But this curative miracle does not appear independently and as an object by itself: the history of it hinges on the fact that the cure was wrought on the Sabbath, and the point of the whole lies in the words by which Jesus vindicates his activity in healing on the Sabbath against the Pharisees. In Luke and Mark this defence consists in the question, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath days, or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it? in Matthew, in a part of this question, together with the aphorism on saving the sheep which might fall into the pit on the sabbath. Luke, who has not this saying on the present occasion, places it (varied by the substitution of ὄνος ἢ βοῦς, an ass or an ox for πρόβατον sheep, and of φρέαρ, well or pit for βόθυνος, ditch) in connexion with the cure of an ὑδρωπικὸς a man who had the dropsy ([xiv. 5]); a narrative which has in general a striking similarity to the one under consideration. Jesus takes food in the house of one of the chief Pharisees, where, as in the other instance in the synagogue, he is watched (here, ἦσαν παρατηρούμενοι, there, παρετήρουν). A dropsical person is present; as, there, a man with a withered hand. In the synagogue, according to Matthew, the Pharisees ask Jesus, εἰ ἔξεστι τοῖς σάββασι θεραπεύειν; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath days? According to Mark and Luke, Jesus asks them whether it be lawful to save life, etc.: so, here, he asks them, εἰ ἔξεστι τῷ σαββατῷ θεραπερύειν; Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath? whereupon in both histories the interrogated parties are silent (in that of the withered hand, Mark: οἱ δέ ἐσιώπων; in that of the dropsical patient, Luke: οἱ δὲ ἡσύχασαν). Lastly, in both histories we have the saying about the animal fallen into a pit, in the one as an epilogue to the cure, in the other (that of Matthew) as a prologue. A natural explanation, which has not been left untried even with this cure of the dropsy,[186] seems more than usually a vain labour, where, as in this case, we have before us no particular narrative, resting on its own historical basis, but a mere variation on the theme of the sabbath cures, and the text on the endangered domestic animal, which might come to one (Matthew) in connexion with the cure of a withered hand, to another (Luke) with the cure of a dropsical patient, and to a third in a different connexion still; for there is yet a third Story of a miraculous cure with which a similar saying is associated. Luke, [[474]]namely, narrates ([xiii. 10 ff.]) the cure of a woman bowed down by demoniacal influence, as having been performed by Jesus on the sabbath; when to the indignant remonstrance of the ruler of the synagogue, Jesus replies by asking, whether every one does not loose his ox or ass from the stall on the sabbath, and lead him away to watering? a question which is undeniably a variation of the one given above. So entirely identical does this history appear with the one last named, that Schleiermacher comes to this conclusion: since in the second there is no reference to the first, and since consequently the repetition is not excused by confession, the two passages [Luke xiii. 10], and [xiv. 5], cannot have been written one after the other by the same author.[187]
Thus we have here, not three different incidents, but only three different frames in which legend has preserved the memorable and thoroughly popular aphorism on the domestic animal, to be rescued or tended on the sabbath. Yet, unless we would deny to Jesus so original and appropriate an argument, there must lie at the foundation a cure of some kind actually performed by him on the sabbath; not, however, a miraculous one. We have seen that Luke unites the saying with the cure of a demoniacal patient: now it might have been uttered by Jesus on the occasion of one of those cures of demoniacs of which, under certain limitations, we have admitted the natural possibility. Or, when Jesus in cases of illness among his followers applied the usual medicaments without regard to the sabbath, he may have found this appeal to the practical sense of men needful for his vindication. Or lastly, if there be some truth in the opinion of rationalistic commentators that Jesus, according to the oriental and more particularly the Essene custom, occupied himself with the cure of the body as well as of the soul, he may, when complying with a summons to the former work on the sabbath, have had occasion for such an apology. But in adopting this last supposition, we must not, with these commentators, seek in the particular supernatural cures which the gospels narrate, the natural reality; on the contrary, we must admit that this is totally lost to us, and that the supernatural has usurped its place.[188] Further, it cannot have been cures in general with which that saying of Jesus was connected; but any service performed by him or his disciples which might be regarded as a rescuing or preservation of life, and which was accompanied by external labour, might in his position with respect to the Pharisaic party, furnish an occasion for such a defence.
