Jesus the healer

We arrive unavoidably at an aspect of Jesus' ministry that for some is a source of awkwardness.

In our scientifically informed culture, talk of the blind receiving sight, the dead being raised and storms being calmed seems like the baggage of an ignorant, superstitious past.

Jesus the teacher we can appreciate, but Jesus the healer, miracle-worker: that is a little less digestible. Nevertheless, no historical treatment of Christ can sidestep this major aspect of the early portraits of the man.

Philosophical observations about "miracles'

The modern philosophical debate about miracles, which has been going on since the 18th century, has resulted in a stalemate " not a draw or friendly handshake, but a begrudging realisation that neither side has been able to deal the decisive blow.

Philosophically, the rationality (or otherwise) of a belief in miracles boils down to our prior assumptions about the world.

If I assume that the observable laws of nature are the only forces active in the universe, then the fact that I do not observe miracles today will be interpreted quite reasonably as proof that miracles have never been observed, indeed, have never occurred.

If, on the other hand, I assume that the observable laws of nature are not the only forces active in the universe " that there is behind these laws a Law-Giver " then, the fact that I personally do not observe miracles today will not be regarded as proof that miracles have never occurred.

It may inspire a certain scepticism about miraculous claims but my assumption about a Law-Giver (God) gives me the freedom to accept a "miraculous' interpretation of an event if the evidence points strongly enough in that direction.

Turning from philosophy to history, let me make a few brief observations.

The absence of miracle-workers in Jesus' world

It is sometimes said that miracle-workers were commonplace in the Palestine of Jesus' day and that the gospels should be read in light of that wider trend in the ancient world: everyone was doing miracles, so the gospels writers portrayed Jesus as doing the same! This is not quite accurate.

While Jewish exorcists appear to have been common, there are only two historical figures other than Jesus associated with healing miracles in this period. The first was Honi the Circledrawer who in the century before Jesus is reported to have prayed to God for rain during a drought. He stood inside a circle drawn on the ground and waited until God answered the prayer " which he reportedly did. The story is mentioned a century later by the historian Josephus and a century after that in the Mishnah.  The second figure is Hanina ben Dosa who lived in Galilee a generation after Jesus. According to a source written a few centuries later, Hanina prayed for the desperately ill son of the famous Jerusalem rabbi, Gamaliel, and the boy dramatically recovered.

From the historical perspective, it is difficult to know what to conclude about such isolated stories recorded a hundred or more years after the event in just one or two sources. My point, however, is that, even if these are reliable historical remembrances, the parallel with Jesus is minimal if not non-existent. Honi and Hanina were not miracle-workers. They were simply pious Jews with a reputation for getting their prayers answered.

What we have in the gospels is another thing entirely. Not only is the sheer number of Jesus' reported miracles striking " 38 by scholarly count " so is the fact that they are said to occur through his own power. He restores a leper with a touch, a crippled man with a word, a dead girl with a command and so on. Frankly, we have no historical accounts comparable to this in antiquity. Whatever else the gospel reports are, they are not part of an ancient trend.

Jesus' healings in the historical sources

The startling deeds of Jesus are attested in multiple independent sources in both Christian and non-Christian writings from antiquity. On the Christian side, Mark, Q, Special L, Special M and the Signs Source (these are sources detected within the New Testament by most biblical historians) all affirm Jesus' miraculous abilities.  To repeat what I said in chapter one, these "Christian' sources are treated by historians as independent witnesses since, although they now appear together in our New Testament, they were originally separate traditions. Something other than collusion, in other words, gave rise to the consistent portrayal of Jesus as a miracle-worker.

From the Jewish and Greco-Roman sources we have at least two references to Jesus' miraculous activity. The first century Jewish historian Josephus wrote: "At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man. For he was a doer of startling deeds " ' This appears to be a neutral, non-committal way of referring to Christ's inexplicable abilities. Not so neutral is the legal judgment of the Jewish Talmud: "On the eve of Passover Jesus was hanged (i.e., on a cross)" because he has practised sorcery and enticed and led Israel astray'.Amongst Jesus' opponents there was never any attempt to deny Jesus' strange abilities, only to cast them in a negative light, as involving "sorcery' or demons.

What modern historians say about Jesus' "miracles'

It is because Jesus' "startling deeds' are so widely and independently attested in ancient writings that most modern experts (whatever their religious persuasion) arrive at a similar conclusion: Jesus did things that were interpreted by everyone around him as supernatural. The wording of this statement is important. Historians cannot affirm (or deny) that Jesus actually did miracles"”that would be to go beyond historical method to philosophical interpretation. What historians can (and do) affirm is that Jesus' friends and foes alike all conceded the supernatural nature of his ministry. This is the conclusion reached by virtually all mainstream scholars in the field.

If this is where the historical analysis of Jesus' miracles leads us, it is also where it leaves us. How we go on from here to interpret this historical conclusion involves, as I have said, those prior assumptions. If we assume there are no forces in the universe other than the observable laws of nature, then we will feel well justified in searching for a natural interpretation of the data. If, on the other hand, we assume there is a Law-Giver behind the laws of nature, then, given the direction in which the historical evidence points, we will feel well justified in accepting a theological interpretation, such as that affirmed in the gospels.