This, however, would not apply to such a miracle as the restoration of the ear of the high priest’s servant; and the reasons are obvious. The faith necessary for an act of emotional healing is not said to have existed, and is not likely to have existed, in a man who probably looked on Christ as an impostor. Even if it had existed, the case was not one where we have reason to think faith could have healed. Besides, the miracle is omitted by three out of the four Evangelists. It is possibly a mistaken inference from some tradition about an utterance of Jesus, “Suffer ye thus far;” which may have really had an entirely different meaning, but which led the third Evangelist to conclude that Jesus desired His captors to give Him so much liberty as would allow him to perform this act of mercy—a humane and picturesque thought, but not history. It is scarcely conceivable that the other three Evangelists should have mentioned the wound inflicted on the servant; that Matthew and John should have added a rebuke addressed by Jesus to Peter for inflicting it; and that John should have taken the pains to tell us the name of the high priest’s servant and yet that they should have omitted, if they actually knew, the fact that the wound was immediately and miraculously healed by Jesus. The irresistible conclusion is that St. Mark, St. Matthew, and St. John, knew nothing of this miracle.
When the acts of healing are set apart, and considered as “mighty works” but not “miracles,” the bonâ fide miracles in the Synoptic Gospels will become few indeed: and I think it will be found that these few are susceptible of explanation on natural grounds. We will pass over the finding of the coin in the fish’s mouth which is found in St. Matthew’s Gospel alone and can hardly be associated with any “characteristic saying” of Jesus—and come to a miracle common to the three Synoptists, the destruction of two thousand swine following on the exorcism of the Gadarene.
This is a very curious case of misunderstanding arising from literalism. It was a common belief in Palestine (as it was also in Europe during the middle ages), that the bodies of the “possessed,” or insane, were tenanted by familiar demons in various shapes—toads, scorpions, swine, serpents, and the like. These demons were supposed to have as their normal home an “abyss” or “deep” (Luke viii. 31, ἄβυσσον); but this they abhorred, and were never so happy as when they found a home in some human body. The “possessed” believed that these demons were visible and material; and the juggling exorcist would sometimes (so Josephus tells us) place a bucket of water to be overturned by the demons in passing, as a proof that they were driven out. In a word, the “possessed” could hardly be convinced that he was cured, unless he saw, or thought he saw, the frogs, serpents, scorpions, or swine actually rushing from his mouth in some definite direction.
The explanation of the miracle will now readily suggest itself to you. Some man, perhaps a patriotic Galilean, to whom nothing would be more hateful than a Roman army, conceived himself to be possessed by a whole “legion,” two thousand “unclean swine.” Identifying himself—as was the habit of those who were “possessed”—with the demons whom he supposed to have possession of him, the insane man declared that his name was “Legion, for we are many” and they (or he) besought Jesus that He would not drive them into the “deep,” i.e. into the “abyss” above-mentioned. But by the voice of Jesus the man is instantaneously healed: he sees the legion of demons that had possessed him rushing forth in the shapes of two thousand swine and hurrying down into “the deep;” and what he sees, he loudly proclaims to the bystanders. It is easy to perceive how on some such a basis of fact there might be built the tradition that Jesus healed a demoniac whose name was Legion, and sent two thousand swine into the deep sea; and from thence by easy stages the tradition might arrive at its present shape.
So far, I think, you do not find it very difficult to separate the miraculous from the historical in the life of Christ, nor feel yourself forced to sacrifice any of the “most characteristic sayings of Jesus.” Let us now come to a miracle of greater difficulty, the blasting of the barren fig-tree.
Even of those commentators who accept the miracle of the fig-tree as historical, most, I believe, see in it a kind of parable. The barren fig-tree, they say, which made a great show of leaves but bore no fruit, obviously represents, in the first place, the Pharisees, and in the second place, the nation, which, as a whole, identified itself with the Pharisees. Both the Prophets and the Psalms delight in similar metaphors. Israel is the vine; Jehovah, in Isaiah, is the Lord of the vine, who demands good fruit and finds it not, and consequently resolves to destroy the vine. So here, the Lord comes to the fig-tree of Phariseeism, the tree of degenerate Israel, seeking fruit; and finding none, He curses it, and withers it with the breath of His mouth. Is it not easy to see how a parable, thus expressed in the hymns and earliest traditions of the Church, might speedily be literalized and give rise to a miraculous narrative?
Let me point out to you a curious fact confirmatory of this view. I dare say you may have noticed that St. Luke, although he agrees with St. Mark and St. Matthew in the context of this miracle, omits the miracle itself. Why so? Is it because he never heard of the miracle? Not quite so. It is because he had heard of it in a slightly different form, not as a miracle but as a parable, which he alone has preserved. St. Luke’s version of the tradition is that the Lord comes to the barren tree and, finding no fruit on it, gives orders that it is to be cut down: but the steward of the farm pleads for a respite; let the ground be digged and manured, then, if there be no fruit, let it be cut down. A similar thought, you see, is here expressed in two different shapes, a miraculous and a non-miraculous; and it is not difficult to understand how the former may have been developed from the latter.
But I see that your last letter has a remark on this very miracle, and on the difficulty of rejecting it. “It is associated,” you say, “with one of the most characteristic sayings of Jesus: for it is in connection with the withering of the fig-tree that Jesus says (Matt. xxi. 21), ‘If ye have faith, ye shall not only do what is done to the fig-tree, but even if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou taken up and cast into the sea, it shall be done.’” “Here,” you say, “we have a characteristic saying of Jesus expressly referring to something done, and done miraculously.”
Would it not have been wise, before making so emphatic a statement, to consider how St. Mark, the earlier of the two narrators of this miracle, sets forth the comment of Jesus? The comments run thus in the first two Gospels, and I will add a parallel saying from the third Gospel, not attached to any miracle:
[Transcriber’s Note: The following three quotations were originally printed side-by-side.]