Of the two cures on the sabbath narrated in the fourth gospel, one has already been considered with the cures of the blind; the other ([v. 1 ff.]) might have been numbered among the cures of paralytics, but as the patient is not so designated, it was admissible to reserve it for our present head. In the porches of the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem, Jesus found a man who, as it subsequently appears, had been lame for thirty-eight years; this sufferer he enables by a word to stand up and carry home his bed, but, as it was the sabbath, he thus draws down on himself the hostility of the Jewish hierarchy. Woolston[189] and many later writers have thought to get clear of this history in a singular manner, by the supposition that Jesus here did not cure a real sufferer but merely unmasked a hypocrite.[190] The sole reason which can with any plausibility be urged in favour of this notion, is that the cured [[475]]man points out Jesus to his enemies as the one who had commanded him to carry his bed on the sabbath ([v. 15]; comp. [11 ff.]), a circumstance which is only to be explained on the ground that Jesus had enjoined what was unwelcome. But that notification to the Pharisees might equally be given, either with a friendly intention, as in the case of the man born blind ([John ix. 11], [25]), or at least with the innocent one of devolving the defence of the alleged violation of the sabbath on a stronger than himself.[191] The Evangelist at least gives it as his opinion that the man was really afflicted, and suffered from a wearisome disease, when he describes him as having had an infirmity thirty-eight years, τριάκοντα καὶ ὀκτὼ ἔτη ἔχων ἐν τῇ ἀσθενίᾳ ([v. 5]): for the forced interpretation once put on this passage by Paulus, referring the thirty-eight years to the man’s age, and not to the duration of his disease, he has not even himself ventured to reproduce.[192] On this view of the incident it is also impossible to explain what Jesus says to the cured man on a subsequent meeting ([v. 14]): Behold thou art made whole; sin no more lest a worse thing come unto thee. Even Paulus is compelled by these words to admit that the man had a real infirmity, though only a trifling one:—in other words he is compelled to admit the inadequacy of the idea on which his explanation of the incident is based, so that here again we retain a miracle, and that not of the smallest.
In relation to the historical credibility of the narrative, it may certainly be held remarkable that so important a sanative institution as Bethesda is described to be by John, is not mentioned either by Josephus or the rabbins, especially if the popular belief connected a miraculous cure with this pool:[193] but this affords nothing decisive. It is true that in the description of the pool there lies a fabulous popular notion, which appears also to have been received by the writer (for even if [v. 4] be spurious, something similar is contained in the words κίνησις τοῦ ὕδατος, [v. 3], and ταραχθῇ, [v. 7]). But this proves nothing against the truth of the narrative, since even an eye-witness and a disciple of Jesus may have shared a vulgar error. To make credible, however, such a fact as that a man who had been lame eight-and-thirty years, so that he was unable to walk, and completely bed-ridden, should have been perfectly cured by a word, the supposition of psychological influence will not suffice, for the man had no knowledge whatever of Jesus, [v. 13]; nor will any physical analogy, such as magnetism and the like, serve the purpose: but if such a result really happened, we must exalt that by which it happened above all the limits of the human and the natural. On the other hand, it ought never to have been thought a difficulty[194] that from among the multitude of the infirm waiting in the porches of the pool, Jesus selected one only as the object of his curative power, since the cure of him whose sufferings had been of the longest duration was not only particularly adapted, but also sufficient, to glorify the miraculous power of the Messiah. Nevertheless, it is this very trait which suggests a suspicion that the narrative has a mythical character. On a great theatre of disease, crowded with all kinds of sufferers, Jesus, the exalted and miraculously gifted physician, appears and selects the one who is afflicted with the most obstinate malady, that by his restoration he may present the most brilliant proof of his miraculous power. We have already remarked that the fourth gospel, instead of extending the curative agency of Jesus over large masses and to a great variety of diseases, as the synoptical gospels do, concentrates it on a few cases which proportionately gain in intensity: [[476]]thus here, in the narrative of the cure of a