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 at the point of death is 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, speak the word, of ἑνὶ τῶν μαθητῶν, to one of thy disciples, 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.
§ 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, on another Sabbath.[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, Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? 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 praised[175] 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, ἐξηράνθη (וַתִּיבַשׁ), 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 to be withered or wasted away is 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]