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Authors: George Eliot
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would belong to the objects of natural science, and not ot religion. But natural science is not able to accredit such a healing power by sure analogies or clear definitions; hence these cures, being driven from the objective to the subjective region, must receive their ex-1 ••-- f.----.^rolmlno-v. Now psychology, taking into account MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES AT A DISTANCE.the power of imagination and of faith, will certainly allow the possibility that without a real curative power in the reputed miracle-worker, solely by the strong confidence of the diseased person that he possesses this power, bodily maladies which have a close connexion with the nervous system may be cured: but when we seek for historical vouchers for this possibility, criticism, which must here he called to aid, will soon show that a far greater number of such cures has been invented by the faith of others, than has been performed by the parties alleged to be concerned. Thus it is in itself by no means impossible, that through strong faith in a hcaling-power residing even in the cloth.es and handkerchiefs of Jesus and the apostles, many sick persons on touching these articles were conscious of real benefit: but it is at least equally probable, that only after the death of these men, when their fame in the church was ever on the increase, anecdotes of this kind were believingly narrated, and it depends on the nature of the accounts, for which of the two alternatives we are to decide. In the general statement in the Gospels and the Acts, which speak of whole masses having been cured in the above way, this accumulation at any rate is traditional. As to the detailed history which we have been examining, in its representation that the woman had suffered twelve years from a very obstinate disease, and one the least susceptible of merely psychical influence, and that the cure was performed by power consciously emitted from Jesus, instead of by the imagination of the patient: so large a portion betrays itself to be mythical that we can no longer discern any historical elements, and must regard the whole as legendary.
It is not difficult to see what might give rise to this branch of the evangelical miraculous legend, in distinction from others. The faith of the popular mind, dependent on the senses, and incapable of apprehending the divine through the medium of thought alone, strives perpetually to draw it down into material existence. Hence, according to a later opinion, the saint must continue to work miracles when his bones are distributed as relics, and the body of Christ must be present in the transubstantiated host; hence also, according to nn 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 farther she was removed from the free spiritual energy of ji’c apostle Paul, the more consolotary was the idea of carrying home his curative energy in a pocket-handkerchief.
§ 98.
CURES AT A DISTANCE.
CURES AT A DISTANCE.
THE cures performed at a distance are, properly speaking, the opposite of these involuntary cures. The latter are effected by “H’rc corDorp.-il ™n+o«* ,,..-ii.-^THE LIFE OF JESUS.
sole ... ely 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 considerabledistances; or. conversely,if it was
so spiritual
as
toactapart frombodily 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.
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 considerabledistances; or. conversely,if it was
so spiritual
as
toactapart frombodily 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 fiaaiMKb$, at the same place (Matt. viii. 5 if.; Luke vii. 1 if.; John iv. 46 if.); and again Matthew (xv. 22 if.), and Mark (vii. 25 if.), 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 fourtli 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 e/eaTWTap^oc), in the fourth a person in office at court (ftaaiMKo^ according to the former (Matt. v. 10 if.), a Gentile, according to the latter without doubt a Jew; above all, the synoptists make Jesus eulogize him as a pattern of the most fervent, humble faith, because, in the conviction that Jesus could cure at a distance, he prevented him from going to his house;
whereas in John, on the
contrary, he is blamed for his weak faith •which required signs and wonders, because he thought thepresence of Jesus inhishouse necessary forthepurpose of the cure.*
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 e/eaTWTap^oc), in the fourth a person in office at court (ftaaiMKo^ according to the former (Matt. v. 10 if.), a Gentile, according to the latter without doubt a Jew; above all, the synoptists make Jesus eulogize him as a pattern of the most fervent, humble faith, because, in the conviction that Jesus could cure at a distance, he prevented him from going to his house;
whereas in John, on the
contrary, he is blamed for his weak faith •which required signs and wonders, because he thought thepresence of Jesus inhishouse necessary forthepurpose of the cure.*
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 sy-”/-^vtSnnl nnwatives from that reported by John: only this accuracy of MIRACLES OF JESUS-CUEES AT A DISTANCE.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
With respect to his disease, the man is described by Matthew as Trapakv-iKog detvug ftaaam^o/ievog, a paralytic grievously tormented; Luke is not only silent as to this species of disease, but lie is thought by many to presuppose a diiferent one, since after the indefinite expression KUKU^ K%MV, being ill, he adds, J/.ue/Ue reXevrav, icas ready to die, and paralysis is not generally a rapidly fatal malady.* But the most important difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, that all which according to Matthew the centurion docs in his own person, is in Luke clone by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from entering his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions some friends to act in his stead. To reconcile this difference, it is usual to refer to the rule: quod yuis per aliwm facit, etc.fIf 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 clone 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.! 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 ^pcrnaum):
Storr on his side wonders how it can be regarded as Schleiermacher, tiber den Lukas, S. 92.+ Ausnistin. de consens. nvanir. i. 2O •
With respect to his disease, the man is described by Matthew as Trapakv-iKog detvug ftaaam^o/ievog, a paralytic grievously tormented; Luke is not only silent as to this species of disease, but lie is thought by many to presuppose a diiferent one, since after the indefinite expression KUKU^ K%MV, being ill, he adds, J/.ue/Ue reXevrav, icas ready to die, and paralysis is not generally a rapidly fatal malady.* But the most important difference is one which runs through the entire narrative, namely, that all which according to Matthew the centurion docs in his own person, is in Luke clone by messengers, for here in the first instance he makes the entreaty, not personally, as in Matthew, but through the medium of the Jewish elders, and when he afterwards wishes to prevent Jesus from entering his house, he does not come forward himself, but commissions some friends to act in his stead. To reconcile this difference, it is usual to refer to the rule: quod yuis per aliwm facit, etc.fIf 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 clone 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.! 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 ^pcrnaum):
Storr on his side wonders how it can be regarded as Schleiermacher, tiber den Lukas, S. 92.+ Ausnistin. de consens. nvanir. i. 2O •
*
Ml.,..THE LIFE OP JESUS.
