Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Nothing can be said against such distinctions in themselves. Cataloging is part of scholarship, and it is the joy of many exegetes to create more and more subtle and difficult classifications. But there are also problems with the sharp classification of gospel miracles, for it is unmistakable that this classification in New Testament exegesis was created also, and perhaps primarily, in order to be able to evaluate the miracles historically. It goes like this: there were healings and exorcisms; there were

no raisings of the dead, epiphany miracles, gift miracles, or rescue miracles. Thus the cataloging of the miracles very obviously serves the purpose of historically disqualifying a number of the miracle stories.

But there is a second problem as well: the various genres of miracles thus created are much more closely related than at first appears:

Should we classify the story about Jairus’s little daughter (Mark 5:21-43) as a healing or a raising of the dead? Christian tradition has always regarded it as the latter, but the narrative itself is ambivalent—in contrast to the story of the raising of the young man at Nain (Luke 7:11-17). Her relatives consider the girl to be dead, but Jesus apparently does not. The text leaves it all in the air. Here we can see how fluid things are in such stories.

Healings and exorcisms cannot be sharply distinguished. In Judaism, and in antiquity as a whole, “normal” illnesses were often attributed to demonic influence.⁸

•  Luke 13:10-17 speaks of the healing of a woman who has been bent over for many years. Jesus interprets her illness as Satan’s binding (13:16).

• Matthew 12:22 speaks of a person who is blind and has a speech impediment. His blindness and inability to speak are explained in demonological terms. Jesus heals him, and he can once again speak and see.

• The servant of the Gentile centurion “is lying at home paralyzed, in terrible distress” (Matt 8:6). The Greek expression for being “in terrible distress,” deinōs basanizomenos, is the language of antiquity, and we must expand it: he is being distressed by the demons of sickness. When, in the course of the narrative, the centurion tells Jesus that his soldiers obey him to the letter and expects the same from Jesus he is obviously referring to the demons that cause illness. The centurion is convinced that the demons must also obey Jesus to the letter.

•  Within the narrative about the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law Luke alters his Markan model. While Mark had written “he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up” (Mark 1:31), Luke instead has: “then he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her” (Luke 4:39). Thus Jesus shouts at the fever as if it were a demon. He speaks a word of power, as in an exorcism. He yells at the illness as once God had yelled at the powers of chaos (Pss 17:16; 67:31; 75:7; 103:7; 105:9, LXX).

• Paul too attributes his illness, which apparently was accompanied by painful distortions of vision (Gal 4:13-15), to a “messenger of Satan” who repeatedly beats him with its fists (2 Cor 12:7-9).

It makes very good sense to distinguish the stilling of the storm on the lake (Mark 4:35-41) from the healing of demoniacs, and yet we must see that in this narrative Jesus acts like an exorcist. He “shouts at the wind” and commands it as if it were a demon: “Peace! Be still!” (cf. Mark 1:25). And then the lake becomes calm, just as possessed people become quiet, even comatose, immediately after their healing (cf. Mark 9:26). Jesus’ action was altogether plausible to people in antiquity: water, especially deep water, was regarded as the residence of demons, just as the desert was. Therefore, in Mark 4:35-41, the narrative types of “rescue miracle” and “exorcism” are intermingled.

It could not be otherwise. For people in Israel, as for people everywhere in antiquity, chaos threatened from all sides. It revealed itself in a variety of illnesses, in lameness, in disfigurement, in wounds, in social isolation, in the powers of nature, and above all in death. People in ancient Israel would have said that the underworld threatens us everywhere. In Jesus’ time people were convinced that demonic powers were a constant danger. The most horrible power of all was death—and it too was occupied by demons. Hebrews 2:14 says that the devil has the power of death.

When Jesus heals sick people, drives out demons, calms the waters, and raises the dead, the basic happening is the same in all cases: he confronts the powers of chaos, conquers demons, heals the damaged and distorted world, so that the reign of God may become visible and creation attain to the integrity and beauty God intends for it.