newly anointed king should touch sick people. Apparently, from time to time, the special circumstances and the sick person’s expectations released healing powers.