in. the least improbable that in Capernaum at two different periods two centurions should have had each a sick servant, and that again at another time a nobleman should have had a sick son at the same place; that the second centurion (Luke) should have heard the history of the first, have applied in a similar manner to Jesus, and sought to surpass his example of humility, as the first centurion .(Matthew), to whom the earlier history of the nobleman (John) was known, wished to surpass the weak faith of the latter; and lastly, that Jesus cured all the three patients in the same manner at a distance. But the incident of a distinguished official person applying to Jesus to cure a dependent or relative, and of Jesus at a distance operating on the latter in such a manner, that about the time in which Jesus pronounced the curative word, the patient at home recovered, is so singular in its kind that a threefold repetition of it may be regarded as impossible, and even the supposition that it occurred twice only, has difficulties ; hence it is our task to ascertain whether the three narratives may not be traced to a single root.
Now the narrative of the fourth evangelist which is most generally held to be distinct, has not only an affinity with the synoptical narratives in the outline already given; but in many remarkable details cither one or the other of the synoptists agrees more closely with John than with his fellow synoptist. Thus, while in designating the patient as True, Matthew may be held to accord with the vlos of John, at least as probably as with the <5oiUoc 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 r/fieAAfi -rsXevrav, in John by r/fieAAev diroOvriansiv, in addition to which it is incidentally implied in the latter v. 52 thatr-the disease was accompanied by a fever, iroperbf.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. Wliile 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, ways, nal «£ e-rrtffTevcraf ysvrjOfjru
way, and as thou hast believed so shall it be done unto tliee, the other, -nopevov, b vlbg oov $y, Go thy way, thy son liveth ; and the conclusion of Matthew also, nal la,Qi{b rraT? avrov iv ry &pa endvri, has at least in its form more resemblance to the statement of John, that by subsequent inquiry the father ascertained it to be KV EKUV^ rrj wpa, at the same hour in which Jesus had spoken the word that his son had begun +,-. <,Tr,pnd
thiin to the statement of Lidie, that the messengers when ‘•iT -^t-J.pr MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES AT A DISTANCE.ferred 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 ot his son’s recovery. Unquestionably where three narratives are so thorouo-lily 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, hut must rather either distinguish all, or blend all into one. The latter course was adopted by Sender, after older examples,* 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 any thing false. With respect to the rank of the applicant, they make the fiamkiKos in John a military officer, for whom the KKarovrapxog 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 scut deputies.f 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 :f as if a very painful disease such as is described by Matthew did not rentier 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 conseM( Uk
^’’1- I’>ic.ke’ ‘‘ ^’ <“)’r>2’ “i” Fi’itzsche, in Matth. p. 310: discrepat autem Lucas iff <« km narration?, ut cetiturionem non ijisum venisse nd Jesum, sed per legatos
cum to ifisse tradat; yiiibiis dissidentibas aacem obtnulere, boni n(oo interpretis esse. 1 Schleier-”wiclicr, ut sup. S. 92 f.THE LIFE OF JESUS.
way, and as thou hast believed so shall it be done unto tliee, the other, -nopevov, b vlbg oov $y, Go thy way, thy son liveth ; and the conclusion of Matthew also, nal la,Qi{b rraT? avrov iv ry &pa endvri, has at least in its form more resemblance to the statement of John, that by subsequent inquiry the father ascertained it to be KV EKUV^ rrj wpa, at the same hour in which Jesus had spoken the word that his son had begun +,-. <,Tr,pnd
thiin to the statement of Lidie, that the messengers when ‘•iT -^t-J.pr MIRACLES OF JESUS-CURES AT A DISTANCE.ferred 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 ot his son’s recovery. Unquestionably where three narratives are so thorouo-lily 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, hut must rather either distinguish all, or blend all into one. The latter course was adopted by Sender, after older examples,* 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 any thing false. With respect to the rank of the applicant, they make the fiamkiKos in John a military officer, for whom the KKarovrapxog 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 scut deputies.f 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 :f as if a very painful disease such as is described by Matthew did not rentier 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 conseM( Uk
^’’1- I’>ic.ke’ ‘‘ ^’ <“)’r>2’ “i” Fi’itzsche, in Matth. p. 310: discrepat autem Lucas iff <« km narration?, ut cetiturionem non ijisum venisse nd Jesum, sed per legatos
cum to ifisse tradat; yiiibiis dissidentibas aacem obtnulere, boni n(oo interpretis esse. 1 Schleier-”wiclicr, ut sup. S. 92 f.THE LIFE OF JESUS.
BOOK: Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)
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