man who had been lame thirty-eight years, it has far surpassed all the synoptical accounts of cures performed on persons with diseased limbs, among whom the longest sufferer is described in [Luke xiii. 11], only as a woman who had had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years. Without doubt the fourth Evangelist had received some intimation (though, as we have gathered from other parts of his history, it was far from precise) of cures of this nature performed by Jesus, especially of that wrought on the paralytic, [Matt. ix. 2 ff.] parall., for the address to the patient, and the result of the cure are in this narrative in John almost verbally the same as in that case, especially according to Mark’s account.[195] There is even a vestige in this history of John, of the circumstance that in the synoptical narrative the cure appears in the light of a forgiveness of sins: for as Jesus in the latter consoles the patient, before the cure, with the assurance, thy sins are forgiven thee, so in the former, he warns him, after the cure, in the words, sin no more, etc. For the rest, this highly embellished history of a miraculous cure was represented as happening on the sabbath, probably because the command to take up the bed which it contained appeared the most suitable occasion for the reproach of violating the sabbath.
§ 100.
RESUSCITATIONS OF THE DEAD.
The Evangelists tell us of three instances in which Jesus recalled the dead to life. One of these is common to the three synoptists, one belongs solely to Luke, and one to John.
The instance which is common to the three first Evangelists is the resuscitation of a girl, and is in all the three gospels united with the narrative of the woman who had an issue of blood ([Matt. ix. 18 f.]; [23–26]; [Mark v. 22 ff.]; [Luke viii. 41 ff.]). In the more precise designation of the girl and her father, the synoptical writers vary. Matthew introduces the father generally as ἄρχων εἷς a certain ruler, without any name; the two others as a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus: the latter moreover describe the girl as being twelve years old, and Luke states that she was the only child of her father; particulars of which Matthew is ignorant. A more important difference is, that according to Matthew the ruler in the first instance speaks of his daughter to Jesus as being dead, and intreats him to restore her to life; whereas according to the two other Evangelists, he left her while yet living, though on the point of death, that he might fetch Jesus to avert her actual decease, and first when Jesus was on the way with him, people came out of his house with the information that his daughter had in the meantime expired, so that to trouble Jesus further was in vain. The circumstances of the resuscitation also are differently described, for Matthew knows not that Jesus, as the other Evangelists state, took with him only his three most confidential disciples as witnesses. Some theologians, Storr for example, have thought these divergencies so important, that they have supposed two different cases in which, among other similar circumstances, the daughter, in one case of a civil ruler (Matthew), in the other, of a ruler of the synagogue named Jairus (Mark and [[477]]Luke), was raised from the dead by Jesus.[196] But that, as Storr supposes, and as it is inevitable to suppose on his view, Jesus not only twice resuscitated a girl, but also on both these occasions, healed a woman with an issue immediately before, is a coincidence which does not at all gain in probability by the vague observation of Storr, that it is quite possible for very similar things to happen at different times. If then it must be admitted that the Evangelists narrate only one event, the weak attempt to give perfect agreement to their narratives should be forborne. For neither can the expression of Matthew ἄρτι ἐτελεύτησε mean, as Kuinöl maintains,[197] est morti proxima, nor can that of Mark, ἐσχάτως ἔχει, or of Luke ἀπέθνησκε, imply that death had already taken place: not to mention that according to both, the fact of the death is subsequently announced to the father as something new.[198]
Our more modern critics have wisely admitted a divergency between the accounts in doing which they have unanimously given the palm of superior accuracy to the intermediate Evangelists. Some are lenient towards Matthew, and only attribute to his mode of narration a brevity which might belong even to the representation of an eye-witness;[199] while others regard this want of particularity as an indication that the first gospel had not an apostolic origin.[200] Now that Mark and Luke give the name of the applicant, on which Matthew is silent, and also that they determine his rank more precisely than the latter, will just as well bear an unfavourable construction for them, as the usual favourable one; since the designation of persons by name, as we have before remarked, is not seldom an addition of the later legend. For example, the woman with the issue first receives the name of Veronica in the tradition of John Malala;[201] the Canaanitish woman that of Justa in the Clementine Homilies:[202] and the two thieves crucified with Jesus, the names of Gestas and Demas in the Gospel of Nicodemus.[203] Luke’s μονογενὴς (one only daughter) only serves to make the scene more touching, and the ἐτῶν δώδεκα twelve years of age, he, and after him Mark, might have borrowed from the history of the woman with the issue. The divergency that, according to Matthew, the maiden is spoken of in the first instance as dead, according to the two others as only dying, must have been considered very superficially by those who have thought it possible to turn it in accordance with our own rule to the disadvantage of Matthew, on the ground that his representation serves to aggrandize the miracle. For in both the other gospels the death of the girl is subsequently announced, and its being supposed in Matthew to have occurred a few moments earlier is no aggrandizement of the miracle. Nay, it is the reverse; for the miraculous power of Jesus appears greater in the former, not indeed objectively, but subjectively, because it is heightened by contrast and surprise. There, where Jesus is in the first instance intreated to restore the dead to life, he does no more than what was desired of him; here, on the contrary, where supplicated only for the cure of a sick person, he actually brings that person to life again, he does more than the interested parties seek or understand. There, where the power of awaking the dead is presupposed [[478]]by the father to belong to Jesus, the extraordinary nature of such a power is less marked than here, where the father at first only presupposes the power of healing the sick, and when death has supervened, is diverted from any further hope. In the description of the arrival and the conduct of Jesus in the house where the corpse lay, Matthew’s brevity is at least clearer than the diffuse accounts of the two other Evangelists. Matthew tells us that Jesus, having reached the house, put forth the minstrels already assembled for the funeral, together with the rest of the crowd, on the ground that there would be no funeral there; this is perfectly intelligible. But Mark and Luke tell us besides that he excluded his disciples also, with the exception of three, from the scene about to take place, and for this it is difficult to discover a reason. That a greater number of spectators would have been physically or psychologically an impediment to the resuscitation, can only be said on the supposition that the event was a natural one. Admitting the miracle, the reason for the exclusion can only be sought in the want of fitness in the excluded parties, whom, however, the sight of such a miracle would surely have been the very means to benefit. But we must not omit to observe that the two later synoptists, in opposition to the concluding statement of Matthew that the fame of this event went abroad in the whole land, represent Jesus as enjoining the strictest silence on the witnesses: so that on the whole it rather appears that Mark and Luke regarded the incident as a mystery, to which only the nearest relatives and the most favoured disciples were admitted. Lastly, the difference on which Schulz insists as favourable to the second and third Evangelists, namely, that while Matthew makes Jesus simply take the maiden by the hand, they have preserved to us the words which he at the same time uttered, the former even in the original language;—can either have no weight at all, or it must fall into the opposite scale. For that Jesus, if he said anything when recalling a girl to life, made use of some such words as ἡ παῖς ἐγείρον, maiden, I say unto thee, arise, the most remote narrator might imagine, and to regard the ταλιθὰ κοῦμι of Mark as an indication that this Evangelist drew from a peculiarly original source, is to forget the more simple supposition that he translated these words from the Greek of his informant for the sake of presenting the life giving word in its original foreign garb, and thus enhancing its mysteriousness, as we have before observed with reference to the ἐφφαθὰ in the cure of the deaf man. After what we have seen we shall willingly abstain from finding out whether the individual who originally furnished the narrative in Luke were one of the three confidential disciples, and whether the one who originally related it, also put it into writing: a task to which only the acumen of Schleiermacher is equal.[204]